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Holy poo poo this is cool.
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Mar 26, 2021 04:26
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ToxicFrog posted:If you want to lay down track and watch trains go while also having some sort of goal to work towards rather than being pure sandbox, but don't really care about accuracy driving the trains (there's a first-person view but no attempt is made to simulate controls, etc), in-dev openttd spiritual sequel Mashinky is lots of fun. I would also recommend Sid Meier's Railroads! It's a flawed game but still my favourite for just spending 30-60 minutes connecting cities and running production chains.
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Mar 26, 2021 04:41
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Log082 posted:Holy poo poo this is cool. Yeah, right? I'm jealous of those Soviet and post-Soviet kids.
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Mar 27, 2021 01:15
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I like the girl who got the law changed so she could have her dream job
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Mar 27, 2021 05:18
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Calling back to my ramblings about Old British Trains And Their Rubbish Brakes in this thread, I came across this video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KRt_tNgHJQ&t=937s It's old 8mm silent cinefilm of the Lickey Bank in 1957. The Lickey being the steepest sustained* gradient on a main line railway in the UK, at 1-in-37.7 (which is, what, 2.6-something percent?) over two miles. In the steam era virtually every train going up the bank needed at least one banking/helping engine on the back to push it up, two bankers were not uncommon and heavy freight trains needed three. When multiple banking locos were used they didn't run coupled up - they all set off one after the other, buffered up the back of the train being assisted, with each banker then buffering up to the one ahead. At the top of the incline the bankers would then drop off the train independently, resulting in one train and up to three separate locos all occupying the same block of track. In the 1900s the Midland Railway built a mahoosive 0-10-0 four-cylinder loco specifically to run very slowly for two miles at a time to shove heavy trains up the Lickey. Very heavy trains would sometimes have a 'braker' coupled in front of the train to help with the braking power on the way down, too. The whole video is ripe with details for what British Railways looked like in the mid-50s in the days before Modernisation (i.e. the world's largest Victorian-themed heritage railway). But the timestamp is at the bit where a heavy unfitted freight train goes down the incline. There are no continuous-acting brakes on the wagons, just the steam brake on the loco and the handbrake worked by the guard in the brake van at the back. So the train has to stop at the top of the bank and the handbrakes on a few of the wagons are 'pinned down' by brakemen on the trackside. The aim is to get it so enough wagon brakes are set that they alone retard the train down the bank, and the loco has to actively pull against the brakes. If speed picks up, the engine driver can shut off the power, and the brakes on the loco and the brake van are still in reserve. But to do this the train has to be eased onto the gradient wagon by wagon at a brisk walking pace. If the train picks up too much speed, the brakemen jog alongside the (moving!) wagon to pin down the brake - you can see that they have big wooden sticks like chair legs to push the brake levers down, but they still have to knock the retaining pin into place by hand while the train keeps moving and they're jogging along the trackside amidst the sleepers, ballast and whatever else is lying about. They do this until the entire train is on the incline and is still under control. Then at the bottom of the gradient the train has to stop again while the brakes are 'picked up', the brakes are checked for overheating, damage or hot blocks, the wheels are checked and tapped for damage caused by the friction from the brakes and the axle boxes are inspected before the train can go on its way. And this is why heavy freight trains in Britain had average point-to-point speeds of under 10 miles per hour even in the 1950s! Ironically right at the end of the video the cameraman captures a 'special train', consisting of new diesel-electric hood-unit locos, of the sort that British loco makers were building for private and export markets but that BR itself would never buy, being delivered to a Welsh steelworks. Being towed there by steam locos... * there are some steeper, but much shorter, gradients elsewhere. Mostly on lines laid through coal mining areas where the track has slumped with mine subsidence, leading to more savage gradients than originally intended.
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Apr 8, 2021 16:59
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the trains were locked up but I stuck my camera through the bars 
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Apr 9, 2021 17:43
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This is why you should only buy cage free trains
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Apr 9, 2021 18:08
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lmao to buy run8 you paypal them $50 and they email you a one-time link and warn you to keep backups of your installer because they won't send it to you again flashbacks to buying games online before steam. holy moly
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Apr 14, 2021 00:44
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hey someone licensed the Rule the Waves purchase engine from frederiek
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Apr 14, 2021 02:03
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OMGVBFLOL posted:lmao to buy run8 you paypal them $50 and they email you a one-time link and warn you to keep backups of your installer because they won't send it to you again Yea it is awful, god forbid you want to buy more than one thing at a time too. They are pretty responsive if you lose your installer if you email them.
