Steam Train Research Articles

R. Blackstock Snowdowne (1939–2006)

The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. British volumeVol. 88-B, No. 12 ObituaryFree AccessR. Blackstock Snowdowne (1939–2006)Jos J van NiekerkJos J van NiekerkDrSouth African Orthopaedic Association - ArchivistSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2006https://doi.org/10.1302/0301-620X.88B12.18538AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsAdd to Favourites ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Professor Robert Snowdowne died after a short illness on 27 May 2006. He grew up in a medical family. His father was a general practitioner in Florida, west of Johannesburg. On graduating from high school, Robert elected not to go to university but to pursue an apprenticeship as an orthotist. He completed this, passed his trade test and then decided to apply to the University of Pretoria Medical School, where he graduated MB ChB in 1967.With his background as an orthotist and prosthetist he decided to specialise in orthopaedic surgery and was accepted into post-graduate training at Pretoria University, obtaining his M Med Orthopaedics in 1975. He was elected as the South African ABC fellow in 1978, visiting the United Kingdom and North America.After this fruitful experience he applied for the post of Professor and Head of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of the Free State, and started his tenure of this post in September 1979. He remained there until his retirement in July 2004. During this period he built up the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery to a high level. It provided excellent training at both under- and post-graduate levels. He was highly regarded as a lecturer and respected teacher by his students and his peers.After settling in Bloemfontein, Robert took an active interest in the affairs of the South African Orthopaedic Association and represented the Free State branch on its Executive Committee for 19 years. He served as the President of the Association from 1997 to 1999. During his period as Head of the Department, he was involved in promoting the stature of the South African College of Medicine and its Faculty of Orthopaedic Surgery. This faculty has now become the College of Orthopaedic Surgeons. He acted as an examiner for the College of Medicine on many occasions and served on the Board of the Orthopaedic College. As Professor of orthopaedic surgery he was involved in outreach programs, and worked in China for three months.The South African Orthopaedic Association gave Robert its highest honour, electing him to Life Membership in September 2002. In September 2005, after his retirement as Professor, he was appointed by the South African Orthopaedic Association as the South African Representative on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. His untimely death cut short his tenure on this Board.Outside his involvement in orthopaedic surgery, Robert enjoyed building and driving model steam trains. He is survived by his wife Pearl, two sons and their families. We extend our deep condolences to them on their loss.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 88-B, No. 12 Metrics History Published online 1 December 2006 Published in print 1 December 2006 InformationCopyright © 2006, The British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery: All rights reservedPDF download

The Travels of Harry: International Marketing and the Translation of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Books

The Travels of Harry:International Marketing and the Translation of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Books Gillian Lathey (bio) How does a children's book become an international bestseller? Viewed historically, there are as many answers to that question as there are children's classics. All that can be said with certainty is that recently there has been a dramatic change in the trajectory of a children's book destined for world fame. The travels of Cinderella, Aladdin, Alice, Pinocchio, Emil, Pippi Longstocking, Babar, or Winnie-the-Pooh have been halting and uneven—sometimes with delays of several years between publication of the original and translation and positive reception in other countries. As Emer O'Sullivan points out in Kinderliterarische Komparatistik, Alice in Wonderland only achieved real popularity in Germany in the 1970s, thanks to a new translation. Conversely, Erich Kästner's modern classic Emil and the Detectives enjoyed two separate waves of popularity in Britain: the first in the 1930s, and the second after the publication of a new translation in 1959, when Emil Tischbein became, on a smaller scale, the Harry Potter of his day. Economic, ideological, political, and cultural factors have all played their part in the international success or otherwise of children's books, as has the fact that children's literature is a visual as well as a literary medium: E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh or Jean de Brunhoff's Babar are recognized everywhere. But there is no doubt that since the advent of Harry Potter, the concept of an international bestseller for children has taken on a new meaning as well as a new epithet: "phenomenon." Rapid distribution and the effectiveness of global marketing have guaranteed the international success of each Harry Potter title. From booksellers dressing up as witches in Germany to a publicity stunt involving a steam train at London's King's Cross Station, the publication of a new Harry Potter [End Page 141] title is an orchestrated event, staged successively across the world with minimal time delay for translation. As the 2003 CLISS summer school took place, translators were working to demanding schedules on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and delegates at the Harry Potter seminar devoted a moment's silent tribute to them all. Never has the role of translators been so essential to publishers and keen readers alike. According to the Publishers Weekly NewsLine website of 2 July 2003 (just over a week after the publication of Potter no. 5), the Chinese translator was a frontrunner in the race to produce the first translation, with plans for an 800,000-copy first printing in place for 1 October 2003. The Japanese translation of the book, on the other hand, was not expected until mid-2004, with Germany (November 2003), Finland, and Spain (both early 2004) in between. Time patterns of translation still vary across the world, but gaps are decreasing as the international Potter effect gains momentum with the publication of each volume. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was not published in China until October 2000, a delay of three years from first publication in the UK; for volume five the planned time lapse between publication of the original and the translation was barely four months. One thing is certain: if Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had been translated into forty-seven languages in two hundred countries and sold circa 195 million copies by June 2003 (bloomsbury.com), then no. 5 is sure, eventually, to be published in a similar, if not greater, number of languages. The publication of a new Harry Potter title is an economic bonanza for all interested parties. Beyond the book lie the forces of global merchandising and branding that rule the world of children's publishing, as Dan Hade argues in his article "Storyselling." Once the nonbook rights to Harry Potter were sold in 1998, Time Warner exercised control of world distribution with an iron hand. There are many instances of legal action, for example against several German publishers for producing pedagogical materials based on the Harry Potter books. Similarly, publishers who have bought translation rights have sought to retain control...

