Once they decided that PTC's job was to enforce the existing rulebook, it was game over...
Read this. It's worth the time and effort.
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/ptc/the-tangled-tale-of-ptc.html?channel=63
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
A good analogy to giving the signal dept PTC, would be giving MOW the job of developing mag-lev. You can be sure that it would include a set of wheels and rails so that there would be a "fall back"...
BaltACD posted that RA link eralier. I posted several extended excerpts. There was also a link to a Reters article. It's a shocking story which no one else has commented on. What gives? The ugly truth hurts?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The author is upset because the railroads didn't hire a "system integrator". Of the 40+ railroads installing PTC, two railroads did and they hired one separately for each railroad (not one for both railroads as the author had suggested should be done), They were both very small operations with a small physical plants, a limited number of trains and a limited range of train sizes . Since the major railroads have implemented lots of other large, multi-state, multi-year systems, what make the author believe that companies who have lots of experience implementing large systems, can't do the same for PTC?I'm wondering about the benefits. A major one described is moveable blocks. It allows increased capacity by reducing headways. Got that. How does that generate the benefits to freight customers of lower cost, higher reliability and greater service mentioned in the article? If a coal fired power plant gets a train every 12 hours and because of fuel conservation restrictions the train operates between 25 and 50 mph max how does it being able to operate 3 minutes behind the train ahead of it generate better service to the customer? How does it increase the reliability? If the trains can run 8 minutes apart, and the railroad says the train will be at the plant at 4 pm, and the train get to the plant at 4 pm, how is that less reliable than if the trains run 3 minutes apart and the railroad says the train will be at the plant at 4pm and the train gets to the plant at 4 pm? Feel free to substitute grain train or manifest train for coal and elevator and class yard for power plant or jack up the speed and substitute auto or intermodal train and auto or intermodal ramps for the destinations.Not saying that the benefits aren't there, I'm just struggling how "yes it can be done" actually translates into tangible benefits. On a commuter line sure, they run lots on trains on really short headways. Benefits are a no brainer. But in territory where the average headways between trains is a half hour I can't see where the difference between being able to an 8 minute headway and a 3 minute headway when the train ahead is physically 20" to an hour away is going to provide significant benefits that will be noticeable to the customer..Another bone of contention are the radio towers, which the authors seems to think were totally unnecessary. I would also be interested in finding out where those 20,000 radio towers are, are they at just intermediate signals or are they at main track switches too? If they are at switches, then even with moving blocks railroads would still need the radio towers to communicate whether the switch was normal or reversed, so that would erode some of the savings the author was describing. I also am wondering about the track circuit protection. Even if the intermediate signals were removed, wouldn't the railroads still have to break up the longer blocks between absolute signals into smaller blocks for broken rail detection? Wouldn't those smaller blocks still require some sort of communication with the PTC system to drive the cab signals? Even without the intermediate signals, wouldn't there still need to be a fair amount of radio towers be required to communicate track continuity protection? If they still did need radio towers for main track switches and track continuity, plus any miscellaneous things that might be tied into the signal system like slide fences, defect and wide load detectors, how many of the radio towers would still have to be installed?
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Wouldn't the PTC system need to know where the end of the train is for movable blocks?
NorthWest Wouldn't the PTC system need to know where the end of the train is for movable blocks?
Easy. Look up APRS (it's an amateur radio thing). Should be easy to include in an EOT.
Of course, that's one more thing to integrate into the system.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 NorthWest Wouldn't the PTC system need to know where the end of the train is for movable blocks? Easy. Look up APRS (it's an amateur radio thing). Should be easy to include in an EOT. Of course, that's one more thing to integrate into the system.
And one more thing to fail. Remember, ALL these high tech features are going to fail from time to time, either because of something in the field, something on the equipment or something in the software - either on the equipment or in the back office.
Part of my territory already has Train Control and Cab Signals - at least daily one or more trains ask for permission to cut the devices out account various faults that can only be corrected at a shop; the trains then continue goverend by wayside signals. TC & Cab Signals are technologically very simple when compared to what PTC will be.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Dave Husman: I would suggest you read the RA piece again. It answers some of your questions. Observes Ditmeyer: “The Class I CEOs made a big mistake when they all assigned the responsibility for PTC implementation to their signaling departments. Signal engineers were fearful that PTC would mean the demise of their signal systems. When they were given the responsibility for implementing PTC, they changed the architecture so that PTC would be tied to all intermediate wayside signals, meaning that more than 20,000 data radios would need to be installed. And then they also decided that they needed to replace all their old wayside signals with new ones to which they could connect the PTC system. These decisions more than doubled the cost of PTC from what FRA had estimated.
