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zokier
quietbritishjim
I was confused too. I found this:
> The term "Fallen Flags" describes those railroads whose corporate names have been dissolved through merger, bankruptcy, or liquidation. At one time the United States boasted nearly 140 Class I's.
https://www.american-rails.com/fallen-flags.html
OK great, but what's a "Class I"?
> In the United States, railroads are designated as Class I, Class II, or Class III, according to size criteria first established by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1911, and now governed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). The STB's current definition of a Class I railroad was set in 1992, that being any carrier earning annual revenue greater than $250 million. This has since been adjusted for inflation and most recently set to $504,803,294 in 2019.
notwhereyouare
which doesn't jive with what I'm seeing? Or maybe I still don't understand.
https://www.rr-fallenflags.org/amtk/amtk.htm
Amtrak still exists, though, maybe since it's a different logo?
PLenz
The audience of the site are railfans - and these terms are common in the jargon of that hobby. We don't define cpu on pages about speculative execution, do we?
ant6n
I work in the rail industry (different country) and didn‘t know what this is about. That page seems to have no explanation what it is about, what it does or what the intent is.
schroeding
Nice to see that BNSF 4723 still has the Microsoft Train Simulator Sticker[1] in 2022. :)
bentcorner
Something about that photo (aliasing? cleanliness of the sticker?) makes it look photoshopped, but it actually does have that sticker: https://youtu.be/9eOYUYSXzi8?t=56
seabass-labrax
I think it's the JPEG compression ratio being different on that region compared to the rest of the picture. That video is great though; just how many containers do you want?!
nroets
Yes, Microsoft really need the brand exposure /s
111111IIIIIII
Good catch lol
a2tech
I love websites like this. It’s an obsessive collection of information, neatly formatted. No JavaScript or elaborate backend systems. Just a plain information dense webpage. A reminder of what the web used to be
skellyclock
Then you'll love this!
https://www.vintagestreetlights.com/
https://www.deviantart.com/tpirman1982/art/Celebrating-10-Ye...
NikkiA
I think Douglas Self's (yes, that Douglas Self!) museum websites probably are of interest too:
http://douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm
and
111111IIIIIII
Recalls the legendary Parisan lamp post photographer Charles Marville https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marville
zokier
> A reminder of what the web used to be
But this page still is here and is seemingly even being updated. So the web that used to be still is.
111111IIIIIII
I am regularly astounded by the depth, breadth, and usability of https://marxists.org.
undefined
dghughes
My province has the ultimate fallen flag the entire railroad system here was dismantled in the mid 1980s.
At the time I never knew of its history or my family history with it until my Dad gave me a metal box. In it were old family documents, pictures, mementos mostly from my great-grandfather. He worked on the railroad but I had never know about it I barely even knew his father my grandfather.
Even more historically powerful my province which at the time was not a province of Canada had massive debt due to railroad construction costs. We only joined Canadian Confederation to get the debt paid off and since it is an island a promise to have year-round access to the mainland.
floren
Is this Nova Scotia? I ask because I've often wondered over Stan Rogers' song "Guysborough Train" which seems to be about a planned but never completed railroad line.
iamhamm
Things I never expected: reference to Stan Rogers on HN.
I believe your interpretation is the generally accepted one. Stan was from Guysborough and as I understand it, the rail line was started, quite a lot of progress made, and then never finished so there was a lot of displeasure from the locals at the constant reminders of the failure of the government to make good on their promise to deliver the railroad.
dghughes
No but you're close, I'm in PEI the neighbour to the north of NS.
Animats
There are names there that were once thought to be too big to fail.
- The Pennsylvania Railroad, the Standard Railroad of the World.
- The New York Central Railroad, their main competitor.
- Railway Express Agency, the FedEx of its day.
IIAOPSW
"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert... 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains." And I heard that story and said 'pfft, surely I can do better than that sucker.'" There are now two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desert. one comically larger and more crumbled than the other. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
That's basically the story of the former Pan Am building, which sits right next door to and overshadows the former New York Central's Terminal building in Manhattan.
Animats
Yes. Corporate ego trip movies, circa 1950.
Pennsylvania Railroad's "Progress on the Rails".[1]
New York Central's "The Big Train", featuring the CEO.[2] He's lobbying for deregulation and less federal funding for airports and roads.
Both include sections on the data processing systems of 1950.
rob74
The building of the mighty airline overshadowed the majestic terminal of the formerly mighty railway, but then the mighty airline itself faltered, and the building now belongs to almighty finance...
IIAOPSW
And I heard that story and I said "pfft, surely I can do better than the last two suckers"...
Lammy
> once thought to be too big to fail
Relevant: Bureau of Labor Statistics data for American railroad jobs from 1947 to today: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4348200001?amp%25253bdata...
bombcar
If you want a sobering antidote to corporate hubris, read the Dow Jones Industrial Average for every year since it was founded.
appleflaxen
Can you elaborate?
bombcar
It's the "30 best companies" or such, and not a single one of the original companies is still on the list.
Of the original list (which is mostly railroads) I think only Union Pacific and Western Union still exist under their own name.
PLenz
The merger of NYC and the Pennsylvania - the Penn Central - was the biggest bankruptcy in US history before Enron. <i>The Wreck of the PennCentral</i> is a great business book on why.
samstave
I have a bunch of model trains... like at least 60 cars/engines in N and HO scale...
I dont know what to do with them per se... I bought the collection at an estate sale, but I have some famous pieces. I just love trains.
jl6
Amazing dedication. This is what the internet is for!
ez_mmk
Can somebody put this on the Internet Archive?
pabs3
On its way via ArchiveBot:
http://archivebot.com/ https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot
Lammy
I've grown wary of relying only on IA
[lammy@popola#Webrips] du -hs www.rr-fallenflags.org
43G www.rr-fallenflags.org
[lammy@popola#Webrips] find www.rr-fallenflags.org | wc -l
479221pabs3
ArchiveBot regularly grabs sites of that size and uploads them to IA, its not a big deal. The Imgur/Reddit archiving was at least an order of magnitude or two larger.
Of course it is always good to have multiple copies of a site, especially personal ones for things you care about.
usr1106
Will that work? The site mentions that it's not indexed by search machines. So I guess it has a robots.txt (on my phone and did not check...) Would the archive respect that?
Jefenry
Annoyingly, Internet Archive doesn't respect robots.txt. I specifically excluded ia_archiver from my site which worked for a number of years until they decided to ignore it because robots.txt "do not necessarily serve our archival purposes." They do remove your site if you email them though.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/internet-archive-rob...
seabass-labrax
Personally, I'm with the Internet Archive on this one. If they were to respect robots.txt, it wouldn't be long before a whole host of websites exclude the Internet Archive for dubious reasons such as lost advertising revenue, copyright concerns, exclusivity deals etc. I am curious to know if you've found the Internet Archive's activity to be exceptionally taxing on your servers, or whether you have another reason to wish to exclude them?
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Is "fallen flag" a phrase I should recognize? I realize the site is probably not for me, but I would have appreciated a paragraph explaining what is being presented here