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Portal:Trains/Featured Article/Week 27, 2005

Portal:Trains/Featured article/Week 27, 2005

A passenger car is a piece of railroad rolling stock that is designed to carry passengers. Most often, the term passenger car is associated with equipment that resembles a coach or sleeping car, but it can also encompass several other specialized types of equipment, including baggage, dining and railway post office cars. Early passenger cars were small, simple affairs, approaching 10 feet (3 m) long. By the end of the 19th century, car lengths had grown to nearly 80 feet (24 m), and cars were able to carry 60 to 80 passengers, depending on the seating configuration. In the 20th century, technological improvements increased car sizes and capacities while they decreased the cars' tare (unloaded) weights. Stainless steel was first used for passenger car bodies in the 1930s, and by the end of the century, the tilting train was developed, allowing passenger cars to lean into the curves, further increasing train speeds. Recently featured: London Underground - Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad - Wigwag

Passenger car

.]] A passenger car is a piece of railroad rolling stock that is designed to carry passengers. Most often, the term passenger car is associated with equipment that resembles a coach or sleeping car, but it can also encompass several other specialized types of equipment, including baggage, dining and railway post office cars.

History

19th century: First passenger cars and early development

Since the advent of railroads, people have traveled by train. Naturally, the first passenger trains didn't travel very far, but they were able to haul many more passengers for a longer distance than any wagons pulled by horses. As railways were first constructed in England, so too were the first passenger cars. One of the early coach designs was the "Stanhope". It featured a roof and small holes in the floor for drainage when it rained, and had separate compartments for different classes of travel. The only problem with this design is that the passengers were expected to stand for their entire trip. The first passenger cars in the United States highly resembled stagecoaches. They were short, often less than 10 ft. (3 m) long, tall and rode on a single pair of axles. British railways had a little bit of a head start on American railroads, with the first "bed-carriage" (an early sleeping car) being built there as early as 1838 for use on the London and Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway. Britain's early sleepers, when made up for sleeping, extended the foot of the bed into a a boot section at the end of the carriage. The cars were still too short to allow more than two or three beds to be positioned end to end. Britain's Royal Mail commissioned and built the first Travelling Post Office cars in the late 1840s as well. These cars resembled coaches in their short wheelbase and exterior design, but were equipped with nets on the sides of the cars to catch mail bags while the train was in motion. American RPOs, first appearing in the 1860s, also featured equipment to catch mail bags at speed, but the American design more closely resembled a large hook that would catch the mailbag in its crook. When not in use, the hook would swivel down on the side of the car to prevent it from catching on any close clearances. As locomotive technology progressed in the mid-19th century, trains grew in length and weight. Passenger cars, particularly in America, grew along with them, first getting longer with the addition of a second truck (one at each end), and wider as their suspensions improved. Cars built for European use featured side door compartments, while American car design favored a single pair of doors at one end of the car in the car's vestibule; compartmentized cars on American railroads featured a long hallway with doors from the hall to the compartments. 19th century circa 1900.]] One possible reason for this difference in design principles between American and European carbuilding practice could be the average distance between stations on the two continents. As most European railroads connected towns and villages that were still very closely spaced, American railroads had to travel over much greater distances to reach their destinations. Building passenger cars with a long passageway through the length of the car allowed the passengers easy access to the restroom, among other things, on longer journeys. Dining cars first appeared in the late 1870s and into the 1880s. Until this time, the common practice was to stop for meals at restaurants along the way (which led to the rise of Fred Harvey's chain of Harvey House restaurants in America). At first, the dining car was simply a place to serve meals that were picked up en route, but they soon evolved to include galleys in which the meals were prepared.

1900-1950: Lighter materials, new car types

By the 1920s, passenger cars on the larger standard gauge railroads were normally between 60 ft (18.3 m) and 70 ft (21.3 m) long. The cars of this time were still quite ornate, many of them being built by experienced coach makers and skilled carpenters. standard gauge. The carbody was made of stainless steel in 1934, it is seen here at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 2003.]] With the 1930s came the widespread use of stainless steel for carbodies. The typical passenger car was now much lighter than its "heavyweight" wood cousins of old. The new "lightweight" and streamlined cars carried passengers in speed and comfort to an extent that had not been experienced to date. Aluminum and Cor-Ten steel were also used in lightweight car construction, but stainless steel was the preferred material for carbodies. It isn't the lightest of materials, nor is it the least expensive, but stainless steel cars could be, and often were, left unpainted except for the car's reporting marks that were required by law. By the end of the 1930s, railroads and carbuilders were debuting carbody and interior styles that could only be dreamed of before. In 1937, the Pullman Company delivered the first cars equipped with roomettes – that is, the car's interior was sectioned off into compartments, much like the coaches that were still in widespread use across Europe. Pullman's roomettes, however, were designed with the single traveler in mind. The roomette featured a large picture window, a privacy door, a single fold-away bed, a sink and small toilet. The roomette's floor space was barely larger than the space taken up by the bed, but it allowed the traveler to ride in luxury compared to the multilevel semiprivate berths of old. Now that passenger cars were lighter, they were able to carry heavier loads, but the size of the average passenger that rode in them didn't increase to match the cars' new capacities. The average passenger car couldn't get any wider or longer due to side clearances along the railroad lines, but they generally could get taller because they were still shorter than many freight cars and locomotives. So the railroads soon began building and buying dome and bilevel cars to carry more passengers.

1950-present: High-technology advancements

bilevel] Carbody styles have generally remained consistent since the middle of the 20th century. While new car types haven't made much of an impact, the existing car types have been further enhanced with new technology. Starting in the 1950s, the passenger travel market declined in North America, though there was growth in commuter rail. The higher clearances in North America enabled bi-level commuter coaches that could hold more passengers. These cars started to become common in the United States in the 1960s. While intercity passenger rail travel declined in America, ridership continued to increase in other parts of the world. With the increase came an increased use of newer technology on existing and new equipment. The Spanish company Talgo began experimenting in the 1940s with technology that would enable the axles to steer into a curve, allowing the train to move around the curve at a higher speed. The steering axles evolved into mechanisms that would also tilt the passenger car as it entered a curve to counter the centrifugal force experienced by the train, further increasing speeds on existing track. Today, Talgo trains are used in many places in Europe and they have also found a home in North America on some short and medium distance routes such as Seattle, Washington, to Vancouver, British Columbia. Another type of tilting train that is seeing widespread use across Europe is the Pendolino. These trains, built by Fiat Ferroviaria (now owned by Alstom), are in regular service in Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Czech Republic and now the United Kingdom. Using tilting trains, railroads are able to run passenger trains over the same tracks at higher speeds than would otherwise be possible.

Car types

The basic design of a passenger car hasn't changed much since the middle of the 19th century, but there are several different passenger car types in service around the world. Generally, these can be split into heavyweight versus lightweight cars. Passenger cars, whether heavyweight or lightweight, can be split into several car types (listed in alphabetical order): baggage, coach, combine, diner, dome, lounge, observation, Pullman, railway post office (RPO) and sleeper.

