Running On A Rail

[kevin_standlee]

Much of the news about High Speed Rail in California is about the legions of NIMBYs who want the trains to run anywhere but where they live, or just to go away entirely. Despite a majority of voters passing the down payment bond measure, there has been precious little in the way of active support for the plan. Of course, it's always easy to oppose something -- most of the NIMBYs are actually BANANAs -- Build Absolutely Nothing Anywere Near Anything. I'm happy to see that Californians for High Speed Rail is forming up to make a greater effort to advocate for building California High Speed Rail. I've signed their petition and signed up for the mailing list. I hope to do more once I have more time to think about anything other than shipment databases at work.

Comments

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

(Veering a bit off topic) Did you perchance catch the premier episode of Human Target last Sunday?

The plot contrived to put the main character, and the person he was protecting, onto the maiden voyage of the high speed train from San Fransisco to Los Angeles -- which was fun. But when a key plot point developed requiring that the brake systems in the not quite finished cars wasn't finished, especially after having established that the target was a very safety minded chief engineer (designer, not train-driver), my suspension of belief was a bit blown.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The only television I've been watching has been some Australian Open coverage as I go to sleep and get up in the morning.

I've just about given up on dramas about runaway trains, because nobody knows how trains work. For instance, there was one where the plot pointedly showed the hydraulic fluid leaking from the train's brake system. Trains don't use hydraulic brakes, and generally speaking, if you cut the brake lines, the brakes apply because the air in the system keeps the brakes open -- it's more or less the opposite of how your car brakes work, as the normal position of a train brake is closed.

Not that you can't get runaways. There was a notable one coming down into Southern California a few years ago where the train was overloaded and the brakes weren't enough to hold it back. The engineer (train driver) tried everything he could, including putting the engines in reverse (which more or less melted the motors, turning million-dollar locomotives' hardware into slag), but it wasn't enough, and the train piled up at the bottom of Cajon Pass.

You can also get situations like the runaway of the French Metro caused by the driver not understanding how the brakes worked and accidentally throwing the manual cut-off, isolating the front and rear brakes. The rear portion of the train stayed "brakes off" because of the manual cut-off, and only the front three cars answered the controls when he called for brakes. That wasn't enough, and the car plowed into the station with some loss of life, including that of the driver.