The Uses of a Mistranslated Manifesto: Baudelaire's "La Genèse d'un poème"

The Uses of a Mistranslated Manifesto: Baudelaire's "La Genèse d'un poème" John Tresen IN HIS COURSE ON "LA POÉTIQUE" at the Collège de France in 1937, Paul Valéry proposed an examination of the aspects of literature that distinguish it from other uses of language. He would investigate the "effets proprement littéraires du langage," the expressive and suggestive inventions that increase "le pouvoir et la pénétration de la parole," along with the restrictions placed upon literature "en vue de bien distinguer la langue de la fiction de celle de l'usage."1 It was a project of separation and purification. The goal was to "bien distinguer" between literary language and mere speech. Taking for granted the distinctiveness of literature, he sought to detail and to explain this difference; he claimed, for instance, that literature relied more heavily than other arts on convention and memory, and that it uniquely combined abstraction with emotion and the senses. At all times, however, literature for Valéry was something particularly mental and internal. In the "repentirs" and "ratures" of the successive drafts of a work, he saw a history of the working of the human mind.2 This paper presents one part of the story of how we arrived in the early twentieth century at a notion of literature as an exclusive medium—as an exemplary record of the creative processes of the mind, or better yet "l'esprit." If we are now sensitive to the rivalries between and within media, as well as the ways that literature can mimic and enter into dialog with the codes of meaning proper to film, sound recording or, more recently, the digital hypertext, it is only on the basis of a previously held conviction of the "uniqueness" of literature, one associated in French criticism with Valéry's poetics and with certain strands of phenomenological and semiotic analysis.1 Crucial to this history, and not only for Valéry's particular conception of the "autonomy" of literature, were the critical writings and poetic practice of Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe.4 In his literaray criticism, Baudelaire presented Poe's works as a moral and metaphysical resource for an intellectual and ultimately spiritual view of poetry, as a sacred province to be protected from contamination by the mechanical materialities of the industrial age. The poetry and criticism of both Baudelaire and Poe were central influences upon Valéry's concept of the object and methods of "la poétique." However, when we look at Poe's conception of literature in his original English texts, he appears, unlike his translator, to consider literature less as an Vol. XLIII, No. 2 23 L'Esprit Créateur isolated mental process than as a material link between an author and a reader. This view, I suggest, brings him close to contemporary views of the dialogical interrelations entertained by literature and other media. Poe saw literary technique and the material assembly and diffusion of texts as technologies that were continuous with other devices of the industrial revolution: like steam trains, the telegraph, and daguerreotypes, an effective poem would restructure the relations among humans, and between humans and the natural world. This article will first give a brief overview of the importance of technological themes and content in Poe's writing, focusing on the technical meaning of "composition" and its implications for his literary theory. It will then examine Baudelaire's early embrace of Poe's scientific and machine-friendly view of literature and his eventual drift, from the late 1840s to the mid-1850s, to a view of literature as a medium that must keep itself at a distance from the mechanical production of industrial capitalism. This eventual landing point will be anchored in a parallel reading of Poe's key critical essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," and Baudelaire's translation of it, "La Genèse d'un poème." While no translation can hope for perfect transparency with regard to the range of overtones and resonances of a text, the spiritual interpretation that Baudelaire put on the writings of his American precursor—in his introductions and critical studies of Poe as well...