Heavyweight vs. lightweight

A heavyweight car is one that is physically heavier than a lightweight car due to its construction. Heavyweight cars can be easily spotted by their wood construction, usually six-wheeled trucks (bogies) and stepped roof line. The roofs of early heavyweights usually consisted of a center sill section (the clerestory) that ran the length of the car and extended above the roof sides by as much as a foot. This section of the roof usually had windows or shutters that could be opened for ventilation while the train was in motion. However, railroad crews and passengers quickly discovered that when these windows were opened on a passenger train pulled by one or steam locomotives, smoke and soot from the locomotives tended to drift in through the windows, especially when the train went through a tunnel. In the early 20th century, air conditioning was added to heavyweight cars for the first time. An air conditioned heavyweight car could be spotted easily since the area where the roof vent windows existed was now covered, either partially or in full, by the AC duct. As lightweight cars were introduced, many heavyweight cars were repurposed into maintenance of way service by the railroads that owned them. Lightweight passenger cars required developments in steel processing that weren't available until the 1920s and 1930s. By building passenger cars out of steel instead of wood, the manufacturers were able to build lighter weight cars with smooth or fluted sides and smooth roof lines. Using steel for carbodies was so effective that the Union Pacific Railroad's M-10000 three-car trainset weighed only 85 tons, which was less than the average weight of one heavyweight dining car. Steel cars were ushered in at the beginning of the streamline era of the 1930s (although not all lightweight cars were streamlined) and steel has continued in use ever since then. With the use of steel for the car sides, railroads were able to offer more innovative passenger car types. It wasn't until after the first lightweight cars were introduced that railroads began building and using dome cars because the sides of heavyweight cars weren't strong enough to support the weight of the dome and its passengers. Lightweight cars also enabled the railroads to operate longer passenger trains; the reduced car weight meant that more passengers could be carried in a greater number of cars with the same locomotives. The cost savings in hauling capacity coupled with the increased car type options led to the quick replacement of heavyweight cars with lightweight cars.

Single level vs. double level

As passenger car construction improved to the point where dome cars were introduced, some passenger car manufacturers began building double decker passenger cars for use in areas that are more heavily populated or to carry more passengers over a long distance while using fewer cars (such as Amtrak's Superliner cars). Cars used on long-distance passenger trains could combine features of any of the basic car types, while cars used in local commuter service are often strictly coach types on both levels.

Baggage

Superliner Although passengers generally were not allowed access to the baggage car, they were included in a great number of passenger trains as regular equipment. The baggage car is a car that was normally placed between the train's motive power and the remainder of the passenger train. The car's interior is normally wide open and is used to carry passengers' checked baggage. Baggage cars were also sometimes commissioned by freight companies to haul less-than-carload (lcl) shipments along passenger routes (Railway Express Agency was one such freight company). Some baggage cars included restroom facilities for the train crew, so many baggage cars had doors to access them just like any other passenger car. Baggage cars could be designed to look like the rest of a passenger train's cars, or they could be repurposed box cars equipped with high-speed trucks and passenger train steam and air connections.

Coach

box car coach]] The car's interior is filled with row upon row of seats, generally all arranged facing toward one end of the car. The seats are often so close together that there is not much room for anything more than a passenger or two in them. Carry-on baggage is stowed on a shelf above the passenger seating area. Coaches are sometimes referred to as chair cars. The seats in most coaches until the middle of the 20th century, were usually bench seats; the backs of these seats could be adjusted, often with one hand, to face in either direction so the car would not have to be turned for a return trip. The conductor would simply walk down the aisle in the car, reversing the seat backs to prepare for the return trip.

Combine

box car A combine is a car that combines features of two types of passenger cars into one car. The most common combination is that of a coach and a baggage, but the combination of coach and RPO was also common. Combines were used most frequently on branch lines and short line railroads where there wasn't necessarily enough traffic to economically justify single-purpose cars. As lightweight cars began to appear on railroads, passenger cars more frequently combined features of two or more car types on one car, and the classic heavyweight combine fell out of use.

Diner

For more on this topic, see dining car. dining car.]] The car's interior is split with a portion of the interior partitioned off for a galley, which is off-limits to passengers. A narrow hallway is left between the galley and one side wall of the car for passengers to use. The remainder of the interior is laid out with tables and chairs to look like a long, narrow restaurant dining room. There is special personnel to perform waitstaff and kitchen duties.

Dome

restaurant]] restaurant A dome car can include features of a lounge car, dining car and an observation. A portion of the car, usually in the center of the car, is split between two levels, with stairs leading both up and down from the train's regular passenger car floor level. The lower level of the dome usually consisted of a small lounge area, while the upper portion was usually coach or lounge seating within a "bubble" of glass on the car's roof. Passengers in the upper portion of the dome were able to see in all directions from a vantage point above the train's roofline. On some dome cars, the lower portion was built as a galley, where car attendants used dumbwaiters to transfer items between the galley and a dining area in the dome portion of the car.

Lounge

Lounge car interiors resembled a lounge. They usually had benches or large swivelling chairs along the sides of the car with a bar or other light meal and drink service at one end of the car. Some lounge cars included small pianos and were staffed by contracted musicians to entertain the passengers.

Observation

dumbwaiter The observation car almost always operated as the last car in a passenger train. Its interior could include features of a coach, lounge, diner, or sleeper. The main spotting feature was at the tail end of the car - the walls of the car usually were curved together to form a large U shape, and larger windows were installed all around the end of the car. Before these cars were built with steel walls, the observation end of heavyweight cars resembled a roofed porch area; larger windows were installed at the observation end on these cars as well. At this end of the car, there was almost always a lounge where passengers could enjoy the view as they watch the track recede into the distance.

Pullman

First conceived by George Pullman in the late 1850s, the Pullman car originally was designed to resemble a coach during the daytime with fold-out beds and privacy curtains for night time. The beds were located on each side of the car, in up to three levels. Passengers used portable ladders to access the upper berths. This type of car was often used as a plot device in cinema through World War II, such as in one scene from Some Like It Hot starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe; the passengers in that scene cram themselves into a space that is normally used only by one person for great comedic effect. As railroads began building and buying "lightweight" steel cars, Pullman cars took on the look of the newer sleepers with compartments instead of privacy curtains.

RPO

Marilyn Monroe]] Like baggage cars, paying passengers were not allowed access to the railway post office (RPO) cars. These cars' interiors were designed with sorting facilities that were often seen and used in conventional post offices around the world. The RPO is where mail was sorted while the train was en route. Because these cars carried mail, which often included valuables or quantities of cash and checks, the RPO staff (who were employed by the postal service and not the railroad) were the only train crews allowed to carry guns. The RPO cars were normally placed in a passenger train between the train's motive power and baggage cars, further inhibiting their access by passengers.

Sleeper

Often called sleepers, these cars' interiors were normally partitioned into separate bedroom compartments for passengers. The beds were designed in such a way that they either rolled or folded out of the way or converted into seats for daytime use. Compartments varied in size; some were only large enough for a bed, while others resembled efficiency apartments including bathrooms.

