Airplane separation rules landing and take offs are not all cut and dried. It all depends on the preceeding airplanes speed, gross weight, wind conditions. Tail winds present some more difficult rules. Cross winds can either affect depending on velocity and direction. Stronger winds 10 - 15 knots can make it easy for closer separation. Following a jumbo jet can increase separation requirements due to wake turbulence. That is a reason for not adding a larger aircraft to a to / landing mix actually slows down capacity. oi
It would bring a cop to your car, but not necessarily move the train… and if you were a guy saying you are pregnant, it might not bring a cop at all to you car, but a detective and a cop in uniform to your house to arrest you for filing a false report.
One night at about 2 AM, i heard a lot of commotion at the church behind my house and when I looked I could see people with fiashlights carrying things out the back door of the church to a van. I called the police to report a possible burglary… I was told to go ask them what they were doing. I asked if I should take my shotgun to protect myself in case they were hostile burglars.
I was told that if they were not burglars, then I was subject to arrest for filing a false report.
I told her that if I did have a gun, I’d go shoot the lot of them and let the police morning shift come clean up after they had their donut and coffee. Then I hung up and went back to bed.
I don’t know if the place was burglarized or not, and I don’t know if the police came to check it out or not. I did my civic duty and went back to sleep.
BaltACD
We had an incident on our train this summer. We pulled into one of our ‘Bike Aboard’ stations to take on a few cyclists and their bikes. This happened to be one of our more scenic stations. At the station was a wedding party taking photos. As the bike handler was loading bikes the wedding party climbed onto the locomotive for photographs. We were running an Alco road switcher and they were on the catwalk on the side away from the engineer. I was off the train by one of the traps but I could not see them on the catwalk- nor could our conductor or engineer. The bike handler saw them at the last minute and chased them off before the train started moving.
What would you have done if you had spotted them on the locomotive at the station? What would you have done if they we
By now the signals and track circuitry should have been upgraded to show that any long train is interfering with the grade crossing or setting off the grade crossing signal.
And just who is the ‘upgraded circurtry’ notifying?
The same people at the dispatching control center that are setting off grade crossing signals at each crossing, even though the train passed through the area over 10 minutes earlier.
There is no interaction between Dispatchers and road crossing protection. Crossing protection is activated by circuitry that is germaine to the individual crossing. Crossing protection works on both track that is signalled and track that is not signalled.
In signalled territory a trains location is identified by it’s activation of a Track Occupancy Light. Depending upon the spcifics of individual territories, the single TOL may cover a territory of 1/10 of a mile - or it can cover 15 miles or more. Each territory is different.
Dispatchers will report to the Signal Department when a train is known to have departed the territory of a particular TOL and the TOL has stayed on. When these happenings are investigated by the signal maintainer they will most likely find one of two conditions - 1. a bond wire that electrically connects rails at a rail joint has broken. 2. a broken rail is found.
As noted by Balt, the dispatcher has nothing to do with the crossing protection. With PTC, etc., going as it is, it won’t be long before dispatchers may be able see a status on a given crossing protection, but an ongoing display on the dispatchers board would contribute to information overload…
Crossing protection that activates when there’s no train in the circuit is usually the result of some flaw in the sensing circuits. It’s a battle the signal maintainers constantly fight, especially in the northern climes where highway salt is part of the mix.
A slight correction on my opening statement - the dispatcher does get involved when a problem is reported with a crossing - false activations or activation failures. Those must be related to crews operating in the area.
circa 2013 Paragould, AR a certain grade crossing was in very bad order for civilian roadway traffic. MTM was contacted but would not call back. Officials were contacted and information obtained. Rough grade crossing desk was notified and an incident # obtained. Long wait, several months. Return call to Grade Crossing Desk: “Oh, our MTM said it was a private spur and not the RR” Of course the MTM lied to his own company employees. Result. I was arrested for trespassing and a permanent restraining order. By the way, I had consulted the mayor before any actions to not get the city in trouble with the RR. After $5K in lawyers fees and going to city hall in handcuffs. Don’t mess w/RR even if you are right. My witness in the trespassing incident was in court for my defense and RR didn’t show up to accuse me and they be found lying. I think the legal term for them (RR accusers) is “abuse of process”. With “official titles” they convinced the Judge and Prosecuting Attorney…then didn’t show up in court…so much for “doing the right thing” endmrw1105161307
reference my troubles “Circa 2013” I am now 70 years old and have followed trains since being a teenager. Climbed up on the local and rode while they were in town. During retirement have been a crew carrier drive and would say gained much respect from crews as I helped any time I could. Such a relief to be where I wanted to be (RR ROW) and it was legal. NOT NOW endmrw1105161320
PTC - as my carrier is implementing it - does not change the CADS display screens in either signalled or dark territory. PTC is supposed to be invisible to Dispatchers and it only applies to trains and/or authorities in the field.
In our CSDS system, Dispatchers receive a ‘Critical Alarm’ whenever the limits of PTC authorities (signal or Track warrent) are breached.
Understood. My point was that it’s possible that grade crossing protection may be able to be monitored remotely. How that information would be used is up for grabs.
Assuming a negligible rate of false information (ie, virtually no electronic reports of activation failures or false activations), it might be possible to alert the DS of a potential problem (with the possibility of information overload). Or (and more likely) the notification could go somewhere else (the RR police or other number that gets called by the public) for appropriate action to resolve the problem.