Spud

If you would prefer to travel on a deep-level underground railway with
untested control systems, that's up to you.

But I suspect most Londoners want the Underground to be safe. And that
means testing new systems thoroughly.

Do you think some signal sengineers simply obtained a full weekend
possession without a proper examination of the needs / alternatives /
impacts?

Think for a moment of the thousands complex actions and interactions
involved in running any kind of high-density railway. The system and
its controllers / users have to "understand"

- state (moving or stationary), location and speed of every train

- route and destination

- location of every signal, junction and station

… and dozens more about which the brethren here will be able to inform us.

Then each of those factors has to be tested both in combination and
with any / every other.

What's the alternative? Trying to squeeze it in to overnight posssions
lasting 4-5 hours, when other routine maintenance is already under way
– for which the power has to be turned off? Assuming that an overnight
posession allows, say, 3.5 hours work, the weekend equates to abut 15
overnights. That's three weeks in which little or no track work or
other maintenance can be done.

And for which, assuming the tests require a number of moving trains,
drivers will have to be taken off their normal duties and rostered for
special "out of hours" shifts (thus reducing their availability during
normal days, which would mean fewer trains when you might want one).

I think if LU inflicted that on us we would indeed be tempted to
describe them in the terms used.

Methinks comments of this kind indicate a failure of the control
systems connecting brains to fingers and keyboards! As one of my first
editors used to say: Think before you write.

Ken

On 2013-08-31 16:30:43 +0000, d said:

For closing the entire section of the Nothern Line for the entire w/e.

Cheers for that. Very considerate.

Utter ******s.