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EightBit posted:I'm more astonished that people can't hold it for 90 minutes. I've been stuck in traffic while driving for longer than that. You're probably in the prime of your life right now. Others aren't; old people, drunk people, commuters in a rush in the morning, disabled people...
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Apr 2, 2014 08:21
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Personally, I can't go 90minutes without almost pissing or making GBS threads myself and I don't know anyone that can.
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Apr 2, 2014 09:08
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EightBit posted:I'm more astonished that people can't hold it for 90 minutes. I've been stuck in traffic while driving for longer than that. You're not including the 20mins walk to the station (if you are lucky), plus the inevitable 45mins wait for the train that is delayed for some spurious reason. And you can't use the station toilets (if you were lucky enough to find one open) if you don't fancy sharing with junkies, gentlemen cottaging or having to wade through 2inches of piss.
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Apr 2, 2014 09:12
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Heh, I had to take a bus ride that took almost 3 hours with no bathroom stops and I did it 6 times or so and I never had a problem. 
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Apr 2, 2014 10:11
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sincx posted:How did the InterCity 125 succeed in a sea of failure? Different design team? An unusually good project manager? Luck? One of the rare occasions BR Engineering weren't hosed for money by the Government I guess? Like, the APT was heading in the right direction but the government / BR management [a] wanted it RIGHT NOW [b] wanted to show off [c] didn't want to spend any more on research and testing so it failed hilariously. The research department then sold the tilting carriage patents off to Fiat Ferroviaria (now Alstom) who, with a bit more time to test things and refine it, put the same design and equipment out as the Pendolino trains which are on both the WCML where the APT was supposed to run, and sold internationally. So, value for taxpayers by short-sighted politicians and idiotic management. Quelle surprise.
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Apr 2, 2014 10:54
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EightBit posted:I'm more astonished that people can't hold it for 90 minutes. I've been stuck in traffic while driving for longer than that. When I was a student, the trip back home would take about this long, a combination of bicycle, train and more bicycle. If I went after eight PM, there would be no intercity trains and the trip would take 15 min longer still. The Netherlands railways had recently introduced a new type of train called "Sprinter", the exact same name as its predecessor it was replacing.  These trains were intended for short trips that involved stopping at every station on the route. These new Sprinters have no toilets, because "they are only to be used for short trips". Although effectively I would be stuck in one for an hour, only to get off at a station with no public toilets. These trains have now been provided with emergency "piss bags", in the event that they break down or get stuck in the middle of nowhere. This they did a lot when they had their first snowy winter. You can ask the guard to be let in the empty driver's cab at the back and do your business in a plastic bag. There was quite a bit of outrage about this and it prompted new regulation: By 2025 all trains in the Netherlands must be fit with a toilet. The Netherlands Railways decided not to buy more of these trains after that.
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Apr 2, 2014 11:28
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sincx posted:How did the InterCity 125 succeed in a sea of failure? Different design team? An unusually good project manager? Luck? Key to the HST's success was that it slipped in under the managerial and political radar. The APT was the big, flagship project, but as such was subject to all kinds of meddling by politicians and managers and dreadful Feature Creep (the same sort of thing that wrecked the class 50, only on a way bigger and more expensive project). All this stupidity, sorry, "development", was slowing the APT's introduction, and by the mid 1970s there was seemingly no end in sight. A new express type was desperately needed, so BR threw the HST together as a stop-gap, only intended to last 10-15 years in front-line service until the APT took over those routes, after which it would move to secondary lines and speed up cross-country and regional services. So as a result: - Because it wasn't a "flagship" project, there weren't hordes of incompetent politicians and senior managers demanding that their own pet gadgets be attached to it. - The development was carried out entirely by the engineering arm, who were able to design the train unmolested. It turned out that BR's engineers knew better about what would make a decent train than the marketing types, as well as a train that would be popular with passengers and economical to operate. Which makes you wonder exactly what BR's marketing and accounting people were doing all day. - Due to the tight budget and urgent, short, development time, the project had a strong emphasis on using tried and tested technology simply because there was no time to develop anything else. Like the Shinkansen in Japan, the HST is surprisingly conventional in its technology - it has lots of power, comfortable carriages and funky styling. Many of the disasters I've written about resulted from technical over-ambition, the APT being the clearest example. The HST was the opposite. - It was always designed for flexibility, so it has always proven useful anywhere it has been deployed. Only a handful of the class actually moved to the secondary lines they were planned to take over, but in the end the main lines were never upgraded and the HSTs were able to make considerable time savings on the lovely track on the main lines. So basically, the HST was a success by mistake.
