OT: Muppets

It does seem silly that if you know the speed limit on a corner is

30Mph, and computer technology ten steps ahead of such a simple command as, "you must slow down now to go 30Mph around the corner ahead", it is not part of the system. (F'ed/up sentence) There have been too many train speeding accidents. It's time. Trains could be run by computer with an engineer forced to stay at the seat with continuous computer questioning that must be answered, just in case human control is needed. (keep the union happy) Mikek

They are working on the problem, but railroads don't have tons of cash sitting around and installing this system is expensive.

You might think the solution is simple, but railroads aren't steeped in technology and often parts of the railroad are distant from... anything really. There are many blind spots and by that I don't mean curves, I mean places where radio links can't reach. That's one problem they have had using radios on trains, the not infrequent loss of communications.

Heck, the safely record of trains is pretty high I believe. If you want to focus on a real problem, do something about the automobile deaths. "There have been too many train ^H^H^H^H^H^Hcar speeding accidents."

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Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

Private-sector unionization is all but dead in the US; the only ones that are still allowed to exist are mostly the dysfunctional but well-connected public-sector ones full of muppets too incompetent to do their jobs properly, much less actually organize and employ any kind of actual leverage that would benefit non-muppets. Transit worker unions are overpaid dead weight and the Democrats would be better off without 'em

Choo choo idiots

LOL they spent EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION bucks on this expansion to have it fatally crash on its inaugural run! There's nothing here that tech can fix! You can help avoid "everyday stupidity" with tech, but you can't use tech to prevent a muppet from wrecking a train if said muppet is determined to do so (which looks to be the case here!)

The Positive Train Control system is gradually being introduced on some runs. It's complex and fabulously expensive.

An ipad or smart phone, with GPS and a fairly simple program, could alert the driver to speed problems, ring a giant bell, maybe apply brakes. That's too easy.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

It's also too stupid to do the job that needs to be done.

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Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

But, if you can just count wheel revolutions, any given run on a track could get mapped effectively, and zoned speed control can't be a 'complex and fabulously expensive' operation.

Something smells like an A-B problem. Did the 'positive train control' specification ever get published? Does it require some oddball doesn't-scale-up technology to be applied at scale?

I suspect the costly part is the global-awareness-of-other-trains that has to work even when trains are out of communication. That wasn't the problem in the recent Amtrak derailment.

Please. Japan isn't the US.

Be grateful they provide unprofitable services at all:

If they had the wide open spaces we do, they'd have the same problems we do. If we had the same high density they do, well... we'd have a shitload of problems because that's a few Earths of people in one country... but at least we'd have good train service?!

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

The really sad news is that the technology to avoid this has been around and successfully used in Germany since before World War II. They call it Inductive Train Safeguarding or Indusi. That slows down and even brings trains to a full stop, overriding an offending operator. It is not rocket science.

Yet we have all those so-called "licensed engineers" who are supposed to "safeguard the public" and blah-blah, then fail on the simplest and most obvious points. They should never have signed and stamped such "system" designs. Yet they did and that has killed people over and over again.

[...]

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

They suck for the same reason most public-infrastructure things suck in the US; there's no popular will to make it better. If there was it would be different.

But there isn't because Americans who aren't millionaires are all temporarily down-on-their-luck millionaires, there's little point in working (or campaigning on such a platform as a politician) for better "legacy" ground transit, which is for poors, when you could be voting for investment in hyperloops, hypersonic passenger jets, point to point rocket travel, flying Uber taxis, and all the other nice things that await after you make it big, real soon now.

Bad train and bus service is a good motivator to "work hard", imagine how many more "parasites" there'd be if it were inexpensive and pleasant!

How about using GPS?

PTC is another gigantic, gigabuck, bloated IT project.

Speeding causes a lot of wrecks. Like going 81 MPH around a 30 MPH-rated curve.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

That is to say the US has lousy train service because the US wasn't designed to be a place that would ever have European-style train service irrespective of distance issues; it's like being in Five Guys and wondering why they aren't serving up filet mignon. It's not America's thing.

If someone doesn't like the fact it isn't serving filet mignon it's way more productive to think about how to go somewhere that does than try to force a square peg into a round hole.

What was the problem? I didn't find anything in particular when I searched. There have been a number of accidents over the years including some on the DC metrorail system. Nothing like the number of people killed on highways. A dozen here, a dozen there, meanwhile every day there are some 100 people who die in autos in the US. When I was looking for the report of the gasoline tanker accident on the DC beltway it was hard to find among all the many gas tanker accidents with the accompanying conflagrations.

