Locomotive Engineer of the near future?

[CMStPnP]

Looks kind of like the Terminator........

https://youtu.be/XiQkeWOFwmk

 

[zugmann]

Give them a coffee cup and they pretty much look like engineers of today. 

[Flintlock76]

Robo-Caseys?    

Nah, gimme the real thing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hps6L5vS0sc  

[tree68]

All well and good until the battery self destructs...

[samfp1943]

tree68

All well and good until the battery self destructs...

 

  Seems like a couple of other issues would case some consternarion on an engineer's job.   Inaccessibility of  the nose walkway, entering and exiting the cab. Currently,doorways too small,and would they be able to judge windage when outon the walkway to relieve themselves? 

At shift changes,do they just swap their battery/computer chips?

What do the Craft Unions feel about their potential dues losses?  

How will a Company deal with rules infractions? 

Do they just  blame the Programers?   Management Heads will explode!!!  

[Overmod]

I keep trying to respond to this post, but anything I type produces a 403 Forbidden error.

It is long past time that SOMEONE at Kalmbach, I'm long past caring who, explains exactly what produces this error when posting, and what hoops we have to jump through to avoid it.  Note that this is different from the snarky 'when all our marketing optimization is in place' brushoff -- this isn't repairs to the code, it is simple instructions about how to prevent a phantom problem entirely of their making.

[BaltACD]

Overmod

I keep trying to respond to this post, but anything I type produces a 403 Forbidden error.

It is long past time that SOMEONE at Kalmbach, I'm long past caring who, explains exactly what produces this error when posting, and what hoops we have to jump through to avoid it.  Note that this is different from the snarky 'when all our marketing optimization is in place' brushoff -- this isn't repairs to the code, it is simple instructions about how to prevent a phantom problem entirely of their making.

I have also gotten the '403 Forbidden' from time to time with no discernable pattern.

[Overmod]

With some care and tedious work, I have identified the likely source of the 403 Forbidden issue: it's a nanny filter.

I used a common 5-letter expression for 'dumb mistake' that began with 'bo' and ended 'er'.  Removing that one word solved the issue.

You may recall an earlier version of the Forum software that found 'suspicious words' and replaced them with '***' -- even when the 'words' in question involved typos or breaks between typed words.  This is probably a pre-emptive way to "ensure" that such concerns can't get started in posts in the first place.

Forewarned is forearmed:

Here is the original post (which I originally stuck in the wrong thread as a reply:

How will a Company deal with rules infractions?  Do they just  blame the Programmers?   Management Heads will explode!!!

There are a couple of answers here, the first of which is that it's been well-established here on the forum that robot predecessors like TO and Leader simply don't make 'mistakes' -- so why should their telepresent replacements be held to a different standard?  Ask yourself: does management blame programmers now when some ghastly violation of train-handling procedure occurs?

 

Now, mind you, programmers can and have made some truly epic errors, including the built-in collisions on the German Netz B system and the zero-train-length howler in NAJPTC.  But as the correct way to implement Skynet is with multiple AI systems running different protocols... each with its own unique version of professional discipline and purpose... the occasional coding or requirements boner will be dealt with in the genetic algorithms alone, let alone periodic integrity and parity checking and garbage collecting.

 

While on the general subject of Skynet, I hear you beginning to muse on something that I'd have thought would be first on your list: what happens when Russian Fancy-Bear hackers gain control over the robot and send loaded oil trains careening toward the heart of Washington in Run 8?  Or they convince it to picket its owners' stockholders meetings for better operating conditions, or refuse to cross the car-inspection robot picket lines?

 

Seems to me that it’s past time we get a Don Oltmann update for 'railroading in 2080' that covers some of these potential topics.  I myself am currently working on an adaptation of an old Daniel F. Galouye SF short story that adapts some of these ideas to classic Eddie Sand-style Railroad Magazine language... all I have to do is find the text of the original story, which remains recalcitrantly absent from cheap online sources, perhaps for some dated language ("I shorted out the upright Routledge coil with a bobby pin!!").  I am resolutely of the opinion that Don can do a better 'straight' job.

[BEAUSABRE]

"

samfp1943

How will a Company deal with rules infractions? 

Simple, "No access to charging stations for X weeks" 

QED

Rule G should be interesting..."No consumption of lubricating oil on company time" ?