“Tying PTC to intermediate wayside signals also had an adverse effect on business benefits. It meant that existing fixed blocks, and the relay logic that controlled the signals, would remain in place. Thus, moving block, and the possibility of closer train spacing, would not be possible. That in turn meant that business benefits such as improved running times, improved reliability, increased track capacity and improved asset utilization would not be obtainable. Had the railroads implemented PTC in such a way as to obtain those benefits, their customers would receive better, more reliable service.
dehusman I'm wondering about the benefits. A major one described is moveable blocks. It allows increased capacity by reducing headways. Got that. How does that generate the benefits to freight customers of lower cost, higher reliability and greater service mentioned in the article? If a coal fired power plant gets a train every 12 hours and because of fuel conservation restrictions the train operates between 25 and 50 mph max how does it being able to operate 3 minutes behind the train ahead of it generate better service to the customer? How does it increase the reliability? If the trains can run 8 minutes apart, and the railroad says the train will be at the plant at 4 pm, and the train get to the plant at 4 pm, how is that less reliable than if the trains run 3 minutes apart and the railroad says the train will be at the plant at 4pm and the train gets to the plant at 4 pm? Feel free to substitute grain train or manifest train for coal and elevator and class yard for power plant or jack up the speed and substitute auto or intermodal train and auto or intermodal ramps for the destinations. Not saying that the benefits aren't there, I'm just struggling how "yes it can be done" actually translates into tangible benefits.
This has been discussed with reference to CBTC of various kinds. To me, the answer is quite simple, really almost trivial. The issue is not QoS for any one particular customer, it's being able to accommodate more customers, each with his or her 'acceptable' QoS, in a given timeframe.
I know we're now in a time of traffic downturn, but not very long ago we seemed to be having frequent discussions -- western portions of the Chicago line being one that comes to mind -- where tremendous delays due to insufficient track capacity (not yard issues or crewing issues) were being described. There are multiple ways to accommodate more customers with adequate QoS -- run longer trains, run trains faster, run larger or heavier cars -- but these have their own difficulties and side effects. In my opinion it is perfectly possible to run a cost/benefit analysis comparing them with communication-based PTC ... and, indeed, find where the synergies might be, and where evolving bottlenecks (yard approach handling being one very significant one, I think) will need addressing.
My father mentioned that he lost hope in the people 'integrating' NAJPTC when one of their programming efforts started tracking trains as if the head end position determined control position -- in other words, not only treated trains as having a common length, but effectively zero length. This could be worked around -- in a programmer's approach -- by reducing the granularity of a 'block' system to that ofan average train plus the effective stopping distance of a 'smart train' following another one. The immediate problem being (and I don't need special credentials to mention this) that a preceding train can stop remarkably quickly if it derails, without any particular assurance of 'smart' warning, and so unless the desire is to stop successive trains in part by running them into 'impact attenuators' composed of accordioned cars, or worry about little things like keeping following trains railed with only minimum flats on the wheels, you still have a 'block' length composed of a consist plus required braking distance.
... in territory where the average headways between trains is a half hour I can't see where the difference between being able to an 8 minute headway and a 3 minute headway when the train ahead is physically 20" to an hour away is going to provide significant benefits that will be noticeable to the customer..
That is likely to be true. But remember that PTC is intended to be a once-and-for-all solution for four separate aspects of train control 'rolled into one', and hence the equipment (including the hardware of the SBRs) will best conform to a single 'frozen' design and then minimum number of 'forks' or possible upgrade paths. So the ability to run safe three-minute headways is the object, not the practical implementation of three-minute headways in 'fleeting' wherever trains run. The point is that any locomotive properly equipped, if it finds itself on a congested piece of railroad, can run on close headway ... etc.
I can think of some other possibilities that *might* make tight-headway fleeting an advisable concern on less-than-capacity-frafficked lines -- accommodating a balance of directional traffic on single-track mains with a minimum of sidings, perhaps, or being able to space heavy traffic through areas with many grade crossings so that inconvenience or risk to road vehicles ... take your pick of which is more important to your community ... can be minimized. Those don't count as direct 'convenience to the customer' but they sure do make the work of actual railroaders running an actual railroad less aggravating, which to me is at least as significant an operations-management concern as customer satisfaction.
Personally, I have no particular hesitation in saying that absent the Congressional mandate to achieve all four of the requirements, railroads would never be spending large amounts of money to achieve them, or even feel the need to have one integrated system (of proportionally enormous cost compared to subsystems that separately achieve the four concerns separately) that does it all with the supposed high assurance that is required to make it potentially a greater danger than the problems it purports to solve. For better or worse, we're going to get the whole schmear, and if not 2018, in the shortest time that a range of politically-motivated authorities can manage or compel. The ability to run short headways comes with that -- whether we feel it would or would not be cost-effective or advisable to do that 'on its own'. it then becomes an individual railroad business decision how to use that capability ... or decide not to use it at all.
