[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
Warning! Engineer at work!
This editor is a Grognard Mirabilaire and is entitled to display this 1937 Wikipedia First Edition.
enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.
This user is a participant in
WikiProject United States Public Policy.
This user is a member of
the Guild of Copy Editors.
Flag of Maryland
This user is interested in the U.S. State of Maryland.
This user is a former resident of California.
This user is left-handed.
♂This user is male.
IrelandÉireannach
This user is Irish.
🇩🇪This user is of German ancestry.
This user is interested in history.
This user is addicted to travel.

10
This user has visited 10 of the 205 countries in the world.
This user is a railfan.
This user enjoys photography.
PEThis user is a licensed
Professional Engineer.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Ghost towns.
This user eats popcorn.
This user believes that caffeine is necessary in large doses daily.
"Surely this user can't be serious?"
This user is cooler than you.
... This user may get around to being a professional procrastinator. Someday. Maybe.
This space is for rent.

Welcome ... I'm a professional engineer/amateur historian living in Maryland. I have a pretty wide variety of interests -- many of which involve travel in one form or another -- but here on Wikipedia I mostly devote my energy to articles about the history and geography of the railroads and engineering. I also enjoy cooking!

Like other users such as User:Antandrus, I enjoy working on significant but little-known topics ... subjects not likely to receive much attention on Wikipedia otherwise.

My background is four decades of engineering and project/program management experience in both the public and private sectors as well as operating my own engineering business and affiliated teaching experiences in engineering, project management and project accounting.

What is Wikipedia?

edit

I am astonished at this thing called Wiki... and recommend you read this wiki page or the missing manual to grasp some of the breath of this as a body of knowledge. As its literature notes, they are here to build an encyclopedia. See also the material on making technical articles understandable.

The policy of the wiki and its objectives, Wikipedia:Principles and its Neutral Point of View objective, or NPOV as well as discussion on public domain issues; Wikipedia:Non-free content,Permission examples as well as general PD template and US Government PD templates.

In some cases these new articles involve reporting on specific very technical reports issued by US Governmental and occasionally State/Local agencies ... no existing guidelines are available to use in developing these type of articles/pages... so I have embarked upon developing some templates.. using this help page for templates... if one gets "stuck" then deploy {{Helpme}} on your talk page and ask for the help you require immediately below it.

For help on editing pages ... General Discussion on wiki markup details .... see this tutorial ... For help on editing talk pages...
For disambiguation guidance .. see [1]
For help on TOCs..
For Hat-notes... Help on user pages...
For abandoning a draft, just put '{{db-user}}'at the start of it.
For guidance on "Identifying and using primary and secondary sources" .. as well as Wikipedia:No_original_research and articles summaries ...for Templates on infoboxes and more templates and Categories ..help on images

For Wiki markup specifics, help on links ... For naming conventions

As I have learned in the past few years working on wiki, there is a lot of duplication. This is true in the case of template material and guidance for citations and sources. This Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles is a very good overview and set of examples. For more help on citations also citing sources ... and templates for citing journals ... as well as for templates and documentation ...see also .. [http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Template:Main#.22For_more_details_on_.E2.80.A6.2C_see_.E2.80.A6.22 "main article" "see also" templates] ... for clarifying material see Disambiguation ... for articles requiring paid subscriptions such Ancestry.com

For articles citing material that is no longer copyrighted and now in the public domain, use ...
  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain {{cite book}}: Empty citation (help)

for US agencies use .. * {{USGovernment}} place this in the reference section ... see Federal law enforcement in the United States as an example ...

Additional citation direction ....if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) then you should do one of the following:

If you have permission from the author leave a message explaining the details on the article Talk page and send an email with the message to "permissions-en@wikimedia.org". See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for instructions. See also Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials
If a note on the original website states that re-use is permitted under the GFDL or released into the public domain leave a note at the Talk page for the article with a link to where we can find that note (or a copy of the permission);
If you own the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en(at)wikimedia(dot)org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the GFDL, and note that you have done so on the article Talk page. Alternatively, you may create a note on your web page releasing the work under the GFDL and then leave a note at Talk article with a link to the details. see also this template.. {{self|cc-by-sa-3.0}}
See also Example permission requests
See also this website for some great info on public domain info
See also Wikimedia Commons for uploading materials...


