From the magazine rack.........

I recently stopped in at Borders Books to look for the October issue of TRAINS. Not only did I find it but also the new issue of The RAILRAOD Press. While I like TRAINS magazine, enough so that I have put in a subscription for it, the publication The RAILROAD Press continues to just knock my socks off.

Published quarterly issue number 67 covers October, November and December of 2005. I don't know the folks that print this magazine but I can tell you that they LOVE trains and that they take a great deal of pride in their work and product.

This is the second issue of the magazine that I have purchased off the rack in a book store and both have been outstanding. The photography work is nothing short of spectacular and the articles are written for someone much more intimate with the working of railroads than the novice fan writing these few words.

I remember the first few issues of Byte Magazine I picked up in the late 1970's early 1980's when I began my odyssey into the world of micro computers. A fair number of the articles were filled with terms and acronyms that left me scratching my head and trying to figure out just what they were talking about by taking them in context with the rest of the sentence or paragraph. Soon it all began to make sense and I knew that “serial port” and RS-232 were the same thing just spoken different ways.

So there was a time when if you said to me that a specific locomotive was a “2-6-2” I would have given you a quizzical look and had not a clue as to why you were calling it that. I would point out that this was not the number on the side of the train in the picture and the numbers that were there had no dashes between them. Slowly but surely I began to learn some of the terminology, the lingo of the hobby as it were. I still have a long way to go before I can carry on anything approaching an intelligent conversation with someone who really knows what they are talking about when it comes to rail fanning but I am learning. That is part of the fun.

So if you are like me and have an above average interest in trains but are a real neophyte to the wonderful world of rail roads there are several things you can do to increase your knowledge of the subject. Stop by your favorite dispenser of written material be it the local library, book store or news stand and pick up some magazines on the subject. I highly recommend TRAINS and The RAILROAD Press. Both outstanding publications. Then find others that share your passion for the hobby and find a way to get together with them. Offer to buy a cup of coffee or some other liquid libation ask a few questions to get a conversation started then keep your mouth closed, listen and learn. I have found with any hobby activity that I get involved with there is an incredible amount of knowledge and wisdom passed on by word of mouth from those that have been involved for a long period of time. Oh and don't forget to enjoy the interaction. Some of my best memories of ham radio, computers, firearms and now rail fanning are of sitting around with a group of like minded individuals just shooting the breeze. Sometime I will have to make a point to record or write down some of the stories that I have heard so that they can be preserved here on the blog. Until then keep listening and reading.

Working on the railroad

This is an article that was in a recent Info World magazine. While really an article about business and databases I found it interesting as a rail fan none the less.



Off the Record: Tales From the Front Lines, By Anonymous
September 14, 2005

I work for a large railway company, and in the past 10 years I’ve witnessed some IT catastrophes that bake my noodle. One of the worst was a $30 million project to develop a software system that controls and tracks how we plan trains, put them together, and move them into and out of our yards. Someone decided to purchase the rights to a system that was in development by another railroad, Kenosha Southern, which we would then customize and redevelop for use within our own environment. This made a perfect fit with our recent adoption of a “buy don’t build” philosophy, and would save us big money on development costs.

Or so we thought.

After a number of changes at the upper levels, an external contractor took over the job, personally billing $2.5 million over the course of the project -- and that didn’t include overtime and travel. His primary agenda seemed to be building walls around deliverables, and refusing to make trade-offs between sub-projects for the greater good of the undertaking.
To make matters worse, halfway through the project someone realized that although grain shipments made up approximately 25 percent of our revenue, no one had interviewed the grain group or had taken the time to understand the peculiarities of shipping grain. Only a major infusion of cash and a slip in deadlines allowed us to fix this, and similar problems occurred in almost all of our major lines of business. In fact, no one seemed to be representing any of the business groups involved in the requirements and development process.
Around this time we sent a few IT troopers down to KS to see what was going on. It was the last point the project could have been killed or redirected, so I checked in with my friend Michael, a savvy project-management contractor. He did an analysis comparing the functionality and cost of reinventing the system in house with modifying the business processes involved in the KS model; KS’s business processes were very different from ours. Michael calculated that if we continued with the collaboration as planned the price would not be $30 million or even $60 million. It would be closer to $70 million. The cost of developing a new system from scratch -- one that would perform the same functions as the KS system and be properly designed for our business groups -- would only run about $45 million.
Ultimately, my friend presented his analysis to the VP of IS. When he finished, the VP asked, “Have you shown this to anyone else?”
Michael, who is politically adept, said, “Absolutely not, you’re the first person I’ve shown this to.”
“Well,” said the VP, “you’d better not -- ever -- if you want to keep your job.”
To make a long story short: Our company went ahead with the original project -- and Michael was amazingly accurate. Officially the project ran $50 million, but when you add training, change management, and lost productivity the number rose damn close to the $70 million he predicted. We brought the system up over a very protracted implementation phase and are currently kicking off a project to “enhance” it. Does anyone hear $90 million?

