Hacker News Reader

Comment by nohuck13 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how many more trees there are in 2013. My wife pointed out that it looks the same with pictures of New York from the early 20th century- green space just wasn't a thing we had the desire/means to rate as highly.

OTOH the major infrastructure hasn't changed much (bridges, urban areas, not just the train line which is politically determined). Technological change reshapes how live in a lot of ways in short timespans, but it's interesting to reminded that big, capital intestive stuff like bridges and tunnels and roads are still built with 50+ year expected lifetimes. I can't imagine writing software with anything like that staying power.

View on HN

There is also another, more practical, reason for the lack of trees and general greenery next to the train lines.

In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash.

There was a pretty interesting article with the BBC to accompany this a while back.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23853863

> In 1953 we are still in the age of steam and trees were cut back from the lines to reduce the risk of fires from hot ash.

I'm assuming that's a joke, but one of the things that's always surprised me is how early electrification happened. The London-Brighton line was electrified in segments from 1909 to 1932. Many of the commuter rail lines in the U.S. were electrified that period too.

I thought there might have been fewer trees in the earliest video, but it was really difficult to tell with the film quality and the speed of things rushing by. If the rail was newly laid in the 50s, then they might have had to cut down the trees, and they take a while to come back.

The difference that jumped out at me the most is the decline in hats. I wonder how many haberdashers were put out of work during this period.

> it's interesting to reminded that big, capital intestive stuff like bridges and tunnels and roads are still built with 50+ year expected lifetimes. I can't imagine writing software with anything like that staying power.

I've given thought to this. Engineers are expected to get things like that right the first time, and the structures have to last a long time. But the engineers don't have to invent a new kind of bridge or road every time they design one. Software, being cheap to make lots of copies of, has to do something completely new every time you write it.

> If the rail was newly laid in the 50s, then they might have had to cut down the trees

It wasn't. The first London to Brighton railway line opened in 1841. Most of sections of the two main paths from Brighton to London (to London Victoria and London Bridge respectively) should have been complete by about 1855. There was expansion work (adding extra tracks) on the busiest section of the line around 1908, but I think that was the last major work on the London-Brighton lines apart from connecting branches.

There's of course been replacements and upgrades, but these tends to happen bit by bit.

It was after the war, and the US was doing enormous infrastructure projects, so it seemed plausible that they did something around that time. Plus, they made a film to show it. But it was really hard to see the trees in the film, so it could be an illusion.

At first I thought so too as well, but then I started to wonder whether that was just an effect of the first film being black and white. This means that the trees don't stand out as much against the grey background as when they're shown in colour.

Even if the bridges had been rebuilt, it would be hard to tell from this video.

They'd probably be in the same spot, so it is hard to tell if they have been replaced at the speed the video goes. Also, they would probably re-use legacy supports, bases etc for a new bridge, so they may even look the same as the old ones?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com