OK (not!), we were discussing railroad crossing signals, their timing, and how they work.
The discussion was railroad related and nobody was flaming anyone. And it was locked.
I’m beyond tired of this. If members cannot civilly discuss railroads on this forum, why have the forum? Any member who is annoyed by any discussion can simply opt out and not read posts on the subject.
There were forum members with an interest in the subject. And those members, myself included, were discussing it in a respectful and rational manner.
Then some moderator decided we should cease. I guess we can’t talk about such things on this forum. So, just what can we discuss? Paint?
Wondered about that myself. No one was ridiculously condemning the truck driver or the parade organizers. No one was just vomiting political opinions. No one was being anything other than reasonable, rational and inquisitive. What gives?
Well, this topic has been going around and around and round and around and around and around in circles.
Crossings are going to be an issue every time someone tries to cross in front of a train. Come now. We all know that it would not matter how long the lights, horns, crossings gates, metal barriers would turn on when a train approaches. We have a few crossings here that leave 30 seconds and STILL we get people trying to cross…even 15 seconds…nothing will stop somebody from trying. And notice I do not accuse this fellow of anything…I was not there when it happened, and neither were any of us as well…
Do you guys have the perfect system to keep people from doing harm to themselves and others?
What is the point of a discussion forum if you can discuss anything - circular discussions are the hallmark of discussions with differing viewpoints of what is being discussed.
This forum has lost, or probably more properly, run away a wealth of accurate railroad knowdledge with the policy of holding discussions to kindergarten levels of decourm; and even when those levels are adhered to threads still get locked.
I am about at my limits in dealing with this place after 9, soon to be 10 years of active participation.
There have been many discussions about paint has it relates to railroads, real and model elsewhere, that have been known to have gotten way out of hand. Some of them made our worst threads look tame by comparison. (Although lately the tameness seems to have nothing to do with it.)
Well folks, it seems very simple to me (a non-railroader but railfan just the same)…IF the news reports I’ve read many times are correct in stating that the crossing bells and lights were working and the gates were in the process of coming down when the “float” driver proceeded to enter the crossing…it does NOT matter how the signals were timed…IF the driver ignored the lights, bells and lowering gates…then HE is at fault…PERIOD. However, until the results of the formal investigation are known to us all…he is innocent until proven guilty…because that is a hard and fast rule of our legal system.
I do not understand why totally civil threads like the crossing three (whose subject is not politics, graffiti or hobos) need to be locked. Some members object to circularity by repeatedly ‘Beating that Dead Horse’ almost every time there is a thread that concerns an issue and it has sufficient interest to cause many members to go back and forth, sometimes even argue their particular viewpoints. If that offends those members so strongly, why don’t they simply ignore the thread, as Greyhounds and others suggest? There are many equally civil threads that go on and on about allowed topics many of us find uninteresting or worse, yet no one runs to the moderators and demands a lock. By the logic used lately, repetitious threads involving Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas should also be locked for ‘Beating a dead Horse’? I for one, would like an explanation from the moderator as to his reasoning on this.
Yes, absolutely right on. The Kalmbach editors seem to have taken on a peculiarly spiteful attitude toward this forum. It is as if we have a set of rules to abide by; and then another unwritten doctrine of correct thinking that must also be adhered to.
In the past, if moderators locked a thread, they at least extended the courtesy of explaining their reasons. And if a thread was locked, the moderators always told us that we were free to start another one, and they often recommended it. That was because the point of locking the thread was the not the topic, but rather, some of the exchange in the discussion that violated the rules. Therefore, nothing prohibited re-starting the discussion in a new thread as long as it stayed within the rules.
However, now it appears that starting a new thread on the same topic is taken as a personal affront by the moderator who locked the first one.
Well, I guess we could discuss DS verses DSS (whatever that is). Over on the Model Railroad forum, those discussions are allowed to go round and round. [X-)]
‘Seems to me, that as long as we’re not breaking any forum policy rules, or calling each other straight- party votin’, graffitti spraying hobos, that going round and round is pretty harmless to those who read the tread, and irrelevent to those who don’t… I’m just sayin’
I participate in a activity that can have life or death consequences to the participants and who’s administration and policing is all done by volunteers. Observations learned from this activity and the performance of it’s volunteers is that those that wield the least ‘power’ in their day to day jobs and lives try to wield their club ‘power’ with the heaviest hand and the least understanding of the situation where they are trying to use that power. In one memorable example, one official thought he knew better than multi-national manufacturers, subject to product liability laws, how a fitting should be attached to a required piece of gear - he used his power to enforce his thoughts and directly caused the very situation he was ostensibly trying to prevent - all at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the participants affected.