Other passenger equipment

Passengers have travelled on rails in trains other than the conventional type of passenger trains that are referred to above. Trams, streetcars and subways have been heavily used in urban areas throughout the world. On lighter trafficked branch lines and short line railways, multiple unit trains or powered diesel cars (such as the Budd Rail Diesel Car) have been used. In non-revenue service, railroads have used crew cars, speeders and HiRail trucks to move their employees around their systems.

Passenger car manufacturers

While some railroads, like the Milwaukee Road, preferred to build their own passenger cars, several railcar manufacturers built the majority of passenger cars in revenue service. Most of these companies produced both passenger and freight equipment for the railroads. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all passenger car builders (see List of rolling stock manufacturers for a more complete list). Quite a large number of firms built passenger cars over the years, but the majority of cars in the 20th century were built by these companies.

American Car and Foundry

American Car and Foundry was formed in 1899 through the merger of 13 smaller railroad car manufacturing companies (in much the same way as the American Locomotive Company was formed from the merger of 8 smaller locomotive manufacturers two years later in 1901). ACF built the first all-steel passenger car in the world for Interborough Rapid Transit in 1904, and then built the first steel cars used on the London Underground in the following year. The company continued to manufacture passenger equipment until 1959. ACF still manufactures freight cars today.

Budd Company

The Budd Company got its start in the early 1930s when Edward G. Budd developed a way to build carbodies out of stainless steel. In 1932 he completed his first railcar, dubbed the Green Goose. It used rubber tires and a stainless steel body, and was powered by the engine out of Budd's own Chrysler Imperial automobile. Budd sold a few of these early powered cars to the Reading Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad and the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The next year, Ralph Budd, only a very distant relation, but president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad at the time, came to Budd to build the Pioneer Zephyr. Budd was soon called on by another railroad president before the end of the decade. Samuel T. Bledsoe asked Budd to build the new lightweight cars for the Santa Fe's new Super Chief passenger train. Budd continued building lightweight powered and unpowered cars through the 20th century for nearly every major railroad in North America.

Pullman-Standard

Pullman-Standard is the company that evolved from the Pullman Company of the 19th century.

St. Louis Car Company

Founded in April 1887, in its namesake city, St. Louis Car Company manufactured railroad cars for streetcar lines (urban passenger railways) and steam railroads. The company made brief forays into building automobiles and aircraft, but they are best known as the manufacturers of Birney and PCC streetcars which have seen worldwide use. St. Louis Car Company closed in 1973.

Military uses and specialized passenger equipment

1973 in Europe; photo from [http://www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm Photos of the Great War].]] Military organizations around the world have always needed a convenient way to transport troops and supplies to and from battle sites. Since the middle of the 19th century, military organizations have made heavy use of railroad equipment. While supplies and vehicles have been hauled in conventional freight cars, their troops have also been carried in passenger cars. Troops in good health would be carried in coaches, troop cars or troop sleepers for longer trips (usually standard-built passenger cars, but sometimes repurposed box cars with seats, windows, doors and sometimes cots installed), while injured soldiers would be returned from the battlefield in "hospital trains". box cars A hospital train consists of passenger cars that have been (usually) retrofit with rows of beds and a small examination area. The hospital cars most closely resembled the Pullman cars of old where the beds were stacked up to three tiers high, but hospital cars normally did not include the luxury of privacy curtains.

See also


- Superliner (railcar) - The brand name of the high-level passenger cars operated by Amtrak
- Double decker - Many commuter coaches were built as bilevel cars, such cars still operate in many large cities in North America.
- List of named passenger trains, :Category:Named passenger trains - Passenger cars operated in passenger trains, so here are links to information on many different trains.
- Pullman Company - The Pullman name has become synonymous with sleeping car amenities.
- Train station - The public interface to passenger trains around the world.

External links


- [http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/archives/guides/bysubject_stlouis/car-company.html St. Louis Car Company Collection at Washington University, St. Louis]
- [http://www.rail-interior-design.net/?sprache=en Flexible Railway Passenger Cars] - a study on more efficient use of passenger equipment

References


-
-
- Talgo, [http://web.archive.org/web/20040604125158/http://www.talgo.com/htm/tecnologiatecnologia2.htm Talgo History] (cached page at the [http://waybackmachine.org Wayback Machine]). Retrieved February 25 2005.
- Welsh, Joe (2005) New deal for rail travel, Classic trains special edition: Streamliner pioneers, Kalmbach Publishing, Waukesha, WI, 3, 8-17.
- Passenger car

Rolling stock

Not to be confused with railcar. A railroad car (or, more briefly, car), also known as an item of rolling stock in British parlance, is a vehicle on a railroad or railway that is not a locomotive - one that provides another purpose than purely haulage, although some types of car are powered. Cars can be coupled together into a train, either hauled by a locomotive(s) or self-propelled. Most cars carry a revenue load, although non-revenue cars exist for the railroad's own use, such as for maintenance-of-way purposes. Such uses can generally be divided into the carriage of passengers and of freight. "Revenue" cars are basically of two types: passenger cars, or coaches, and freight cars or wagons.

Passenger cars

:Main article: Passenger car Passenger cars, or coaches, vary in their internal fittings: Seating is usually three, four, or five seats across the width of the car, with an aisle in between (resulting in 2+1, 2+2 or 3+2 seats) or at the side. Tables may be present between seats facing one another. Alternatively, seats facing the same direction may have access to a fold-down ledge on the back of the seat in front.
- If the aisle located between seats, seat rows may face the same direction, or be grouped, with twin rows facing each other. Sometimes, for example on a commuter train, seats may face the aisle.
- If the aisle is at the side, the car is usually divided in small compartments, each with two seat rows opposite to each other, with 6 or 8 seats. Cars usually have either air-conditioning or windows that can be opened (sometimes, for safety, not so far that one can hang out). Toilet facilities are also usual, though the setup varies (see passenger train human waste disposal). Other types of passenger car exist, especially for long journeys, such as the dining car, parlor car, disco car, and in rare cases theater car ([http://www.haagschecourant.nl/gfx/gfx_nieuw/kranten/BD/artikelvisuals/1858748-194854.jpg picture]). Observation cars were built for the rear of many famous trains to allow the passengers to view the scenery. These proved popular, leading to the development of dome cars multiple units of which could be placed mid-train, and featured a glass-enclosed upper level extending above the normal roof to provide passengers with a better view. Sleeping cars outfitted with (generally) small bedrooms allow passengers to sleep through their night-time trips, while couchette cars provide more basic sleeping accommodation. Long-distance trains often require baggage cars for the passengers' luggage. Historically in European practice it was common for day coaches to be formed of compartments seating 6 or 8 passengers, with access from a side corridor -- corridor coaches fell into disfavor in the 1960s and 1970s partially because open coaches are considered more secure by women traveling alone. Another distinction is between single- and double-decker cars. An example of a double-decker is the Amtrak superliner. A 'trainset' (or 'set') is a semi-permanently arranged formation of cars, rather than one created 'ad hoc' out of whatever cars are available. These are only broken up and reshuffled 'on shed' (in the maintenance depot). Trains are then built of one or more of these 'sets' coupled together as needed for the capacity of that train. Often, but not always, passenger cars in a train are linked together with enclosed, flexible gangway connections that can be walked through by passengers and crew members. Some designs incorporate semi-permanent connections between cars and may have a full-width connection, making in essence one longer, flexible 'car'. In North America, passenger equipment also employ tightlock couplings to keep a train reasonably intact in the event of a derailment or other accident. Many multiple unit trains consist of cars which are semi-permanently coupled into sets; these sets may be joined together to form larger trains, but generally passengers can only move around between cars within a set. This 'closed' nature allows the separate sets to be easily split to go separate ways. Some multiple-unit trainsets are designed so that corridor connections can be easily opened between coupled sets; this generally requires driving cabs either set off to the side or (as in the Dutch Koploper) above the passenger compartment.

