In 1870 Charles F. Dowd, who was unconnected with the railway movement or civil authorities, proposed "A System of National Times for Railroads", which involved a single time for railways but the keeping of local times for towns. Although this did not find favor with railway managers, in 1881 they agreed for the idea to be investigated by William Frederick Allen, Secretary of the General Time Convention and Managing Editor of the "Travellers' Official Guide to the Railways". He proposed replacing the 50 different railway times with five time zones. He eventually persuaded the railway managers and the politicians running the cities that had several railway stations that it was in their interests to speedily adopt his simpler proposals, which aligned the zones with cities' railroad stations. In doing so, they would pre-empt the imposition of more costly and cumbersome arrangements by different state legislators and the naval authorities, both of whom favored retention of local times. On 11 October 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to the implementation of five time zones in North America, using as a basis Greenwich Mean Time.