Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/07/2010 4:42:49 PM PST by george76
Along with “Where?”, “When?” and “What?!?”, the three most insistent questions on the lips of would-be rail travellers in southern England over the past few days have been “Why, why, why?”. Now The Sunday Telegraph has an answer, of sorts.
The almost total disappearance of trains from the network serving the capital from the south and east was due, it seems, to their sophisticated computer systems, which do not agree terribly well with a blend of third-rail electrification and icy conditions. A case of the wrong type of chips, perhaps?
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
That made me laugh. Fifty or a hundred years ago the trains would be zipping about with no problem.
This isn’t a software issue. The electronics in mobile equipment that is exposed to cold enviroments needs to be engineered to handle it. Truck engines, transmissions and heavy equipment engines and transmissions have their electronics heated and cooled to keep it running.
They just had poor designs and not enough thought went into the protection of the electronics.
Lucas Train Systems, LLC.
Global warming meets electric —no so—high speed trains.
Perhaps the English should try “fish and chips” on their railroads. Take the “fish” and use them to grease the rails. That should keep the snow off. Then grind up the chips and use them to melt the snow (again, grease).
Remember, the British invented the train. Now they have invented a way to keep them from running. I think they have just gone back 150+ years in technology.
Somebody tell them that is NOT how progress works. Socialism, maybe, but not western, free-entreprise progress.
/johnny
They never had this problem In Frostbite Falls.
“Lucas Train Systems, LLC.”
Aw yes, Lucas Prince of darkness to those of us who rode early Triumphs or BSA’s seems like nothing has changed...
Anyone who would claim that it was knows very little about either hardware or software. When the processor runs, the software executes. When the processor stops running due to cold weather, that's a hardware issue, not a software issue. As you say, designing electronic equipment for its operating environment (with reasonable safety margins for extremes) is critical.
Lucas refrigerators: Why Brits drink warm beer.
This is both a hardware and a software issue.
There are a series of sensors on the rail line that tell the positions of trains, their velocity, the positions of switches, etc. so that trains can move on the system without colliding. The software considers the input of the sensors and decides whether the line is clear ahead to propel the train. If the line is blocked, the train stops a safe distance from the obstruction.
But what if the software gets no signal from a sensor? The safe thing is to stop the train. But perhaps the practical thing is to let the human operator move the train at a slow speed of perhaps 10 mph if he can see the way is clear ahead and allow the train to get past the dead sensor. Once the train clears the sensor, things can proceed normally again.
That would be fault-tolerant software.
The Germans would have kept the trains running - on time! /sarc
Anyone who has owned an English car (or other European car unlucky enough to be equipped with Lucas electrical components and wiring) knows how notoriously poor Lucas quality is. $50,000 cars made worthless because of $50 worth of electronics, not worth the solder barely holding them together.
I think this paragraph sums it up best - in a dryly witty Brit fashion:
“As safety measures go, the systems are pretty unimpeachable. It’s hard to imagine that any rolling stock could be safer than that which remains completely motionless. Passengers, though, might be willing to forfeit a little of this security in order to undertake – entirely at their own risk, of course – the adventure of being carried from one spot to another. We hope the rail operators will seek, with some urgency, software that can handle a hard frost.”
‘=)
A lot of posters are assuming these trains are British-built. Very few are these days. In fact most modern commuter trains in Britain are built in Germany, Italy or France.
AHHHH, Lucas the Prince of Darkness.
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