Freight cars

Freight cars or (UK: "wagons") exist in a wide variety of types, adapted to the ideal carriage of a whole host of different things. Originally there were very few types of car; the boxcar (UK: "van"), a closed box with side doors, was among the first. Common types of freight cars include:
- Autoracks - (also called auto carriers) specialized multi-level cars designed for transportation of unladen automobiles
- Boxcars (or vans) - box shape with roof and side or end doors
- Refrigerator cars (or, colloquially, Reefers), a refrigerated subtype of boxcar
- Flatcars (or flat) for larger loads that don't load easily into a boxcar. Specialised types such as the depressed-center flatcar exist for truly outsize items or the Schnabel car for even larger and heavier loads. With the advent of containerised freight, special types of flatcar were built to carry standard shipping containers and semi-trailers. Some allow containers to be stacked two high (double stacked).
- Gondolas with an open top but enclosed sides and end, for bulk commodities and other goods that might slide off
- Hopper cars, a gondola (rail) with bottom dump doors for easy unloading of things like coal, ore, grain, cement and the like. Two varieties; open top, and closed top.
- Tank cars for the carriage of liquids
- Slate wagons - specialized freightcars used to transport slate
- Stock cars for the transport of livestock
- Well cars - specialized cars designed for carrying shipping containers. These have a very low bottom floor to allow double stacking, and articulated 3- and 5-car sets are common. The vast majority of freight cars fit into the above categories.

Non-revenue cars


- Cabooses (or guard's vans or brakevans) which attach to the rear of freight trains to order to watch the train and assist in shoving moves.
- Maintenance of way (MOW) cars, for the maintenance of track and equipment
- Handcars, which are powered by their passengers

Military cars

Military armoured trains use several types of specialized cars:
- artillery - fielding mixture of guns and machine guns
- infantry - fielding machine guns, designed to carry infantry units
- machine gun - dedicated to machine guns
- anti-air - equipped with anti-air guns
- command - similar to infantry wagons, but designed to be a train command center
- anti-tank - equipped with anti-tank guns, usually in a tank turret
- Platform - unarmoured, with purposes ranging from transport of ammunition or vehicles, through track repair or derailing protection to railroad ploughs for railroad destruction. Car Category:Vehicles ja:鉄道車両

Coach

:This article is about vehicles called coaches. For other meanings of the word, see coach (disambiguation).

Original meaning and etymology

The original meaning of the term coach was: a horse-drawn vehicle designed for the conveyance of more than one passenger — and of mail — and covered for protection from the elements. The small Hungarian town of Kócs (pronounced "korch") was the place of manufacture, from the 15th century onwards, of an exceptionally well designed example of such a vehicle with durable and comfortable suspension and steering; and from the Hungarian word Kócsi (meaning "from Kócs") the name spread to several other European languages (compare Spanish coche and German Kutsche).

Railway coach

A railway coach — also known, especially in the UK, as a railway carriage — is a vehicle designed for the conveyance of passengers by rail (the first such vehicles were, in fact, often road coaches mounted on frames equipped with railway wheels). In North America railway coaches are usually known as "railroad cars". A railway coach can be self-propelled such as the Budd Rail Diesel Car (in which case it is known as a railcar), form part of a multiple unit of self-propelled vehicles, or be pulled or pushed by one or more locomotives either singly or together with other such coaches. For more information on railway coaches, see the articles on railroad cars in general or passenger cars for more specifics.

Motor coach

In British English and Australian English, the term coach is also used to refer to a large motor vehicle for conveying passengers. It is similar to a bus but usually more comfortable and designed for longer-distance travel or touring. The term coach appears in the formal names of many such firms in the US, though most people still call them bus lines. The main differences come from the facts that passengers of a motor coach are not considered potential vandals, and that a coach service is in competition with other means of long-distance travel. Thus most often coaches have upholstered seats, carry a toilet, and are air-conditioned. Fitments have come to resemble those of an airliner, with storage bins for carry-on luggage and individual lighting which enables passengers to sleep. There is even luggage storage below the floor, accessible from outside panels, just as in an airliner. A bus also has has the differences resulting from having to take on and discharge many passengers for very short runs. They often have both front and rear doors, which open in an accordion fashion. There are more and larger untinted windows for passengers both standing and sitting to watch for their stop, and devices to alert the driver for this purpose. Buses also either carry a conductor or else have a fare bin near the driver. Many have advertisements both in the interior and on the outside. Coaches do not have these things.

See also


- carriage
- stagecoach
- passenger car
- dining car
- sleeping car
- double decker Category:Carriages Category:Bus transport Category:Passenger equipment

