Oh, you wanted to get off the train? Tough shit, GPS is out.
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Linking me to TvTropes 20 minutes before the end of my workday? Evil ideas thread is
Not as evil, I think, as posting the link earlier in the day and wasting even more of it.
Filed under: I was good; I only read two pages.
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There's no technology pictured there we couldn't have built in 1930.
The question is, why hasn't anybody built a train like that to date? THAT is the question the video should be answering.
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The question is, why hasn't anybody built a train like that to date?
Health & Safety, most likely. That, and bureaucratic red tape.
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I look forward to seeing the first guy sliced in half by this mechanism.
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Maybe he wrote the comments first, as a spec, and then wrote the code to the spec. Handy.
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The question is, why hasn't anybody built a train like that to date? THAT is the question the video should be answering.
I'm gonna go with "people are dumb..."
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Right, unlike those super-smart Chinese engineers.
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Dauntless
I'm ashamed of having understood that joke. It was a rather terrible movie.
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Wouldn't work here without massive, ridiculous investment in ripping out our existing structures to give us much taller overbridges and tunnels
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ripping out our existing structures
That's what we have robot overlords for, right?
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Book was sub-par. Readable, but entirely unorigional and predictable. I bailed before book three.
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Book was sub-par.
Didn't read, but it's the premise that fails entirely for me, so I don't think there's much of a difference.
My biggest gripe is that it was basically the worst example of being Color Coded For Your Convenience, without the actual colors. "Oh, they're the smart guys". "They're the good guys". "They're the brave guys". Jeeesus.
And if you have more personality than a piece of cardboard (in this case, one of two pieces of cardboard), you're shot and killed because well, our dystopia works this way, sucks to be you. It's not like we could use the fact that you have certain skills we lack, nope, you're dead meat.
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It was a rather terrible movie.
yes it was. i walked out of the movie about 20 minutes in.
the book however was quite enjoyable, predictable and unoriginal, but enjoyable
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I read a LOT of books. Sometimes I scrape the bottom of the barrel, but not for long.
Though lately I've been working my way through A Song of Ice and Fire, so I've slowed down on the number of books per week. I think I went through the first two Divergent books in under a week and then moved on to another series.
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If each car were powered by a third-rail, you could just shit off the car at the back and accelerate a new car to speed at the front. And do the same thing without going outside the loading gauge. (And again: this is 1930s technology here.)
I'm guessing from the concept art, though, that they expect to run on the real high-speed rail systems.
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I'm guessing from the concept art, though, that they expect to run on the real high-speed rail systems.
There's no real point in doing it otherwise.
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Chinese is a tonal family of languages. Japanese is not. If the pitch varies in a nonsensical pattern to your Anglo-trained ear, it's probably Chinese.
IF EVERY SINGLE WORD SOUNDS LIKE THEY'RE SHOUTING then IT'S PROBABLY KOREAN. THEY DON'T HAVE A CONCEPT OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES.
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Applies to overhead power as well, I think.
As I see it there are two advantages to the cart-on-top model:
- Top cart does not have to be very comfortable, as passengers are never in it for more than a couple of minutes. Does require seats as it will accelerate strongly.
- Top cart does not need to be able to accelerate. It runs on a track on the roof of the main train, and brakes relative to that track.
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As I see it there are two advantages to the cart-on-top model:
I would totally swear off trains if someone tried this shit.
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I would totally swear off trains if someone tried this shit.
And the less passengers, the more likely I am to not have to sit next to anyone! Genius.
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And the less passengers, the more likely I am to not have to sit next to anyone! Genius.
Apparently, the trick to avoiding someone sitting next to you is to smile and pat the seat. But then that comes from Derren Brown, so…
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Those were done in the UK - look up "slipping" carriages.
The slip guard would dump a carriage or two off the back of the train and gently apply the brakes, hoping to stop them in the station.
If it stopped early or late, they were screwed as the carriages had no motive power.
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Apparently, the trick to avoiding someone sitting next to you is to smile and pat the seat
Or keep eye contact while openly masturbating
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I would totally swear off trains if someone tried this shit.
I thought you already had totally sworn off trains?
