
The Rise and Fall of the Cash Railway - ductionist
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-cash-railway
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carapace
This is one of those things where it's like, are people just making stuff up?
Like dogs "bred to run on a wheel in order to turn meat so it would cook
evenly."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_Dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_Dog)

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gumby
I continue to be amazed by how much effort over the years went in to moving
and managing random physical objects around (money, file folders, books, etc).
There have been two parallel processes, one optimizing the process (e.g.
containerization, JIT delivery, et al) the other eliminating the physical
stuff (e.g. files as data, money as data etc). Both processes are at their
core ones of abstraction, though all sorts of vestigial traces remain (e.g.
calling directories "folders", or even the term "file").

When I go to offices I feel that a lot of that subject matters (physical
stuff) has merely been replaced by people moving _data_ around (copying
entries into a spreadsheet, for example, or writing reports). That's what
we'll get rid of next and again, I believe it will be through a process of
abstraction.

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dredmorbius
_high-spirited sales clerks would occasionally try to prank them by placing
live mice or dead spiders inside the canisters. In-store gossip and romances
could be covertly conducted by secret messages passed back and forth via the
cash-carrier wires._

Create a link between people, capable of carrying messages (or dynamic
entertainments), and hijinks and love will follow.

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Sniffnoy
After reading this article, I still don't understand what problem these were
solving that is now solved by other means. Why was there a need to rapidly
transport cash around the store in the first place? This apparently isn't
needed anymore, so what problem existed then that no longer exists now?

The article says cash carriers went away due to 1. pneumatic tubes, and 2.
automatic counter registers. However, pneumatic tubes isn't much of an answer,
because that's just a _different_ way of rapidly transporting cash, and those
are now gone as well.

So presumably the real answer has to be these "automatic counter registers".
But the article never elaborates on what those are. How does an automatic
counter register differ from earlier cash registers, and why was it that
without them one needed a rapid cash transport method?

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smelendez
The idea seemed to be that the customer could check out with clerks around the
store, but the cash was stored and counted in a secure area by trusted
employees.

A decline in robberies probably also helped. Department stores like Sears and
Macy's now have distributed cash registers around the store, sometimes in low
traffic areas, but I've never heard of them getting robbed.

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londons_explore
I suspect that in the past stores had more staff and more different
departments, which were each smaller. Think more like market stalls. Each
department might not have staff dedicated to payments, but instead roving
salespeople designed to advertise the benefits of goods, and then to complete
the sale there and then on the shop floor.

These salespeople probably weren't paid well, or identified well, so the
shipowner couldn't trust them. Instead, for every payment, they need to get a
receipt from a central place, which prevents any dishonesty.

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Animats
Disneyland Paris has one of those, built by Disney Imagineering.

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xfour
Do you have a link to pictures?

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Animats
There's a whole site for cash railways.[1] It's on there.

[1] [http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/](http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/)

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jagged-chisel
direct link:
[http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/photos/dlp.htm](http://www.cashrailway.co.uk/photos/dlp.htm)

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masonic
Many Costcos still have their pneumatic tubes in place.

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pbalau
I'm fairly disappointed with the quality of discussion/things posted here, but
from time to time, there is an article like this and all is good with the
Universe again.

