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Post by class411 on Jan 24, 2023 10:02:57 GMT
I fail to see that the risk to the passenger is any worse than when they use the inter car doors whilst the train is in motion as I see happening fairly regularly on my travels. Well the difference in risk is that in the 'train in motion' case, they are merely trying to get from carriage to carriage. Foolhardy, but not particularly dangerous. Trying to de-train via a method that was never designed for that purpose is extremely dangerous - it will be even more so as any passenger trying it will have to cope with avoiding the new inter-carriage barriers. A further point is that using the doors on a moving train is almost never necessary, and thus any passenger injured shares significant culpability. In the case of a possibly frightened, confused, and panicked passenger the major fault lies with LU in not ensuring they were correctly detrained. I would have thought it blindingly obvious that 'couple of years' did not mean regularly, every two years. It's just an expression to mean on a fairly rare, random, basis. If this change goes ahead, and there is an incident resulting in staff or customer injury or death, LU will be slaughtered in court - civil and criminal. It's one of those organisations that always claim 'passenger safety is our number one priority', and the fact that they suffered a fatality and then removed a system that protected against such issues, after a change that they had implemented to ameliorate the risk had demonstrably failed, will make life very easy for whoever is prosecuting them.
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Post by class411 on Jan 23, 2023 16:12:42 GMT
You can imagine why I might be personally be concerned at the thought of this proposal, and why some of my colleagues on the District that remember my incident may also be concerned. Management can wave all the risk assessments they like, it doesn't make us feel any better. I'd previously only been considering the passenger side of this (since ASLEF were dealing with the driver side). But the idea that LU management are prepared to risk the health and safety of their staff in this way is all but incomprehensible. They may be prepared to accept the death of a passenger every couple of years as 'unavoidable collateral damage' to their cost savings, but if this hare brained scheme goes ahead it appears that there will be instances where drivers have to deal with trapped customers on a regular basis, and it's almost certain that some of these will result in assault at least, and battery at worst. The thought of some small, slightly built, driver having to deal with a couple of drunk louts whilst trapped inside a train is not pleasant. If ASLEF cave into this demand, I hope it will be on the basis that the first time a driver suffers physical injury (whilst the managers are safely sitting behind their desks), everyone that signed off on this is unceremoniously booted out of LU (with no pension). If they are that confident of their 'risk assessment', they should have to problem agreeing to that.
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Post by class411 on Jan 21, 2023 16:11:39 GMT
One person died through a train not being checked when terminating. It may only have been one person, but that person was a human being who was entitled to live a life not curtailed by some LU cost cutting exercise. He may well have had a wife and children whose lives have been ruined. Also possibly brothers sister and parents who will have to live the rest of their lives with the knowledge of this tragedy. If any LU employee could point to a procedure that could result in and LU employee getting killed, it would be acted upon. Why are passengers considered expendable?
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class411
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Post by class411 on Jan 21, 2023 15:58:03 GMT
I think this is a bit OTT. As a passenger if you don't try to detrain yourself in a stupid place you won't get hurt. Is it OK for LU to implement a dangerous procedure if it only kills people (possibly frightened, confused, or drunk people) who do something stupid? Straw man argument. Nobody suggested they did. It's just been demonstrated that they are ineffective if anyone is determined to get out of a train.
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Post by class411 on Jan 21, 2023 12:05:54 GMT
I did. I'm sorry you're struggling. (Perhaps you believe the occasional death of a deaf person or a non English speaker is acceptable if it saves LU some money.) But I would have thought it would be an easy concept to understand. People have already died as a result of LU's actions to reduce staff, one, apparently because of this very change. So they come up with some half baked 'safety' procedure (It has already been shown to be flawed: see post by Colin Advisor above). Then they try and re-implement a clearly dangerous procedure. Thank God the ASLEF have got our backs on this.
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Post by class411 on Jan 21, 2023 9:57:58 GMT
Since the Liverpool Street accident, the trains have been fitted with 'inner' intercar barriers to prevent people trying to vacate the train between cars. So it's not correct to imply no change has occurred. I acknowledge the separate concern about T/Ops being accosted by over-carried passengers when changing ends through the train. Great. So now they are just more successful at trapping a passenger in a space in which they do not wish to be. Given the fact that being intoxicated is a very good reason for missing an announcement, a half asleep drunk, determined to get out of a train, will take some containing. Senior management's view is the risk is low and they are prepared to own it. How lovely for them. I bet that will be a great comfort to the family of the last person to die in one of these cost cutting experiments. And the families of any others who die in the future. I hope that the managers responsible will be held personally liable if anyone else dies because of this (I believe a change in the law is pending to allow that). A few years in jail might help to focus the minds of others in industry who are minded to take a cavalier approach to the safety of others.
