RE: Steam Railroads, was: Telex [Telecom]

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- Neal McLain
  
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posted
15 years ago

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 2:53 AM

OhMyGhod! A real railroad guy! I've been a railfan for > years. > > OK, totally unrelated, Moderator's privilege, etc.

Hey, this gives me a chance to put in a plug for one of my must-see television programs: "Trains & Locomotives" on RFD-TV. It's a glorious hodgepodge of the old and the new: old 16mm B&W films of narrow-gauge steam from the 30s and

50s to coverage of railfan weekends in the 90s and 00s. Most programs feature U.S. railroads, but there have been episodes about railroads in Canada, Germany, China, Russia, and South Africa.

T&L runs three times a week. A new episode premiers at

6:00 pm Eastern on Monday, and repeats at 4:00 am Tuesday and sometime on Saturday (the Saturday schedule changes depending on other programming).

This week's program features D&RGW narrow-gauge in New Mexico and Colorado. Several shots of the Durango & Silverton, and a few shots of the Galloping Goose. Your last chance to see it: Saturday, March 14, at 12:00 EDT.

RFD-TV launched in 2000. It's a non-profit company based in rural Nebraska, with studio operations in Nashville. It claims to be "Rural America's Most Important Network" which is probably a safe claim since it's rural America's only network. It's on DirecTV (Channel 379) and Dish (Channel

231), and numerous cable TV systems. Comcast has a contract to carry it, although only some of its systems actually carry it. Don't know if Boston-area systems carry it.

Neal McLain

***** Moderator's Note *****

I'll have to pass: I use rabbit ears and I've just gotten a DTV converter so that my ~5 year old tv can keep chugging along.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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- hancock4
  
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posted
15 years ago

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 8:47 PM

OT Aside:

Based on NYT articles and some broadcast history books . . .

This isn't the first time broadcast TV converted its signal and requried all home sets to be modified.

The present 525 line picture and FM sound was standardized in June

1941, replacing an earlier standard of fewer lines and AM sound. Existing sets (about several hundred thousand out there at that time if my source is correct) had to be modified. Unlike today with tiny IC chips, TV sets had very large chassis of individual components and tubes and required a modification. It appears manufacturers came out and did this for free (keep in mind those early sets were extremely expensive and undoubtedly owners would've been quite upset at obsolescence).

It appears that experimental broadcast TV began in the late 1930s and was not standardized, each TV set maker (e.g. RCA, Philco, Farnsworth) had their own standard which meant a set could only get one station. Finally there were standardized around 1939 and more broadcasting began (albeit very limited). It was mostly in New York, but it appears other large cities may have had an experimental station as well.

After Pearl Harbor broadcasting was significantly reduced, but AFAIK there was still an hour or so every night.

One history suggests AT&T's TV transmission rate structure hurt smaller networks. That is, the smaller DuMont network paid almost as much as CBS and NBC despite its much smaller size, and this contributed to DuMont's failure.

I am vague on the history of coaxial and microwave transmission of TV signals and the FCC's involvement. But I get the impression the FCC was favorable to AT&T getting a monopoly on it. This very well might have been because, unlike other common carriers or newcomers, AT&T was in the best position to provide national service quickly, and TV took up substantial bandwidth. AFAIK, while it wasn't cheap, AT&T's TV transmission services did provide quality service.

The early TV history is influenced by aggressive jockeying by the TV set manufacturers, networks, advertising sponsors, and independently owned TV stations for the biggest piece of the pie and control. Each entity wanted public policy to work out in its own favor. (RCA, for instance, wanted only the VHF band utilized since it had strong patents, and not the UHF band. Networks did not want sponsors to have the control over an entire show as they had on radio.)