I will not be surprised to see it tried 'wrongly' both ways. And hopefully corrected, if wrong, by people with enough intelligence to realize that having a hammer doesn't mean you always pound big nails fast, but also doesn't mean you only buy a sale-price tack hammer because you think you only need brads for picture hanging, while parts of the house have carpenter ants.
Railroads have been dominated by operations folks, who have different agendas in any large corporation than the marketing/revenue side folks. There are many advantages in running fast, scheduled services in terms of gaining customers. After all, coal and oil unit trains are in decline. But because of the errors discussed in the RA article, the primary benefit has been lost permanently (probably) and at a huge, unnecessarily high cost to implement the in the manner rails chose.
The RA article is an opinion - and as we know, opinions are just like a part of the anatomy that every one has and is worth just as much to others.
Those who's ideas aren't accepted, for whatever reasons which includes reality, will always postulate that their idea was superior. Given the opportunity, they will shout it to the heavens.
PTC has become a should'a, would'a, could'a second guessers paradise.
oltmannd A good analogy to giving the signal dept PTC, would be giving MOW the job of developing mag-lev. You can be sure that it would include a set of wheels and rails so that there would be a "fall back"...
Relays and equipment sheds that can survive lightning strikes on them or the track connected to them - or "fail safely" if they are damaged - are a common example. Another is signals based on the movement of the switch portion of a turnout being controlled not by the lever or switch machine moving the switch, but instead by a separate and independent rod and circuit.
Consider what the consequences could be if the then (and now) still untested and unproven PTC technology fails in whole or in part - i.e., some of the same kinds of wrecks that have been used to justify PTC's installation. Most of those have been caused by people = operational failures, not signal failures. It would be irresponsible to throw out the level of protection of the current signal systems on the mere expectation - without extensive testing - that PTC will work perfectly on Day 1. That would eliminate a back-up level of protection, and open up the operation to yet another possible cause of wrecks.
- Paul North.
BaltACD The RA article is an opinion - and as we know, opinions are just like a part of the anatomy that every one has and is worth just as much to others. Those who's ideas aren't accepted, for whatever reasons which includes reality, will always postulate that their idea was superior. Given the opportunity, they will shout it to the heavens. PTC has become a should'a, would'a, could'a second guessers paradise.
It's an article based on interviewing several folks with more knowledge on the entire PTC process than most of us, even you. All opinions are not equal; some are worth far more than a part of anatomy or some other inane eupemism you and others use to circumvent forum rules.
I haven't made a detailed analysis here, but it seems like those involved in maintenance and operation tend to favor redundancy, while believers in new technology think it's a waste of effort. I'm reminded of something I read years ago (My field was computer maintenance):
If architects designed buildings the way computer programmers design programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy all of civilization.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Sticking with the architect analogy, if railroad operating departments designed buildings, we'd stll be living in caves.
"One test is worth a thousand expert opinions."
- Author unknown, though often attributed to rocket scientist/ engineer Werner von Braun; I had thought it was from Dick Dilworth of EMD.
Thanks, wanswheel (Mike), once again. I did see some references to Riehle as being the source of that quote, but they did not seem any more definite than some others. Now I know.
Before you say you know -- don't forget that the version with 'test' was a Riehle 'trademark' (they made test equipment so they changed the original quote to use that word). And when Mr. Johnston (who among other things could fly a four-point roll in a 707 at low altitude) put it on a sign it made it into aerospace lore in that form.
But the older and probably original version of the quote is from Robert H Mathies - "One experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions" -- and that dates from way earlier, as I believe Mathies died in Civil War times...
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C02E3DA1E3AE533A25750C2A96E9C94679ED7CF
wanswheel
And, for those who cannot tell the differemnce between an "f" and an "s" that is not at the end of a word, look for the lack of a crossbar on said "s." The printing of said "s" has changed in the last three hundred or so years.
Johnny
oltmannd Once they decided that PTC's job was to enforce the existing rulebook, it was game over... Read this. It's worth the time and effort. http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/ptc/the-tangled-tale-of-ptc.html?channel=63
Don Oltmann (someone who knows) posted this in 2015. Worth revisiting.