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Post by class411 on Jan 20, 2023 9:46:18 GMT
That is disgraceful.
LU kill someone by instigating an unsafe procedure and their attitude is: "We'll shelve the procedure for a bit and then bring it back again".
'Cretinous' is one word that springs to mind. 'Irresponsible' and 'callous' two more.
Of course, if you simply don't care about the deaf, non English speakers, or people wearing headphones, you're quite likely to support LU. They clearly don't.
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Post by class411 on Jan 10, 2023 17:50:54 GMT
Good lord!
It seems only a couple. Of years back that we were celebrating 150 years of the underground.
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Post by class411 on Jan 7, 2023 17:07:59 GMT
How many trips could a train do on one lot of acid?
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Post by class411 on Jan 5, 2023 12:13:34 GMT
Gauge can refer to at least three things: ... Thanks for a very clear explanation. As I was reading it I realised that I should have been well aware of the vertical element to 'gauge', because, centuries ago, when I had a model railway, there was always a model of a structure to ensure that wagons did not exceed the vertical loading gauge in the Triang catalogue. (Presumably they just left a safety margin for kinetic elements.)
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Post by class411 on Jan 5, 2023 10:35:36 GMT
... out of it's approved kinetic envelope = "out of gauge" in plain English ... "Out of it's approved kinetic envelope" sounds as if it's too hot or cold, or travelling too fast (or backwards). "Out of gauge is difficult: My first guess would have been that it referred to track that was too wide or narrow (virtually impossible given the way sleepers and fixings work I would imagine [but I'm probably wrong]). However, as from context, it clearly applies to a train, I would initially have thought that it meant that the wheels were exceeding a lateral margin of spacing error. From further context however, it seems that trains and their environment have a vertical gauge as well as a horizontal. But I don't think either qualifies as plain English. This is a problem that often occurs with technical subjects when, attempting to describe one thing, you end up having to describe a whole series of others for your explanations to make sense.
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Post by class411 on Dec 30, 2022 13:25:27 GMT
Could it have been so that large parts could be moved in and out?
If you ever wanted to murder a health and safety inspector, you could just take him or her for a tour of the insides of Sarah Siddons.
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Post by class411 on Dec 30, 2022 11:01:36 GMT
Have the seats on the Piccadilly line always been so hard? When you sit on them nowadays it's as if the moquette sits directly on top of the seat shell. I'm (almost) sure it hasn't always been like that. Still better than the instructor seat in the cab. Roll on the '24s. The seats aren't really uncomfortable. It's just that they seem unexpectedly hard when you sit down and it's always a bit of a surprise after other stock.
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Post by class411 on Dec 30, 2022 10:10:13 GMT
George Orwell, SPS? I seem to remember it being suggested it was Jacques Delors, the hardening being some kind of EU directive.... Or was that just a ferroequenological equivalent of the bendy cucumber? George Orwell was the one who came up with the idea of changing the meaning of words to disguise what's really going on. Actually, I've just realised, you could call him 'The Father of Spin'. There was a magnificent example on British Rail back in the day, when the changed a service that used to split en-route so that passengers to one destination had to get out and wait on the platform for several minutes (assuming the second train was on time). They advertised this quite significant reduction in service quality by proudly proclaiming: "We won't split on you any More!"
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Post by class411 on Dec 30, 2022 10:00:26 GMT
I was wondering whether there is a next train indicator screen. Maybe still not provided at Shepherd's Bush Market? Sorry, my brain didn't engage properly - I thought you meant an indication of which platform the train would end up in(at?). Yes, there are train indicators at Shepherd's bush and they work well. The train was described as a Goldhawke Road terminator on both the platform and the train. The driver also made an announcement. Every thing was correct and passengers were well informed. I only mentioned it because it is the only time I've ever seen this movement. (I rarely travel during the morning rush hour, so it may be more common then).
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Post by class411 on Dec 30, 2022 2:25:12 GMT
Yes but it's a bit draughtier waiting at the south end of Goldhawk Road station! Perhaps today's victim will recall whether there was a platform indication at Shepherds Bush Market and whether it was correct. What do you mean by a ‘platform indication’?