The Picturesque Railway

In spite of protests from some who feared its impact on the landscape, the railroad often settled into its surroundings without inflicting lasting damage. Contemporary artists, and those responsible for railway buildings and structures, contributed to a widespread perception of the railroad as an acceptable feature even of the ‘Picturesque’ landscape, an aesthetic ideal typified by pastoral scenes including evidence of human activity. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while usage of the term ‘Picturesque’ became looser, the railroad was associated less and less with Modernity, and rural lines and steam trains in particular came to be seen as relics from the past, and as picturesque in their own right. The railroad in the landscape, an evocative image of a transient reality, poignantly represents a short-lived harmony of the natural world and human endeavour.

The Hobo as National Hero: Models for American Manhood in “Steam Train” Maury Graham's Autobiography

The Hobo as National Hero: Models for American Manhood in “Steam Train” Maury Graham's Autobiography

More than Embers of Sentiment: Railroad Nostalgia and Oral History Memories of the 1920s and 1930s

MICHAEL KAMMEN OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY finds instructive lesson in the way Americans perceive the cultural meaning of railroads from the Jacksonian Era to the present: During a span of roughly a century and a half the railroad shifted from being a symbol of dramatic and unimagined progress (1830s and '40s) to representing abusive and regressive economic power (1880s and '90s) to becoming the object of wistful nostalgia on the part of tradition-oriented train buffs. Tourists now thrill to the whistle of an olde-tyme steam train; we have museums entirely devoted to railroad history; and huge locomotive and diesel engines provide some of the most awesome exhibits in the Henry Ford Museum and the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. We have passenger stations that have been abandoned by their lines and now serve as atmospheric restaurants. Retired railroad cars situated on adjacent tracks commonly serve as cocktail lounges. From dangerous cinder sparks to embers of sentiment: the railroad really exemplified [Nathaniel] Hawthorne's notion that progress is circular rather than linear. Here we have an instance of transformation: from innovation to tradition, via memory, in about five generations.'

Into the third decade: Some suggested strategies for AARE in the 1990s

Well, colleagues, I have demonstrated that AARE was born into optimism in the early 1970s and that alas, it lost its way in the wilderness of economic rationalism and despair in the 1980s. I am aware that the pall of gloom of the 1980s is still with us. However, I hope that several of the strategies which I have advocated — especially those of the permanent secretariat and the national research agenda may prove to be the light at the end of that long tunnel which stretches into the 1990s. I leave it to some future President to assess, with the benefit of historical hindsight, whether any of these suggested strategies were adopted and proved successful. I leave it to her, too, to declare whether it was in fact the light at the end of the tunnel which I saw or merely another metaphorical steam train bearing down on our troubled Association.

Liverpool of the Cape

Abstract In the 1980s, especially with the motor industry in the doldrums, Port Elizabeth could be described as South Africa's Cinderella city. Few people, however, realise the key role she played in South African trade just over a century ago when agriculture was king and the mining revolution still something of the future. At the time it was locally believed that Port Elizabeth was “the most important spot in the colony - not the Liverpool, but the New York of the Cape.” Although she had a fairy tales rise to prominence there was no traditional happy ending Initially, aided by a fairy godmother in sheep's clothing, this Cinderella triumphed over the wicked designs of her Table Bay stepmother's attempts to promote the Kowi e and East London as ports. She became belle of the Cape trade ball hosted by Prince Economics. But at midnight the ox wagon turned into a steam train which the prince hijacked to seek his fortune on the diamond and gold fields. Port Elizabeth's humble sheepskin slipper was overlooked ...

