All over the news today is that Norfolk Southern is having signal problems affecting VRE Manassass line. Anyone have more details?
VRE trains are cancelled and late. Some are running at restricted speed now.
No details on the specific signal problems on the Manassass line, however, when Dispatchers cannot clear a Absolute signal for a train, the train is given verbal permission to pass the Stop Signal and the train will then proceed at Restricted Speed until the next more favorable signal indication is received or until the next Absolute signal is encountered, which if the Dispatcher cannot clear it, the process is repeated. Trains are moving, albeit very slowly.
VRE says it was a division-wide signal outage. It was resolved at about 0930 Friday.
I believe it is the NS Piedmont Division.
Does VRE use the Washington to Atlanta Main Line or is it the Washington District line?
Any details on the outage would be very much appreciated. Thanks!!
According to reports I received, it was systemwide on NS. It started at 06:50EST and ended around 09:30. The GPS?/satellite link was supposedly lost, crippling the dispatching system. Any mainline with remote dispatcher controlled CTC was halted with all trains having to stop wherever they were. This in turn caused trains to go on the law all over the place! It took all day Friday to clean up the mess on the Georgia Division. I can only imagine how long it took elsewhere!
[quote user=“anb740”]
So if this is what happened does this indicate a placing of all NS’s eggs in one basket? I have previously had some thoughts on signaling modifications so this problem can be mitigated some how and will post a thread sometime.
Did this outage also cause delays on AMTRAK and other commuter lines NS dispatches?
It had nothing to do with GPS. NS does not use GPS to dispatch trains. This sounds like a train dispatching system failure where the hot back-up system failed to do it’s job.
Yeah, the GPS aspect seemed like a non sequitur . . . [:^)]
A failure is always the ‘Achille’s heel’ of the system-wide ‘One Big/ Central Facility’ doctrine. Recall about 25 years ago when a huge Soviet naval ammo dump up near Murmansk someplace exploded . . . [:-^]
But I thought NS had - uniquely, among the Class I’s - pretty much kept its dispatching de-centralized down at the Division level. That should have compartmentalized the damage and limited its extent - no ? Or was there something else that went wrong and still screwed-up multiple offices ? Inquiring minds want to know . . . [swg]
- Paul North.
1. Don: this sounds like the NS dispatching system uses a single node to route all dispatching functions instead of being truly de centralized? So if all dispatching functions go thru say (Atlanta) then to the various CPs then a failure of that node may (?) be the reason for this system wide failure.
2. Otherwise maybe each dispatching office going directly to the various CPs of its territory would mean another kind of failure (maybe software upgrade?)
I lean toward #1 but have no definite knowledge but the ability for other offices to take over one or more dispatching positions may be an indication?
1. Don: this sounds like the NS dispatching system uses a single node to route all dispatching functions instead of being truly de centralized? So if all dispatching functions go thru say (Atlanta) then to the various CPs then a failure of that node may (?) be the reason for this system wide failure.
2. Otherwise maybe each dispatching office going directly to the various CPs of its territory would mean another kind of failure (maybe software upgrade?)
I lean toward #1 but have no definite knowledge but the ability for other offices to take over one or more dispatching positions may be an indication?