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Apr 2, 2014 12:16
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqZwDTToH5o This is why we can't have nice transit things in the US.
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Apr 2, 2014 17:20
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Axeman Jim posted:Which makes you wonder exactly what BR's marketing and accounting people were doing all day. 
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Apr 2, 2014 17:44
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TheCoach posted:Some older footage that contains wonderfully recorded engine sound of this thing: Aww yeah. I'm a music producer and I watched that on my studio computer hooked up to my big fat monitors - I wish my work had a bassline like that... We have some great-sounding older types in the UK. This is the Class 205 "Thumper" (basically a diesel-powered EPB), now retired but popular in preservation because - well just listen to it. Who would have thought a puny 600Hp engine could make such a racket? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbeU6KPCvHE The Class 37, classic English Electric design and the backbone of BR's freight operations for 40 years. A handful are still around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F6wEmsgaLc And nothing sounds quite like a Deltic (Skip to 1:15) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoktXA1VWHw Bring the noise.
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Apr 2, 2014 17:58
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Cygni posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqZwDTToH5o Meanwhile drunk trains are currently TEARING poo poo UP on the commuter lines in south east London   at least it's not as bad as it could be
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Apr 2, 2014 18:03
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Cygni posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqZwDTToH5o How does anyone not at least pretend to look for a train coming before going around the barrier (assuming they are stupid enough to go around the barrier in the first place)? I mean there was no loving way that was even close to a 'beat the train' situation there.
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Apr 2, 2014 18:29
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The Locator posted:How does anyone not at least pretend to look for a train coming before going around the barrier (assuming they are stupid enough to go around the barrier in the first place)? I mean there was no loving way that was even close to a 'beat the train' situation there. I had a semi pulling a container get hit by a train in my yard about a year ago(he didn't suffer any injuries). When I was doing my investigation I asked him if he saw the train and he said, "Yeah, I saw the train there but I see trains everyday."
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Apr 2, 2014 18:37
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The Locator posted:How does anyone not at least pretend to look for a train coming before going around the barrier (assuming they are stupid enough to go around the barrier in the first place)? I mean there was no loving way that was even close to a 'beat the train' situation there. BUT I HAVE A SUV!
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Apr 2, 2014 23:11
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Cygni posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqZwDTToH5o
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Apr 2, 2014 23:19
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I don't know if it's because of the way the Houston METRO interacts with the road or the way Houston drivers are, but drat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc
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Apr 2, 2014 23:30
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evil_bunnY posted:Did that with 2 kids in the back too. gently caress's the matter with US drivers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMvtDNATP04&feature=youtube_gdata_player This. Try to beat one and get creamed by another train. I swear people get retarded around trains.... maybe its because they are big? Also this is .... graphic. Not so much for blood and guts but just what happens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w612s5faYtE&feature=youtube_gdata_player BrokenKnucklez fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 23:33
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BrokenKnucklez posted:
 Well now I know what that looks like.
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Apr 3, 2014 00:07
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FISHMANPET posted:I don't know if it's because of the way the Houston METRO interacts with the road or the way Houston drivers are, but drat... Oh I can't wait for the Woodward streetcar project in Detroit to get finished. The fountain of stupidity around here is sure to provide for some amazing videos! 
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Apr 3, 2014 00:12
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Foamer pro-click. Train Breaks in two on video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB_pB7lDDpI
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Apr 3, 2014 02:52
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WWII declassified footage of train derailing experiments that will blow your mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8gV4DJZUw
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Apr 3, 2014 02:54
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I do believe this is a runaway diesel locomotive. Runaway in the diesel sense, not the locomotive sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvMl8LUzQnk
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Apr 3, 2014 04:37
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B4Ctom1 posted:Foamer pro-click. Train Breaks in two on video For those wondering, it happens at 5:30 into the video. Edit: he's quite the foamer all right! He just wants to help 
TITTIEKISSER69 fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 05:49
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Just a reminder about trains vs cars in the worst case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue61c6MZNQw
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Apr 3, 2014 07:23
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drunkill posted:Just a reminder about trains vs cars in the worst case. I've seen GIFs of the woman being hit by the Metra/BN train but never the actual video.
