' Track switches ARE endangered.
____
'From:
bobmacd+NNcsy219980911@netcom.com
vr 22:56
Subject:
Track switches ARE endangered.
There has been some conception on this newsgroup that railroad track
switches have some serious compliance problems; that they cannot be
operated manually anymore; and that the control systems are all non-
compliant.
I had come on here arguing that this was not so; that the people saying
these things knew very little about railroads; and that nearly every switch
in the land was either manual or dual-control (meaning two handles: one
to switch it between power and manual control, and the other to throw the
switch when in manual.) I even went around looking at switchstands and
snapping pictures, just to confirm this. (And the discussion never
traveled to the fact that CTC technology is not computerised, that all
of the computerized CTC overlays in the RR dispatching centers were
initially installed in the 1990's with planned service extending well
past 2000, and anyway most are Unix-based.)
Looks like I was wrong. In the library last night, I read an article
in the _Oakland Tribune_, as part of a multipage, front-section, 3-day
series on Y2K, where a senator said there was not one single manual
switch left in the country and the industry is in trouble. Damn.
I must have been wrong. There it is, right in the paper. Who'd'a thunk.
Well at least Y2K is becoming front-page news. That's good, maybe they'll
save some of the critical systems.
-Bob, so I guess those handles on the switchstands do something else now... |