Sleeping car

. The car is configured in this photo for daytime operation.]] The sleeping car or sleeper is a railroad car with sleeping facilities. Some of the more luxurious types have real beds, and rooms not shared with strangers. In the United States, Amtrak includes this type of sleeping car on most of its overnight routes. In some other countries, such as South Africa, more luxurious sleeper services include ensuite shower rooms. An example of a more basic type of sleeping car is the European couchette car, which is divided into compartments for four or six people, with bench seating during the day and double- or triple-level bunk-beds at night. Even more basic is the Chinese "hard" sleeper in use today consisting of fixed bunk beds in a public space. Chinese railroads, which unlike American railroads are in heavy daily use by the general public, also operate a "soft" or deluxe sleeper with two beds per compartment. The American cars made longer-distance travel by train more popular and enjoyable since they allowed truly comfortable sleeping on the train. The first sleeping car appeared in the 1830s, but was not economically successful. The man who made the sleeping car business profitable was George Pullman, who built a luxurious sleeping car (named "Pioneer") in 1865. The Pullman Company owned and operated most such cars in the United States through the mid twentieth century, attaching them to passenger trains run by the various railroads. In addition, some sleeping cars were owned by the railroads running a given train but were operated by Pullman. The owner of a particular car was usually stenciled on the side of the car above the vestibule side doors. During the peak years of American passenger railroading, several all-Pullman trains existed, including the Super Chief on the Santa Fe railroad, and the 20th Century Limited on the New York Central Railroad. Pullman cars were normally a dark Pullman green, although some were painted in the host railroad's colors. The cars carried individual names, but usually did not carry visible numbers. After World War II the American railroads bought out the Pullman Company's sleeping car business and operated the cars themselves, though the cars usually were still named rather than numbered, and still carried the word 'Pullman' on them. Pullman, as Pullman-Standard, continued in the manufacture of railroad cars until 1980. With much passenger service having been abandoned from the 1930s through the early 1970s by American railroads, in May 1971 all but a few of the remaining intercity passenger operations were transferred to Amtrak, which today operates all of the remaining scheduled sleeping car services in the United States. Today, Amtrak with some difficulty still operates the legacy American design of the 1950s, which was a lightweight car. One side of the car has a short single corridor, on which open two-bed "bedrooms" with washbasin and toilet, but no shower. Most of the car is a corridor between rows of single-person "roomettes" with a standard size bed and the same toilet facilities. More modern designs specifically for Amtrak finally incorporate a shower, but it is public access and demands physical skill in its use on American roadbeds. During the heyday of American rail travel, certain pricey rooms on premium trains including the Broadway Limited of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Twentieth-Century Limited of the New York Central had incorporated shower facilities. One unanticipated social consequence of the sleeping car was its convenience as a rendezvous site for lovers, who could be anonymous and free from the constraints of home. Important romantic scenes in such films as Some Like It Hot and North by Northwest take place in sleeping cars. North by Northwest to Bucharest]] Another unanticipated consequence was the effect of the Pullman car on civil rights and African American culture. Each Pullman car was staffed by a uniformed porter. These were almost always African-Americans and, by convention, were often addressed as "George" by passengers. Although this was servant's work, it was relatively well-paid and prestigious, and so Pullman porters were in a position to become leaders in the black communities where they lived, helping to form the nucleus of the black middle class. And, like all the other railroad trades, the porters came to be unionized. Their union became an important source of strength for the burgeoning civil rights movement in the early 20th century, notably under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph. Because they moved all across the country and stayed in local black communities between shifts, Pullman porters also became an important means of communication for news and cultural information of all kinds. The black newspaper Chicago Defender gained a national circulation in this way. In particular, porters used to sell phonograph records bought in the great metropolitan centers, greatly adding to the distribution of jazz and blues and the popularity of the artists. In Europe the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, French for International Sleeping Car Company, first focused on sleeping cars, but later operated whole trains, including the Simplon-Orient Express, Nord Express, Train Bleu, Golden Arrow, and the Transsiberien (on the Trans-Siberian railway). Today it restricts itself again to sleeping cars, and to onboard railroad catering. In the immediate postwar period world-wide, experiments were made with democratising train travel which before the war had been divided into sharply distinct classes. These included a "sleeperette" service operated by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on overnight runs between Chicago and New York or Washington. Here, experience in designing small crew quarters in WWII was applied in 1949 to creating smallish single and double rooms. Unlike the larger and more lavish "roomettes" and "bedrooms" of the standard post-war American Pullman, moving about these rooms was tricky for the larger American. Although they provided a slightly miniaturized form of the amenities of a Pullman for a small surcharge over coach, they never caught on with railway decision-makers, because the railways then, like the airlines today, found it wasn't profitable to give the budget customer much more than a minimal space. Thus, as the 1950s wore on to the near-demise of American passenger service in 1960 (the advent of the Boeing 707 jetliner), basic train travel converged on a coach service that was, ironically, equivalent in comfort to today's first class air travel, with an almost fully reclining seat and lavatories at the end of each car. It was possible then (and, for the train-obsessed today, on Amtrak) to travel overnight on America's vast spaces by coach and arrive in a civilized condition. Only the length of the trip made it much different from a first class airline voyage today, and humanely, no train passenger was ever subject to the rigors of (for example) a trip from Chicago to Beijing in today's "coach". Internationally, the same democratisation of train travel (which ended with the 1973 oil shocks) resulted in a service extant in the only American length voyage in France, the run from Paris to the Mediterranean, at Nice or Aix en Provence. This is the Train Bleu, an all sleeper service which leaves the Gare d'Austerlitz in mid-evening and arrives in Nice about 7:30 AM.Trans-Siberian railway Because the Train Bleu has no need of daytime accommodations, it can provide compartments at which strangers are stacked three to a side, vertical with respect to the axis of the car and connected by a single corridor in the European style. Toilets and washrooms are provided at each end of the car. The Train Bleu also provides first-class compartments. As is the case with Amtrak in the USA, however, the Train Bleu is preferred by the older and more sedate traveler while younger travelers prefer budget flights, or in a pinch one of the daytime TGV, which provide rapid coach service that cuts the journey down to a few hours, with much more French country and mountain scenery. Devised for the newly-leisured working class of postwar France and their new 8-hour day, the Train Bleu may ultimately disappear despite Gallic conservatism about French institutions. Another attempt to re-engineer the sleeping car were all-coach but overnight trains operated by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, again in the 1950s, for the two-night run between Chicago and Los Angeles. These provided in today's terms a first class airline seat and were heavily marketed by the Santa Fe in a pioneering tie-in with a visit to the first Disneyland in Anaheim. The fundamental diseconomy of the sleeping car, once the bugs were worked out of jet aviation, where the airplane rides above the frightening turbulence encountered by propellor craft, and once government oversight had standardized and made safe air travel, was that for most normal people, travel is not an end in itself, and most normal people will endure a standardized minimum of comfort to get from one place to another, at minimum cost. American railways of the 1950s had no way to accurately measure seat miles in the way today's airlines use these metrics, but their owners seemed to have realized that the market for sleeping car rooms was restricted to the wealthy and the upper middle class, and that this market would be an "early adopter" of jet transportation. Elsewhere, sleeper services continue to run. In the United Kingdom, a network of sleeper trains operates daily between London and Scotland, and between London and the West Country (as far as Cornwall). Still using rolling stock designed and operated by British Rail, these services offer a choice of single- or double-occupancy bedrooms, although their future is questionable as the Strategic Rail Authority has recently (2005) questioned the amount of subsidy they receive. Only in China (and, to an extent, Asiatic Russia) today, does there exist a true mass market for sleeper service for in Europe, economic integration and budget airlines (along with privatization of rail service in the UK) have destroyed the appeal of overnight rail transport. However, the layout of the Chinese "hard sleeper" shows it more like the original American open sleepers with the disadvantage that unlike open sleepers, the Chinese beds do not convert to seats. The Chinese solution, like the Train Bleu, loses the charm of control of one's privacy that was a feature of the American sleeping car of the 1950s and becomes, like an airplane, a functional sardine can.

See also


- Passenger car
- Superliner (Amtrak sleeping car)
- Famous trains
- List of named passenger trains
- List of types of lodging
- Auto Train

External links


- [http://www.srmduluth.org/Features/pullmans.htm Sleeping in Comfort: Pullman Fundamentals] Category:Passenger equipment ja:寝台車 (鉄道)

Baggage car

, Canada.]] A baggage car (often shortened to just baggage) is a type of rail transport passenger car. Its purpose is to carry the checked baggage of the passengers in a passenger train, and is typically coupled at the front of the train close to the locomotives. Because this type of car is usually hauled at the front of a passenger train, it is sometimes classified as "head-end equipment". Passengers aboard a passenger train are not normally allowed access to a baggage car while a train is in motion. Category:Passenger equipment

Railway post office

.]] A railway post office, commonly abbreviated as RPO, was a railroad car that was normally operated in passenger service as a means to sort mail en route, in order to speed delivery. The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train.

