thenudehamster wrote:I think that we're in danger of delving too deeply into a problem that may not even be there if we take Elojikal's premise to a conclusion. Perhaps the general principles standard would be a good idea, leaving the detail design to the manufacturers.
Firstly I get the impression that you thought I was referring to detailed design of trains such as the interiors, which I wasn't.
The thing is, even with a general principles standard it could still end up being a bad standard. Maybe not even a bad standard but one which leaves a lot to be desired. In the early 50s when British Rail were looking to specify a standard coach design that would become the MK1 coach they settled on the Bulleid designed coaches used in the Southern Region's suburban 4-SUB and latterly EPB trains. They did this largely as a matter of convenience and expediency. The problem with this is that the SUB and EPB coach designs were based on a design from the mid 30s that had been intended for a class of trains whose production had been interrupted by the war. These designs themselves owed much to the previous coach designs of LBSCR stock dating back to the turn of the 20th century and as Southern often recycled rolling stock the newer stock could not be too radical in terms of design. By the time British Rail came to settle on the MK1 standard coach design it was a design that was essentially twenty years out of date yet came to dominant subsequent coach designs for the next thirty years. However around the same time Bulleid was designing coaches with seperate bodies and underframes and "slam doors" the LMS were already bringing into production suburban trains of an integral design and with sliding doors. If British Rail had based their standardised coach design on a more modern design such as this then the name "Clapham" might not be brought up so often in conversation when discussing the end of the MK1 era.
Of course in the future such a bad decision as this would most likely not be made again however I think it is a valid point about how a central authority can go wrong due to compromise when coming up with general design principles.
And British Rail came up with many bad bogie designs, some absolute shockers in fact. The design of bogies that are track friendly and give good riding quality and comfort seems to be more of an art than a science!
My arguments are not against a central body setting standardised design principles, I think we need them. My concern is with how the central body operates and whether or not inferior standards might be forced to prevail over superior alternative designs.
CSRZiyang wrote:On TMS, I think we are in danger of obsessing about this. I worked in the oil and gas industry for a number of years as a control and instrumentation engineer prior to joing the railway industry. In that industry, SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and DAS (data acquisition system) have been commonplace for over thirty years. BUT, these systems are only used to collect data and carry out no front-line role, simply being used to advise personnel regarding system status. A seperate (usually hard wired) ESD (emergency shut-down) system has the task of shutting things down in a controlled and safe way in the case of an abnormal condition that puts either equipment or life at risk.
There is no reason why this principle shouldn't extend to trains and to a certain extent it does already. The problem is that we expect the TMS to do too much.
Traincrew should have TMS information on a 'need to know' basis. If the ESD system decides to shut down the system, then the driver needs enough information to be able to discuss with either a technical riding inspector or a remote technical support engineer (by phone) what the problem is, and what he or she can do to (in the worst case) either get the train moving and clear the line or call for traction assistance.
Over and above that, the TMS should sit in the background, quietly gathering data, which, if used properly should be able to give maintenance staff a great insight into how the train (and with a larger overview the fleet) is performing and how maiintenance processes might be tweaked to get more reliability.
My main concern about TMS isn't really a "ground level" issue so much as a network issue. We have a situation in this country where Virgin who have realised the limitations of their Voyager fleet can't augment this fleet with a number of Meridian's that Midland Mainline trains suddenly found they have no use for because the two fleets of trains used different and incompatible TMS. The same problem exists with the different fleets of Electrostars where different versions of TMS exist. What we really need is a standard train management system that is used on all trains in this country. We need a single centralised authrority to make this happen but I fear that if that authority wasn't at arms length from the government then it might approach the design of a standardised TMS from a technocratic viewpoint.
And I agree about the traincrew. A train driver only needs to know how to operate a train. He doesn't so much need to know how it operates. He certainly needs an understanding of the mechanical side but he doesn't need to concern himself with why the TMS is being uncooperative and not opening the doors.
However you go on to say that we are quite rapidly approaching a future where ATO systems are scaled up to fully take over the operation of main line train services. If this were to be the case then if an operator remained on the train even in a safety role then he would need to have a greater knowledge of the works of the TMS.
For the record I don't think GPS is the appropriate technology for the primary automatic operation of trains. It isn't reliable enough in urban areas to be failsafe. Rather I see it as a
component of an advanced ATO of the future being utilised in a two way form whereby the TMS sends its position, the status of the train and the operating conditions back to a central computer. This central computer which would have the capacity to compute hundreds of alternative pathings and timings (much like computers designed to play chess do) and make adjustments to the service of the train in operation based on problems that lie ahead such as late running trains, failed points, lights and so on. This network information would then be sent back to the train's TMS and it would then respond to it by taking the appropriate actions.
PS. I don't find your suggestion of not having air-conditioning as contentious as I am someone who prefers fresh air to recycled air - especially if the train operator has a policy of not keeping its carriages cool in the summer months in order to reduce energy consumption!
