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Post by zbang on Jun 17, 2022 15:54:45 GMT
How are they? If not already up North*, I have a chance to take one in late July, but I'm not sure I want to spend the time in London just for what looks like only a two hour tour. (It's all a matter of what's open and steaming when.)
*touring restored mills and operating stationary engines, and the Keighley & Worth Valley Ry
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Post by zbang on Jun 9, 2022 17:09:37 GMT
Given that at one time the signals were flags held by a person, the term could well go back to that.
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Post by zbang on Jun 8, 2022 16:14:28 GMT
'Stick' is a Southern thing. London doesn't exactly qualify as North, and IIRC the word was used around the Underground at one time.
Anyway, might be one of those things whose origin is lost to the mists of time.
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Post by zbang on Jun 7, 2022 22:57:34 GMT
Hitting the spindle/stalk thing, aren't signals sometimes called a 'stick'? As in "held at a red stick".
Fascinating discussion, 'ere.
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Post by zbang on May 23, 2022 17:34:51 GMT
"Non-stopping" isn't the sort of thing most of The Public would understand, let along most news reporters (and especially those who don't cover transportation).
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Post by zbang on May 20, 2022 17:13:23 GMT
Is it (important)? Staff has a difference with management, which management ignores. Staff then publicizes that difference hoping outsiders will press management. If that pressure doesn't occur, staff performs a job action while also publicizing exactly why they're acting. Often mgt now sees a reason to work on a solution.
The customers are simply the third leg of the stool.
Anyway, -IF- the earlier allegations are true (manager forcing out a disabled staffer), then as a customer I'd be more than a little perturbed.
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Post by zbang on May 10, 2022 17:40:11 GMT
like the information roundel sign I saw with the LED strip saying "NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE" (I have a photo of that somewhere).
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Post by zbang on May 5, 2022 15:47:27 GMT
Is that 800v from ground or from the negative rail? (Neither would be good, one is a lot less bad.)
Either way, it's hard to do a spike like that out of what's probably a 6-pulse bridge rectifier unless there's some parasitic capacitance occasionally resonating.
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Post by zbang on Apr 28, 2022 15:00:20 GMT
My preference, of course , is to put the actual URL in place of the "click here" message so it's simple to cut/paste into the browser address line; some of us don't want to touch viglink (it has been a virus vector).
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Post by zbang on Apr 27, 2022 15:24:12 GMT
What I meant was that I saw -no- link in the original message, not even one of the mangled viglink things (which are an abomination and IMHO unnecessary; this is the only forum I read that does that sort of thing).
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Post by zbang on Apr 26, 2022 23:37:49 GMT
Link?
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Post by zbang on Apr 22, 2022 16:34:35 GMT
being short tripped with the possibility of a cut away,
Untangling the language- does that mean having the train stopped short of the planned termination point and the driver being sent home? Or something else?
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Post by zbang on Apr 19, 2022 16:32:08 GMT
It certainly makes some sense to basically wall off the disused tunnels, but if they're still hollow they need inspection and probably water pumping (hence access by the Urban Trespassers' Society). I ask because of the earlier reference to "backfilling" and whether old tunnels are ever completely filled or just partially; the link above suggests a complete fill.
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Post by zbang on Apr 17, 2022 17:09:03 GMT
As a digression from the "Bank Branch closure" thread-
There was a reference in the project chart to "back-fill tunnels" etc, which I assume is that those tunnels will have no possible further use and will abandoned and then filled to both prevent re-use and to support the earth above. I also assume they're stripped of pretty much everything usable, even for scrap.
How are they filled? Dirt or hoggin fill will settle, leaving an airspace at the top. Foamed concrete would cost a bit. Gravel would cost even more.
Depending on location, they could also fill with water. Is that a consideration?
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Post by zbang on Apr 10, 2022 21:12:35 GMT
Not sure ow much would be gained by a higher positive rail even with a narrower tube, a sectional drawing might answer that.
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Post by zbang on Apr 2, 2022 18:02:01 GMT
I believe it's down to the back of house capabilities when applied to existing Oyster cards. I think you're right on that, it would be the different process flows of stored-value in the card vs accumulating transactions and batch-processing them all after hours. I expect that it would be possible to simply use the Oyster as a token, like a touch card, but that would require a much larger back-end to process the transactions.
IIRC, the Oyster back-end is operated under contract by to ?? and the touch-card PAYG directly by TfL. Yes/no?
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Post by zbang on Apr 1, 2022 17:08:59 GMT
While the chip in Oyster cards only has 16 charts (0-15), I can't see how that would directly affect PAYG since that (ought to be) just clocking the entry/exit points and calculating it later...unless the O system does that in the exit gate and is zone-based instead of point-to-point based.
(z dived further down the rat-hole of transit payment systems...)
