The shrinking of space is an interesting topic and a concept that is known to man as time moves forward. The invention of the railroad set this idea into many individuals’ heads as the network of tracks increased and covered more real estate than ever before. The perception of time really began to make people curious. In his Railway Economy Lardner says, “Distances practically diminish in the exact ratio of the speed of personal locomotion.” Lardner is referring to the physics behind speed. Speed is calculated by dividing the distance and the time. Thus we can calculate the time by dividing the distance and the speed. These three things are all proportional to each other, therefore, changing one will affect the other two. Trains are said to have been able to travel the same distance as traditional methods of transportation in one-third the time.

In the article an interesting point has been bought to attention. It explains that the shrinking of the amount of time it takes to travel from place to place has a direct correlation with the perception of the distance between those places. Now that the railroad decreases the amount of time it takes to travel from place to place people are able live further from the city center. The further out of the city center people live the closer they get to the adjacent city. Meanwhile the adjacent city is utilizing the railroad in the same manner. There is only so much distance between the two cities and as a result of the train, two cities that once had their own identity have now been combined into one city. Therefore, the space between the cities can be seen as growing smaller even though the actual distance has not changed. This concept is reinforced in the text by stating, “…the railroad opens up new spaces that were not as easily accessible before; on the other, it does so by destroying space, namely, the space between points.”

The railroad not only connected cities that were once hours away by traditional methods of transportation but society also gained something else from it, time synchronization. Now that the railroad was in place the cities had to cooperate with each other on the time in which the train was leaving or arriving at each station. It’s interesting to think something like transportation set up the modern time standards. At first each railroad company had their own time standards. Then in 1884 at the international conference in Washington D.C. on time standards, a consensus was reached that set up the time zones around the world. The railroad relates directly to architecture in the fact that architecture can be analyzed as evidence of the transition to modern times just like the railroad. The railroad and glass buildings are direct expressions of such a transition.

The Railway Journey is an interesting title for such an article. It is purposely named this due to the fact that a journey insinuates time. The interesting thing is that the beginning of the railroad marks the beginning of changing times around the world. People could move faster than ever before which was speeding up the process of production and launching societies into the industrial revolution. The railroad changed the world forever and intellectuals have pondered the question, was the world changed for the better? or for the worse?