On thing new holders of ‘power’ need to learn, power is best used when it is least used. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
While the first thread on the incident did get a bit contentious, the latter two were conducted in a very civil manner as both Greyhounds and Schlimm stated.
Gawd, I’m glad I’m no longer doing this. (Someone is applauding…somewhere… [(-D])
Used to be that the server storage limitations was a problem. When I first offered to moderate, the rationale for locking seemingly endless or redundant threads that had begun to amass 200-500 posts and more was that the server began to act up when it had more than one or two such threads. This was according to Bergie. Not long after, with a new rollout of forum software and a server upgrade, that problem seemed to go by the bye. So, it isn’t a storage problem. Or a software one.
I hadn’t spent much time in that newly-locked thread, certainly not in recent days. It seems to me that if a thread still gets relevant observations, or even questions that have apparently long since been answered, it doesn’t hurt for someone to summarize the details periodically so that a more focused progression can take place. As long as people are being civil, curious, contributory, and cogent in their contributions (whew, that’s a lot of alliteration!), one should expect some redundancy after three, six, twelve pages of discussion, particularly when people formerly on vacation or deployed for work come back to their leisure time at their computer/tablet and wish to offer something after some determination of facts or opinions and don’t want to read all that has transpired…pages and pages of it…in order to get those facts or opinions.
I learned some things about this forum and about myself as I went along. Sometimes, once or twice, I felt I had to undo what I thought I had done justifiably.
In the past I have received some criticism for being straightforward and forthright (even blunt). I’ve always regarded these as good qualities. Some folks seem to prefer a softer approach. But straightforward and forthright, maybe blunt, is how I am.
So it is with no personal animosity that I say your post seems to mean that we can discuss a topic until you think it has been discussed enough, and then we have to stop. At least that’s what’s coming through to me.
I’d still like to know more about the time prediction system. Does is always perfectly activate a signal at the set timing, or does it produce a range of activation timings with the set timing as an average? If so, what does the distribution of the actual activation time look like? (The bell curve thing, you know, there’s 99% probability that the signal will activate within +/- 0.5 seconds of the set timing. Or something like that.)
That’s a real question about the real world of railroading and I was hoping to get some insight here. Look
As I said, I get really tired of the “yes, but…” and “what if” stuff. If the sign says “STOP,” the sign says “STOP.” Does it really matter whether it’s three feet across, or four? Yes, but, what if the sign was FIVE feet across?
Let’s face it. The guy blew a perfectly appropriate stop sign.
I’ve got no problem with such threads getting locked.
Well, I don’t agree with everything said on this forum, but I can’t imagine wanting a thread locked to prevent people from saying things I disagree with.
That sounds like a very reasonable question to me and I’d also be interested in the answers.
I’ve got a guess on how they work - by measuring the current magnitude and phase of the audio frequency applied across the rails with respect to the applied voltage, it is then possible to measure the inductance of the circuit formed by the two rails and axles that short the rails. The higher the inductance, the further away the train is from the measurement point. Using another circuit to measure or calculate the change in inductance with respect to time will give you speed. The speed will then give the distance (inductance) at which the crossing signals should be activated.
There are always some errors (AKA noise) in measurements, so the question about the range of activation timings is a good one.
I am interested in the difficult problems posed by grade crossings, and have done a lot of research on the topic, including communication with the MUTCD, FRA, OL, State Highway Patrol, railroad companies, and local police. So when a crossing crash occurs, I naturally want to know how it happened. This Texas accident, while certainly tragic, is also unusually interesting on so many levels.
But asking questions about how these things happen seems to make some people very defensive because they believe that questioning the cause is somehow letting the perpetrator escape blame. Strangely enough, this attitude is not shared by the official authorities such as the NTSB. They ask questions just like I do. The only difference is that when I ask the same questions that the NTSB asks, the thread gets locked.
That Nevada Amtrak crash thread was locked twice, and on both occasions I was able to persuade the moderators to unlock it because it had not violated any rules. Meanwhile, the NTSB has been asking questions about that crash for 1½ years, and they are still not finished. So I don’t think it is a cut and dried as some people want it to be.
I came to this forum after I subscrbbed to Trains and as of now there is more to keep me here than there is to send me away.
However, this is not the only train forum on the web. A little net surfing will show several others. People interested in discussing a specific topic might be well advised to scout our several forums because a topic that is taboo on one forum will be perfectly acceptable on another forum.
I support trains, particularly passenger trains, because I believe in diversity of transportation options. Perhaps diversity in forum options is also a good idea.