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Apr 14, 2021 02:06
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well i took the plunge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSvrcxL_NEc im not sure if im playing it right
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Apr 16, 2021 06:26
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Oh noes 
CrazyOldGuy fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 10:03
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CrazyOldGuy posted:Oh noes Multi track drifting doesnt work in real life I guess?
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Apr 20, 2021 12:33
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It worked at Eschede, briefly
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Apr 20, 2021 18:23
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Not been a good weekend for trainfucking in the upper midwest. From today in Iowa: https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/developing-train-derailment-near-sibley-iowa/ From yesterday in Minn: https://www.fox9.com/news/roads-blocked-after-50-train-cars-derail-in-albert-lea-minn Both of course occurred in marshland, or by streams or rivers and have chemicals that may leak. Looks like its gonna be a long summer.
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May 17, 2021 01:35
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Is it in bad taste to make a joke about Precision Scheduled Railroading?
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May 17, 2021 02:02
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Never.
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May 17, 2021 02:36
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no no no the new system isn't "positively out of control train" you morons arghhhh
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May 17, 2021 05:48
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Steam engine 611 is moving north from NC towards its new temporary home at Strasburg today. Supposedly it should pass by this cam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV17Ri0ONrg Edit: Supposedly around 8:30ish, emphasis on the ish. Log082 fucked around with this message at 13:06 on May 17, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 13:01
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Gates go boom https://streamable.com/yyfjkd
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May 19, 2021 09:52
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That is in Ballarat (not Canberra as the cctv says) Happened a year ago. Here is a good writeup on the incident: https://www.danielbowen.com/2021/04/28/the-ballarat-railway-gate-saga/ These historic gates are located right next to the station, which the train was supposed to stop at, but which it continued past for a few hundred meters given it was going at a high speed. Still no decision on what will happen but it'll probably be replaced with modern boomgates. quote:Ballarat City councillor Samantha McIntosh said it had taken the state government too long to come up with a temporary solution. drunkill fucked around with this message at 15:41 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 15:39
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I love the old photo of the electric tram crossing the railroad grade.
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May 19, 2021 17:26
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quote:Take the case of a Shinkansen bullet train driver who left the cockpit to use the bathroom on May 16. This isn't your typical work break -- he did so while the train ran at 150 kilometers per hour (90 mph) with some 160 passengers on board. quote:According to JR Central, which operates the government-owned Tokaido Shinkansen Line connecting Tokyo and Shin-Osaka, this is the first time a bullet train driver vacated the cockpit of a moving train while there were passengers on board. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/japan-bullet-trains-hnk-intl/index.html
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May 22, 2021 00:36
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drunkill posted:That is in Ballarat (not Canberra as the cctv says) Presumably these gates were at one point (or even still were at the time of the accident?) operated mechanically (electro-mechanically?) from the adjacent signal box - a very common setup with traditional double/quadruple crossing gates in the UK. There are still some entirely manual gated crossings in the UK - two near me include this one, which still has the signal box with block instruments and bells for the approach signals, but the signalman has to leave the box to open and close the gates:  And this one, which is across a five-track 125mph electrified main line but is still worked by a man sitting in a cabin and getting out to manually open and close the gate on each side of the line. Zero One posted:I love the old photo of the electric tram crossing the railroad grade. It is a great pic. It's always odd seeing Australian rail infrastructure because a lot of it is (for obvious reasons) identical to traditional British stuff but in an oddly unfamiliar context. The crossing gates could be from any urban level crossing on the British rail network from before 1950. The signal box looks like it came straight from somewhere in south Devon on the Great Western Railway, those semaphore signals between the crossing and the station are identical to the distinctive 'somersault' Great Northern Railway types (themselves introduced after a a nasty accident) and so on.