Got harrowing war stories or tales from the trenches where IT and business intersect? Send an e-mail to OffTheRecord@infoworld.com. If we use your story, we'll make every effort to conceal your identity (and that of your company and colleagues). And don't worry — we won't rat you out to your CEO. We'll also send you an iPod shuffle for your troubles.

Metra train was 59 mph over limit

From the Chicago Sun Times

September 19, 2005
BY MARK J. KONKOL Transportation Reporter

The deadly Metra Rock Island train that jumped the tracks Saturday morning was speeding -- 59 mph over the limit -- when it smashed against the 47th Street bridge, killing two women and injuring dozens of others.

The downtown-bound train was going 69 mph when switching tracks, a maneuver restricted to 10 mph just before that viaduct, federal investigators said.
The National Transportation Safety Board's acting director, Mark Rosenker, said it's still unclear why that train switched tracks going so fast.
NTSB officials interviewed the train engineer, whom sources identified as Mike Smith, a 41-year old with only 45 days' experience taking commuters from Joliet to downtown. Smith spent 51/2 years driving freight trains for CSX and completed a six-month Metra training period on the Rock Island line.

Rosenker said he would not provide details of conversations with Smith, whom they did not identify, until conductors and a toll collector also are interviewed. Results of toxicology tests on the engineer and crew also were not available Sunday.
NTSB officials said what few details available about Smith are he is in good health, with normal vision and hearing. Smith scored a 99-out-of-100 on the Metra training exam. He did have a cellular phone with him on the train Saturday, but said he was not using it. The NTSB plans to review Smith's phone records.

A team of investigators has inspected the track, train cars and signals at the crash scene. Rosenker said the walking inspection of the track found "nothing extraordinary." Investigators also will review records of train signals, radio transmissions and information from the three "black box" data recorders.
"We have to look at event data recorder in more detail. We must also coordinate that with the signal logs, which will give us an idea of what was supposed to have happened," Rosenker said.

The recorder showed the train didn't slow down before the crossover switch, which triggered the derailment. The recorder indicated a sudden application of the emergency brake.

However, it wasn't clear if the engineer had applied the emergency break himself or whether the train induced it by "breaking apart."
The day of the incident, a trainee dispatcher was working with a fully qualified dispatcher, and NTSB investigators still need to determine which one of them issued the signal to the engineer.

About 8:30 this morning, officials will try to re-create the conditions Smith encountered Saturday by running a train at 65 mph near the crash site.
2 dead; dozens injured

So far, there is only one thing certain about the crash: Speed caused it.
"Sixty-nine miles per hour is very, very fast when you're dealing with a 10-mile-an-hour restriction," Rosenker said.

And at that velocity, changing tracks was fatal. Passengers who suffered the worst injuries, Rosenker said, were in the the fourth car of the five-car train.
After leaving the tracks, the fourth car slammed against the steel bridge wall and crumpled. The train's spinning wheels sliced through the undercarriage, fire department sources said.
"We are looking at that car . . . to understand exactly what created that fatality. Clearly the collision between the bridge and that car had something to do with that fatality," he said.

Jane Cuthbert, 22, a University of Illinois at Chicago student from Oak Forest, died on the train. And Allison Walsh, 38, of New Lenox, was rushed to Stroger Hospital, where she died from her injuries.

In all, 50 people walked away unscathed, 51 passengers suffered minor injuries and 16 were seriously or critically injured. On Sunday, 15 people were still being treated at area hospitals. Among them is a pregnant woman in her 20s who was clinging to life at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, sources said.
Smith was operating the locomotive -- which was pushing the five-car train -- from controls in the lead car, which was empty. Passengers were in three other cars, and the fifth car, the one nearest the engine, also was empty.
Just past the 47th Street bridge, the fifth car and engine separated from the rest of the train and violently skidded to a halt, throwing passengers and bolted-down chairs in other cars through the air.

