Railway Preservation News • View topic

Nigel Anthony Hewer Day · **Posted:** Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:31 pm

bbunge wrote:

Quote:

whereas, if he stayed working with us, he could work on technology that was so obsolete that the skills would always be in demand!

I have a friend who never learned anything other than one of the original programming languages - cobol - who may be starting a nice retirement at age 50 in a couple of years after a career that has taken him around the world fixing obsolete computer code that few others can fix. I say may because he hasn't decided if he wants to retire yet.

If I were him, I'd retire to Strasburg and learn another obsolete technology.

Bob

But steam technology is not obsolete, A lot of it can be upgraded and find a place in todays world. The big risk is to assume that it can not evolve and maintain the best of the old and include the new. Its still steam!

superheater · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:54 pm **Posts:** 2605

COBOL isn't yet obselete, at least in the sense that its limitations aren't so bad that thy are sufficient enough to overcome the inertia of "sunk investment costs". People really forget bean counters get the last word-computer science professors were delivering eulogies for COBOL when I took my first class in the early '80's. I was still "acceptance testing" it, until I left my stint in IT in 1994. Technical obselescene doesn't send a technology packing...

COBOL isn't being learned by enough numbers to keep the billions of lines of code in tip top shape, let alone to migrate low visibility, but stable and essential applications to more modern code. I'll bet your friend will be in demand for another 20 years.

In a sense, steam (locomotion) is truly is obselete, it has been fully replaced in all non-tourist applications. For that same reason, electrification can be considered obselete as well.

thirdrail · **Posted:** Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:15 am

superheater wrote:

...............................................
In a sense, steam (locomotion) is truly is obselete, it has been fully replaced in all non-tourist applications. For that same reason, electrification can be considered obselete as well.

Perhaps if you qualified the latter with "as far as North American rail freight operations". Electrification is certainly not obsolete in rail passenger transport in North America, nor is it obsolete for freight service in many other parts of the world.

Ted Miles · **Posted:** Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:00 pm

third rail,

Your user name reminds me that I grew up on the Long Island railroad where the third rail is in use every day; in fact they built several miles of new third rail a few years back to go further East.

And the traction world is alive also; they have just moved i on board the locomotive. What is it that the Diesel locomotives do?

They make electricity to turn traction motors! Some are AC, but I would suggest that there a lot of DC motors around yet!

Ted Miles

superheater · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:54 pm **Posts:** 2605

True, with one qualifier: The heavy subsidization of European operations-keep in mind that subsidies carry income and substitution effects. However, that effect is uncertain, so I stand corrected.