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Children's Railways of the Former USSR

dzd-ussr.ru

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Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#81

Post by d1l »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #26
nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

> Then, why is it "Children's?", you might ask. Because it is operated by the schoolchildren, 9-15 years old. This blew my mind, and immediately made me think of John Taylor-Gatto [1] who won numerous teaching awards trying, but ultimately failing, to convince American teachers to show children the same respect. My 30 year old masters students are not even allowed to run their own WiFi network never mind an actual RA…

> This scared the living shit out of governors and politicians who realised such a radical agenda might create young adults able to think and politically organise. Can you provide any examples of this? I'm skeptical of this claim given that Gatto was a prominent Libertarian, which don't really believe in political organization. The Libertarian movement is inherently individualistic. Not to mention his work with a Chr…

Catholic scientists, quite a list:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scie...

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#82

Post by f6v »

bionsystem wrote: post #59
f6v wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be surprised but Deutsche Bahn fit the description as well.

Can we find similar ideas in the way Samsung is run ?

I think many huge corporations start building their own resorts, housing, hospitals, etc. I mean, you can practically live at Google campus, right?

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#83

Post by orthoxerox »

kgeist wrote: post #39
deepdriver wrote: post #3

The steam locomotives (scroll down for color photos) look remarkably like Thomas the Tank Engine: http://www.dzd-ussr.ru/towns/gorky/foto1-eng.html Those photos are from the late 1990s, so maybe the resemblance is intentional.

Thomas the Tank Engine is virtually unknown in Russia, so I doubt it

That's incorrect. The show has been regularly broadcast since the 1990's. But it's not that big in Russia that people will deliberately style steam locomotives to look like Thomas or Gordon.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#84

Post by orthoxerox »

mantas wrote: post #38
IIAOPSW wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious why do you say it would be a less immersive experience? Running a train system is no small thing. From drawing up time tables to ad hoc rerouting when something inevitably breaks to all the signal and rolling stock maintenance...

At least in my city, the child railway used to be an isolated bit of decommissioned railway. A kilometer or two of a single track to do back-and-forth runs. While it still had to be great experience (it was closed many years before I was born), it was not that complicated :)

It's still complicated, since your tiny train can run over some wino who fell asleep across your tiny track after finding a hole in the fence.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#85

Post by dalbasal »

nightpool wrote: post #29
dalbasal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following. Are you in favour of letting children operate trains or against it?

The GP was saying that comparing the children's railway to IT limitations preventing graduate students from running their own WiFi networks is absolutely ridiculous. University IT has lots of good reasons for centralizing the administration and allocation of WiFi networks that have nothing to do with "children" (30 year olds) not being "respected"

Railway networks have many reasons to not let children run a rail line. I realize there are reasons and arguments for the default position, but well... these are arguments for the default position.

Of course WiFi admin is different from rail transport from farm management, etc. That doesn't negate the fact that they're also similar in some respects, and affected in similar ways by prevailing culture and attitudes.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#86

Post by matkoniecz »

avodonosov wrote: post #77
nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

> Then, why is it "Children's?", you might ask. Because it is operated by the schoolchildren, 9-15 years old. This blew my mind, and immediately made me think of John Taylor-Gatto [1] who won numerous teaching awards trying, but ultimately failing, to convince American teachers to show children the same respect. My 30 year old masters students are not even allowed to run their own WiFi network never mind an actual RA…

The responsibility here is to give rides to other children. It is not used for real transportation needs.

Responsibility refers here to is transporting actual humans (that will die or will be maimed in case of an accident).

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#87

Post by matkoniecz »

anovikov wrote: post #42
nonrandomstring wrote: post #9

> Then, why is it "Children's?", you might ask. Because it is operated by the schoolchildren, 9-15 years old. This blew my mind, and immediately made me think of John Taylor-Gatto [1] who won numerous teaching awards trying, but ultimately failing, to convince American teachers to show children the same respect. My 30 year old masters students are not even allowed to run their own WiFi network never mind an actual RA…

These children were mostly railway workers' kids. Whole purpose of it was to teach them railway jobs were cool to make them follow their parents' steps. In the Soviet Union, and to a great extent in Russia till now, railway system is very independent from the State. It's frequently called a state within a state. It has it's own power stations, construction departments that build among other things, housing for worker…

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Railway_Troops have position/separation greater than elsewhere.

For other oddities, USSR has army, navy, air force and anti-aircraft branches.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#88

Post by matkoniecz »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #35
smeej wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of scientists, authors, and innovators who were not only Catholics, but Catholic priests is enormous. Maybe you've met some dopey religious folks, but don't paint with too broad a brush.

Yep, and a lot of them lived back when being accused of heresy by the church was literally a death sentence. So again, not exactly an environment that fostered critical thinking, certainly one that punished speaking out against the church in any sort of way. Galileo, for example, was condemned on his death bed by the pope and buried in an unceremoniously small room next to the novice's chapel for almost 100 years bef…

And for example scientific foundations for Big Bang were put by Belgian priest and treated with suspicion as too consistent with world as created at some point.

> Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and calculated the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_Bang_theory

World is not some simple.

Also, do you really need throwaway account for THAT?

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#89

Post by progre »

f6v wrote: post #82
bionsystem wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we find similar ideas in the way Samsung is run ?

I think many huge corporations start building their own resorts, housing, hospitals, etc. I mean, you can practically live at Google campus, right?

All self respecting industry operations in Sweden (steel, wood, papermills, weapons) had their own seaside resorts for workers from about 1920 to the late 1980-ies. Most had housing and company clinics too. Some of these companies were state owned, some in private hands. It all ended when the world went stock-market crazy and the maximize profit guys started to "core-business" the industries, and colsolidation started.

I think that capitalism was kind of hi-jacked by the money guys at that point. Lots of company towns where, if not thriving, getting along, working. Not super profitable but doing ok. Then practically overnight they turned to wasteland when the mills closed.

Re: Children's Railways of the Former USSR

#90

Post by avodonosov »

matkoniecz wrote: post #86
avodonosov wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The responsibility here is to give rides to other children. It is not used for real transportation needs.

Responsibility refers here to is transporting actual humans (that will die or will be maimed in case of an accident).

In this sense yes. The phrase "real passengers" can be interpretted differently, more seriously.

But I am not sure the drivers are children. And even if they are, of course not the yongest ones. And if 14/15 year old is allowed to drive after getting trained, it is not a big problem, I think. In some countries 15 year olds can drive cars.

In any case, this railroad is supervised by adults. It is more of an educational establishment.

We have such a railroad here in Minsk. I never cared to visit, even when was a child. Although I briefly knew one person attending it, he was dreaming to work on railroad.

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