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Posted on 03/07/2009 7:48:34 AM PST by Publius
Synopsis
Eddie Willers talks with the Anonymous Rail Worker in the corporate cafeteria, bringing him up to date. Dagny’s work on the John Galt Line is going so well the newspapers refuse to report it. The United Locomotive Works has gone bankrupt, and Dwight Sanders of Colorado has bought the plant. Dagny has moved into a little office near the back of Taggart Terminal, and Eddie feels badly about sitting in Dagny’s chair and taking credit for her work.
The office of the John Galt Line is on the ground floor of a half-collapsed building and is strictly a no-frills operation. Dagny is in town because she had rushed to New York upon hearing that Dwight Sanders had retired – and there was no trace of him to be found. In her office, an exhausted Dagny permits herself a small moment of weakness, longing for a man who can share her meaning of the world. Outside she sees the shadow of a man lingering near the door – but he leaves. Dagny rushes outside but sees only the rear entrance to Taggart Terminal. (No spoilers, please!)
Hank Rearden sells his ore mines to Paul Larkin to get around the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Paul is consumed with guilt, and Hank is not interested in Paul’s rationalizations. Hank had earlier sold his coal mines to Ken Danagger, who was willing to sell his coal to Rearden at cost, even though that was illegal. Hank’s concern was not cost; he simply wanted to be the first to get the coal.
Wesley Mouch retires from Rearden’s employ to become the Assistant Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.
Hank and Eddie Willers have breakfast at the Wayne-Falkland. With the railroad in such poor financial shape, Hank wants to give Eddie a moratorium on the first payment for Rearden Metal; from his perspective it’s just good business. Eddie is shocked but takes the offer, feeling badly that this will help Jim Taggart and his friends. Hank says not to worry about them.
The American people are worried about whether the Rearden Metal bridge will stand, and they curse Hank Rearden amd Dagny Taggart for caring about nothing but money. Simon Pritchett, Claude Slagenhop, Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder are all fueling the chorus of public opinion while claiming that it arises spontaneously. Balph Eubank and Mort Liddy are the first signers of a petition from the Committee of Disinterested Citizens asking for a government study of the line before it can open.
But Dagny is thrilled. A union boss announces that he is not going to let his men run a train on her tracks, and Dagny throws him out of her office after giving him an ultimatum. Every engineer on the Taggart Transcontinental volunteers to run the first train. Pat Logan, engineer of the Taggart Comet on the Nebraska Division, gets the “demotion” to freight. Dagny is going to ride in the cab.
At the press conference, Dagny, with Hank in attendance, gives the media the details of the opening of the John Galt Line. She and Hank make it clear that their motive is profit, much to the discomfiture of the press. The first train will be a 4-locomotive mixed freight of 80 cars running the entire way at 100 mph. Hank volunteers to ride in the cab with Dagny and the crew.
Everything goes perfectly; in fact, the whole trip is a natural high. At 100 mph, the train streaks through the countryside and right through the Denver yards and station. It roars across the Rearden Metal bridge and comes to a halt at Wyatt Junction. Ellis Wyatt is positively giddy; he takes Hank and Dagny off in his convertible to his home. Over dinner, Wyatt tells them he is planning to extract oil from shale only five miles away in a magnitude previously unheard of. Hank, Dagny and Wyatt make great plans.
As they head for separate bedrooms, Hank pulls Dagny into his arms and kisses her brutally. Then he takes her into his bedroom and makes wild, hot, passionate love to her.
The Issue of Rail Speed Limits
At the time of the publication of the book, railroads were entirely responsible for speed limits on their tracks. A 1910 law, most recently upheld in 1996, refused permission for towns to restrict train speeds.
On the John Galt Line, blocks were two miles long. In the real world of railroading, blocks are of variable length. Each block begins with a signal tower that conveys the condition of the block by a red, yellow or green signal. In the earliest days, large balls on a pole were used, which is where the term “highball” comes from. Later came semaphores, and when the Pennsylvania Railroad switched to light signals, the lights mimicked the positions of a semaphore. There is no standardization of block signals in America today; each railroad has its own unique customs.
A railroad engineer is issued a booklet with each block on the line listed by milepost and with its designated speed limit. Railroads also use speed limit signs that are often coded separately for freight and passenger trains. The speed limit on a given block is determined by factors such as curvature of the rail and the number of grade crossings. Rail yards have much lower speed limits unless the yard possesses a separate bypass track.
As recently as the Fifties, a dispatcher might radio an engineer and say, “You own the railroad tonight.” This was a signal for the engineer to use his own judgment on following the posted speed limits. Today every rail line has track-side sensors, and every train has a FRED Unit (“friendly rear-end device”) where the caboose used to be. These tools gather data and use telemetry to pass it to the dispatcher. Thanks to these innovations, engineers with a heavy hand on the throttle are a thing of the past.
The Federal Railroad Administration now sets maximum speed limits on America’s railroads. The maximum speed for freight trains is 70 mph, and for passenger trains it’s 79 mph. Passenger trains on certain types of track with in-cab signals are permitted to go 110 mph, and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor has its own speed limits with sections rated at 120 to 150 mph.
It is obvious that turning the Rio Norte Line into the John Galt Line involved a complete re-engineering. The first freight train runs at 100 mph around curves and grades, which would imply a total rebuild. (That train today would have been restricted to 70 mph.) It even runs through heavily populated Denver and the Denver station and yards at 100 mph, which today is an absolute no-no.
What is even more interesting is that the ride was smooth and quiet with jointed rail; welded rail hadn’t been invented yet. I often wonder if Rand didn’t anticipate the invention of welded rail decades in advance.
The Disappearance of the Adversarial Press
Traditionally, the American press was highly adversarial. Every town had a Democratic newspaper and a Republican newspaper, and there was no line separating news from editorial content. You read the paper that reflected your political bias.