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Apr 3, 2014 07:34
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I've been in a train as it hit a car and you legit don't feel a thing, that's the extent of the energy differential. Sure felt the emergency braking though.
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Apr 3, 2014 11:00
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Yeah, even assuming the train consists of just a locomotive (typically around 250 metric tons from what I see on google) and your car weighs 5000lbs, you're at a 100 to 1 disadvantage there. Add on actual cargo and it's like a person stepping on an empty soda can.
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Apr 3, 2014 11:07
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:I do believe this is a runaway diesel locomotive. Runaway in the diesel sense, not the locomotive sense. Can someone please explain what's going on here? I've seen some similar videos from Russia, showing locos doing that. Mokotow fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 12:45
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I'm sure someone with more technical expertise can describe it in more detail but a "runaway" diesel engine is one that is consuming its own lubricant oil as fuel. Diesel engines will run on just about any kind of oil, and as it's not running from the gas tank there's no way to shut it off except to try to deprive it of air or wait for it to consume all the available lube oil. Either way the engine's toast. It can happen to any diesel engine, including cars and trucks.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:37
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:I do believe this is a runaway diesel locomotive. Runaway in the diesel sense, not the locomotive sense. It just wants to be a steam engine.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:39
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kastein posted:Yeah, even assuming the train consists of just a locomotive (typically around 250 metric tons from what I see on google) and your car weighs 5000lbs, you're at a 100 to 1 disadvantage there. Add on actual cargo and it's like a person stepping on an empty soda can. An 8000' intermodal train weighs about 9000tons. I looked up a coal train just for comparison: 6000', 15500 tons.
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Apr 3, 2014 18:39
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Mokotow posted:Can someone please explain what's going on here? I've seen some similar videos from Russia, showing locos doing that. To expand on the answer already given, diesels rely on the heat created during compression to ignite the air/fuel mixture. Because of this, you can't kill the ignition to turn one off like you could on a car - you have to starve it of either fuel or air. If your turbo starts leaking oil into the intake, then the engine will run on that and will rapidly climb to waaaay above redline, stopping only when either air or fuel runs out or when the engine disintegrates/seizes.
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Apr 3, 2014 19:59
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wilfredmerriweathr posted:To expand on the answer already given, diesels rely on the heat created during compression to ignite the air/fuel mixture. Because of this, you can't kill the ignition to turn one off like you could on a car - you have to starve it of either fuel or air. If your turbo starts leaking oil into the intake, then the engine will run on that and will rapidly climb to waaaay above redline, stopping only when either air or fuel runs out or when the engine disintegrates/seizes. You'd figure a big, expensive diesel like that would have a mechanism to shut off the air intake. There are mining/oil field trucks with air shut-offs to prevent run-aways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NRaqgab0_w&t=90s
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Apr 3, 2014 20:38
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Axeman Jim posted:The Class 37, classic English Electric design and the backbone of BR's freight operations for 40 years. A handful are still around: Glow plugs and block heaters not being a high priority in the mid-50's, I'd imagine.
