Trains...

...now it's just "gotta get there as quickly and as cheaply as possible, comfort be damned." :glare:


On a related note, I've been thinking about visiting Chicago one of these days and have been contemplating taking the overnight Capitol Limited. Might go for the Superliner Roomette.

$259, still cheaper than most economy flights and I get a bed (sort of)! :lol:

And for that price you get more than just a seat. You get a bedroom on wheels!
 
TL;DR: Awesome summer weather melts bridge.


There's this awesome piece of 1920s engineering, a three-way bridge for planes ships, trains, and automobiles. When closed there's a single train track that can be used by cars if no train is around, and occasionally it gets opened to let ships through. Location: http://goo.gl/maps/v4z22

It's the only train crossing for the Schlei fjord, and the next car ferries are about 30km detours. For ships it's even worse, you need to wait for the bridge to open if you're taller than a RIB.



No, no regular steam service :( regular Lint 41s:


Note the very German bicycle lane markings, telling you to go over the first rail at a perpendicular angle and then stay between the rails...


So, what's the big fuss? Well, we've had a long period of proper summer:

That's measured right next to the Baltic Sea, so it's a low estimate.

Heat makes metal expand... So yeah, that bridge is basically sealed shut for now :lol:
 
Heat makes metal expand... So yeah, that bridge is basically sealed shut for now :lol:
Ouch! :blink: I suppose that's the first time this has happened?

Just as a mental exercise, would anything bad be likely to happen if you were to use some of that water to cool the metal down until the bridge can be opened?
 
Ouch! :blink: I suppose that's the first time this has happened?

Just as a mental exercise, would anything bad be likely to happen if you were to use some of that water to cool the metal down until the bridge can be opened?

Yeah, first time in ninety years.

The water around there is pipiwarm due to very little water exchange with the Baltic and very shallow depths combined with large surfaces, so that wouldn't help a lot.
Additionally, preliminary investigations suggest something broke as well.

Funnily, just a few hours before the heat troubles manifested themselves the Bahn restricted the bridge to 2.3m width for cars, effectively banning all trucks and agricultural vehicles because they're worried it won't hold the load... they say a new bridge will be finished by the end of 2016, but without any signs of constructions starting I'll believe that when I drive over it.
 
What a complete bascule!
 
Sooo... last night this happened in Mannheim:

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A freight train and a Eurocity collided on a switch. Luckily no fatalities, only wounded but still... Seems like despite all the computer-controlled high tech stuff of modern railway errors always find a way...

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we're talking about computers like these:

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;)


although even that kind of signalling is pretty much failsafe already, as long as the people operating it are doing their job properly.
most noteworthy crashes lately happened because of very serious negligence by either the signalmen or the train drivers.
 
Trains...

I don't know if is a US only thing but, I was watching an episode of Exteme Trains and the engineer was saying there's a button that needs to be pressed a lot to insure the engineer is still alive and coherent. There's an alarm that will sound if the button is not hit after a certain time. If it's still ignored the brakes are applied and the train stops.
 
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I don't know if is a US only thing but, I was watching an episode of Exteme Trains and the engineer was saying there's a button that needs to be pressed a lot to insure the engineer is still alive and coherent. There's an alarm that will sound if the button is not hit after a certain time. If it's still ignored the brakes are applied and the train stops.

Dead man switches are all over the train world.

Apparently, some trains make themselves heard when activated:


Mind your volume...
 
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I don't know if is a US only thing but, I was watching an episode of Exteme Trains and the engineer was saying there's a button that needs to be pressed a lot to insure the engineer is still alive and coherent. There's an alarm that will sound if the button is not hit after a certain time. If it's still ignored the brakes are applied and the train stops.

The alerter system.

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I believe all modern locomotives around the world use it. A lot of older locos have also been retro-fitted with it.

Prior to the alerter, locomotives generally used a dead man's switch, usually a pedal on the cab floor, though these weren't all that effective as it wasn't too difficult to bypass them (see Hinton train disaster). The alerter itself is not foolproof either (Crazy Eights incident), but it's a major step up.
 
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The cycles in our locos are random and task activated, ie, as long as you're moving the throttle, brake, blowing the horn, etc it wont flash but after a short period of inactivity then a light in the cab starts flashing and a countdown box appears on the screen. After a few seconds it'll start beeping and the volume will increase in intensity until you acknowledge the vigilance or it times out and the brakes are automatically applied. And then you'll have all sorts of phone calls to answer.
 
