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Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

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Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#171

Post by eldaisfish »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #165
bigiain wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno why this is getting downvoted. It's a fair and important question. I've never been to Tennessee, but I spent a week in Atlanta once 15 or 20 years back, and as an Australian the segregation and underlying racism really surprised and disappointed me. (Not that Australia is really any better with respect to how we are institutionally and often socially and causally racist towards our indigenous people...)

> Dunno why this is getting downvoted. It's a fair and important question. It's getting downvoted because it's neither of those things. It's basically bigotry towards his outgroup ("ewww those rural hicks" drips from that comment) with a thin veneer of pretending to be concerned for minorities.

this right here is why acknowledging racism is so hard for so many. The US south has a long history with racism, this is a website that skews white and wealthy and your accusation is that a question asking about rural racism is bigoted against rural people?

wow.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#172

Post by Retric »

pizzathyme wrote: post #49
shortformblog wrote: post #39

The irony being, of course, that it is surrounded by an area where it is basically impossible to get by without a car. My wife and I once left Gatlinburg after a week there and our tire blew out on the way out of town. It was a Sunday morning. Literally our only option to get it replaced that day was a Walmart location 15 miles away. So we had to wait for AAA for an hour and a half to tell us we were stuck using a do…

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

It’s really not that simple.

If Denmark population 6 million people and 141 people per/km^2 has zero issue with trains then Florida a flat state population 22 million population density 163/km^2 should be full of them.

And it’s not alone. MD has 6 million people and 246/km^2, Massachusetts 7 million 347/km^2, New Jersey 9.3 million and 488 people / km^2.

Further, if you consider the road network the overwhelming majority of roads are in high populations density areas. NYC alone has ~1/6 as many road miles as the entire interstate highway system which criss cross the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System It’s a classic edge to surface area problem, 10,000 acre farms need 1/100 the roads per acre as 1 acre suburban homes. The same kind of scaling applies to rail networks.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#173

Post by sltr »

Blount county native here. (How native? Almost got married in the church her nephew preaches at).

There was a joke that made its rounds here round about the time Queen Elizabeth died:

> Bob: "The queen's dead"

> Alice: "Dolly?!"

If you ride the train, be prepared for soot to get in your eyes.

I'm sure Dolly would be tickled silly to know a bunch of computer people were talking about her.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#174

Post by tomhow »

eldaisfish wrote: post #130

[flagged]

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44251098 and marked it off-topic.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#175

Post by esseph »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #56
pizzathyme wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

With that logic airportd should not have been built everywhere and useless, yet they were and are not.

"There are approximately 14,400 private-use and 5,000 public-use airports, heliports, and seaplane bases in the US."

Works out to about 288 private airports per state on average, and 100 public per state (on average).

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#177

Post by danans »

adeelk93 wrote: post #161
serf wrote: post #129

Yes, steam locomotives are neat. Yes, Parton is a saint. Yes, Tennessee is better place because of her. Yes, she did good things with her money. BUT the fact that we're all still so impressed by steam engines that we decided that 1000 tons of coal a year ( 622 cars worth of co2, the annual energy use of ~250 US homes a year) was a good value just to see an antique demo at the US's 30th (!!) most popular theme park bo…

I had the same feeling when I first rode it. It’s wasteful - a theme park is fundamentally wasteful. But it’s the only time in my life I’ll get to ride a steam engine. And for many others, the only time they’ll ever be on a train.

> But it’s the only time in my life I’ll get to ride a steam engin

There are historic steam engines operating all over the US. I know of a few in Northern California alone. But not coal mind you, most are oil fired.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#178

Post by danans »

stevage wrote: post #158
serf wrote: post #129

Yes, steam locomotives are neat. Yes, Parton is a saint. Yes, Tennessee is better place because of her. Yes, she did good things with her money. BUT the fact that we're all still so impressed by steam engines that we decided that 1000 tons of coal a year ( 622 cars worth of co2, the annual energy use of ~250 US homes a year) was a good value just to see an antique demo at the US's 30th (!!) most popular theme park bo…

Yeah, that was my thought. I'd love to see steam trains converted to electricity or even diesel in a way that basically they still look like steam trains to the casual observer, but without all the coal burning.

What's the point of the look if they're electric? A few steam engines operating for historical tourism doesn't seem like a big issue for emissions compared to the millions of ICE cars. We should keep them operating on their original fuel.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#179

Post by stevage »

danans wrote: post #178
stevage wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my thought. I'd love to see steam trains converted to electricity or even diesel in a way that basically they still look like steam trains to the casual observer, but without all the coal burning.

What's the point of the look if they're electric? A few steam engines operating for historical tourism doesn't seem like a big issue for emissions compared to the millions of ICE cars. We should keep them operating on their original fuel.

Just like every car doesn't seem like a big deal compared to all the other millions of cars.

Re: Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

#180

Post by GJim »

Spooky23 wrote: post #106
pizzathyme wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, more rails would not be useful because there is lower density in the US. Denmark is 141 persons/km^2, whereas the U.S. is about 36 persons/km^2 (census data). Even if you built train lines everywhere outside urban areas, any stop you step off at would still require a 20 minute drive to get to where you are going. (Or in your case 15!)

You could make the same argument about highways if you didn’t have the massive federal funding. Maintenance of an interstate averages around $15,000 per lane/mile. Bridges are 7-12x. We had a viable rail network all over the country as recently as the early 1950s. Federal policy blew it up because dispersing the population was seen as a civil defense priority for an atomic war, and cars and airplanes provided an econ…

> dispersing the population was seen as a civil defense priority for an atomic war

Do you have a citation for this?

(I'm not necessarily doubting, it's just a claim I have not heard before).

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