That section of track was the site of a similar, though less deadly, derailment Oct. 12, 2003. The NTSB report on that accident is not complete, but Rosenker said he expects it to be completed in a few months.

That derailment was blamed on a rookie engineer, who was demoted to assistant conductor. He didn't notice two warnings to slow down before the crossover, which he went through at 67 mph.

Could take two years

Normally, Metra trains are allowed to take much of the Rock Island line straightaway between the Gresham and La Salle Street stops at 70 mph hour, and are only required to slow to a 10 mph crawl when crossing to a different track.
Rosenker said figuring out why that didn't happen Saturday will take up to two years.
"We rule things out, not in," he said. ". . . We'll get down to a point to make that final report, which will include the probable cause and recommendations to prevent this or similar accidents from happening again."

Scenic railroad packs thrills for steam fans

Many thanks to Paul, N0VLR, for the heads up on this story from the CNN web site.

CUMBERLAND, Maryland (AP) -- Deep in the Brush Tunnel, with coal smoke and steam filling the air, there is scant light in the open cab of Engine No. 734. The locomotive's large, round pressure gauge glows dimly, flanked by two bulbs barely illuminating a pair of water meters.

Follow this link for the complete story

Tickets please............

We had a great rail fan net this evening on the 146.88 repeater. What you are seeing here is a ticket stub that was given to Dennis, KB3HPC, along with a number of others from the early 1900's. Dennis was able to scan the them thanks to Jim, KB3ENC their owner. If you follow the link below you can see all of the stubs that Dennis scanned and they are interesting to look at. If you are not a member of the Yahoo discussion groups you will need to sign up in order to gain access to our file and photo areas. It is a simple and painless process.

Did I mention that Craig, KB3KBH, was out net conductor this evening? Dennis didn't make it home in time to start the net and Craig was kind enough to fill in. And he did a great job! Hope to see you all again next week on the Pittsburgh Rail Fan Net.

Link to ticket stub photos

Deal for rail dispatching system positions Union Switch & Signal as a market leader

Here is an interesting article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette of September 14th 2005. This is just one example of technology that is being implemented here in Pittsburgh.

Picking Up Speed


Wednesday, September 14, 2005
By Jim McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Union Switch & Signal Chief Executive Officer Ken Burk is making a big bet that the Pittsburgh railroad products company can boost the average speed of the nation's largest freight railroad by 2 to 4 mph.
If that doesn't sound so fast, consider that a 1 mph increase in average train speed can save large railroads such as Union Pacific Corp. an estimated $200 million a year. By moving product just a little quicker over long distances with the same number of trains and crews, the effective number of workers and locomotives per mile falls, generating huge efficiencies.

Union Switch recently signed a contract to design and maintain a rail dispatching system for Union Pacific that aims to help do just that. The technology, initially developed some 10 years ago with a Carnegie Mellon University research team and refined since then, is designed to give railroads "real time" information on train movements and help automatically route traffic around problem areas such as impassable tracks.
It's a complicated problem that involves multiple agents -- or autonomous pieces of software -- that incorporate decision-making programs, memory and the ability for trains, crews and rail traffic controllers to communicate with each other. "It's basically a more difficult and complex problem than air traffic control" because planes "can fly around a problem," Burk said. "On rail, you are fixed onto the track."

Follow this link for complete story.

Tonights rail fan net and some video

We had a great rail fan net this evening on the 146.880 repeater. There were a record high seventeen (17) stations check in and there was lots of good discussion of activity on the local rails.

Dennis, our net engineer, also brought to our attention that he had shot some video on a recent trip to Horseshoe Curve in Altoona Pennsylvania. He has kindly decided to share it with us and has put a link to the file on the North Hills Amateur Radio Club web site.

Link to Horseshoe Curve Train Video

The image you see above is a snap shot from that video showing an Amtrak passenger train making its way through the curve. Enjoy the video and join us next week on the Pittsburgh Rail Fan Net. If you are not a licensed amateur radio operator you can listen in on the net with any public safety scanner radio. Simply program 146.880 in the channel of your choice and join the fun. If you would like to participate in the net you can send Dennis email by clicking here.
[Questions & Comments to the Rail Fan Net]

Send your questions or comments and we will try out best to answer them on the net. Also let Dennis know if you are listening to the net each week and if you enjoy it. We appreciate his efforts.