Your train may rely on Victorian-era signaling

HERE’S THE INTERESTING PART

While you scroll TikTok on the train, the infrastructure keeping you from colliding with another locomotive is likely older than your great-grandparents. Many major transit systems still use mechanical track circuits and block signaling concepts pioneered in the 1870s because replacing it all is too expensive.

From the Stacky collection1 min read

Your train may rely on Victorian-era signaling — STACKY / Transport

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Your train may rely on Victorian-era signaling

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Leather blinders prevented horses from panicking

Why tuk-tuks shake at every stoplight

Tony Jannus piloted the world's very first scheduled commercial airline flight in 1914, transporting a single paying passenger across Tampa Bay in a trip that lasted a mere twenty-three minutes.

National speed limits were originally implemented in the early twentieth century not to prevent gruesome traffic fatalities, but primarily to save the rapidly deteriorating rubber tires of early automobiles.

Oxen are entirely steered using vocal commands

Iconic red double-decker buses in London did not originate with modern combustion engines, but were originally massive wooden carriages violently dragged through the filthy…

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.