If the judgment of the engineer takes precedence, this can work. If the suits insist that Com Pewter is supreme, it will fail.
The Navy recognized this long ago. Rarely does the ship run in auto. The Aegis weapons system is capable of tracking and engaging “many” separate targets, air, surface and sub, automatically, but in all my time at sea, I never saw “Otto” enabled. Always, the crew fought the ship.
The judgement of the engineer always takes precedence, after all you can’t run the computer off. These are job aids as they say…
Ryan Faulk said:
The judgement of the engineer always takes precedence, after all you can’t run the computer off. These are job aids as they say…
See Craig’s post…
Ryan Faulk said:
The judgement of the engineer always takes precedence, after all you can’t run the computer off. These are job aids as they say…
Well Ryan, I’m not sure of your background but when I worked as locomotive engineer the computer was never wrong. If something went wrong it was the engineers fault. No judgement on the engineers skill level or ability, but you where told to ‘follow the rules’. If you made a simple mistake it was YOUR fault, professional judgement wasn’t worth a grain of salt.I got dinged a few times for powerbraking, but the reason I was powerbraking was to not break a knuckle because of bad train makeup…
As BuNSniF believed 100% of accidents were preventable…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-yell.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-undecided.gif) So when it comes to PTC and trip optimizer, the computer is never wrong, your wrong. Heck, BuNSniF used to give out ‘fuel’ rewards ($50 gas card) for engineers that ran ‘fuel efficient’. Ironically that also meant that you never went about notch 4, and you got OT every trip… Those fuel savings where sure saved with all that OT that got paid.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-money-mouth.gif)
Vic Smith said:
Craig hit on one the serious problems, the computer controlling the train and not the judgment of the engineer. I forsee alot of foul ups liked stalling on grades when the computer orders a throttle down because from what I understand the systems doesn’t really take terrain and loads into consideration. Gonna be interesting.
Worse yet, it could actually cause a crash if the computer controlling the train screws up.
Vic Smith said:
Craig hit on one the serious problems, the computer controlling the train and not the judgment of the engineer. I forsee alot of foul ups liked stalling on grades when the computer orders a throttle down because from what I understand the systems doesn’t really take terrain and loads into consideration. Gonna be interesting.
Vic,
Interesting that you mentioned stalling on grades, because just last week BNSF experienced a PTC failure on Steven’s Pass, and it such down the Hill for hours until enough people could get it troubleshooted. This is what the Hill looked like after last weeks possible PTC failure (not publicly confirmed). The screen shot is from ATCS monitoring (pretty cool railfan network that allows this)
And it slowly cleared up…
Small things like this add up… Especially when the Tunnel requires a 30 minute flush after each train.
Ray Dunakin said:
Vic Smith said:
Craig hit on one the serious problems, the computer controlling the train and not the judgment of the engineer. I forsee alot of foul ups liked stalling on grades when the computer orders a throttle down because from what I understand the systems doesn’t really take terrain and loads into consideration. Gonna be interesting.
Worse yet, it could actually cause a crash if the computer controlling the train screws up.
Computers controlling a train… What could possibly go wrong? (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)
This all very interesting. It seems it may be the ground work for automated trains.
An engineer friend described the whole thing to me in laymen terms. The engineer is a teenager who can’t count change and the loco is a cash register. What happens when the register breaks?
T
A bit of sarcasim, the computer cant be fired so it does no wrong…
On my road, trip optimizer does run the train, the engineer is asked to match ocasionaly. It throttles up down and works dynamics, It does not use air. Most engineers like it though when it works good as its basicaly cruise control. That being said it does not account for Load/Empty status and posistion of cars so it only works as good as the train is built and there usualy built to the very minimum the rule book. It has alot of problems on it own before PTC and has a bad habbit of getting itself in a bind and throwing it back to the engineer at the last seconed and the worst possible time. For example track speed is 50 with temporary 25 ahead. Auto control sets up dynamics late and runs them up to d8 and about 500 ft from the 25 it starts hollering manual control while still doing 28-29.
Craig, its the same on the otherside of the country, Common sense has no place on the RR and sadly thats all you need to be good safe and effcient at the job. But thats the way they want it, if investors really new how there money was being spent…
And as for PTC, well its a work in progress and i dont think it will ever be %100. Theres just too many varibles, when i hired out the people training me used to say you learn something new everyday. You truly do, no one trip or train is ever the same.