Not a fan of PTC just like many other workers. The screen showing the data is a constant distraction. instead of looking straight ahead down the trk, your attention is pulled to the screen and it it difficult to take eyes away from it. This is just like the constant scroll on the bottom of tv at home. Again that is a distraction that takes eyes away from what is happening on the big screen. (A fixture to that is placing duct tape across the bottom of the screen to blot out the crawl info). PTC is even starting to show up in older switch engs. The screen on the left side sits at an angle just a few ft from where the brkmn sits. In addition this bright screen at night is a headache in the making. The location of the screen blocks the view looking out the windshield. Only through the frontdoor window can you see what is in front of the train. I guess the powers to be have the opinion that what is displayed on the PTC screen is more important that what one can see to the front. Wish PTC was not here but it is, its not going away and just like everythig else, learn to live with it.
Modeling the Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the PennCentral era starting on the Cleveland lakefront and ending in Mingo junction
Have you mentioned that to any superiors?
With respect to railroads having a future, if PTC is this difficult, is self-driving and automatically convoying trucking really "right around the corner" as often claimed?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
ruderunnerHave you mentioned that to any superiors?
We don't have PTC up and running yet in my area. We do have a couple of energy management systems, one of which has a display close to what PTC will have. After every run we are supposed to give feedback, good or bad to the powers that be. One system requires a lot of attention. I've mentioned that in the feedback. That every time it beeps at you to prompt an action, you have to look at the screen to see what action the system wants you to take. Sometimes that means looking at the screen a lot more than looking out the window.
Jeff
Paul MilenkovicWith respect to railroads having a future, if PTC is this difficult, is self-driving and automatically convoying trucking really "right around the corner" as often claimed?
As with anything in this world - The Devil is in the Details! Details! Details! Details! Those pesky details! If it wasn't for the details, perpetual motion machines would be on the market yesterday.
I have begun to wonder if the real solution to all of this would have just been a vision system as is begin developed by MobilEye and a few others for automobile lane keeping control right now. They can now read signals aspects and signage, and could easily figure out which track the train is on with poor GPS reception and communicate back to the main-office for warrants. Even in a non-signaled yard or a long siding it could enforce civil speed restrictions when running forward against bumping blocks and the occasional loose car.
But they are non-vital, not fail-safe. But a PTC system tied back into the old fixed block still leaves many holes in the system particularly at low speeds.
So here is the solution, have the brotherhood fund these units as a "ghost engineer" in the cab, particurally for the miles of terminal and dark track that will remain.
Everything stays confidential within the unions and they have a hand in development. The chipsets can fit within a notebook format or smaller.
BaltACD Paul Milenkovic With respect to railroads having a future, if PTC is this difficult, is self-driving and automatically convoying trucking really "right around the corner" as often claimed? As with anything in this world - The Devil is in the Details! Details! Details! Details! Those pesky details! If it wasn't for the details, perpetual motion machines would be on the market yesterday.
Paul Milenkovic With respect to railroads having a future, if PTC is this difficult, is self-driving and automatically convoying trucking really "right around the corner" as often claimed?
Maybe you and I speak a different language?
The problem with perpetual motion machines is in a hard physical law "Conservation of Energy." OK, Einstein wrote "E=mc^2", matter got converted into energy, and big booms happened, but at least that energy came from somewhere instead of from nothing. But apart from nuclear reaction converting matter into energy, perpetual motion machines are not a matter of pesky details. To say that is to suggest that perpetual motion is doable if the government gives the key people a little more time (or even a lot more time to work on details).
The problem with PTC is not the problem with a working perpetual motion. There are no laws of physics that need to be violated for it to work.
Maybe a better comparison is between PTC and controlled nuclear fusion? There is no new physics to discover with nuclear fusion, everyone says it is "just around the corner", but it is always 15-20 years away. Nuclear fusion is awash in details. Such as the scientists know how to build a fusion power plant right now by scaling up their fusion experiments that don't yet achieve "break even", but the plant would be many times the size and expense of the known fission-type atomic power plant, and fission atomic power at present is hopelessly uneconomic.
Maybe PTC is impossible in that it would require Artificial Intelligence to account for all of the contingencies of where a train needs to be stopped? Maybe the specifications for PTC make it an "NP-hard" computer programming problem, which is a term of art among computer scientists of a problem lacking an exact solution in a reasonable time even with the fastest computers foreseeable in the future? Maybe PTC is impossible in the way that replacing the current, creaky computerized Air Traffic Control system is impossible because there are too many cooks stirring the pot drafting up rules and specifications that it is supposed to meet?
But saying that we don't have perpetual motion machines on account of pesky details is claiming that we will have perpetual motion once enough time goes by that all the details get worked out, of which scientific opinion (yes, opinion because there can always be some new discovery) claims will never happen.
Maybe in your line of work saying "PTC is like perpetual motion" means something to people and settles an argument. In my line of work, saying "PTC is like perpetual motion" only gets the arguments started. In my work community, people worry a great deal about being precise in what we mean in such statements.
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