So what do you think? How soon will we being seeing RCL outside yards in road service?
Sam,
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Considering that not everyone within and outside railroading is convinced of RCL safety now, it’s going to be a long road to acceptance on the mainline.
There is far more to the issue than the RCL technology - the capability to run a locomotive (or any other vehicle) from afar is certainly mature. Simply monitoring the area in front of the locomotive for the obstructions poses the more serious challenge.
All of the threads on the forums that deal with train handleing have an underlying theme…that the best operators are the best because they are able to “feel” how the train is responding, and make adjustments accordingly. Slack action comes to mind…and braking rates would be right up there. It’s more than the numbers on a readout…
Ask anyone who has taken flying lessons, and then flown the Microsoft flight simulator. It is easier to land a real airplane than one on the simulator, because of the non-visual clues. It used to be called flying by the seat of your pants…and there is some truth to that, because not only do you see what is happening, you feel it with your own biological accelerometers.
Why do you think the airlines and the military go to the expense of full motion simulators for trainers? While trains only operate with one degree of motion freedom, as opposed to three degrees, I would guess the difference between a ham-fisted engineer and one who can make his train do amazing things are due to being able to respond to the feel of what is happening.
If I understand this article correctly, the idea is to replace control of the train by humans to operating by computer, with a human droid along for the ride just to make the public feel safer. Sounds like the same mentality that gave us Homeland “Security”–the agency dedicated to making Joe and Jane Sixpack feel all warm and cozy about our government’s concern for us.
I understand that Windows XP has approximately 20 MILLION lines of code (and we all know how reliable Windows PCs are); if this is true, image how much programming would be needed for a RCL. It would be interesting to see just how many lines of code would be necessary to program into a computer so the brainbox could deal with EVERY possible contingency that can occur during even normal operations, much less considering bad weather, malfunctioning equipment, etc. It’s not like an assembly robot that you can program to do a few specific funtions in a closed environment.
I can’t help but wonder what a RCL system would do about people playing ‘chicken’ in front of the train…would it go into emergency every time it detects a pedestrian on or near the tracks? Would it be faked out by a clothed stuffed dummy laying on the tracks? How would it know if it hit something? And how would it know if what it hit required stopping?
I can’t help but thinking of the sequence of events from the movie 2001, when HAL wouldn’t let Bowman back into the ship, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that. Your actions might jeopardize the mission, and I can’t allow that” (note how the computer gramatically refers to itself in the first person).
As a former Engineer, I came across some type of unique situation almost every trip, some were very minor discrepancies, some were major events, b
A typical “Class 1 Suit” (C1S) may claim that his Company has a locomotive availability of 92%, a statement which means that 8% of his power fleet is down for routine maintenance, periodic inspections, or some kind of “piston-in-prarie” failure. Reality may be closer to double that figure: 84%-available and 16% either down, or about to go down, due to an imminent “piston-in-prarie” or electrical failure.
Given the fact that so many trains run today at a bare-bones minimum horsepower per trailing ton, it takes the real skill of an expert throttle jockey to keep that train moving, especially if he or she is dealing with finicky power. It would take the development of an extraordinarily complex computer program modeled along the lines of those that learn how to play the board game of chess - and an extremely large amount of computing power to do what an experienced hogheads do by the seat of their pants.
Another question is this. What’s more economical: a train equipped with a locomotive engineer (and his wages, payroll taxes, plus fringe benefits) and the fuel he burns (at, what, $2.79-gallon?) or a train without a locomotive engineer and the fuel a computer causes the locomotive to burn? My estimate is that it’ll be a long ways off in the future before the latter becomes cheaper than the former.
If I understand this article correctly, the idea is to replace control of the train by humans to operating by computer, with a human droid along for the ride just to make the public feel safer. Sounds like the same mentality that gave us Homeland “Security”–the agency dedicated to making Joe and Jane Sixpack feel all warm and cozy about our government’s concern for us.
I understand that Windows XP has approximately 20 MILLION lines of code (and we all know how reliable Windows PCs are); if this is true, image how much programming would be needed for a RCL. It would be interesting to see just how many lines of code would be necessary to program into a computer so the brainbox could deal with EVERY possible contingency that can occur during even normal operations, much less considering bad weather, malfunctioning equipment, etc. It’s not like an assembly robot that you can program to do a few specific funtions in a closed environment.
I can’t help but wonder what a RCL system would do about people playing ‘chicken’ in front of the train…would it go into emergency every time it detects a pedestrian on or near the tracks? Would it be faked out by a clothed stuffed dummy laying on the tracks? How would it know if it hit something? And how would it know if what it hit required stopping?
I can’t help but thinking of the sequence of events from the movie 2001, when HAL wouldn’t let Bowman back into the ship, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that. Your actions might jeopardize the mission, and I can’t allow that” (note how the computer gramatically refers to itself in the first person).
As a former Engineer, I came across some type of unique situation almost every trip, some were very minor discrepancies, some
Today, computer station operators in Nevada will cause planes to take off in Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps loiter around for awhile, detect or be directed onto enemies, and take action to make former enemies of them. This can occur in proximity to innocent civilians or our own troops. The plane will then return to its base for refueling/rearming.
The complexity of those tasks and the ability to respond to situations not known at time of takeoff make this system able to be effective in situations in which just lobbying a cruise missle is not practical.
To take another example, most aircraft engineers and the manufacturers will tell you that certain planes, especially the B-2 bomber, could not be flown by a skilled pilot without the help of computers. It’s just too unstable a design.
It would be relatively easy to apply that same technology to the commercial airline fleet, especially new plane production. I can hear the cabin announcement now “Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, the weather in Las Vegas, where I am, is sunny and …”. Right, that is likely to happen soon. NOT!
I think the same situatin exists with respect to remotely controlled locomotives. It is not the technology itself that has to be developed, it is the cost of the technology as applied to both the locomotives and the rail network and the public acceptance of the situation. The railroads seem to have adopted a go slow approach to the idea, and that is what would seem to be the prudent thing to do.
Seems to me the largest problem is that trains interact with other things in their environment. Once an airplane is flying in the air, its got to deal with wind, and staying airborne. But it should avoid other airplanes. A train can’t do that. There are things that might get in the way on the tracks. There are grade crossings. There are slack run-ins and run-outs. There’s too much that the computer would have to deal with. It would have to analyze things that it thinks it might hit, and then figure out what to do when it actually hits one of those things. A slack run-in or run-out doesn’t happen in an instant. The computer would have to anticipate what the slack might do, and compensate for the problem in advance.
No matter how big/fast/good the computer is though, the simples answer I’ve heard is that a computer can’t walk back 20 cars and fix a broken knuckle or re-connect a semi-frozen air hose.
I’ll not come down for or against it, especially considering the issues already facing yard RCL work, but taking RCL “on the road” for way freight work does seem like a logical extension of the technology.
The concept of one person working alone, far from other railroad resources (ie, the other people working in the yard), doesn’t look like a good idea, though, IMHO.
…I can’t speak for what can and cannot {shouldnot}, be done by computer operated equipment on rail lines, as far as operating the equipment.
The question it brings to my mind…is a measure of safety for any crew member involved. An ongoing train movement out on the route with 2 crew members has a measure of safety {communication}, built in with 2 members on sight. Will suggested computer operated equipment do away with this bit of protection…?
I’m totally opposed to this idea, for reasons already stated and the fact that more jobs will be lost. The idea of one man alone with a train controlled by a computer is scary. What if that man has a heart attack or blacks out, who’s gonna know. Technology is good to an extent but it’s really getting out of hand.