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I thought you already had totally sworn off trains?
Nononono. Swear at trains. Totally different.
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So, I like trains, and I'm British, and I thought I'd clear up a few things in this thread:
- Thameslink is not related to the London Underground/the Tube. It was actually a project a couple of decades back (which is now in the middle of a major upgrade programme) to connect two major London commuter lines via a (previously disused) tunnel going north-south through the centre of London (the benefits of this are twofold — it saves capacity at terminal stations as the trains don't have to terminate in London, and it provides more capacity for people wanting to go through London). It's owned by Network Rail, the government body/not-for-profit company/entity with a weird status that owns most of the other railway lines in the country, and the trains themselves are run by private companies operating franchises funded, specified, and generally micro-managed by the government. At the time the article was written, this company was First Capital Connect, owned by First. Now Govia Thameslink Railways run the franchise, with these services branded as just Thameslink (they operate other services too). I would be very sceptical of the claim above that it handles the majority of London's commuter traffic, as there are plenty of much busier routes unconnected to the Thameslink network.
- So this is a valid WTF, but some people seem to have misunderstood slightly. I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that to get enough accuracy, the GPS used is assisted GPS, ie with a fixed base station as someone ruled out above for no apparent reason. In tunnels there are beacons that communicate directly with the train (that article implies via the GPS, so I'm inclined to believe it), and it is those that seem to be failing. They didn't just forget that GPS doesn't work in tunnels ;)
- In most places across the whole network, the current means of opening doors at stations with short platforms ("Selective Door Operation", or SDO) is for the driver or guard (if the train is not driver-only operated, or DOO) to specify how many doors need opening (you often have to do this in some arcane method like using the control panel for the door behind the doors you want opening in the train, or other such things. Obviously this doesn't work if you're the driver!). Unfortunately there are issues with this. It is not uncommon for drivers or guards to be momentarily distracted and forget how long the train they're driving is, or to forget that they're at a station that requires this and just open all the doors. Since it is usually (but not exclusively) smaller stations that require SDO, and sometimes it's only required on a few trains per day, it's not as hard to forget as you might initially think.
- Aside from this, there are issues with the number of doors that require opening being different on different trains (due to different carriage lengths), and for some trains to have really inflexible methods of selective door opening (I'm looking at you, Siemens!) requiring a different number of doors to be opened. So the general confusion caused by all this has made some view the current, manual method as unsatisfactory.
- Before you say "why not lengthen the platform or shorten the train", bear in mind that there are only two types of station that generally don't get platform extensions — those used so rarely that it can't be justified financially, and those that have some obstruction preventing lengthening (a bridge, a tunnel, a railway junction, a sharp curve (current health and safety laws prohibit new platforms being curved), etc.). In one case they had to close a railway just to lengthen a platform (Farringdon on Thameslink, the City Widened Lines that provided a route from Farringdon to Moorgate for surface trains had to be closed). And you can't shorten the train because people actually use trains in this country, and the whole reason the train was lengthened in the first place was that it wasn't long enough! We don't just arbitrarily say "Hmm, we want twelve coaches on these trains" — there are (or at least should be) calculations on the number of people who will actually be using them...
- For all these reasons, there has been recent experimentation with automatic SDO such as this. Unsurprisingly there are teething problems. But hopefully in the long term it will make the whole network safer, more reliable (through fewer accidents/incidents), and more flexible. Hopefully!
So what are the real WTFs here? I'd say the main one is implementing an unproven technology on a major route through the centre of London...
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I would be very sceptical of the claim above that it handles the majority of London's commuter traffic, as there are plenty of much busier routes unconnected to the Thameslink network.
It's probably true, but only if you use the specific weird definition that they're using, such as only counting stations within the City of London (a tiny part of London that the majority of main stations are well outside) and discounting anyone who uses the Tube. In other words, total bullshit definitions but they let you make the claim with half a straight face.
current health and safety laws prohibit new platforms being curved
I think they just limit the curvature, not prohibit curved platforms outright (that'd be too bloody awkward). It's almost certainly to do with keeping the gap between the platform and the open doorways small.I don't know why they don't go with the approach I've seen in a few parts of continental Europe: having small extending plate in the door structure that fills in the gap between train and platform when the door is open. Could be a combination of “never heard of it”, “could never work here; this is Britain!” and “can't afford that untried (except in places that I think don't count) technology”. Idiotic parochialism is too often the rule, alas…
Unsurprisingly there are teething problems.