After World War II, however, that changed. Thanks to media consolidation, eight companies today control most books, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio stations and movie studios. Because of this, the mass market reflects a bland, corporatist, internationalist liberalism, quite different from the muscular liberalism that shaped America in the 20th Century. This is the liberalism of the intellectual, not the lunch bucket. This bland liberalism defines itself as “the American Center”.
In the Sixties, younger journalists became the avatars of advocacy journalism, in which Radical Leftist opinion was marketed as bland liberalism. Over time, advocacy journalism became the norm and today dominates the media.
Some Discussion Topics
Ping! The thread has been posted.
Special thanks to those FReepers who have participated in these threads. We’re having some excellent and insightful discussions of the book. We’ll rap up in early August, so let’s keep up the quality.
Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Top and the Bottom
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Immovable Movers
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Climax of the d’Anconias
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Non-Commercial
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Exploiters and the Exploited
Ping! The thread has been posted.
Special thanks to those FReepers who have participated in these threads. We’re having some excellent and insightful discussions of the book. We’ll rap up in early August, so let’s keep up the quality.
Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Top and the Bottom
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Immovable Movers
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Climax of the d’Anconias
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Non-Commercial
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Exploiters and the Exploited
bfltr
that’s correct.
there was the afternoon denver post, the “bankers’ paper”,
and the morning rocky mountain news, the union, democrat paper.
Sounds like the Coastal Commission in 70's Kalifornia (and maybe to this very day, I just don't care anymore).
When I can't take it anymore, I tend to tilt at those who by default think that a person espousing the liberal view of a matter is a pure-as-the-driven-snow "activist", while a conservative MUST have some conflict of interest. Global Warming grants are the perfect example. There is actually MORE opportunity for service of self-interest on the liberal side. Naysayers are constantly vilified. Any sane person looking to sell his opinion to the highest bidder would definitely choose the pro-AGW side, yet it's the anti's that must bear the stain of an assumed lack of integrity.
Another observation (and an incredibly obvious one): The companies run by the protagonists are all named after them (Taggart, Rearden, Wyatt, Marsh, Nielsen, Dannager), while the ones run by mealy-mouths like Mowen or Boyle have vague universal names like "Amalgamated..." or "Associated...". Like I said, this should be obvious, but it just struck me this week.
Not to get too far ahead in the story, but I often wonder why Eddie Willers was not invited to Atlantis? He was not a looter, he was dedicated to his work and a life long friend of Both Francisco and Dagny. But he was left in the world, last seen chasing rabbits around the dead engine of a dead locomotive.
Maybe he symbolized the innocent, “civilian casualty” of the war with liberals.
Well, they do have a history of "targeting" individuals..... first on a small, then massive scale.
I hear project X will have 4 million "shovel ready jobs" soon.
Sounds like deconstructivism to me. Thank God that's finally started to be discredited in academic circles.
I have tried over & over to get thru Atlas. I have never been able to get thru Rand’s ponderous writing style. I get the message just can’t handle the style
I am not the great thinker you are (Wind in His Hair to Ten Bears), but IMO the shell of the building represents what is left once the takers in society get done with their taking leaving nothing but a shell of what greatness once was.
The new offices of the John Galt Line, regardless how tattered they may currently be, represent a new hope for a future that can be rebuilt from the bottom up with hard work and determination.
I was thinking about the “cartoonish” epithet that somebody tossed out somewhere upthread. While they meant it as an insult, it shouldn’t be. Stylistically there’s a fair point but it is intentional and purposeful. It is to mistake starkness for simplicity. The characters are drawn starkly. High contrast. The objective is to evaluate the differences between people, between worldviews, not to get distracted yet in the exact boundaries of where those differences are. Or... allow the context to become a character itself and too much a part of the story.
There’s a timelessness to the story and I think the style is there to support that. It’s “Film Noir”, to me anyway, as it plays in my head. I’m seeing cinema like an old Cagney or Bogart film. Sam Spade. I hadn’t thought about it before but yes, it’s even in black and white! Maybe a splash of color here and there... the blue on Rearden metal... some intense red on Dagny’s lipstick... the brief orange glow of a cigarette... but otherwise stark, dark and mostly colorless. Like a graphic novel. Like Bogart and Bacall.
Starkly drawn characters that don’t blend much with the setting, the decade, the techology at the time... it makes it possible then to tear them out of the story and put them down anywhere in time. The story is being told against this backdrop but it could easily be any other. Casablanca had stark, yes cartoonish characters, but it made for a story that wasn’t locked into a particular place and time but could find an analogue anywhere, in any time.
Where does your tag line come from?
One thing that surprised me about the book is that Ayn Rand knew about the existence of shale oil.
When I first read the book, I’d never heard of shale oil and thought it was a literary device so Ms. Rand could create another strong willed industrialist. It wasn’t until a few years after I read the book that shale oil became news.
So, I suggest that Ms. Rand did her research and knew what she was talking about.
And the chicken tastes better.
The other thing that keeps striking me as I read the book, is how the people don't seem to have any say. No voting, no rioting, no court cases, just sheeple. Surely, someone would speak out against these know nothings. Then I see the union rr workers come back to work under assumed names and I'll thrilled by the rebellion. If only it would catch on.
The rough sex thing puzzles me. Does that mean that is how Rand likes it? Is it some puritanical throw back of guilt?
I actually listened to it unabridged on Audiblebooks. It worked very well for long drives.
57 hours of listening. They read every single word.
She amazed me with her precognition. “Anthem” is a very short read, and is about the aftermath of where “O” and his new boytoy Chavez wish to take us.
Gunner
Whenever Wesley Mouch is metioned I see Barney Frank in my mind.
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