History

The first sorting of mail en route in the U.S.A. was in 1862 between Hannibal, Missouri, and St. Joseph, Missouri. Its purpose was to separate mail for connection with a westbound stage departing soon after the train's arrival at St. Joseph. This service lasted approximately one year. The first permanent Railway Post Office route was established on August 28, 1864, between Chicago, Illinois, and Clinton, Iowa. This service is distinguished from the 1862 operation because mail was sorted to and received from each post office along the route, as well as major post offices beyond the route's end-points. By the 1880s, railway post office routes were operating on the vast majority of passenger trains in the United States. A complex network of interconnected routes allowed mail to be transported and delivered in a remarkably short time. Railway mail clerks were subjected to stringent training and ongoing testing of details regarding their handling of the mail. On a given RPO route, each clerk was expected to know not only the post offices and rail junctions along the route, but also specific local delivery details within each of the larger cities served by the route. Periodic testing demanded both accuracy and speed in sorting mail, and a clerk scoring only 96% accuracy would likely receive a warning from the Railway Mail Service division superintendent. In the United States, RPO cars (also known as mail cars or postal cars) were equipped and staffed to handle most back-end postal processing functions. First class mail, magazines and newspapers were all sorted, cancelled when necessary, and dispatched to post offices in towns along the route. Registered mail was also handled, and the foreman in charge was required to carry a regulation pistol while on duty, to discourage theft of the mail. Image:RPO interior.jpg|The interior of an RPO on display at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, WI Image:CBQ 1926 mail hook detail.JPG|The mail hook on CBQ 1926 An interesting feature of most RPO cars was a hook that could be used to snatch a leather or canvas pouch of outgoing mail hanging on a track-side mail crane at smaller towns where the train did not stop. With the train often operating at 70 miles per hour or faster, a postal clerk would have a pouch of mail ready to be dispatched as the train passed the station. In a coordinated movement, the catcher arm was swung out to catch the hanging mail pouch while the clerk stood in the open doorway. As the inbound pouch slammed into the catcher arm, the clerk kicked the outbound mail pouch out of the car, making certain to kick it far enough that it was not sucked back under the speeding train. An employee of the local post office would retreive the pouch and deliver it to the post office. Green Bay, WI train No. 5.]] Most RPO cars had a mail slot on the side of the car, so that mail could actually be deposited in the car, much like using the corner mail box, while the train was stopped at a station. Those desiring the fastest delivery would bring their letters to the train station for dispatch on the RPO, knowing that overnight delivery would be virtually assured. The mail handled in this manner received a cancellation just as if it had been mailed at a local post office, with the cancel giving the train number, endpoint cities of the RPO route, the date, and RMS Railway Mail Service or PTS Postal Transportation Service between the killer bars. Collecting such cancellations is a pastime of many philatelists and postal history researchers. The Railway Mail Service organization within the Post Office Department existed between 1864 and September 30, 1948. It was renamed the Postal Transportation Service on October 1, 1948, and existed until 1960. After 1960, the management of Railway Post Office routes as well as Highway Post Office routes, Air Mail Facility, Terminal Railway Post Office, and Transfer Office, were shifted to the Bureau of Transportation. After 1948, the Railway Post Office network began its decline although it remained principal intercity mail transportation and distribution function within the Post Office Department. There were 794 RPO lines operating over 161,000 miles of railroad in that year. Only 262 RPO routes were still operating by January 1, 1962. In 1942, the U.S. Post Office began experimenting with a highway version of the RPO to serve the same purposes along routes where passenger train service was not available. These highway post office (HPO) vehicles were initially intended to supplement RPO service, but in the 1950s and 1960s, HPO's often replaced railway post office cars after passenger train service was discontinued. When the post office made a controversial policy change to process mail in large regional 'sectional centers', the remaining railway post office routes along with all highway post office routes were phased out of service. After 113 years of railway post office operation, the last surviving Railway Post Office running on rails between New York and Washington, D.C. was discontinued on June 30, 1977. Ironically, the last route with a Railway Post Office title was actually a boat run that lasted a year longer. This Boat Railway Post Office was the Lake Winnipesaukee RPO operating between The Weirs, New Hampshire, and Bear Island, New Hampshire, on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. The final date it operated with a postmark was September 30, 1978.

References


- Bergman, Edwin B. (1980) 29 Years to Oblivion, The Last Years of Railway Mail Service in the United States, Mobile Post Office Society, Omaha, Nebraska.
- Wilking, Clarence. (1985) The Railway Mail Service, Railway Mail Service Library, Boyce, Virginia. Available as a MS Word file at http://www.railwaymailservicelibrary.org/articles/THE_RMS.DOC
- U.S. Post Office Department. (1956) MEN AND MAIL IN TRANSIT, Railway Mail Service Library, Boyce, Virginia. Portion available as a video clip at http://www.railwaymailservicelibrary.org/videos/m&mit01.MPG
- National Postal Transport Association. (1956) MAIL IN MOTION, Railway Mail Service Library, Boyce, Virginia. Portion available as a video clip at http://www.railwaymailservicelibrary.org/videos/MIM-01.MPG
- Romanski, Fred J. The Fast Mail, History of the Railway Mail Service, Prologue Vol. 37 No. 3, Fall 2005, College Park, Maryland.

See also


- Travelling Post Office - The term for cars in British use that served similar functions. Category:Passenger equipment Category:Postal system Category:United States Postal Service Category:Rail transport in the United States

Foot (unit of length)

:For other uses, see Foot (disambiguation). A foot (plural: feet) is a non-SI unit of distance or length, measuring around a third of a metre. There are twelve inches in one foot and three feet in one yard. The international standard symbol for feet is ft (see ISO 31-1, Annex A). The standardization of weights and measures has left several different standard foot measures. The most commonly used foot today is the English foot, used in the United Kingdom and the United States and elsewhere, which is defined to be exactly 0.3048 metre. This unit is sometimes denoted with a prime (e.g. 30′ means 30 feet), often approximated by an apostrophe. Similarly, inches can be denoted by a double prime (often approximated by a quotation mark), so 6′ 2″ means 6 feet 2 inches. In addition to the current standard international foot, there is also a slightly different U.S. survey foot, used only in connection with surveys by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, it is defined as exactly 1200/3937 m (610 nm greater than 0.3048 m).[http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdoc59-5442.pdf] The foot as a measure was used in almost all cultures. The first known standard foot measure was from Sumeria, where a definition is given in a statue of Gudea of Lagash from around 2575 BC. The imperial foot was adapted from an Egyptian measure by the Greeks, with a subsequent larger foot being adopted by the Romans.