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Post by class411 on Dec 29, 2022 14:55:17 GMT
<<Thread merged - goldenarrow>>
I was going from Shepherd's Bush Market to Hammersmith, today, and the first train terminated at Goldhawke Road.
In thirty years I've never known that happen before.
Is it an unusual movement, or just one of those weird coincidences where you always manage to miss something that's quite common (or keep observing something that's relatively rare)?
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Post by class411 on Dec 29, 2022 14:51:23 GMT
Have the seats on the Piccadilly line always been so hard?
When you sit on them nowadays it's as if the moquette sits directly on top of the seat shell.
I'm (almost) sure it hasn't always been like that.
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Post by class411 on Dec 19, 2022 10:05:25 GMT
I don't think that the technology ability to read the cards or lookup numbers is relevant to why bank cards being associated with railcards isn't done. I don't know, but I suspect that the issue is security and/or regulatory related - storing bank card details is after all not something any organisation should be doing lightly. I have a recollection that there was something (I can't remember what) that TfL looked into doing when contactless was first introduced, but they chose not to do it because it would have required registering as a bank and complying with all the regulations being a bank rightly entails. Chris M is right re the whole security/regulatory minefield. At the moment TfL doesn't even need to know basic personal details about Railcard holders to add the discount to an Oyster card, and when (if?) revenue checks are done they can see at the time if the Railcard and Oyster are paired. . On the building access tangent I suspect building/site managers all wanted something slightly different that they could specify and run, and it would have had to deal with non-staff, visitors, different levels of security, varying levels of data storage and so on. Plus security at many buildings is outsourced and the company may have its own pet system. Then of course TfL Staff Travel would need to be involved... I think you are both a little confused about which regulations apply to whom. The proposed system to allow Oyster cards to be used as a general payment system came unstuck when it was realised that to do that TFL would have to be 'taking deposits' (within the meaning of the act). To do that they would have to be authorised as a bank and fulfil many onerous obligations. It was felt hat it was not worth the effort. Storing card details is NOT a problem (although you are not allowed to store the CCV). There are tens of thousands of web sites, from tiny one person operations to vast multi-nationals), that will store your CC details (again, not the CCV) if you let them. TFL would need to store less information than all these companies, and the stored information would be useless to criminals since the card dates would not need to be stored. No it wouldn't. Sorry to be so blunt, but a moments thought should reveal that that is not the case. The gate would need to access a very simple TFL database that recorded card numbers together with flags for railcard types and an expiry date. No bank or railcard database would need to be accessed. The current half baked system where one payment method won't allow one discount and one won't allow another (so you cannot get all the discounts to which you are entitled), is a mess and TFL should be sorting it out. No one has yet provided a sensible reason, technological or regulatory, why they can't.
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Post by class411 on Dec 19, 2022 9:41:16 GMT
* Unless you only ask idiots if it can be done. ** It might be necessary to make post transaction adjustments ***. *** Although with the cost of memory what it is now, it would be possible (from the chips POV)to store a couple of CC/DB numbers for every man woman and child in the UK for less than a tenner a gate. (Obviously you couldn't actually update all the gates for a couple of quid each.) Why would Banks want it added to their cards? That question does not make any sense in relation to what I posted. Nothing needs to be added to a card. That is the way Oyster cards work, not the CC/DB system.
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Post by class411 on Dec 18, 2022 16:02:49 GMT
The fact that after so many years it hasn't happened rather suggests that it isn't actually easy. Perhaps. Or that some considerable time ago, when computer hardware was a lot more expensive than it is now, someone said it wasn't feasible, and no one has ever had the nous to revisit the question since. Or it's as someone mentioned a couple of years ago in relation to driverless operation. There are those who are simply determined to find obstacles, real or imagined, to any proposed new ideas. Since we know that all current gates can read a CC/DD, check that it is extant, valid, and has sufficient credit, and can communicate that information to the the main gate mechanism, just how difficult can it be to interrogate a list of numbers and see if a specific card has a railcard attached? (Answer: not difficult at all, although it's never quite as straightforward as it seems.)
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Post by class411 on Dec 18, 2022 13:37:24 GMT
Drifting slightly, but does anyone know when we are going to be able to add rail cards to credit/debit cards (if it isn't already done). They've had a few years to sort that out now and it will be a shame if they let it remain as yet another example of failed 'joined up thinking'. I'd be surprised if that happens. Why? It's not difficult * ** * Unless you only ask idiots if it can be done. ** It might be necessary to make post transaction adjustments ***. *** Although with the cost of memory what it is now, it would be possible (from the chips POV)to store a couple of CC/DB numbers for every man woman and child in the UK for less than a tenner a gate. (Obviously you couldn't actually update all the gates for a couple of quid each.)