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May 22, 2021 17:33
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mekilljoydammit posted:Is it in bad taste to make a joke about Precision Scheduled Railroading? Tex Avery posted:Never. I'm honestly finding it hard to make a better joke than the darkly hilarious idea that deferring maintenance to improve shareholder value in the short term will be consequence free, this time, trust us. Ever see how terrible stuff is allowed to get by the time a tie gang gets to it? And they're relaxing standards and cutting track time for tie gangs? (I'm speaking about them specifically because I've worked with them) Just loving yikes this is going to come back to bite.
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May 22, 2021 18:46
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Seeing some of the stuff that Class 1s let slide is incredible. For context, I work for a Class 3 that operates over a lot of track belonging to a Class 1. I was working third man on a switch job when my conductor found a joint bar that only had one bolt left in it on one of our industrial spurs. We called it in to our track gang who told us that while they couldn't replace it today, they would have the parts in a few days and would change it out ASAP (it was a very old set of joint bars that definitely needed to be swapped entirely - replacing the bolts wouldn't do). It would be okay to operate on for now since the speed limit was only 10 mph, but we needed to have one member of the crew watching the entire move. It made me feel a little sketchy, but the hard logistical facts of the matter superseded what would have been the best solution (replacing it then and there). Just a month or so earlier, I was in a yard belonging to a Class 1 that is a pretty key point for the region. We found a joint bar that was cracked in half on both sides, so we called the yard master to tell him about it and where it was. His only response was "Well that sucks. Call me if you derail; I can't get MoW out here until something is on the ground." It just blew my mind.
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May 22, 2021 20:11
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Saw some weird stuff driving past the Union Pacific yard at Roseville, California. What's the raised structure on top of the cab for? This whole line of locomotives had it, but it was folded down on some of them.  And what does this thing do? The scoop next to the wheels makes me think of some snow clearing purpose, but it doesn't look like it's meant to be put at the front of a train. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!
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May 23, 2021 21:25
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StandardVC10 posted:Saw some weird stuff driving past the Union Pacific yard at Roseville, California. Looks to be a device for clearing icicles from overhead lines. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=93017 As for the caboose, I'm thinking those scoops are for clearing the center gauge of any excessive snow the rotary snow plow left behind. But I'd also think the main blade of the loco could do that too.  It also looks like UP 572 and SPMW 326 have been a coupled pair for a long while.
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May 23, 2021 21:40
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I've ended up down a rabbit hole about "flangers" and it looks like it's for clearing the center section. The later designs don't seem to dig as deep as the older ones (1/4 of the way down the page), but that makes sense as there's more than just switch gear to worry about with modern track. Here's a picture of 326 that shows a bit more of that scope and where it would meet the track: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=4482671 Here's an older unit in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYgnK2tcbU And 572 and a flanger (I can't make out the number) operating around Truckee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdeHd6Xa4dk
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May 23, 2021 21:58
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Tex Avery posted:Seeing some of the stuff that Class 1s let slide is incredible. For context, I work for a Class 3 that operates over a lot of track belonging to a Class 1. I was working third man on a switch job when my conductor found a joint bar that only had one bolt left in it on one of our industrial spurs. We called it in to our track gang who told us that while they couldn't replace it today, they would have the parts in a few days and would change it out ASAP (it was a very old set of joint bars that definitely needed to be swapped entirely - replacing the bolts wouldn't do). It would be okay to operate on for now since the speed limit was only 10 mph, but we needed to have one member of the crew watching the entire move. It made me feel a little sketchy, but the hard logistical facts of the matter superseded what would have been the best solution (replacing it then and there). You don't get to be a Class I by writing a lot of checks I guess
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May 23, 2021 22:03
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moparacker posted:I've ended up down a rabbit hole about "flangers" and it looks like it's for clearing the center section. The later designs don't seem to dig as deep as the older ones (1/4 of the way down the page), but that makes sense as there's more than just switch gear to worry about with modern track. That is really cool, thank you.
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May 23, 2021 22:07
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MikeCrotch posted:You don't get to be a Class I by writing a lot of checks I guess You don't stay a class 1 by neglecting your physical plant. Ask the Penn Central or the Rock Island.
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May 23, 2021 22:56
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:You don't stay a class 1 by neglecting your physical plant. Ask the Penn Central or the Rock Island. That sounds like a problem for the next CEO. Still wild to me that most (all?) US railways are privately owned - in Britain the modern flirtation with the rails themselves being private got quietly scrapped after people literally died because of it.
