Other than station stops, Amtrak trains run either on signal indication or some version of Track Warrants (TWC or DTC, depending on the owning railroad) so there is no timetable in the "Timetable and Train Order" sense. A train arriving early at a passenger stop is expected to "wait for time" as Johnny indicated, unless its a "D" stop where a timetable note says the train may depart before the scheduled time.
Amtrak trains do have schedules that the public can access. Certainly, if the Amtrak schedule states that a train is to leave a certain point at a certain time, the traveling public will expect the train to not leave before the published time--so an Amtrak train would be held uttil the clock reaches that time.
In general, long distance trains have no published times of departure from Alexandria to New York City--so they may leave such stations any time after the announced arrival time.
After the change from standard to daylight time, all trains with a schedule will run an hour late unless they are able to make time up. It is only at the fall change that scheduled trains would be held.
Johnny
Like everyone else, RRs moved their clocks forward an hour in February 1942 and stayed there until September? 1945.
RRs nationwide moved their clocks forward an hour on 30 April 1967 -- the first year of standardized nationwide DST. When they moved them back at the end of October, a scheduled train that was running on time would indeed have to stop and wait for an hour, unless the dispatcher annulled the schedule. But nowadays "scheduled trains" don't actually exist.
WILLIAM O CRAIGsome metropolitan areas went on Double Daylight Saving Time.
In the US? Where?
I just ran across this item about time zones and time changes. The time is appropriate, as we are about to change our clocks again in 2019. I covered the Interstate Commerce Commission for Traffic World magazine from 1958 to 1969 and a hearing examiner once told me that the worst, most bitter hearings he ever presided over were those involving a proposed time zone boundary change. In World War II, everybody went on "war time" (permanent DST), and some metropolitan areas went on Double Daylight Saving Time. When I was in Chicago in the summer of 1946 some public clocks had two hour hands, one for DST and the other for standard time that the railroads still ran on. I have heard that trains stop for an hour when universal DST goes into effect so that their schedules will match the new times. Does anyone know if this is true?
Deggesty Sad to say, I do not remember the source, but a year or two ago I saw a study which showed that more energy is used during the time that we have to get up an hour earlier than we should than during the time that our clocks are closer to sun time. In other words, Daylight Saving Time wastes energy. But, it seems that the people in Bedlam-on-the-Potomac are immune to reasoning.
Sad to say, I do not remember the source, but a year or two ago I saw a study which showed that more energy is used during the time that we have to get up an hour earlier than we should than during the time that our clocks are closer to sun time. In other words, Daylight Saving Time wastes energy. But, it seems that the people in Bedlam-on-the-Potomac are immune to reasoning.
Pay your money and get the 'study' says what you want it to!
The older I get the cinical I get to all these 'studies'!
One study says coffee is bad, the next says coffee is good, the third says coffee does nothing, the fourth study says tea does it better - ad nauseaum
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Overmod K4sPRR Semper VaporoIndiana used to leave it up to the individual county as to whether to adopt DST. Due to that, a friend of mine who grew up in Indiana told me he would wear two watches. Could this be an added reason to use the "Fort Wayne" hour hand sometimes found on railroad watches? This has two hour hands fixed one hour apart (one usually red or gold, the other normal blued (or for Illinois, plum). I had thought this was just for operation across a time zone... but yikes! if railroad time varied with county time, there might be an additional use.
K4sPRR Semper VaporoIndiana used to leave it up to the individual county as to whether to adopt DST. Due to that, a friend of mine who grew up in Indiana told me he would wear two watches.
Semper VaporoIndiana used to leave it up to the individual county as to whether to adopt DST.
Due to that, a friend of mine who grew up in Indiana told me he would wear two watches.
Could this be an added reason to use the "Fort Wayne" hour hand sometimes found on railroad watches? This has two hour hands fixed one hour apart (one usually red or gold, the other normal blued (or for Illinois, plum). I had thought this was just for operation across a time zone... but yikes! if railroad time varied with county time, there might be an additional use.
My father who was a officer on railroad divisions that spanned two time zones had his Railroad Approved Bouleva Accutron with two hour hands.