The cycles in our locos are random and task activated, ie, as long as you're moving the throttle, brake, blowing the horn, etc it wont flash but after a short period of inactivity then a light in the cab starts flashing and a countdown box appears on the screen. After a few seconds it'll start beeping and the volume will increase in intensity until you acknowledge the vigilance or it times out and the brakes are automatically applied. And then you'll have all sorts of phone calls to answer.

In other words, you blow the horn to deactivate the countdown box *choochooooooo* makes sure everyone in the greater area is awake as well.
 
In other words, you blow the horn to deactivate the countdown box *choochooooooo* makes sure everyone in the greater area is awake as well.

Hey if I can't be allowed to sleep then, neither can they :p

No, horn is generally used at night only at driver's discretion.
 
Now that's properly awesome.

you should see the movie!

i started watching with the mindset of "it's about a runaway train, how can it be good?"
but it turned out to be great!
 
Now that's properly awesome.

Here's some newsreel of the incident...


i started watching with the mindset of "it's about a runaway train, how can it be good?"
but it turned out to be great!

Same. Wasn't too sure about it since it came out just a year after The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (another railroad related film from the late Tony Scott), which was a bit of a disappointment, but boy was I surprised!

 
no it wasn't...it actually made me furious.
there was a perfectly good reason why the real train originally ran away, it was mildly technical but could have been summed up in two sentences or so.
but then they go ahead and make the locomotive's throttle lever move by itself, as if that was in any way more acceptable to the audience then what really happened.
(engineer forgot to activate dynamic brakes and slammed throttle wide open, because dynamics and throttle use the same lever.)
 
no it wasn't...it actually made me furious.
there was a perfectly good reason why the real train originally ran away, it was mildly technical but could have been summed up in two sentences or so.
but then they go ahead and make the locomotive's throttle lever move by itself, as if that was in any way more acceptable to the audience then what really happened.
(engineer forgot to activate dynamic brakes and slammed throttle wide open, because dynamics and throttle use the same lever.)

OK, I'll give you that it was a real "WTF?!?" moment, but the rest of the movie wasn't bad.
It's a popcorn movie, you can't look too much into the details.


If you think that was bad, go watch Atomic Train. Holy shit, the list of things that movie got wrong...
 
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no it wasn't...it actually made me furious.
there was a perfectly good reason why the real train originally ran away, it was mildly technical but could have been summed up in two sentences or so.
but then they go ahead and make the locomotive's throttle lever move by itself, as if that was in any way more acceptable to the audience then what really happened.
(engineer forgot to activate dynamic brakes and slammed throttle wide open, because dynamics and throttle use the same lever.)

Yes! Throttles dont just move themselves. The other thing that got me was in the movie how the railroad were so keen to give out details to the media of the incident and the crew involved :p. But apart from that it was a pretty cool film.

Also I glanced through the Wikipedia article of the original runaway and it said the engineer:

...had applied the locomotive's brake. He also attempted to apply the locomotive'sdynamic brake, but failed to do so. He then set the throttle for the traction motors at 100%. If the dynamic brakes had been selected as intended, this throttle setting would have caused the train to slow down. However, since dynamic braking was not engaged, the setting caused the train to accelerate.

I dont understand this, on our locomotives which have similar control principles to those used in the US, if you have the independent brake applied, the dynamic brake will not engage. If you have the dynamic brake applied and increase the independent brake to over 100kpa, the dynamic brake will disengage. So it seems to me his plan was never going to work. In the movie they could've passed it off as a technical failure or something not have the fucking thing move by itself.

The whole idea of jumping off your moving loco is absurd to me. Even if the points were set against me, I'd rather run through them and have to explain to my manager why I screwed up. Yeah, he'll be pissed but I'll keep my job. If I was caught jumping off a moving loco leaving it unattended in the morning I'd be looking for work in the afternoon and I'd never get another job in the rail industry :p.

Also the practice of leaving the train brake disconnected for shunting seems a bad idea to me as well. Sure you can shunt on the independent but you have to be careful otherwise you'll have the rest of the train running into or away from your loco when you hit the brakes. This is a very rough way of shunting and can lead to skidded wheels and damage to rollingstock and containers.
 
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