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May 24, 2021 00:04
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MikeCrotch posted:You don't get to be a Class I by writing a lot of checks I guess You don't get to be a Class 1 by neglecting your physical infrastructure, either. The shortsightedness of this is driven by pure greed and subservience to stockholders who would probably be just fine if they didn't demand more profit literally every three months.
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May 24, 2021 01:32
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:You don't stay a class 1 by neglecting your physical plant. Ask the Penn Central or the Rock Island. I'm always fascinated by the downfall of the Milwaukee Road, and how in the mid-60s the management decided that the railroad had no viable long term future...and spent the next 20 years proving themselves right. They focussed on virtually every other aspect of the business - mostly logging rights, land sales and property - other than railroading and deferred all the maintenance they could. They somehow lucked into getting loads of guaranteed interchange traffic from the PNW when Burlington Northern was created, making the line profitable for the first time in the 20th century...and didn't seem to notice. Eventually there was a year in the mid-70s when they began running massive grain unit trains to Puget Sound in new heavyweight hoppers and they smashed the already-decrepit permanent way to pieces until the railroad was getting an average of more than one derailment per day and long stretches of single-track line over the Rockies had 5mph restrictions. So the railroad could basically not move any traffic, all the customers went elsewhere and the management was all "See, we told you the railroad had no future! We'd better declare bankruptcy and sell it all off!" IIRC the Rock Island was similar - a granger railroad which spent decades trying to merge to secure itself and deferring maintenance both to make it look more profitable/less-loss making than it actually was and because (hopefully) long-term maintenance would soon be someone else's problem...until the railroad literally fell apart at the seams.
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May 24, 2021 06:21
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Don't sleep on the Milwaukee Road de-electrifying their transcon route to get the scrap value of the copper right before the energy crisis of the 70s.
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May 24, 2021 20:44
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BalloonFish posted:I'm always fascinated by the downfall of the Milwaukee Road, and how in the mid-60s the management decided that the railroad had no viable long term future...and spent the next 20 years proving themselves right. FISHMANPET posted:Don't sleep on the Milwaukee Road de-electrifying their transcon route to get the scrap value of the copper right before the energy crisis of the 70s. The fish duo make a great point! Where could we read or watch more about the Milwaukee Road?
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May 24, 2021 22:50
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meltie posted:The fish duo make a great point! Where could we read or watch more about the Milwaukee Road? It's been years since I actually hunted this stuff down - as a Brit I first learned about the Milwaukee Road playing downloaded custom scenarios on Railroad Tycoon 2 about 20 years ago (which is where I picked up most of the rest of my knowledge about American railways and, indeed, American geography and history...) Milwaukee Road in the 70's: What really happened? A .pdf laying out the course of the MILW's demise A really good document (ironically hosted on a website dedicated to one of the MILW's main rivals...) by someone with real experience in railroad working laying out how and why the Milwaukee's transcontinental route was such an expensive and difficult route to operate and why it was abandoned (in contrast to, say, the Rock Island, large parts of which are still operating under new ownership even though the company is long defunct). It seems that the MILW is a bit like the Great Central Railway here in the UK - a sad loss in retrospect, a great case study in business mismanagement, a marvel of civil engineering and a railway fan's delight...but also wrapped up in a lot of myth-making. The MILW seems to get held up as the shortest, fastest, easiest route to the PNW and its failure was all due to bad luck, bad management and conspiracy. To hear some British railfans talk the Great Central was basically a ready-to-go 21st century High Speed Rail line that would be able to take 200mph international passenger trains and piggy-back intermodal freights without any modification. Neither are true and the myths obscure the (much more interesting, I think) reality.
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May 24, 2021 23:43
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Tex Avery posted:You don't get to be a Class 1 by neglecting your physical infrastructure, either. The shortsightedness of this is driven by pure greed and subservience to stockholders who would probably be just fine if they didn't demand more profit literally every three months. its almost like a system of distributed ownership by speculators is a dumb system for idiots
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May 25, 2021 18:44
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No, it can't be
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May 25, 2021 19:16
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