The nominal orientation of Indiana and time zones was that the counties around Chicago, observed Chicago time - the balance of the state observed Eastern time. It would get 'wild' when daylight saving time went into effect - the counties around Chicago observed what Chicago observed, the counties around Cincinnati observed what Cincinnati observed, and as I recollect, the state as a whole did not move to 'Daylight Saving Time'.
Overmodif railroad time varied with county time...
Re. Paul above:
As I recall it, the argument was that natural gas was too precious to burn for the generation of electricity. (This was before today's plentiful supply.) The proper use was for home heating. Perhaps the effect was a net shift of natural gas to the north. I do know that, up north too, we had plants burning gas or even oil. These too were encouraged to switch to coal, where practical.
I remember wondering what the logic was behind changing to daylight saving time as a solution to the energy shortage. Someone suggested that its purpose was just to disrupt our routine to remind us to conserve energy.
Something else puzzled me: Before the crisis, power plants in the south ran mainly on natural gas which was abundant here, and up north they ran on coal. Part of the solution to the energy crisis was to have the south convert to coal which had to be shipped down from the north so that the natural gas could be sent north. I never have figured that one out.
I have always been anti-DST.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Be glad you're not Chinese. The whole country observes Beijing time. Sunrise at 9:00 AM in the far west, anyone?
As for this old Air Force type, let's hear it for Zulu!
Chuck
I hear ya, Stix. I no doubt remember too many things that ain't so!
"Bedlam"--the British pronunciation of "Bethlehem;" many years ago there was a hospital named "Bethlehem" where people who were not quite right in the head were confined.
I do not remember if it was William Sydney Porter (O Henry) who originated the expression "Bedlam-on-the-Potomac;" I do remember his using the expression "Bagdad-on-the Hudson" for New York City.
dakotafred Nixon has a lot of things to answer for, but not this one. Altho the oil embargo hit in '73 -- causing the price of gas where I lived to jump from 32 cents to the stratospheric heights of 44 cents -- Nixon was gone when a Democratic Congress and Gerald Ford got around to enacting year-round DST in time for the winter of '74-5.
Nixon has a lot of things to answer for, but not this one. Altho the oil embargo hit in '73 -- causing the price of gas where I lived to jump from 32 cents to the stratospheric heights of 44 cents -- Nixon was gone when a Democratic Congress and Gerald Ford got around to enacting year-round DST in time for the winter of '74-5.
No it was Nixon. I remember it happened when I was in Jr.High...and I didn't start high school until Sept. 1974. It was the winter before that.
I looked it up, Nixon signed the law Dec. 15, 1973, taking effect January 6, 1974.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4073
wjstix Wasn't there a deal with the oil embargo in 1973 where Nixon ordered that the clocks not change that winter (1973-74)?? I was in ninth grade then (last year of Jr. High) and I remember in the winter being in school for like two hours each day before the sun came up ... Somehow this was supposed to save gasoline or something.
Wasn't there a deal with the oil embargo in 1973 where Nixon ordered that the clocks not change that winter (1973-74)?? I was in ninth grade then (last year of Jr. High) and I remember in the winter being in school for like two hours each day before the sun came up ... Somehow this was supposed to save gasoline or something.
They also gave us the "double nickel" speed limit, even on interstate highways, that persisted until 1995, with dubious benefit.
Semper Vaporo I should add that Granddad was always talking about being on "God's time" and forget this messing with the clocks.
I should add that Granddad was always talking about being on "God's time" and forget this messing with the clocks.
You still hear talk of "God's time" from people who don't understand that Standard Time is just as artificial a construct as Daylight Savings. Put them back on the real "God's time" -- sun time -- and they'd scream to high, uh, Heaven.
Pigs and cows? Dogs, also. The last dog we had knew which days of the week he and I would take a walk when I came home from work. In the summer, I would have to tell him, when I came home, that we would have to wait because it was too hot to go then.(And in the winter, I was able to leave work a little early so we could get an hour's walk in while there was still light enough to see where we were going.)
No one who grew up on a farm (like my wife) has much good to say about Daylight Savings Time. Apparently pigs and cows don't really grasp the concept very well.
Indiana used to leave it up to the individual county as to whether to adopt DST. If you were traveling any distance in ANY direction and wanted to keep your watch correct, you would have to adjust the time ahead or back at many county lines.