For articles I have issues with... I can add this as a comment inside of double brackets .. "refimprove section|date=mydate" or [citation needed] ... for lack of neutrality or factual basis ... Template:Lopsided or this [unbalanced opinion]

For editing out old texts with embedded carriage returns ...

Helpful User pages

edit

Top of current page

Projects I am working on

edit

As part of my efforts.. I have created various subpages as draft documents while put all the material together rather than tie up an actual wiki page... It is not possible to make a redirect to a special page, or to create normal pages beginning with the "Special:" prefix. You can see them if you scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on user subpages...

I also am working on drafts using the wiki sandbox(es) ... click on them above to see more ... enjoy!...

This is a listing of all my recent contributions.


Public Sources of Information

edit

I could not have done this without archival efforts by others....

first and foremost is Wiki-library itself... again amazing!...
World CAT library search site ... Library of Congress services and catalog on ASCE engineering periodicals
Art, Architecture and Engineering Library, Lantern Slide Collection at U Michigan...
National Archives Access
David Pfeiffer materials on railroads at the Archives...
National Park Services online materials for railroads
Google books and related sites, including Hathi Internet Trust for Railroad journal materials... incredible source ....
Archives of Maryland online, policies ... Debates of the 1850 state constitutional convention and the benefit to the State from its investments in Railroads ... Maryland State Archives for Newspapers ... The Maryland Line in the Confederate Army. 1861-1865 by W. W. Goldsborough (1900) from the state archives.. UMD archives on the WPA in Maryland during the 1930s.
Maryland HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDING SURVEY (HABS) COLLECTION ca. 1930-1940 (bulk 1936) record group PP85 includes Little Pipe bridge, Prints and Photographs Division, Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St.Baltimore, MD 21201.
Frederick County Court Records Up thru March 1869 and the following book of records which ends on October 1870 and the following book begins and ends on October 1872 ... the next book starts and ends in May 1873 and the next book begins . The 1896 court record begins in Book 38 ,pages 1 to 752.
Frederick County Land Records and Land Plats home page
Frederick County GIS home and maps
Frederick County preservation assistance program.
History of Frederick County by John Thomas Scharf
Thomas John Chew Williams and Folger McKinsey, History of Frederick County, Maryland, , Genealogical Publishing Com, 1979, ISBN 0-8063-7973-1.
Western Maryland Regional Library,101 Tandy Drive,Hagerstown, Maryland 21740
Frederick County surveyor records ...(Survey Record, Index)1784-1915 CM510 Film Reels:CR 11670-1 (Scanned) Description:See CR 38,446 for ret. of HMSA Citation:MSA CM510-1
Frederick Historical Society website ... ancestry website and info for Maryland... Baltimore collection of Frederick County history.
Wiki category of people from Frederick County.
Wiki category of Frederick County geography
Wiki category of Frederick County geographical landforms
Thurmont history image website ...loads of RR materials ...
Emmittsburg Historical Society website.
Carrol County Historical Society
Adams County Pennsylvania History ...railroads
Maryland Topo maps site.. Maryland state maps... Sanborn maps at LOC..
Maryland State Names and Places (1904 Gazetteer, Accessed May 2013) [1] and the Maryland register of historical places ... A 1867 geographical description of Frederick County with a reference to the newly incorporated Frederick and Pennsylvania Line railroad. Extending Walkersville MD city limits-1941 ... Town incorporated in 1892.


I am researching the property acquisitions for the Frederick and Pennsylvania Line RR in the period of 1869 thru 1871.

Top of current page

Public Agency Wiki articles

edit

As a retired DOT professional.. I am interested in upgrading my former department's various wiki pages to add more info... They are missing program data, history,etc. and could be enhanced to match that of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA as an example ... More on this when I get into various components on the subject of risk.. Particularly, issues to do with engineering and project management in a regulatory context, i.e. United States administrative law and naming conventions for public agencies ... I also plan to add material on the agency projects ...

Wikipedian in Residence

edit

I am interested in supporting Federal programs that engage in the design and construction of mega-projects and infrastructure as a Wikipedian in Residence]These programs serve the interests of the American people.. sometimes we meet their expectations and sometimes we don't but nonetheless I seek to preserve the history of these programs and their lessons learned. I encourage these programs to seek out Wikipedians to develop the material on these programs and make them accessible to the public. Please feel free to leave a note on my talk page if there is an interest...

