Boltar...you been on holiday or, perish the thought, everything been going
as you liked for a while. I've missed your abrasive people hating comments
recently, welcome back.

The reason so many have been highlighted recently is......... They have been
testing them. Hence every train tested means a number of failures hence the
situation we are in. Its got nothing to do with them all SPADing.
Why hasn't it been picked up before? Probably because the trip cock test
that has to be done by every train leaving a depot or terminus, so, many
times a day. It is a test to ensure the arm is not missing or out of
alignment with the train stop at the signal. It doesn't operate the trip
cock. If it did the arm would miss a train stop thereby rendering the train
capable of going past a red. In these cases the arm is correctly aligned, it
just doesnt open the valve. So the normal trip cock test works fine.
Also, judging a red in the dark with no referance points isn't that easy.
Thats where line knowledge comes in. If it wasn't for the profesionalism of
the drivers, or operators, trains would SPAD all the time. And we would have
found the tripcock problem years ago......

The qustion Boltar you should be asking is how much will the contactor pay
for the disruption. Will it make a huge dent in profits.....if they get
found to be contributing to the delay at all. I have no idea how the system
works....perhaps other do and could enlighten us.

Mal

"Richard J." wrote in message
.uk...
Boltar wrote:
Something no one in the media or on here seems to have mentioned is
that the only reason the drivers are noticing so many tripcock
failures is that so many of these overpaid agitators are going
through red lights!

Perhaps the reason it hasn't been noticed is that your assumption is
false. The fault is said to occur when trains are driven through a red
light very slowly, as happens for example in the case of a track circuit
or signal failure where a driver is given permission to do so. The
procedure is to go forwards slowly, get tripped, reset the tripcock and
proceed at slow speed to the next signal or for 3 minutes, or something
(I forget the details). It's been found that in these circumstances,
the tripcock can reset itself without stopping the train.

If you have up-to-date info on the number of SPADs on LU, please quote
numbers and source.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)