A comparison of alternative symbolic warning signs for railway level crossings : Cole, B.L., and Jacobs, R.J.Australian Road Research, 1981, 11.4, 37–45

Most level crossings have light traffic and good accident records and the only protection that can be justified in cost benefit terms is a system of warning signs. The Australian standard specifies a warning sign using the cross bucks symbol which might not be correctly interpreted and might also be confused with the crossroads warning sign. Wigglesworth, in a review of level crossing protection for the Ministry of Transport, Victoria, recommended the adoption of a train symbol. The UN protocol symbol is a steam train but steam trains are no longer used on scheduled railway services. However, a diesel train symbol does not have distinctive features easily adaptable to symbolic representation and such a symbol might not have an adequate legibility distance. This paper compares the two Australian standard railway warning signs, a steam train symbol and two diesel train symbols. The criteria for evaluation are interpretability and legibility distance. Consideration is also given to what are the community stereotypes for a railway warning sign. It is concluded that the steam train symbol remains a community stereotype despite the rarity of steam trains; is likely to be correctly interpreted and has a long legibility distance. (Author/TRRL)

The role of advancing technology in the future of air transport

Subsonic jet transport has been with us now for about a quarter of a century. There are young people starting their careers today who have never known a sky without jet noise and the V-wing silhouette of a passenger carrying aircraft. Indeed, it must seem to them as permanent a feature of our world as the steam train between the world wars was to people such as myself; the big difference is, as I hope to show, that air transport has not yet reached a development plateau.Aviation has always been a dynamic industry, with a rapidly expanding technology and opportunity which has now taken it beyond the atmosphere, into space and onto the planets. The spectacular steps have not been taken in the first place for the benefit of commercial transport operations—although there have often been consequential advantages. Advances were pursued because they were thought necessary for the maintenance of effective armed forces and the provision of efficient weapons.

The role of technology in air transport—2000AD

Subsonic jet transport has been with us now for about a quarter of a century. There are young people starting their careers today who have never known a sky without jet noise and the V‐wing silhouette of a passenger carrying aircraft. Indeed, it must seem to them as permanent a feature of our world as the steam train between the world wars to people such as myself; the big difference is, as I hope to show, that air transport has not yet reached a development plateau.

Concorde

The logic of Concorde is the logic of the stage mail coach, the canal barge, the steam train, the steamship and earlier air transports. Sheer speed.

Sir William McKell and Labor History

Vince Kelly has written a valuable account of the career of W. J. McKell (A Man of the People in Alpha Books, Sydney, 1971). The book is attractively presented, wrell-bound and evocatively illustrated: illustrations remain understandably popular and essential to a work of this type, they help to sell a book. But a recent feature of the book trade in Australia is surely not helping to sell books. I refer to the practice of publishers who, under pressure, it seems, from the sellers, often do not print a price on their product. In the cases where they do show a price, it is by no means uncommon for the sellers to make an attempt, not always successful, to obliterate it and replace it with a higher price. The Labor History Society has recently had some experience of this: 'The Great Depression in Australia', journal No. 17, had a fixed retail price of $2.50, but at least one bookseller raised it to $3. I am not moralising about this situation: and many of its general implications, of the facts of life type, are relevant to the observations I am going to make about W. J. McKell and his role in labor history: for the art and practice of bookselling are subject to change, like anything else, and what wras appropriate for William Moffitt and the Teggs in the 1830s (see Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 2) is clearly not suitable for booksellers in the 1970s. Many of them occupy prime sites in the capital cities that are now capable of earning higher incomes from such activities as selling office space, or accommodation, if not beer, rather than books, reflecting changes of pace and style, deeply rooted in the life of the people. As a result much of bookselling as at present organised is finding it difficult to pay for itself, it is uneconomic. And the contemporary confusion about retail prices reflects the fact, hard as it may be for many, that the days of leisurely and satisfying browsing and selection from a wide range of books are probably about to go forever, like trams and steam trains. So there is no price shown on Kelly's book on McKell. Its retail price is the one that will confront the buyer wherever he may examine it. I hope, for many reasons, that there will be many buyers of it. Sir William McKell was born on 26 September 1891 at Pambula, Newr South Wales, in the year in which the Australian Labor Party was founded and about the time the first Labor Party w7as having its first split, both in parliament and outside. He came from a family that was close to being impoverished; when he came to Sydney as a boy he lived in Redfern, then, as now, an underprivileged area, however vital and cheerful. Educated at Surry Hills State School, he left w7hen thirteen to become an apprentice to boilermaking. He became an active trade unionist and as a youth joined the Labor Party. Elected to the New7 South Wales Parliament in 1917 at the age of 25 he was a minister before he was thirty. In his spare time he studied law and became a barrister in 1925 (K.C., 1945) . He was elected leader of the party in 1939, and became premier in 1941, the forerunner of five consecutive Labor premiers of New South Wales until 1965. In 1947 he resigned to 60

Urban transportation and city form

The last century was significant in transport history in showing the enormous impact a new technology, the railways, could have on city growth and form. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, cities were compact, the population mostly living within relatively short walking-distances from work. The steam train, slow to accelerate or stop, made only widely spaced stations economic, but electrification allowed a closer station spacing, producing suburbia. This assessment of the effect of transport on city development introduces a subject, aspects of which will be treated in greater depth in later issues.

