I believe it has been proven by the results that those in charge of the Denver debacle have all the common sense of humanoids trying to have sexual congress with a rolling confectionary - thus their problems with their toy train outfit.
(The problem is that the same players and hardware are having issues just like Denver in northern CA with the DUMB project (formerly known as SMART)…scary
The Denver A & G lines just happened to be the first to use the unproven technology, bugz and all. While the tall buildings playing hell with the timing coming out of Denver Union Station (ruining predicted arrival data), there are other issues as well… Had Light Squared happened with the sale of radio frequencies around the GPS bands (which surveyors yelled foul over and continue to make noise because the technocrats didn’t get it and still don’t), the issues would be worse.
(*) Denver RTD’s woes and federal intervention can be traced back to what happened 20 years ago at McLean IL and what happened when you mix new technology, a forgotten jumper wire, exhausted maintainer and insufficient precautions that resulted in two fatalities…
Whoever thought that GPS could co-exist with adjacent band terrestial transmiters obviously has no experience with real world radio equipment. Unfortunately this included a guy who worked on GPS, but apparently had more experience with theoretical system performance than real system performance. Not to mention sources of IMD that could cause a clean signal to bleed into the GPS band.
What most people don’t realize is that actual GPS signal is well below the thermal noise for anything less than a highly directional antenna.
- Erik (formerly user “erikem”)
Everything works on PowerPoint!
Copy and paste is your friend.
Back when I was actively railroading, I had a couple of incidents with crossing signal failures. One just down the road from us-signal on the CSXT line would regularly fail to activate. I reported it multiple times and finally had it with the railroad police. The last time I reported it, I informed the desk officer that the crossing was a public danger in its current situation, that there was a large public housing development on that street and that the line of sight from the crossing was compromised by a sharp curve and trees to the north of the crossing. My last words were to the effect was that it was only a matter of time before a fatal accident would occur at that crossing. Fortunately, that was not to be the case.
Literally the next day, I saw a signal maintainer working on that crossing. He was there for at least three days in a row working on it. Never had a problem with that crossing after that.
Another time, I had to deal with a signal failure on a major crossing on the Norfolk Southern main line. I was preparing an excursion train for a trip the next morning and decided to go to dinner with a fellow crewman at the local Cracker Barrel. For whatever reason, we decided to drive on the surface roads towards the mall, knowing full well that we might get held up by a train. We did. What we saw after the train had passed was very scary.
After the train passed, the gates rose but did not go up far enough to shut off the flashers and bells. Worse, it w