Seems the DC metro system is pretty good. The accident a few years ago was because a detector was wigging out in a rapid intermittent way that the system didn't detect. They would have gotten off with no blame but the investigation found other cases of unreported incidents with no accident that should have been reported and may have helped to prevent this accident.

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Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

The DC metro was fully automated until the accident that killed nine people by a train hitting a stopped train that wasn't seen by the system. One of the nine was the operator who didn't put on the brakes until the train was less than 500 feet from the back of the other train. I didn't follow the series of Post articles to find out how much sooner she could have seen the stopped train. One train should never see another, stopped or not.

I recall riding the subway and looking up the tunnel I could just see the tail of a train that left the station and was preventing the next train from coming to pick us up.

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Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

Did they ever find out why the system did not register the stopped train?

One of the nine was the operator who didn't put on the brakes

That is one of the accidents that the German Indusi system prevents. It disects pretty much their whole rail system into blocks. A train will not be allowed to enter a block in which another train is present, moving or not. If the operator won't apply the brakes in time the Indusi system overrides. I believe nowadays that event is being recorded and the operator would be required to do some explaining.

It is not 100% fail-safe and there are some lonely single-line sections without this automation but it would have prevented most of the serious train wrecks we had in the US.

Subways often have good automation in the US. It's the railroads that are on Flintstonian technology.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I posted that in another comment. The device in that block had a weird rapid intermittent that the system didn't recognize as a failure, but it didn't report the train. Maybe the system should provide some feedback to the train operator so if the system looses track of a train, at least the operator knows and can alert someone to manually flag it's position.

That is what is different between train dispatch and air traffic control, at least with an automated system. The train dropped off the map and the system didn't flag an error. I think it operates at a more fundamental level based on always knowing when a train is in a block and not letting traffic into that block or any adjacent block. No thought to tracking anything.

How is this different from the US system? Sounds just like what was described in the paper.

How does a German system prevent US wrecks?

They still have a great safety record. It's only being discussed here because it is sensational. The real disaster is autos. But everyone accepts that. Just like the Boston bombing, people in the deli where I had to get my Internet access were glued to the TV. But two days later 5 times as many die in a plant explosion in Texas and no one gives it a thought. They were still glued to the Boston story.

It's not about what is important, it is about what is sensational. The shade tree mechanics here can wax on about how bad others do jobs we aren't tasked with (you know who I mean John) but we don't have a real clue how to do them better.

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Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

Must have been in another thread.

There are better ways than that, see further below.

That is a serious system design error.

As I said it divides a track into blocks of sections. There are WW-II movies where the resistance and sabotage groups mess with the Nazi train system (which they had partly equipped with this Indusi system). You can see the big screens that show where the trains were. Big white boards with lights in them. That's pretty much how my grandpa who was a train engineer described it to me.

If a detector into sector 16 misses a train then this train is assumed not to have left sector 15 even if it did. That means that a train traveling through sector 14 will be stopped via a sign which cannot be set to "GO" until sector 15 is signaled as clear. If the train operator fails to engage the brakes the train will be stopped automatically. Sort of a double-safety. This can result in a huge traffic clog but that is better than people dying.

Many train wrecks were avoidable with rather simpe, technology. Like this one:

True. That's in part because our nation is glued to the automobile and in part because most people don't have any other options.

Well, in this case we do have a clue how to do the job better. Since more than half a century.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

You are claiming a "serious design" error based on my speculation?

They had one of those boards in the dispatchers office when my dad worked in Camden Yards. Now it's a ball field and they control the entire CSX system (it was B&O, then C&O when my dad worked there) from Gainesville, FL I believe.

You didn't answer my question about what is different between the systems that you think the German system can't have a failure.

What about trains traveling the other direction in sector 17 entering sector

16 on the same track? Not only is this not uncommon on dual track, many railroads are single track with traffic in both directions. Sounds ot me like it is exactly the same.

No, it's because people aren't rational in their response to issues. They become desensitized to the common traffic accidents but the infrequent rail and air disasters are big headlines.

As is often the case, you seem to be talking through your hat. We also can do better on nuclear safety, but it's not a priority with anyone.

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

[...]

I recall a system where the blocks were electrically isolated from each other.

The resistance between the rails was monitored. When a train entered the block, the axles shorted the rails together and the resistance dropped. You could tell which direction the train was moving by watching the resistance increase or decrease. You could tell how long the train was by seeing how many blocks were shorted.

This seems to be an ideal way to detect where the train is, which direction it is moving, and how fast.

I wonder if this system was ever used, and what happened to it.