Given these are the kind of obstacles a Google driverless car has to navigate around, machines may be at the point they can match humans here. Of course this is a much more fancy, expensive level of automation than the "docklands light railway" type.
If a driverless car goes wrong, it's very unlikely to kill more than a double-handful of people. A 5000-ton freight train capable of barreling along at 100km/h while carrying 50 tanks of propane or anhydrous ammonia or similar is an entirely different risk case ...
Indeed. In the UK, nuclear waste is transported by train as well.
I thought there might have been fewer trees in the earliest video, but it was really difficult to tell with the film quality and the speed of things rushing by. If the rail was newly laid in the 50s, then they might have had to cut down the trees, and they take a while to come back. The difference that jumped out at me the most is the decline in hats. I wonder how many haberdashers were put out of work during this pe…
> If the rail was newly laid in the 50s, then they might have had to cut down the trees It wasn't. The first London to Brighton railway line opened in 1841. Most of sections of the two main paths from Brighton to London (to London Victoria and London Bridge respectively) should have been complete by about 1855. There was expansion work (adding extra tracks) on the busiest section of the line around 1908, but I think…
It was after the war, and the US was doing enormous infrastructure projects, so it seemed plausible that they did something around that time. Plus, they made a film to show it. But it was really hard to see the trees in the film, so it could be an illusion.
It's interesting how many more trees there are in 2013. My wife pointed out that it looks the same with pictures of New York from the early 20th century- green space just wasn't a thing we had the desire/means to rate as highly. OTOH the major infrastructure hasn't changed much (bridges, urban areas, not just the train line which is politically determined). Technological change reshapes how live in a lot of ways in s…
There is also another, more practical, reason for the lack of trees and general greenery next to the train lines. In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash. There was a pretty interesting article with the BBC to accompany this a while back. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23853863
> In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash.
I'm assuming that's a joke, but one of the things that's always surprised me is how early electrification happened. The London-Brighton line was electrified in segments from 1909 to 1932. Many of the commuter rail lines in the U.S. were electrified that period too.