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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flatsville who wrote (3823)	2/12/1999 8:52:00 AM
From: Dan Hamilton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Y2K bug: The first hit Ron Corbett The Ottawa Citizen The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, in what it admits is a Y2K gaffe, has recently sent out hundreds of notices of fines for traffic infractions that, according to the government, will occur nearly 100 years in the future. ottawacitizen.com

To: flatsville who wrote (3823)	2/12/1999 2:56:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

More on railroad switching... _____________ 'I found another good CSY2K posting by Erich tonight; interesting reading... --Roleigh dejanews.com[ST_rn=ap]/getdoc.xp?AN=349794353 Author: Erich Houchens < eshouchen-@earthlink.net > Date: 1998/05/03 Forum: comp.software.year-2000 Bradley K. Sherman wrote: One wonders how the railroads ever operated without computers. Huge amounts of manpower I guess those pictures of trains from the 19th century are > part of some conspiracy by Pollyanas. I suppose you think the railroads still use steam locomotives,communicate using telegraph and have manned switch towers at each rail junction. Back in the 19th century they did all of the above and more without computers. But times have changed, the railroads today are heavily into computers....let me give you a few examples.... 1) Motive power (locomotives) There are basically two types of locomotives in use today on Americas railroads. I've divided locomotives into two the groups for the benefit of the readers of c.s.y-2 A) Dumb locomotives These are locomotives were mostly built in the 50's, 60's and 70's. You start them up, yank on the throttle and the train begins to move....nothing hi-tech about it and no computers involved. B) Smart locomotives These locomotives were built in the 80's and 90's and all of them have micro-processors on board. You start them up, yank on the throttle and the train starts to move. This is where it gets different. The on board computer using a small radar unit that looks down at the tracks determines how fast the train is moving, the grade (incline) the train is on and where or not any of the locomotives wheels are slipping. If one of the wheels is slipping the computer reduces power to that wheel while continuing to apply full power to all other wheels. On older "dumb" locomotives the engineer only got a "wheel slip" alarm which forced him to reduce power to all wheels of the locomotive. This often caused trains to stall on grades (hills) or forced the railroad to use more locomotives than were needed for other flat parts of the railroad. This is why it take two of the new high tech locomotives to replace three or four of the older dumb locomotives. Improved fuel economy and lower emissions are two other results of the high tech locomotives. The on board computers also keeps track of various locomotive sub systems and when they must be serviced or inspected (FRA). This is where the date issue comes into play. It will be interesting to see how many of these new high tech locomotives have problems after 01-01-00. 2) Control systems In the old days the movement and dispatching of trains was very much different than it is today. At each junction and crossover location a manned tower stood. In this tower a man using levers connected to rods and pulleys lined switches and cleared signals. This was all done under the instruction of the train dispatcher through telegraph and later telephones. Nowadays the old tower has been torn down and replaced with a brown or silver track side box filled with relays and micro processors. The boxes are linked to the dispatcher (sometimes hundreds of miles away) by telephone circuits, radio links or sometimes even satellites. At the dispatchers end is a computer work station showing his railroad territory on a video screen in front of him. Everything the dispatcher does is recorded (FRA requirement) and is time and date stamped. I have seen one of these logs printed out and it showed the date in the standard MM/DD/YY format. Anyone of these systems from the field locations to the dispatchers work station computer can be effected by the Y2K problem. Keep in mind that all of the above needs power and communications systems that are up and running for everything to work. Both these things are generally out of the railroads hands. Now some people at this point would say that the trains could still keep running even if the power was out and there was on way to contact the dispatchers. While this is true to a certain extent there are some major problems... Many lines are single track lines. The dispatcher using signals or TWC (non signaled railroad lines) rules via radio keeps the traffic flowing (well most of the time). Without a central authority (dispatcher) to keep everything running nothing would move. Engineers would not move a train an inch on fear of meeting another train head-on (corn field meet) somewhere. Going to a timetable system or token system would take weeks or months to implement and would greatly reduce capacity of an already overloaded railroad system. 3) Safety At one time the above mentioned "man in the tower" kept an eye on all passing trains for any defects that might cause a derailment. This was in addition to the conductor riding in the caboose on the rear of the train. Now that the towers and cabooses are all gone the railroads have installed track side defect scanners. These scanners are either linked to a radio that directly warns the train crew or tied into the dispatchers computer to give him a warning of a train defect. Once again this is all dependent of power and communications systems being up and running. Without these track side defect scanners working the railroad would have many more derailments and wrecks. 4) Car and shipment tracking. At one time there were hundreds if not thousands of clerks who's job it was to keep track of where railroad cars were and on what train they were on. Today these clerks are all gone having been replaced by track side scanners that "read" magnetic tags on each car. This information is feed directly by telephone lines to the railroads central computer. Not knowing where various shipments and cars were at anyone time would cause major problems....(some people say the UPRR does this all the time even with computers.....) One thing not directly related to the railroads computers are of course the employees of the railroads. If the Y2K problem causes major problems in food distribution, energy and communications the railroads won't be running either. Railroad employees need food to eat, gas for their cars to get to the railroad and a reliable way of getting train movement instructions. Also lets not forget that massive amounts of diesel fuel is needed to run all those trains. A Y2K problem in the oil industry could cause shortages of diesel fuel. If the Y2K computer date problem is as bad as everyone says it is then the railroads will have major problems as well. Severely impacted schedules, perhaps. Complete shutdown, no. Oh, and BTW, while I'm not a code writer, computer head or geek I DO work for a major railroad and know the major roll computers play in today's railroads. Saying today's railroads could continue to operate if the Y2K bug crashed all their computers is nonsense. That would be like saying the airlines could continue to fly if the air traffic system crashed....just use VFR's at all times, right?? --bks -- Erich S. Houchens Fort Worth, Texas Internet: eshouchen-@earthlink.net IRC Undernet #trains: RRspatch ICQ: 172674 AOL Instant messenger: RRspatch CompuServe: 73053,2234 (TrainNet only) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roleigh Martin ourworld.compuserve.com ( easy to remember alias is: webalias.com ) (A Web Site that focuses on Y2k threat to Utilities, Banks & more) To subscribe to free e-letter, fill in the form at the bottom of the page: ourworld.compuserve.com To unsubscribe, send blank subject and blank message to roleigh_for_web-unsubscribe@egroups.com Print out this Y2K brochure to give to your neighbors, friends & relatives: ourworld.compuserve.com Special Offer: egroups.com If you read my egroups.com posts online, click on "Source" (upper RH corner) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Create an e-mail group for your friends. Help & Info