Songlines and Steam Power.
How I write about steam locomotives and steam power.
Teenage me always wanted to be mechanical engineer designing steam engines, Fine scale modelling, Railfanning every golden opportunity, Steam became yesterday’s technology opportunities disappeared, University study immersed in design computers and analytics.
Almost fifty years later NSWGR 3801 passed under bridge on my way to shops glorious sight, Wrote the story, Thoroughly enjoyed researching and remembering railfanning.
Decided to write about steam powered transport cars ships aeroplanes and locomotives of course and one steam powered submarine, Called my project Steaming Times my songline of steam, Still going strong.
Traditional Aboriginal Songlines.
In her wonderful book “The Memory Code” Lynne Kelly described “Songlines” as pathways through landscape connecting locations in travelling order.
At each location tribal elders hosted performances of cultural knowledge relevant to site and season.
Songlines carefully timed to coincide with seasons vegetation and wildlife, Songline is “sung as a long sequence of short verses which together form a sung chart of ancestral being’s creative journey”, Tribal elders literally sing the landscape.
Songlines are elegant ways of accurately remembering knowledge connections and relationships, Australian Aboriginals have world’s oldest continuous culture, Accurately remembered cultural identity passed down by performing songlines for over 65,000 years.
Ideas and Songlines
Thinking about Gaia’s Songlines gives insights about my place in Gaia,
Being engineer, Think of songlines in terms of technology, Tool for effectively managing and developing diverse ideas and relationships.
Sample of songline thinking, Locations replaced by steam locomotive stories, Path in the landscape between sites replace by theme of time that clearly shows development chronology between locomotives.
Research and reading adds more locomotives enriching songline, Affording deeper insights, Consider tracking improved efficiency by use of superheating.
Identify locomotives with superheating, Songline automatically shows development times, Gives insight into spread of superheating by knowledge of where locos were built.
Locomotive songline can be thought of as histories linked by themes like superheating, Size and weight, Tractive effort.
Songline can show theme based on railroads such as Union Pacific or Baltimore and Ohio, Endless possibilities.
Managing Songline Thinking.
Songline of steam is large and unwieldly, Bit too much for my old head.
Created story board using MS PowerPoint, Each slide represents songline story, Slide view organises songline by primary theme like time.
Each slide can be considered header with hyperlinks to other slides representing story sections, Hyperlinks for histories, Ones for pictures, Ones for statistics, Perhaps to Wikipedia or other research source, Anything and everything that you need.
Handy trick, When writing story draft use hyperlinks to PowerPoint slides, Helps to keep things organised in one master document.
Just takes patience and practice, Started all this out of curiosity doing my PhD then kept going.
All came together by chance encounter with prompt from Desiree Driesenaar on technology, Few years back.
Blessed be.
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