Almost on topic...<p>When we were kids, my brother studied a railroad atlas any time he wasn't in school or church. This thing was a monster, large book with hundreds of pages of maps. Literally county by county across the Unites States, all railroad lines and yards. I'd go to sleep Friday night while he sat in an overstuffed chair, studying. I'd wake up at 7:30 AM Saturday... he hadn't moved. Still there, a few pages further into the atlas.<p>As an adult, he worked for the Illinois Central as a hump yard operator. Later the Iowa Pacific, and ultimately found himself doing customer service for a small line in Texas, mainly shipping sand. His job frequently included finding 'lost' cars somewhere in the US, on any line that happened to be in that car's route. He was really good at it.<p>One notable call had him searching railroad yards in Missouri. He had a strong hunch that the misplaced car was on a spur where that yard stored cars that had lost their way. But he needed to confirm. He could have called that yard, but getting the right person to check logs or go hunt was always a hassle. So... He Googled up the yard, zoomed in on the spur and noted that Google helpfully displayed several businesses in a strip mall backed up to the spur. Mike dialed up 'Patty's Nail Salon' and the call went something like: "Hi Patty, this is Craig with the Iowa Pacific. I'm tracking down a misplaced car and I have reason to believe it is sitting on the spur outside your back window. Would you mind checking for a car with ID 123876?"<p>Extended pause....<p>"I'll be right back!"<p>Sure enough, there is was.
I was having a strange feeling I’d seen this site before, but only the style, not the content. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I remembered the page on the Paris pneumatic clock network: <a href="http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/airclock/airclock.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/airclock/airclock.h...</a> (discussed on HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19441300" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19441300</a>)<p>The entire museum section is well worth a read, though a bit of a rabbit-hole: <a href="http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm</a>
The Hesston Steam Museum has a Shay Geared Locomotive, and I've always looked at those bevel gears out in the open, and wondered what OSHA would say about it, but compared to logging, it's probably the least of the worries.
I love the explosion in diversity of designs as everyone tried new things before settling on what worked best, the stealth chimneys, preheaters, turbine engines.<p>It's an Industrial Age Cambrian Explosion.