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Apr 3, 2014 20:49
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BR Class 42 and 43 “Warship” The Great Western Railway always wanted to be different. Isambard Kingdom Brunel originally designed the line to a different track gauge to everywhere else, supposedly because it was better, but more likely just to annoy everyone. Even when the Great Western was nationalised and absorbed into British Rail as its Western Region, its management inherited its culture of doing things as differently as possible pretty much for its own sake, and this tradition of bloody-mindedness extended to its diesel procurement as well. The Western region decided that while every other part of BR was ordering locomotives with electric transmission, it would exclusively order diesel-hydraulics, ostensibly because they worked quite well in Germany on the kind of long, flat routes that the Great Western served, but really because it was different to what everyone else was doing and would piss everybody off. The “Warship” class that resulted was a typical BR bodge-job. It was basically a badly re-engineered clone of the successful German V200 series, but tinkered with just enough to break it. It was built by two different manufacturers (as class 42 and 43) and the two batches had very little commonality of parts despite being based on the same design. One thing they did share, though, was the transmission. Government procurement rules forbade importing the V200 design wholesale, and so whilst the original Maybach engines were retained (but built in Britain under licence) the German transmissions were replaced with glorious British engineering – which didn’t work.  Ich bin ein Embarrassment Anyone who has driven a diesel car, truck or van knows that whilst diesel engines have plenty of torque, they only produce that torque at quite a narrow RPM band and that you can’t be lazy with the downshifts the way you can with a petrol engine. If you're in the wrong gear for your speed, you put your foot down and nothing happens whatsoever. The bigger the engine, the narrower that power band, which is why large trucks have so many gears. This is also one of the reasons why electric transmission works so well in railway locomotives – the engine can run at its most efficient RPM while the generator takes care of the voltage required for traction - a diesel-electric locomotive effectively has an infinite number of gears, ideal for big diesel engines with difficult power characteristics. With a hydraulic transmission (which is basically a mechanical transmission but with hydraulic fluid couplings and torque converters taking the place of the gearbox and clutch) you need to get the gear ratios right, and in the “Warships” they got them horribly, horribly wrong. The gear ratios of the off-the-shelf transmission they bought bore no resemblance to the power characteristics of the engine and as such the “Warship” produced nowhere near the power at the rail that it was supposed to. To get performance out of it, the drivers needed to gun the engines hard, wasting fuel and wearing out the engines which were not designed to run at full power for long periods, causing frequent engine failures. The low-speed ratios were also set wrong, and “Warships” hauling slow freight trains would find their locomotives “hunting” between first and second gear, jerking back and forth, delivering no power and wearing out the fluid couplings which would fail in spectacular geysers of transmission fluid and shame. Just as bad, the suspension was suspect, and after drivers complained about violent jolts and track supervisors complained about damaged track, the “Warships” were limited to 80mph instead of their designed 90, forcing the drivers to push them even harder on accelerating to try to keep to the timetables. So in summary, the “Warships” were slower, less powerful, less reliable, consumed more fuel and were more expensive to maintain than their rivals. But they certainly were different, so there’s that. A post-script on how a "Warship" became the first preserved diesel locomotive in Britain, which is British Rail in a nutshell: In 1971 a preservation group wanted to save a member of Class 22, one of the Western Region's better diesel-hydraulic designs, and agreed a price with BR's headquarters to buy D6319, the last remaining example. They paid their money, but someone at head office forgot to tell the staff at Swindon works, who scrapped it. An embarrassed BR offered the group their choice of "Warship" instead, and D821 (pictured above) was saved and is still operational on the Severn Valley Railway. It has now spent over 40 years in preservation compared to just 10 in active service. Axeman Jim fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 21:38
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madeintaipei posted:You'd figure a big, expensive diesel like that would have a mechanism to shut off the air intake. There are mining/oil field trucks with air shut-offs to prevent run-aways. Most trucks that might be in a dangerous environment do. All of our capitol pieces - read: full side fire trucks - have something you can yank on that valves off the intake. I have a friend who drive some sort of gigantic mining truck and it had the same due to the probability of flammable gas leaks. He tells a story of noticing that he had a bit more power than he should have when he was in the pit for 5 or 10 minutes before the safety guys shut the site down for a methane leak or some similar heavy flammable gas that was laying down there.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:55
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:An 8000' intermodal train weighs about 9000tons. I looked up a coal train just for comparison: 6000', 15500 tons. Our big unit trains (coal, potash, grain) get even bigger, upwards of 23000 tons. Picture a small aircraft carrier flying along the tracks at 50mph.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:01
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Last unit frac sand train i had on my desk was 32,000 tons. Yep. You just read that correctly. 244 short sand cars, 7 locomotives, and a length of 12000. Max authorized speed: 50 And that guy flew along. Mostly because there was no place to park the fucker... so green lights the entire way.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:29
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sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Apr 3, 2014 22:32
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Skeeber posted:Our big unit trains (coal, potash, grain) get even bigger, upwards of 23000 tons. Picture a small aircraft carrier flying along the tracks at 50mph. Which is about half the size of the ore trains in  at 45,000t. And they are less than half the size of the special one-off ore trains at 100,000t. That's a loving Nimitz supercarrier. I can't comprehend how hard it is to drive one of those without breaking it
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