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Rabid Anti-Dentite! posted:Not the best pictures, I'll try to take some more the next time I am high-railing with my buddy. This is out in the Mohave Desert about 50 miles from Ludlow CA, pretty sure it's a Dash-9 There are very few industry-specific vehicles I want to operate more than high-railers. Over the years I've seen two or three pop up on the used market. If a private citizen was to get their hands on one, anyone know if there's any way one could legally get on the rails? Obviously if you know where a stretch of abandoned or lightly used rail is you could probably get away with a short run, but the risks of not getting away with it are pretty severe and being able to make a longer run knowing it's all clear would be a lot of fun.
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Mar 7, 2011 03:52
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neckbeard posted:Legally? Nope. Would be trespassing against whichever company owns the tracks. My dad worked for Canadian Pacific for 30 years, he had a mid-90s Ford F-350 Crew Cab high-railer, and when you're 10 years old it's the coolest drat company truck besides a fire truck. Rabid Anti-Dentite! posted:It would be almost impossible to do that without working for the railroad. The amount of people he had to call and get the track shut down was incredible. They had to cut out a section and replace it with new rail due to shrinkage. Pretty cool to watch. That was an F250 that was only a few years old with other 150,000 miles on it. When that train passed, we had to stop or risk being blown off the track. Other than that, you lock the steering wheel and set the cruise at 45 and sit back and relax. Pretty cool feeling, like Marty in back to the future haha. I looked around and found these guys, a club of owners of old track maintenance vehicles which organizes legitimate group runs. Looks like they usually get access to track that's been abandoned, but they also list a few events which look like they're running ahead of an actual maintenance crew on a normally active line that would be closed at the time anyways. Seems to be the way to do it. I used to have a place I liked to ride my quad which was most easily accessible by riding about a mile down the side of the rails that ran behind my parents' place, so I'm quite familiar with the rail cops and certainly would not want to get on their bad side. For anyone who doesn't know, in most US states the rail cops are considered equal to the state police and have some interstate jurisdiction. wolrah fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Mar 8, 2011 |
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Mar 8, 2011 17:15
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Sponge! posted:So a handful of coins would make for a fun day? (Being non-magnetic.) Coins are also pretty soft, would they really pose much of a challenge to this stuff?
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Apr 20, 2012 23:12
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9axle posted:Now the brakes on every car are locked, held on with air pressure(no springs, like a truck) and the reservoirs are empty. Any particular reason why it works this way, rather than the truck-style springs? It would seem like the spring system is more fail-safe. Is it basically that one car is rarely on its own, so a single car's air pressure failing is basically irrelevant where a single car losing an air line could cause that brake to lock up while the engineer has no idea?
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Sep 8, 2012 03:16
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9axle posted:Most yard switching is done with the brakes bled off, allowing cars to roll freely. Ina flat yard, the engine stops quickly as the pin is lifted on the car, "kicking" the car down the selected track. A good crew, with a brakeman working the switches,and a conductor who knows his job can switch a ton of cars really quickly this way. To prevent cars from rolling out the other end of the track, many yards are built with a bowl shaped contour. Part of the skill of a conductor is knowing this contour, and how hard to kick cars into a track to ensure they couple to cars already there, but not fire them out the other end. Oh yea, I completely forgot about that. Makes complete sense. I'm surprised my immature brain slipped on that, I still chuckle every time I see "Do Not Hump" on a train car.
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Sep 10, 2012 01:08
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Least destructive train crash in history: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=740_1354359538
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Dec 1, 2012 16:26
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Rabid Anti-Dentite! posted:I think they are a good idea. I personally think the people that object them are the people that will more than likely get busted doing something they shouldn't. Basically what it comes down to with anything like this is how sane are the rules, which basically translates to how much is violating the rules for good reason (or because you have to) a part of everyday operations? The obvious example would be to point to the trucking thread and the combination of GPS tracking, computer logs, and unrealistic dispatchers making a "successful" run require the violation of one or more company and/or governmental rules.
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May 14, 2013 02:42
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B4Ctom1 posted:Crossing accident with pipe truck. Video from two angles. This one was linked on Jalopnik as apparently being the previous day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSUxUGyt38
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Oct 11, 2013 05:49
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:edit: Not trying to get on anyone's case here. I think its silly to get all up in arms over PTC when the railroads don't stand to gain nearly as much as they'd spend implementing it and mishaps can be reduced through other means. Its not like the conductor or engineer(or yardmaster or clerk or dispatcher) union are going to let the class 1s reduce crew size after the implementation of PTC. It sounds like PTC would be most effective at reducing the sort of accidents the general public cares about. That may not align with the things that cost the railroads the most overall, but it's all the majority of the world sees. I'm pretty sure most passenger rail accidents would have at least been far less likely under full PTC. The general public doesn't really care about freight unless volatile materials and populated areas are involved.
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Dec 5, 2013 07:49
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Hyperriker posted:Seems to me that it's pretty similar to the road setup. Great Britain, Australia etc are on the left, while the US enjoys being different Unlike units of measure, we're with the majority on this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_driving_on_the_left_or_right.svg It's basically the Brits and places that were under British influence when cars became popular that drive on left side of the road. 90% of road miles in the world match the US.