Etymology

The popular belief is that original standard was the length of a man's foot. The original measurement was from King Henry I, who had a foot 12 inches long; he wished to standardise the unit of measurement in England. The average foot length is about 9.4 inches (240 mm) for current Europeans. Approximately 996 out of 1000 British men have a foot that is less than 12 inches long. A plausible explanation for the missing inches is that the measure did not refer to a naked foot, but to the length of footwear. This is consistent with the measure being convenient for practical purposes such as on building sites etc. People almost always pace out lengths whilst wearing shoes or boots, rather than removing them and pacing barefoot.

See also


- Units of measurement
- History of measurement
- Systems of measurement
- weights and measures
- English unit, Imperial unit, and U.S. customary unit
  - inch
  - yard
  - mile
- SI
- Metric system

External link


- http://www.onlineconversion.com/ from feet to international system
- http://www.knowledgedoor.com/1/Library_of_Units_and_Constants/Group_Index/foot_group.htm Foot Foot Foot Category:Human-based units of measure ja:フィート

Metre

:This article is about the unit of length. For other uses of metre or meter, see meter (disambiguation). The metre (Commonwealth English) or meter (American English) (symbol: m) is the SI base unit of length. It is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in absolute vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Adding SI prefixes to metre creates multiples and submultiples; for example kilometre (1000 metres; kilo- = 1000) and millimetre (one thousandth of a metre; milli- = 1 / 1 000).

Conversions

1 metre is equivalent to:
- exactly 1/0.9144 yards (approximately 1.0936 yards)
- exactly 1/0.3048 feet (approximately 3.2808 feet)
- exactly 10000/254 inches (approximately 39.370 inches)

History

The word metre is from the Greek metron (μετρον), "a measure" via the French mètre. Its first recorded usage in English is from 1797. In the 18th century, there were two favoured approaches to the definition of the standard unit of length. One suggested defining the metre as the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second. The other suggested defining the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of the earth's meridian along a quadrant (one-fourth the polar circumference of the earth). In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences selected the meridional definition over the pendular definition because of the slight variation of the force of gravity over the surface of the earth, which affects the period of a pendulum. In 1793, France adopted the metre, with this definition, as its official unit of length. Although it was later determined that the first prototype metre bar was short by a fifth of a millimetre due to miscalculation of the flattening of the earth, this length became the standard. So, the circumference of the Earth through the poles is approximately forty million metres. Earth in a vacuum.]] In the 1870s and in light of modern precision, a series of international conferences were held to devise new metric standards. The Metre Convention (Convention du Mètre) of 1875 mandated the establishment of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM: Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to be located in Sèvres, France. This new organisation would preserve the new prototype metre and kilogram when constructed, distribute national metric prototypes, and would maintain comparisons between them and non-metric measurement standards. This organisation created a new prototype bar in 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM: Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures), establishing the International Prototype Metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of ninety percent platinum and ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice. In 1893, the standard metre was first measured with an interferometer by Albert A. Michelson, the inventor of the device and an advocate of using some particular wavelength of light as a standard of distance. By 1925, interferometry was in regular use at the BIPM. However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new SI system as equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum. The original international prototype of the metre is still kept at the BIPM under the conditions specified in 1889. To further reduce uncertainty, the seventeenth CGPM of 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of time and the speed of light: :The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second. Note that this definition exactly fixes the speed of light in a vacuum at 299,792,458 metres per second. Definitions based on the physical properties of light are more precise and reproducible because the properties of light are considered to be universally constant.

Timeline of definition


- 1790 May 8 — The French National Assembly decides that the length of the new metre would be equal to the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second.
- 1791 March 30 — The French National Assembly accepts the proposal by the French Academy of Sciences that the new definition for the metre be equal to one ten-millionth of the length of the earth's meridian along a quadrant (one-fourth the polar circumference of the earth).
- 1795 — Provisional metre bar constructed of brass.
- 1799 December 10 — The French National Assembly specifies that the platinum metre bar, constructed on 23 June 1799 and deposited in the National Archives, as the final standard.
- 1889 September 28 — The first CGPM defines the length as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.
- 1927 October 6 — The seventh CGPM adjusts the definition of the length to be the distance, at 0 °C, between the axes of the two central lines marked on the prototype bar of platinum-iridium, this bar being subject to one standard atmosphere of pressure and supported on two cylinders of at least one centimetre diameter, symmetrically placed in the same horizontal plane at a distance of 571 millimetres from each other.
- 1960 October 20 — The eleventh CGPM defines the length to be equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2p10 and 5d5 quantum levels of the krypton-86 atom.
- 1983 October 21 — The seventeenth CGPM defines the length to be distance travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

See also


- Metric system
- SI
- SI prefix
- Conversion of units for comparisons with other units
- Orders of magnitude (length)
- Speed of light

External links


- [http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/length.html?unit=meter&value=1 Length Converter: convert metre to other units, such as yard, mile, and so on]
- [http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html History of the metre at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)]
- [http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/timeline.htm Timeline of history of the metre at the NIST]
- [http://www1.bipm.org/en/scientific/length/ Bureau International des Poids et Measures - Lengths] Category:SI base units Category:Units of length ko:미터 ms:Meter ja:メートル simple:Metre th:เมตร

19th century

:Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) The 19th century lasted from 1801 to 1900 in the Gregorian calendar (using the Common Era system of year numbering). Historians sometimes define a "Nineteenth Century" historical era stretching from 1815 (The Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (The outbreak of the First World War).

Europe

For Europe, the period is marked with revolution, social upheaval, and the emergence of a united conservatism from the monarchs of Europe in response to the emerging republican firestorm spreading from revolutionary France. There were many revolutions in Europe in 1848. Furthermore, the later end of the century was dominated by what many call the New Imperialism, which was the rapid aquisition of colonies worldwide by European powers, most noteworthy is the Scramble for Africa. Many countries in Europe underwent an Industrial Revolution, especially Britain and Germany, that spread elsewhere by the end of the century, with factories and railway lines built all over the continent. The start of the 19th century there was a struggle between France and Britain and their allies for control of Europe and the world during the Napoleonic Wars, with Napoleon being finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. During the rest of the century, the British empire became the largest and most powerful empire in history, during the period known as the Pax Britannica.

Americas

In the Americas, the United States slowly grew economically, militarily, and politically, but nevertheless faced dramatic changes domestically, best seen in the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the expansion across the American continent known as Manifest Destiny. Industrially, America will explode following the Civil War, and would eventually begin expansion outward across the Pacific Ocean and in Latin America.

Other countries

For the rest of the world, there were few places not influenced by the West in some fashion, whether through colonialism, imperialism, or war. European powers gained increasing influence in China, where Qing control had weakened, and wars were fought by the western powers against China, such as the first and the second Opium wars and Sino-French War. Japan, which was forcibly opened to Western trade, began a rapid industrialisation. Africa which was largely free from European control at the start of the century, was almost completely dominated by Europe at the end of it, with the Scramble for Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. Large European settlement, especially British, of colonies such as Australia, New Zealand and the Cape Colony continued during the nineteenth century.