British Aeronautical Research Facilities

“And as in uffish thought he stood,The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,And burbled as it came!“Scarcely has the final history of the steam train been written, than I am asked to write the history of the aeroplane, from the research facilities’ point of view. It can only be this nostalgia for the past which has enabled me to secure the willing help of so many people in the brief three and a half weeks allowed for the compilation of this paper. Of necessity it must be incomplete, but is, I trust, accurate.

NEWS OF INDUSTRY

Sleeving Beats Cable Corrosion. Sulphurous fumes emitted by steam trains passing under the British Railways bridge at Lodge Road, London, corroded away the steel joists supporting the bridge. In the 22 years since the bridge was first opened the damage had become so extensive that a major rebuilding was scheduled recently. The fumes caused particularly acute corrosion in the mild‐steel pipes encasing three 66,000‐V two‐core oil‐filled high‐tension and associated pilot cables laid under the south footway and supported by mild‐steel R.S.J.s suspended from the main bridge girders.

Progress in Metropolitan Integration

veniently. Fifty years ago nearby suburbs were peopled by steam-railroad commuters and customers of the rapidly developing trolley lines. Up to that time, however, the outward movement of population in search of cheaper rents and precious light and air had not been so rapid but that city growth by annexation had been able to keep up with it. With the development of the automobile and the paved highway city population has literally exploded over the surrounding country until in many places more of the population which economic forces have drawn to the city live outside of it than in it. This result is most notable, of course, in the case of our great population centers, but there is scarcely an urban community so small or of such slow growth that it is not evident. The effects of this outward sweep of city workers by bus, streetcar, subway, steam train, and automobile have been complicated further by the movement of industry into the outskirts so that in numerous instances the morn-

Levels and Spectra of Transportation Vehicle Noise

In the recent past a program was initiated to survey vehicle, traffic, and industrial noise in the Chicago area. The phase on noise of vehicles has been completed. The investigation included street, elevated, and subway cars; diesel, steam, and electric trains; and motor buses, trucks, and automobiles. Measurements were made of over-all and octave band levels. Inside of the vehicles, flat network over-all levels ranged from 85 db in a new “L” car to 95 db in subway cars. The readings in the 400–800 c.p.s. band ranged from 68 db in an automobile to 91 db in subway cars. Outside of and close to vehicles, the flat network over-all levels ranged from 78 db for automobiles to 94 db for subway trains. Observations in the 400–800 c.p.s. band ranged from 66 db for automobiles to 87 db for subway trains. Variations in the over-all levels inside of vehicles ranged from ±1 to ±5 db. Variations the 400–800 c.p.s. band ranged from ±2 to ±5 db. Outside of the vehicles, variations ranged from ±2 to ±6 db in both the over-all and 400–800 c.p.s. band levels.

The Transportation System

On the outer lines, the modern Dieselelectrics furnished rapid service. Although they ran less frequently, they were as accurately timed as their counterparts on the central system. They covered their 700 kilometers several times a day. The steam trains, kept in good repair, also rendered rapid and dependable service. At the junctions they were met by small locals, which were gradually being replaced by buses. The gay-colored, shining buses covered the country with a network of lines. They reached into every tiny hamlet, serving it several times a day, maintaining exact schedules. There were also large excursion buses, attractive in appearance, which offered delightful sight-seeing trips at low cost. A government committee regulated these 4,500 vehicles, and official inspectors saw that they ran on time and complied with the safety requirements. The tramcars, originally steam-driven, were being gradually replaced by buses except in the cities, and those that remained were electrified.

Train Acceleration and Braking

Abstract This paper presents a direct analytical method for determining the equations of the motion of a steam train, either when it is being accelerated or when it is being braked. The following important relations are found: The relation between (a) speed and acceleration or deceleration; (b) speed and time; and (c) distance traveled and speed or time. The results obtained are compared with actual performance records. The author feels that, in some cases, an analytical method of the type presented in the paper compares favorably with numerical or graphical integration.