Word: railroads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Through a Chicago-based task force heading the sanctuary movement. Estella hooked up with the underground railroad that would lead her to the Cambridge church after shutting her through various U.S. churches. She says her journey was difficult and recalls the Texas/Mexico border as an especially hard place to pass...
...problems involve the transportation of chemicals. In elaborate detail, the Department of Transportation has compiled regulations for the handling of 3,000 dangerous products. Says Thomas Charlton, chief of the standards division in the department's office of hazardous materials: "We regulate every container from laboratory jars to railroad tank cars...
Trucks used for shipping chemicals must be strong enough to survive a rollover without breaking open, and tank cars a derailment. Hydrogen cyanide, a lethal poison, can be transported only in carriers with 1-in.-thick, high-strength steel bulkheads. When a railroad car carrying petrochemicals overturns, the reason may be loose rails, which can break off from their ties and puncture the front of an oncoming tank car. Therefore, industry rules were established that call for adding more insulation and head shields. Cost: $452 million...
Many regulations for transporting dangerous materials have been born of disasters. In 1978, 23 cars of a slow-moving Louisville and Nashville train derailed in Waverly, Tenn. A day later, a tanker containing propane exploded, killing 16 railroad workers, Government officials and bystanders, and injuring 30 others. Investigators learned that a railroad wheel had broken and had sent the cars off the track. Later, the Government banned that type of wheel from use on trains carrying hazardous materials...
...some of the real computer whiz kids are finally getting their due. In a new book called Hackers (Doubleday; $17.95), Writer Steven Levy argues that these "science-mad people" are the true heroes of the computer revolution. He traces the history of hackers from M.I.T.'s Tech Model Railroad Club, their first mecca, to Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer Club, an early microcomputer gathering spot, to a video-game factory in Coarsegold, Calif. Through it all he discerns a common thread: the unspoken assumption among crack computer programmers and engineers that they could straighten out the world...