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Feb 1, 2014 16:45
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CSX is helping Lynchburg, VA pretend they're Cleveland. http://www.wset.com/story/25392359/train-has-derailed-in-lynchburg
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Apr 30, 2014 21:53
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Not a rail guy but at least from a physics perspective if both the braking force and mass are proportionally increased so the overall brakes:mass ratio remains the same there should be no change in stopping distance if all the brakes were applied at the same time. There, I believe, lies the problem as the standard rail air brake system relies on pressure differences traveling along the brake pipe. It can be quite a few seconds between activating the brakes and the rear car actually starting to help. One study I found with a quick search quoted Queensland Rail coal trains as having around 30 seconds of delay on average. During that time you only have some of your braking force but you have all of the mass still, so until all the brakes get on the same page you'll slow down less. tl;dr: With electrically activated brakes you'd be right on the money, but entrenched standards are what they are and the industry sure isn't looking to spend anything they don't have to. edit: I think some FREDs can dump air as well, though whether it's reasonably controllable or just there for e-stops I have no idea. In any case that would obviously halve the brake pipe delay when used. wolrah fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 05:27
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:Passenger rail, once again, is a loving joke. Just for funsies, I priced out traveling from Jacksonville, FL to Miami, Fl. 350mi, 8hr trip. $140. Flights are $230 and take an hour. I've been wanting to take a proper trip by train for years, but this kills it for me every time. Right now I'm in DC visiting my family and I actually looked up doing this trip on Amtrak. Headed down today, returning on Friday. The round trip was going to be around $400 IIRC and would take around 12 hours each way. The worst part is that there are only two trains that go through Cleveland. Both are options to get to DC, but both depart in the wee hours of the morning. At this time of year I don't think an on-schedule Amtrak train is in the state of Ohio during daylight. Southwest charged me $125 round trip and got me here in 55 minutes, while letting me get a mostly full night of sleep.
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Dec 24, 2014 06:22
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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:I thought that all US passenger cars had to empty into a holding tank. Grey water (sinks, showers, etc.) dumps directly on the ground, black water (toilets) goes to a tank.
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Dec 25, 2014 06:11
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ijustam posted:Amtrak has some dual-mode locomotives that can run on diesel or third rail but I can't imagine those are cheap. Given that any modern "diesel" trains are all electric drive to the actual wheels it seems to me like it shouldn't be that complicated to take a diesel-electric and add the necessary bits for receiving electricity from a third rail and/or overhead wires. Then it's just a matter of switching power sources and idling/stopping/starting the diesel as needed.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:16
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Train v. Bus last week in Atlanta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaPbCZHxzck Six injured, no fatalities. One serious head injury, probably the last guy out the back doors who got a bus punted in to him. Considering it got hit by a train the bus actually fared pretty well: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/six-injured-in-marta-bus-vs-train-collision/nmGDs/
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May 19, 2015 18:45
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B4Ctom1 posted:OK fuckers take a look at this With how easy it seems like it should be on paper I'd be amazed to find out no crazy railfans have rigged up their own systems.
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Oct 4, 2015 06:07
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Head-on collision in Germany: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35530538 It's hard to tell from the Google Maps overhead view and there's no Street View mode to check things out closer because German privacy laws are insane, but it looks like this is a single set of rails. Reports are saying that there should have been some sort of autobraking system triggered by passing a stop signal, so it'll be interesting to see what kinds of failures came together here once the investigation is complete.
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Feb 9, 2016 17:10
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Truck driver totally spaces out while pulling away from a police stop, drives right in front of a train. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0obAEPT-3Y
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Feb 24, 2016 05:07
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CharlesM posted:I can't believe they spent the money to crash a train but put a small airbag between the two people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QxWybfrtOA It's not between the two, it's a controlled test. The airbag is on one side only while both dummies are in front of otherwise similar dashboards.
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Jun 30, 2016 22:33
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I think 8 bit axle counters might be a bit too low...
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Jul 11, 2016 19:06
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NightGyr posted:Some idiot posted this video about riding the rails it doesn't end well. Dunno, in terms of the things that can go wrong when trying to hop trains it could have ended a lot worse.
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Sep 9, 2016 14:56
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B4Ctom1 posted:I sat through a briefing last year that said that pot and alcohol had tied, and that meth was making a comeback. I always have to wonder with the pot stats how it is they're testing. Most common tests look for metabolites which get absorbed in body fat and thus can stick around for a long time after the high is over, we're talking weeks to months for some people, where tests for most other recreational drugs look for things that are out of the body relatively quickly, in the range of hours in a lot of cases. Someone who only smokes weed on the weekend will still be flagged by most tests where someone who starts the day with an Irish coffee will be clean by the afternoon. Heroin sticks around a bit longer but is still mostly gone by the next day. Amphetamines are detectable for a day or two. If someone uses a bunch of drugs over the weekend and then gets piss tested the following Thursday they'll likely only pop for pot, which kinda skews the statistics as far as non-dependent recreational drug users.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:02
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NoWake posted:I don't think springs really heat up though? I thought metals only started getting hot once they're stretched past their elastic limit. Maybe you're thinking of shock absorber oil? The energy has to go somewhere. It likely doesn't make a significant difference assuming the springs are appropriately sized for the application but they definitely heat up.