I've yet too see new trains come into service without teething problems. TRWTF is how people round London blow up in a huff when things go slightly wrong; they should chill out a bit more.
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TRWTF is how people round London blow up in a huff when things go slightly wrong; they should chill out a bit more.
That's how people in London are. Which we all would be if we lived in London (or had to deal with it regularly) too.
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TRWTF is how people round London blow up in a huff when things go slightly wrong;
Eh, if I was constantly surrounded by 12,000,000 other humans at all times, I'd blow up in a huff when things went slightly wrong too...
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That's how people in London are.
I have quite a few friends who live in London voluntarily. I don't understand it at all.... :/
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Good points. Re the extending plates, Pendolinos have them if I recall, and they take bloody ages for the doors to open in part because of this. That would potentially be one problem, dwell times are high enough as they are now without extending them further. They took enough of a hit when slamdoor commuter stock went*.
Curved platforms have other problems, though — they make safe dispatch harder as it becomes more difficult to see the whole platform area, and they require extra indications to be provided in areas with guards or platform dispatch staff so they can see the signal indication.
*You could argue that this is balanced out by the lack of need to have staff to close all the doors, but since commuters usually know what they're doing I'm led to believe this was only a problem on InterCity lines as it is now.
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when slamdoor commuter stock ent
We had some of that, after it was got rid of from somewhere in north London, for a while until the slamdoor stuff was banned entirely. (The ban was because of the lack of central locking.) Apart from being completely clapped out, it was good. The units they replaced it with were better, but only because they were a third longer. We've still not got enough capacity at peak times, to the point of running out of standing room, but it's not as bad as it used to be with the slamdoor stuff.
Curved platforms have other problems
Again, it depends on how much curve there is and whether the guard can operate the doors from the centre of the train. You can't base all decisions on just whether it is convenient to operate things at full efficiency.
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In tunnels there are beacons that communicate directly with the train
Why only in tunnels? Why not use beacons everywhere?you often have to do this in some arcane method like using the control panel for the door behind the doors you want opening in the train, or other such things
Well that's just stupid.It is not uncommon for drivers or guards to be momentarily distracted and forget how long the train they're driving is
Wot? I know lorry drivers routinely forget how high their vehicle is (there is a tunnel on my route to work where they have to repair the tram catenary at least once a month because some lorry scraped them off despite the eight BIG signs warning them not to), but I was under the illusion that train drivers were a litte less stupid.or to forget that they're at a station that requires this
Seriously? How many stations are there on this Thameslink thing?So the general confusion caused by all this has made some view the current, manual method as unsatisfactory.
Agreed. But one would think they would try to come up with a BETTER solution.And you can't shorten the train because people actually use trains in this country, and the whole reason the train was lengthened in the first place was that it wasn't long enough!
Here is an idea: Use MORE trains then instead of LONGER ones. You know, like they do during rush hour as opposed to Sunday mornings. You can't tell me that's more expensive than all this GPS/Beacon/TMS bullshit.Our underground system actually works like that: Many and normal-sized trains during peak hours, fewer and sometimes short-sized trains off-peak. And some of them are driverless, too.
For all these reasons, there has been recent experimentation with automatic SDO such as this.
I'm fine with automatic SDO approaches. GPS is still not the technology I would use for it.So what are the real WTFs here?
GPS in underground stations.
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Use MORE trains then instead of LONGER ones.
At peak times they're probably already doing that. Except with MORE, LONGER trains. I don't know if it is possible to resignal the track to run things more frequently than at present, but London's lifeblood is its trains and Tube…
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Thameslink is undergoing an upgrade to be able to run longer trains more frequently as well as adding like another 100 stations.
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Thameslink is undergoing an upgrade to be able to run longer trains more frequently as well as adding like another 100 stations.