Events


- 1801: The Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merge to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- 1803: The United States buys out France's territorial claims in North America via the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1804-06: Americans Meriwether Lewis and William Clark lead an expedition to the Pacific Coast and back.
- 1805-48: Muhammad Ali modernizes Egypt.
- 1806: Holy Roman Empire dissolved as a consequence of the Treaty of Lunéville.
- 1809: Napoleon strips the Teutonic Knights of their last holdings in Bad Mergentheim.
- 1813-1917: The contest between the British Empire and Imperial Russia for control of Central Asia is referred to as the Great Game.
- 1815: Congress of Vienna redraws the European map.
- 1815: Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo brings a conclusion to the Napoleonic Wars and marks the beginning of a Pax Britannica which lasts until 1870.
- 1816: Year Without a Summer
- 1816-28: Shaka's Zulu kingdom becomes the largest in Southern Africa.
- 1819: The modern city of Singapore is established by the British East India Company.
- 1820: Liberia founded by the American Colonization Society for freed American slaves.
- 1830: France invades and occupies Algeria.
- 1830: The Belgian Revolution in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands led to the creation of Belgium.
- 1833: Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire.
- 1834: Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
- 1835-36: The Texas Revolution in Mexico resulted in the short-lived Republic of Texas.
- 1837-1901: Queen Victoria's reign is considered the apex of the British Empire and is referred to as the Victorian era.
- 1845-49: Irish Potato Famine
- 1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
- 1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe
- 1848-58: California Gold Rush
- 1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
- 1851-60s: Victorian gold rush in Australia
- 1851-64: The Taiping Rebellion in China
- 1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan's policy of Sakoku.
- 1855: Bessemer process enables steel to be mass produced.
- 1856: World's first oil refinery in Romania
- 1857-58: Indian rebellion of 1857
- 1859: The Origin of Species published.
- 1864-67: French intervention in Mexico
- 1865-77: Reconstruction in the United States
- 1866: Successful transatlantic telegraph cable follows an earlier attempt in 1858.
- 1866: Creation of the North German Confederation and the Austrian-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.
- 1866-69: Meiji Restoration in Japan
- 1867: The United States purchased Alaska from Russia.
- 1867: Canadian Confederation formed.
- 1869: First Transcontinental Railroad completed in United States.
- 1869: The Suez Canal opens linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
- 1870-71: Unifications of Germany and Italy.
- 1871-1914: Second Industrial Revolution
- 1870s-90s: Long Depression in Western Europe and North America
- 1872: Yellowstone National Park created.
- 1874: The British East India Company is dissolved.
- 1877: Great Railroad Strike in the United States may have been the world's first nationwide labor strike.
- 1877-78: The Balkans are freed from the Ottoman Empire after another Russo-Turkish War.
- 1878: First commercial telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.
- 1880-1902: Great Britain conquers Dutch settlers in South Africa in two Boer Wars.
- 1882: First electrical power plant and grid in Manhattan.
- 1884-85: The Berlin Conference signals the start of the European Scramble for Africa. Attending nations also agree to ban trade in slaves.
- 1885: Unification of Bulgaria
- 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre is the last battle in the American Indian Wars.
- 1894-95: After the First Sino-Japanese War, China cedes Taiwan to Japan and grants Japan a free hand in Korea.
- 1895-1896: Ethiopia defeated Italy in the First Italo-Abyssinian War.
- 1896: Olympic games revived in Athens.
- 1896: Klondike Gold Rush in Canada
- 1898: The United States gains control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
- 1898-1900: The Boxer Rebellion in China is suppressed by an Eight-Nation Alliance.

Wars

List of wars 1800–1899
- 1799-1815: Napoleonic Wars.
- 1801-15: Barbary Wars between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa.
- 1806-12: Russo-Turkish War
- 1810-21: Mexican War of Independence.
- 1810s-20s: South American Wars of Independence.
- 1812-15: War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain.
- 1821-32: Greek War of Independence.
- 1828-29: Russo-Turkish War, 1828-1829
- 1833-76: Carlist Wars in Spain.
- 1839-60: After two Opium Wars, Great Britain, France, the United States and Russia gain many concessions from China.
- 1854-56: Crimean War between Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Russia.
- 1861-65: American Civil War between the Union and seceding Confederacy.
- 1866: Austro-Prussian War.
- 1877-78: Russo-Turkish War.
- 1879: Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa.
- 1879-84: War of the Pacific between Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
- 1880-81: First Boer War.
- 1894-95: First Sino-Japanese War.
- 1895-96: First Italo-Abyssinian War.
- 1899-13: The Philippine-American War.

Significant people


- Gilbert and Sullivan, playwright, composer
- William Gilbert Grace, English cricketer
- Baron Haussmann, civic planner
- Sándor Körösi Csoma, explorer of the Tibetan culture
- Fitz Hugh Ludlow, writer and explorer
- Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer
- Ignaz Semmelweis, founder of hygiene
- Dr. John Snow, the founder of epidemiology
- F R Spofforth, Australian cricketer

Anthropology


- Franz Boas
- Edward Burnett Tylor
- Karl Verner
- Brothers Grimm

Painters


- Paul Cezanne
- Eugène Delacroix
- Caspar David Friedrich
- Antonio de La Gandara
- Théodore Géricault
- Vincent van Gogh
- Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
- Édouard Manet

Music


- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Hector Berlioz
- Johannes Brahms
- Anton Bruckner
- Frédéric Chopin
- Antonin Dvorak
- Franz Liszt
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Modest Mussorgsky
- Franz Schubert
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Richard Wagner

Literature


- Charles Baudelaire
- Charlotte Brontë
- Emily Brontë
- François-René de Chateaubriand
- Anton Chekhov
- Kate Chopin
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Charles Dickens
- Emily Dickinson
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Gustave Flaubert
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Nikolai Gogol
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Friedrich Hölderlin
- Heinrich Heine
- Victor Hugo
- Henry James
- Stéphane Mallarmé
- Aleksandr Pushkin
- Arthur Rimbaud
- Stendhal
- Leo Tolstoy
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
- Jules Verne
- Walt Whitman
- Oscar Wilde
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Herman Melville

Science


- Henri Becquerel, physicist
- Charles Darwin, biologist
- Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
- Michael Faraday, scientist
- Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician and philosopher
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, physicist, astronomer
- James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
- Gregor Mendel, biologist
- Louis Pasteur, biologist
- Nikola Tesla, inventor
- Amedeo Avogadro, physicist
- Johann Jakob Balmer, mathematician, physicist
- Pierre Curie, physicist
- Christian Doppler, physicist, mathematician

Philosophy and Religion


- Bahá'u'lláh, Persian religious leader and founder of Bahá'í Faith
- Báb, Persian prophet and founder of Bábísm
- Nikolai of Japan, religious leader who introduced Eastern Orthodoxy into Japan.
- Mikhail Bakunin, anarchist
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher
- Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
- Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist
- John Stuart Mill, philosopher
- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
- Joseph Smith, Jr., religious leader, founder of Mormonism
- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Hindu mystic
- Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
- Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism
- Brigham Young, Mormon religious leader
- William Morris, social reformer

Politics


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