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

edit

As a retired public agency employee and "unpaid" Wikipedia editor, I have a conflict of interest in writing about some agency programs. I also possess significant knowledge and experience with agency operations and I wish to edit responsibly. Therefore, I will follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously. I will disclosing my interest on their user pages and on the talk page of the article in question, and to request the views of other editors and if necessary I will make suggestions on the relevant talk page.

See also this material on COI disclosure- User:Econterms/COI
NARA COI material and templates... NARA Wikipedia project

Public Agencies

edit
Technical report and the use of grey literature... as well as the broader category of documents such as engineering reports, assessments ... Copyright status of work by the U.S. government and the subcategory of Category:Reports of the United States government . Congressional Research Service reports and its public domain content template as well as the Category:United States government attribution templates government, Maryland templates,Wikipedia:Public_domain_status_of_official_government_works,Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government, FOIA
Missing economic census data as well as statistics of income from IRS...

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) , Office_of_the_Federal_Register, Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations

Administrative Conference of the United States and their external site... Incorporation by Reference in an Open Government Age.

Office of Management and Budget , Category:United States Office of Management and Budget, Baseline (budgeting), Issuance of OMB’s “Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices”

Clinger–Cohen Act The Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA) of 1996 requires agencies to use a disciplined Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) process to acquire, use, maintain and dispose of information technology (IT). It also encourages the use of performance- and results-based management of these initiatives. Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Government procurement in the United States ... this last one needs a lot of work .... Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Government Accountability Office

List of U.S. Department of Defense agencies

United States Department of Energy , org charts ,DOE Program and Staff Offices

United States Forest Service as well as the amazing..List of legislation governing the United States Forest Service good templates for use... defining new ones for engineering and construction ...

Bureau of Land Management , United States Bureau of Reclamation,

United States Department of Health and Human Services

United States Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA ..Policy & Guidance ... plus a history of risk assessment at EPA! ... and more guidance

Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty
For Attribution -- Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards

See COI statement above... NARA materials available... See also this discussion on copyrighting by Federal contractors such as FTA PMOs. This the wikisource materials on FTA. Wiki Commons [ site id] as well.

NJT's Access to the Region's Core, or ARC
MTACC's Eastside Access or ESA
MTACC's Second Ave Subway.. or SAS
LACMTA's MEGLEE project
PAAC's North Shore Connector project...
Silver Spring Center ...Montgomery County website ... Office of Legislative Oversight

Federal Highway Administration, Federal Railway Administration, Interstate Commerce Commission.

Valuation Orders: these are a valuable source for railroad researchers .. this is a site that provides additional information on their structure. See also Pennsylvania Archives on PRR see also the Wikiproject for this ICC effort.
In 1951, the AAR produced an index[2] of ICC valuation reports that identified their docket number, volume and page numbers. :Several of the railroads I am studying are listed in these reports...
York, Hanover and Frederick railroad has two references:
Docket #887,Volume # 22, page 1;
Docket #887,Volume # 23, page 1225;
For all Maryland state railroads..
Emmitsburg Railroad Company
Docket #582,ICC Volume # 116, page 447;

Last but not least is the United States Railroad Administration, one of the few instances of nationalization of such a scale in US history ...

Top of current page



Top of current page

Pages made better (or at least tried to)

edit

Pages I am planning to work on...

Top of current page

User Boxes

edit

working on developing user boxes.. Wikipedia:Userboxes/Transportation

Notelist

edit

[a]

References

edit

Poor, Henry V (1860). "Gettysburg Railroad". History of the Railroads and Canals of the United States (Google Books). New York: John H. Schultz and Co. Retrieved 2011-05-10.

Footnotes

edit
  1. ^ Gannett, Henry (1904). A Gazetteer of Maryland And Delaware , Volume 2 (Google eBook). Washington: UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.
  2. ^ Rice, Herbert William (1951). Index of the (ICC) Valuation reports. Washington, DC: Association of American Railroads. Retrieved 11 May 2013.

See also

edit


Category:Companies affiliated with the Pennsylvania Railroad Category:Pennsylvania railroads Category:Maryland railroads Category:Defunct Maryland railroads Category:Frederick County, Maryland Category:Former Class I railroads in the United States Category:Railroads transferred to Conrail Category:Railway companies established in 1870 Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1982
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).