Are you referring to Crossrail? I thought that was east/west, whereas Thameslink is north/south. I don't think anyone's doing any other major rail expansion right now, and 100 stations is a lot…
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Are you referring to Crossrail?
No.
edit: the 100 stations might be bollocks though. Read that somewhere else.
Some of the additional stations come from the link into the East Cost Mainline up to Peterborough and Kings Lynn and down to Ashford. And other routes.
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the 100 stations might be bollocks though. Read that somewhere else.
Ah! Having read the link, the “100 stations” is possible, but only in a technical sense. The stations already exist, but are the commuter stations that feed into King's Cross (so that's everything from London out to Peterborough and Cambridge, plus at least one loop somewhere near Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City) at the moment.
edit: Damnit, hanzo'd!
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It is not uncommon for drivers or guards to be momentarily distracted and forget how long the train they're driving is
Wot?
I know lorry drivers routinely forget how high their vehicle is (there is a tunnel on my route to work where they have to repair the tram catenary at least once a month because some lorry scraped them off despite the eight BIG signs warning them not to), but I was under the illusion that train drivers were a litte less stupid.When you've been driving (say) an 8-carriage train all morning, and towards the end of your shift you change to a 12-carriage train with identical driving cab and no visual difference, can you really not empathise with how easy it would be to mistakenly and merely for the brief instant of pressing the "door open" buttons think you were still on the 8-carriage train? Of course, a portion of driver and guard training is to do with ensuring lapses of concentration do not happen, but I believe (I seem to recall from reading accident reports, but I might be misremembering) it's a known phenomenon for drivers with a few years' experience to get complacent which is when things like this can happen.
I mean, much worse accidents have been caused in the past due to similar complacency or lack of concentration, and therefore the railway has in the past invested in mechanisms to mitigate these (for example, drivers and guards forgetting to check the signal's indication before departing stations, being too distracted by station dispatch duties, were relatively common. A number of changes of procedure have been put in place to prevent this, as well as a ridiculously simple device — a button that a driver is required to press on the console whenever they stop at a red signal that prevents power from being applied, that the driver has to pull out when restarting after being stopped at one. This little extra distraction is enough to ensure that the signal is double-checked in most cases.)
Most of your other comments have already been responded to, so I'm just responding to this particular one.
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When you've been driving (say) an 8-carriage train all morning, and towards the end of your shift you change to a 12-carriage train with identical driving cab and no visual difference, can you really not empathise with how easy it would be to mistakenly and merely for the brief instant of pressing the "door open" buttons think you were still on the 8-carriage train?
No, because after the first time that happened to one of my employees they'd have a giant Post-it with the number of cars the current train has in front of them at all times. And I'm sure a similar low-tech but automated solution would not be hard to implement.A number of changes of procedure have been put in place to prevent this, as well as a ridiculously simple device — a button that a driver is required to press on the console whenever they stop at a red signal that prevents power from being applied, that the driver has to pull out when restarting after being stopped at one.
My point exactly. KISS solutions. Not computerized Train Management Systems with GPS relay beacons that have to be rebooted before anyone can leave the train.
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that is cool.
That bigger train, that appears to exist to carry the piggybacks around, seems excessively large for something that must not carry any passengers itself. I'd hate to think what the turn radius must be, too.
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I think the idea is, once you're in that little car and the little car is on top of the train, you can climb down into the main train through a hatch or some such. Then the people going off go up into the little car and it's dropped off at the next station.
That's a pretty horrible idea unless your stops are really far apart.
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Nononono. Swear at trains. Totally different.
I see a new line of stores for people like you. They would sell onions preattached to belts for your convenience.
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I see a new line of stores for people like you.
People who have moved on to more modern methods of transportation?
They would sell onions preattached to belts for your convenience.
Oh, nevermind, I see we're back to your silly notions again.
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That bigger train, that appears to exist to carry the piggybacks around, seems excessively large for something that must not carry any passengers itself. I'd hate to think what the turn radius must be, too.
You misunderstand; once the piggyback is stationary, the passengers move into the big train for the duration of their journey; they move back to the piggyback unit when they want to get off.
Thameslink Programme - Wikipedia
