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
The part that I found interesting was Eddies decision to cut the ribbon only once not the three times that the press asked for. Had this decision been for his own values, he would have shown that he understood the action. I believe, however, he chose to because Dagny would have wanted it that way. Perhaps this is Rands demonstration of the subtleties of altruism. His action was decisive but for the wrong reason.
Maybe he symbolized the innocent, “civilian casualty” of the war with liberals.
Eddie is an 'in between'. He seems to live by someone elses convictions, never taking a stand for his own beliefs.
I read AS about 3 times before I understood that Rand’s books are philosophy books, not entertainment stories. If you approach it from that view point, it’s easier to read.
I had trouble with that too. You have to use "freeperbookclub". I guess you could go around to all the threads once you find them and add "atlasshrugged" or "aynrand" if you wanted to for the next time.
Try typing in Atlas Shrugged. It will automatically select the search type as “keywords”, but if you change that to “Titles” it should work just fine.
O ne
B ig
A ss
M istake
A merica!
Leaving the Denver Station the rails head west and pass just to the south of the old Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility location. It passes through a tunnel under HWY 93 before some switchbacks as the rail begins climbing the sudden appearance of the front range peaks. The line turns north and crosses a small bridge over HWY 72 (which follows Coal Creek Canyon)and gradually traverses the front range uprise for a few miles heading north. This section of track is cut into the side of the mountain and has very steep drop-offs and numerous, short tunnels through mountain ridges. The line turns sharply to the west at Eldorado Canyon and runs for 10-12 miles on the steep edge of the canyon high above South Boulder Creek and is very precarious looking until the town of Pinecliffe.
At the town of Pinecliffe the grade becomes much more gentle and the railway follows on the side of the creek past Rollinsville (which is where Wyatt Junction would be) and continues following the creek until entering the Moffat Tunnel which cuts about a six mile path under the continental divide and emerges right in the ski resort town of Winter Park.
This is the view with a fairly wide angle lens looking west from my house. The continental divide is the highest range of peaks and is generally 13,000 to just under 14,000 ft in this area. (hope the photo works, I can't tell in preview)
[IMG]http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa124/mountainclmbr/Viewtothewestedit1.jpg[/IMG]
The rail line is in a difficult to see canyon that goes from the lower right of the photo and Rollinsville would be behind a ridge on the left edge of the photo. The Moffat Tunnel (no spoilers for later) is also on the left edge and is pretty far below tree line.
I know this is fiction, but a few observations: This part of the rail line has too many sharp turns to travel 100mph. Trains usually go only 20mph and there have been several major single train accidents even then. There is no major bridge on this section of the line. The oil shale is in western Colorado, not north-central Colorado. It is fiction, but I enjoy the tidbits that are based on reality!
I just bought Atlas Shrugged tonight so I am way behind. (Fat book small print I hope it grabs me or I’ll never make it to the end)
And thanks for holding off on the tunnel. It's one of the prize chapters in the book.
If you catch up with us at Chapter 10 or 11, that's OK.
I wondered about that part, too. I guess we’ll discuss it more later.
bttt
FYI I bought it last week and read a chapter a day to get caught up. The first few chapters can be challenging to get through, but keep in mind Rand is using those as a basic introduction to the characters. About chapter 4, the characters start interacting, that’s when I almost literally couldn’t put it down..
Thanks for the advise I am starting tonight.
Will do! I have wanted to read it for a long time, this is the perfect time.
I think that you hit the nail on the head about her writing style. I understood from talking to a (capitalist) friend who recommended the book to me that it was primarily a philosophy book. In spite of this I thought the 100MPH train ride was fun. I couldn’t wait to get to the bridge.
I usually feel alone in my opinions when I am among fellow workers, and neighbors. I choose my friends carefully,while my small family and I are largely in accord on most things political.
Appreciate the post in the midst of this also awesome AS Review.
Dagney is a strong woman, strong character. She conquers anything she sets her mind too. The train ride is part of this sex scene. Her train, Readon's steel. Is it really rough sex or passionate sex between strong people? If Dagney had said, "No." Hank would not have violated her.
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