EDIT: I should add that Granddad was always talking about being on "God's time" and forget this messing with the clocks.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
I don't remember just what year it was, but I do remember the asinine ruling--and I remember that some school children lost their lives because of having to be out in the pitchdark so they could get to school on time. I do not remember much detail of going to school during winter when we had "wartime" during the War (WW II, for those who are too young to comprehend the term), but it seems that we started to school later during the winter.
Another thought about time zones. The boundaries, especially the one between Eastern and Central time, have been changed many times; usually they were moved to the west from the appointed lines that were seven and a half degrees west of the meridians used to determine the time. Long ago, all of Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida were in the central zone. When my mother and father moved from Virginia to Florida to live right after they were married in 1919, they were told to change their watches at Columbia, S.C. In 1938, Atlanta, Asheville, and Bristol, Tenn./Va. were points of change.
Wasn't there a deal with the oil embargo in 1973 where Nixon ordered that the clocks not change that winter (1973-74)?? I was in ninth grade then (last year of Jr. High) and I remember in the winter being in school for like two hours each day before the sun came up.
Somehow this was supposed to save gasoline or something. Oh, and for a while back then outdoor Christmas lights were discouraged to save electricity, so for quite a few years you didn't see huge home displays like you had in the sixties (or see again in recent years).
I should have prefaced "Most of the South...." with "Until Congress enacted its decree,"
Ah, yes, there could well be great confusion and many missed trains (as though no one misses a train now) before the inauguration of standard time zones. Seldom were the time standards mentioned in the railroads' representations in the guides of the era. Looking in the Travelers Official Railway Guide of the United States and Canada for June, 1869, I find a rare note in the representation of the Wilmington and Manchester Railway (Wilmington, N.C., to Kingsville, S.C., and Kingsville to Camden)--"Camden Branch Trains...run by Camden time, which is 15 minutes slower than Wilmington and Manchester Railway time."
I do not know how many of you remember the hodge-podge of starting and ending times for the so-called "Daylight Saving Time" before Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that everybody is to observe the same dates, unless a state legislature exempted its state; Congress did make an exception for the area of Indiana close to Chicago. The details of this hodge-podge were published in the Guide.
Most of the South did not make the change, but the people in Virginia living near (and especially those working there) in Bedlam-on-the-Potomac had to make the change.
I like Phoebe Vet's comment about the people who were incapable of adjusting their time.
Incidentally, during the Second World War, the people in England had to endure Double War Time. At least, we in the South were forced to observe only single War Time.
Are many of you familiar with Robert Louis Stevenson's poem which sets forth the lament of the boy in Scotland who, "In winter, I get up and dress by candlelight"--and "In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day"?
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
wjstix According the story they taught us in school, Daylight Savings Time was first proposed by Ben Franklin, who thought it odd that during certain times of year Philadelphia shops would sit closed in the mornings until several hours after the sunrise, but would close in late afternoon or evening in the dark. By adjusting the clocks by an hour, the shops could both open and close during daylight hours - a good thing in the years before electric lighting.
According the story they taught us in school, Daylight Savings Time was first proposed by Ben Franklin, who thought it odd that during certain times of year Philadelphia shops would sit closed in the mornings until several hours after the sunrise, but would close in late afternoon or evening in the dark. By adjusting the clocks by an hour, the shops could both open and close during daylight hours - a good thing in the years before electric lighting.
What a shame that people were incapable of adjusting their hours of operation unless someone changed the time indicated on the village clock. After the clock is adjusted the merchants are now opening an hour earlier just as they would be if they just said "In the summer we open an hour earlier".
Just as the railroads needed a standard time so opposing trains could be co-ordinated, so in our now very international society, we should run the entire world on standard time. GPS & flight planning, among others, already do.
BTW Railroad Standard Time created time zones, so every station within one time zone set their clocks to the same time, rather then setting them by the sun (causing different times as you travelled east or west). It had nothing to do with Daylight Savings Time.
DeggestyAs I understand the matter, when the noon sighting had been taken, the time on board the ship would be set to noon.
No idea when they reset clocks, but they wouldn't use a noon sight to reset them. No way to use a sextant near noon to determine time accurately.
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