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Post by zbang on Mar 31, 2022 16:15:41 GMT
BTW, searching "seeberger escalator london" turns up a fair few pages, although none of the ones I checked had much depth to them.
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Post by zbang on Mar 31, 2022 16:13:54 GMT
If something isn't unsafe, affecting service, or damaging equipment, the repair crew(s) might not get to it for a while.
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Post by zbang on Mar 30, 2022 17:38:49 GMT
Interesting, there's another rat-hole to follow.
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Post by zbang on Mar 23, 2022 17:35:47 GMT
As far as I can tell, a great many people* everywhere don't connect the idea of urban rail transit with having a timetable at all. The behavior is a simple "go to the station, a train arrives sooner or later". Their only concern is how long they'll have to wait for the next one. People who think about it more may get to "If I leave the house at 7:55, I should be at the station just before the next one arrives." I suspect that this behavior holds when there are usually more than 6-7 trains/hour.
*in more urban areas; those in less-frequently-served areas often know "there's a train a little after 9:10 and the next isn't until around 9:45" but they don't know or care that those trains are at 9:13 and 9:43
(I know from my last visit that I never consulted a timetable, only either the google planner or just went to the station and waited. Granted that I don't think I went outside zone 4 except by main line trains.)
This really gets into human behavior, not train scheduling.
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Post by zbang on Mar 21, 2022 16:53:41 GMT
(without much thought involved) Would it be difficult for the LU signs to say things like "Delays at Eastern stations" or "Delays North of Seven Sisters" instead of "Good service"? (I'm not sure there are enough characters for that, maybe "Delays - East"?) There's also a point from above about gaps vs "good service", there's a decent argument to be made that if the service is usually 20tph and there are only enough on the line to count 10, that's not good service.
ETA- political and equipment seem to be a limiting factor in what can be delivered to the platforms; both should be irrelevant to Internet displays.
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Post by zbang on Mar 19, 2022 0:38:10 GMT
That's a quintessentially English failure.
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Post by zbang on Mar 17, 2022 23:03:02 GMT
... I'll probably go barking mad! But only on the District or Overground.
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Post by zbang on Mar 17, 2022 1:49:53 GMT
A friend who works for San Francisco's Muni railway posted a picture of him holding a small dog with the comment-
Some days my job is interesting. Meet “Line Delay”. This naughty boy ran into the Twin Peaks Tunnel at West Portal. I followed him on foot all the way to Forest Hill Station, and caught up with him under the inbound platform. (FH is about a mile from WP)
How often does this sort of thing happen in the greater TfL system? Not often at all on Muni, but then there are only a few tunnels (sigh).
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Post by zbang on Feb 12, 2022 17:33:00 GMT
Hardly 'problems'. If you don't have a synchroscope, you can do it with three light bulbs! Sure, if you have them. How many small converter sets do? Anyway, as tom says, it's sectionalized so if the problem exists, it's probably small. (Off to ask some electrical engineers I know about this....)
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Post by zbang on Feb 12, 2022 1:34:03 GMT
Oh ya, assuming the "signal main" is carried continuously through along the entire line with multiple sources, that gets close to being an infinite bus source and causes all generators feeding it to run in lock-step (at the same frequency & phase). That then brings all kinds of interesting problem with connecting a new generator to the bus- have to have the frequency and phase correct or substantial mechanical stresses can occur. (This from my knowledge of power generation, not of the LU signaling systems.)
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Post by zbang on Feb 11, 2022 16:50:20 GMT
The substation frequncy changers (rotating machines) were (are) powered by induction motors, It seems a bit odd to me to use non-synchronous motors in that application- changing frequency, unless you're not concerned if the output is stable and not really on-freq. If that's the case, so be it- the 125Hz nominal becomes more like 120Hz, a seemingly small difference but could affect the operation of some resonant devices (e.g. vibrating reeds).
A shunt-wound DC motor is often called a "constant-speed motor" and has rather good stability unless the supply voltages drops significantly.
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Post by zbang on Feb 6, 2022 17:39:23 GMT
Couple of things- Many people would consider 125Hz to be an "audio frequency" (very close to B2 at 123.47Hz, nine steps below middle-C).
125Hz is a 10 pole machine turning at 1500 RPM.
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Post by zbang on Feb 4, 2022 23:16:24 GMT
A few readers seem to have missed the connection from "Anyone got a bucket and sponge?" (suggesting that random people start manually washing the trains) with the idea of B-a-J (slightly less random people manually washing cars, etc) and that washing a train is a bit more work than the Scouts would have taken on. It should also have been apparent that neither is going to happen.
And I still occasionally hear older people derisively refer to menial or simple work they don't want to do as "Bob-a-job work" ("Sweep leaves off the pavement? That's bob-a-job work, get someone else to do it.").
Back to the original, ISTR that more than one depot was set up so that trains either leaving or entering almost always passed through a washer. Sounds like this no longer true for Northumberland Park, what about other depots?
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