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Sep 29, 2016 15:24
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dissss posted:Well that's certainly caused a mess: http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/kaikoura-rail-line-decimated-2016111413 It's pretty cool how the rail stayed together and just got pushed over to the other side of the road. Two new unplanned crossings.
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Nov 15, 2016 19:29
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http://i.imgur.com/cub4oMF.gifv
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Jan 6, 2017 18:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD89wPiicCg
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Jan 25, 2017 00:04
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The Locator posted:You sort of have to completely ignore the fact that all of that energy working only on the front locomotive of the train would also cause the worlds largest derailment, and the only derailment where the locomotive was pushed backwards through the entire consist as it was coming off the tracks. Kerbal Railways
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Feb 8, 2017 20:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCrYUl8-WTg I guess that's what you can get away with when your equipment is on rails...
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Feb 26, 2017 04:12
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Steam reviews seem to be fairly negative on the performance side, that's kind of disappointing. I saw Unreal Engine 4 and was hoping it might support VR. I've played Derail Valley a few times and while it's just a limited tech demo it's pretty fun. Here's my first time playing, where unfortunately OBS took a poo poo and brought the game down with it right before I was about to connect up some cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx78OLYoKIQ I'd be all about wasting a day in VR with a fully featured simulator.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:18
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~Coxy posted:How long was that boom gate down that the cops were there stopping traffic but nobody dragged it out of the way with a tie-down? I was thinking the same thing. If you grabbed the end of the gate the lever distance probably would have allowed it to be moved far enough by hand.
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May 25, 2017 23:31
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Is it even possible to steal a locomotive by yourself? I have to say I'd be interested to see (in a simulator so I couldn't actually break anything) whether I could manage to start a train and drive off. I know the basic principles but I'm sure there are dozens of little details which could easily prevent me from progressing or cause problems. Not sure why someone would try to steal one though (aside from drugs/booze, as the mugshot sort of implies), it's not like you can really evade a pursuit when the pursuers know exactly where you're going and have at least partial control over that depending on the level of automation in the area.
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Nov 22, 2017 00:47
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hailthefish posted:According to WSDOT's website, it sure looks like it. Looks like they were less than a mile from the end of the new route, and given that it happened at the point where the track jogs across the highway I'm going to bet lack of attention + too much speed.
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Dec 18, 2017 21:29
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A popular tracker site had the train at 81 MPH right before the crash according to this guy: https://twitter.com/AirlineFlyer/status/942789704763789312/ The site's blown their Google API limits so it's breaking now, but they claim their data comes right from Amtrak.
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Dec 19, 2017 04:30
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PremiumSupport posted:It's a massive investment of time and money with very little payoff until the entire project is complete. I don't see how so. It's not like it depends on everything being done to be useful. Track and trains supporting it can be used immediately where available and it doesn't hurt anything otherwise. The payoff scales pretty linearly with the level of completion. Those trains on that track become theoretically immune to many common kinds of human error. Also at least with regards to overspeed situations a GPS-based solution could operate entirely self contained and not require any trackside infrastructure. It wouldn't be able to provide the full functionality of a PTC system with real-time signal and switch info (at least reliably, such data could of course be relayed over cellular where available) but it could definitely prevent going in to a turn too fast.
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Dec 19, 2017 19:57
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hackbunny posted:Oh come on it's even got tram lines It even has many of the roller coasters at Cedar Point listed as "narrow gauge rail".
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Dec 20, 2017 01:10
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Saukkis posted:I think the magic word with trains is "sleeper cabin". A friend took his family to northern Finland with a cartrain before Christmas. They drove their car to the station and loaded it in the train. Then they hopped in and spent the ride sleeping in their private cabin. I usually prefer trains for ~12 hour trips over plane. Less hassle than an airport, I can spend the trip sleeping instead of wasting several hours in the middle of the day. If only car trains were available on any of the cross-country routes here in the US. There's literally one route that offers this, from near DC to near Orlando. https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train If I could bring my car along on any of the Chicago > West Coast routes it'd make rail travel a lot more appealing.
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Dec 27, 2017 16:19
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PremiumSupport posted:Multi-track crossings work just fine when they're not in the middle of a divided street, and in this case I think they'd have the same problems even if it were a single track. I wonder how feasible it'd be to have an additional set of gates geared to the main ones that come down in front of the tracks when the road gates are up. It'd probably be effective against casual stupidity, and it's really not worth trying to battle advanced stupidity. Cygni posted:For example, here's one by me in LA:
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Jan 12, 2018 04:23
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Amtrak vs. CSX collision this morning, at least two fatalities. http://abcnews.go.com/US/amtrak-passenger-train-collides-freight-train-sc-injuries/story?id=52826058
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Feb 4, 2018 15:49
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~Coxy posted:I choose to believe this is true. 
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Dec 9, 2018 04:56
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