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Post by class411 on Dec 18, 2022 10:36:47 GMT
Drifting slightly, but does anyone know when we are going to be able to add rail cards to credit/debit cards (if it isn't already done).
They've had a few years to sort that out now and it will be a shame if they let it remain as yet another example of failed 'joined up thinking'.
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Post by class411 on Dec 18, 2022 10:33:49 GMT
At Leytonstone, it all felt a bit last minute. It was most probably down to a last minute blow out and no spare available to step in and cover it. It's not always possible to have a plan in place when something occurs without prior notice. Apparently, the government plan to legislate to make it illegal for trains to break down without giving two days notice. It will be included with the legislation to force hospitals with bed shortages to install more beds.
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Post by class411 on Nov 13, 2022 23:02:43 GMT
Maybe a better word would be 'insufficient'? (as in insufficient information)No. They definitely give out incorrect information. As well as insufficient information.
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Post by class411 on Nov 12, 2022 16:53:26 GMT
Yes, incorrect information would probably be better.
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Post by class411 on Nov 11, 2022 10:38:20 GMT
Tfl in general, and LU in particular, have a very relaxed attitude to issuing false information to passengers. I doubt that anomalies such as these would be of any concern to them.
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Post by class411 on Nov 8, 2022 18:28:01 GMT
Are any of those actually acronyms? Well, 'RAT' is. But, on the whole, that battle is on the verge of being lost. Partly because there are far more initialisms than acronyms, and partly because 'initialism' is a bit of a mouthful. And if the rule was to be enforced, you'd need TLI's* and ETLI's* *TLI : Three letter initialism, ETLI : Extended Three Letter Initialism.
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Post by class411 on Nov 6, 2022 19:04:55 GMT
A delay makes perfect sense, and explains why two co-located clocks both suffer exactly the same error. However, I don't think it's a propagation delay. It's far too big, and ' exactly one minute' seems like way too much of a coincidence. I suspect it's the pulse generation that's the problem. Given the age of the installation, this is almost certainly done in hardware. The clock is most likely six cascaded BDC counters (e.g. 74LS90) feeding six BCD to decimal decoders(e.g. 74LS32). If you take the 'zero' outputs from each decoder and nand them all together, you would get a pulse whose leading edge you could use to trigger the reset. If the minute signal was taken from the 'one' line rather than the 'zero', you would get the behaviour exhibited here. Of course, it would imply that the pulse logic had been patched onto the main circuit board, because if the whole thing was one PC it would be hard to see how just one station's master would be mis-wired. 1 minute over a long period I can't explain; I thought the thread was about BST / GMT at ShepBush [which is one hour out], and then someone added another station GlosRoad clock that I thought they were saying 1 second out - not one minute which I see after re-read. Sorry, my fault. I forgot that what I was referring to was a subsidiary comment located five posts down from the top, by roman80. I've been banging on about clocks being a minute slow since 2000 at Gloucester Road, when the thread was about BST at Shepherd's Bush.
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Post by class411 on Nov 6, 2022 10:13:31 GMT
Clock permanently 1 sec adrift even after a power cut is explainable. If there is a propogation delay to the device, then no matter what signal or pulse you send it, it will be received delayed. Once power is restored, the very next real time pulse, or resync pulse, will attempt to set the right time - but if the time offset is always 1 sec, so takes 1 sec longer than the real world, then your clock is always 1 sec slow. It is not an accumulative lag if any sync pulse is rcvd, just the same offset lag. A delay makes perfect sense, and explains why two co-located clocks both suffer exactly the same error. However, I don't think it's a propagation delay. It's far too big, and ' exactly one minute' seems like way too much of a coincidence. I suspect it's the pulse generation that's the problem. Given the age of the installation, this is almost certainly done in hardware. The clock is most likely six cascaded BDC counters (e.g. 74LS90) feeding six BCD to decimal decoders(e.g. 74LS32). If you take the 'zero' outputs from each decoder and nand them all together, you would get a pulse whose leading edge you could use to trigger the reset. If the minute signal was taken from the 'one' line rather than the 'zero', you would get the behaviour exhibited here. Of course, it would imply that the pulse logic had been patched onto the main circuit board, because if the whole thing was one PC it would be hard to see how just one station's master would be mis-wired.
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