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Congressmen support more federal funds to pay for PTC
Love it or leave it?
If Mr. Haws is upset by political disputation – and PTC is fair game, having originated in Congress – why doesn’t he find another country to live in?
Did Guse ask a question?
Can it be he doesn’t know everything?
How appropriate that he asks about a manure spreader because I think about Guse when I need to consider the initial, and primary place that manure originates and is spread therefrom.
In 1980, at SP’s engine service training center, a colleague who went on to be an investigator for NTSB initiated a couple of informal brainstorming sessions about PTC same system as F Smith says "originated in Congress.
Another over-reaction by a bunch of know nothing congressmen who don’t know the A-end of a boxcar from the B-end of a gondola.
Another over-reaction by a bunch of know nothing congressmen who don’t know the A-end of a boxcar from the B-end of a gondola.
PTC is the perfect example of an unproven, unfunded, socialist government mandate forced on the freight railroads, which are responsible to make it work, and do it within an unrealistic deadline, dreamed up by a bunch of socialist idiots unable to tell the difference between a Jordan spreader and a manure spreader. (They both spread? That makes them the same? Correct?)
Meanwhile, the freight railroads are supposed to hand over for free their own costly research and development to the socialist government, owned and operated, crash a week, commuter railroads and Amtrak, with the understanding the provider class will pay for all of this. This is done with the understanding that if PTC doesn’t work, it must either be the fault of the freight railroads for providing defective technology or the provider class for not providing enough. And how much is enough? According to the socialists, it is never enough. The provider class can always provide more and the freight railroads must always be hiding something.
Jeff Guse is right on. Odds are if you disagree with him you are still supporting this run away administration!
When did this site become a political forum? I have always enjoyed reading comments by other rail fans but the bullshit that Jeffery Guse @ Illinois spreads is really getting deep. If he or she is so dissatisfied with the US and our political system, why doesn’t he or she, move on to another country more favorable to their liking.
Just another under funded federal mandate. If your gonna shove this crap and thats what it is down the railroads throat you should pay for ALL of it .
PTC most certainly did not originate in Congress. In various forms it dates back to at least the 1960s - that is, the German system I recall being implemented around that time. Within the US, the Florida East Coast Railroad implemented PTC systemwide in the 1980s.
The only thing that’s originated in Congress is a mandate to implement it. And given the absurdly high taxes local, state, and Federal governments have imposed on railroads over the last century, I hardly consider it unfair (or some dreadful attack on the “provider class” - do you have any idea, those of you who use it, how completely ridiculous and eye swiveling you sound when you use phrases like that and “socialist”) that the government should pick up the tab.
Absolutely we should have PTC.
Absolutely the government should be part funding it.
And if you’re going to pretend to be pro-freemarket, let’s see you demand an leveling of the playing field. No more subsidies for road and air users, and either they start paying over and above in taxes to fund non-transportation activity, or the railroads stop paying taxes.
The Goose, the goose, the goose is on the loose!!!
The PTC discussed at the ESTC in 1980, required more data transmission, computer performance, and interface with the railroad physical and mechanical stuff than existed at that time.
Paul H., is it possible that what you saw: various forms being implemented in the in the 1960’s, was sophisticated systems enforcing signal requirements along with speed authorization required by track occupancy and curve limits?
If so, the LIRR after two disastrous wrecks in the early 1950’s (Rockville Centre tangent head-on and Richmond Hill rear-ender) installed Automatic Speed Control which did control for those restrictions.
PTC that we BS’d about would monitor, direct, require and enforce everything from collisions through curves, grades, tonnage per operative brake restrictions, to fuel saving by setting optimum speeds which avoid highspeeds approaching a place where a delay (meeting a train, say) that isn’t going to get there 'til a while after one of the trains arrive. Authorization to occupy and move on any track, of f’ing course!
Probably we were imagining a more different, than similar, thing than the '60’s stuff?
Right, Ted T.?
Jim Norton, GET A LIFE! Jeffery Guse is nothing but a troll and you must be one as well.
@FRANCIS - I was thinking of LZB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZB) which generally furfills the requirements to be considered a form of PTC (that is, for example, it’ll pre-emptively slow or stop a train that’s approaching a lower speed or danger signal with not enough time to slow down - it’s more than a form of ATS or ATC)
I appreciate the systems being implemented by the railroads (and in the 1980s implemented by the FEC) are considerably more advanced, but these seem to be largely exercises in efficiency and/or implementation details (LZB seems to be built upon the pre-existing conventional block signalling/train detection system rather than an entirely seperate set of tracking systems) rather than changing the fundamentals. I’m happy to be told why I’m wrong though, it was an interesting learning experience finding out about LZB in the first place. Part of what I found interesting is that the differences between it, and ATS, made it clearer what the rationale was for PTC in the first place.
Trains,
If you can’t keep political rants off this board then I for one am going to stop reading them!
Seriously, you are going to lose far more readers than the few loonies you’ll gain.
Paul of Florida,
Glad to set an example with you of maintaining a civil airing of differences.
My response to your stating that LZB, of which I knew nothing (a German system…pardon me Sgt Schultz) operated in the way you described, I should have stated that the LIRR developed or adopted a system similar to what you described that the LZB did but in the '50’s; it pre-emptively controlled speed approaching speed restrictions or obstructions: read “stopped or opposing trains,cars or engines.”
The apparatus was called Automatic Speed Control, abbreviated ASC, not Automatic Train Stop, ATS, or a cab signal system requiring recognizing and physically reacting to a restrictive block indication…
ASC governed curve and diverging route and block occupancy moves.
500 miles south of Silicon Valley in the diaper age of the 1980’s, at SP’s Engine Service Training Center, we were contemplating adapting train control which could have guided a machine carrying people to the Moon and back…implausible…what?..11 years before that had happened…
BTW, maternally I’m pure German; not diss’ing Sgt Schultz or others.