TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
Aye, my post was rather crude I must say. I didn't mean to paint the drivers as drones. I for one hope that they stay in control.
Driverless trains on the Tube?
- Thread starter 8ball
- Start date
Aye, my post was rather crude I must say. I didn't mean to paint the drivers as drones. I for one hope that they stay in control.
andysays
Love and solidarity
I think most reasonable people would accept that it's a crash, an incident, an accident, whatever, unless of course the collision was deliberately set up as a stunt or similar.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
most reasonable people = not a set of people to which bungle belongs.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Fair enough, I didn't think you painted them as drones.
The point is that this is not simply an issue of TFL trying to break the RMT (and I think more operators are ASLEF, BTW), there are crucial safety issues which can be missed if we simply say "these trains already don't have drivers, so what's the problem if we get rid of them on all the other trains too?"
andysays
Love and solidarity
el-ahrairah
forward communism, forward gerbils!
presumably the door is in the front?
That's for access in the depot, and evacuation in a tunnel.
Someone will be along in a moment to say whether the driver's cab having a door at each side is essential to a driver's duties.
Also, however, I note that the mockup demonstrates engineering illiteracy. The interior of the train has constant width, with no provision at all for the bellows between the cars.
el-ahrairah
forward communism, forward gerbils!
it could also be so that the driver can get in and out. or they could go via the carriage.
as you note, the accuracy of that mock up should probably not be taken as indicative of anything other than the intention to replace the trains with something similarly train-shaped.
as you note, the accuracy of that mock up should probably not be taken as indicative of anything other than the intention to replace the trains with something similarly train-shaped.
I just watched the video. It clearly shows the track ahead visible by passengers through the end windows.
And equally clearly shows no bendy bits between cars
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Also, that front end is so not happening as designed.
Why do they got windscreen wipers if they're driverless?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Ah. I was only running my eye along the window line.
Engineering illiteracy indeed... actually, the rail at the top of the windows is a mindless CGI cut-n-paste, isn't it?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Which bit? This looks like a pretty rigorous and thought-through design to me.
TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
Or a reflection.
There's provision for the train to bend below the waist rail, as you point out.
It's unclear what happens between there and the wossname, bottom-of-the-roof rail. If there are bellows, they're a quite remarkable design.
There is clearly no provision at all for the train to bend at the bottom-of-the-roof rail.
From the still you posted, it's very unclear indeed what happens in the roof... is that a skylight?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
It's a reflection in the glass panel
8ball
Decolonise colons!
See post #51
andysays
Love and solidarity
No it's not. The trains I used to drive had a door at the very front, which as you say is for access in the depot and evacuation in a tunnel, and a door at the back of the cab so you could go from cab to carriage or vice versa.
That drawing does appear to show a train which could only function in a straight tunnel, or at best one which only had very gentle curves. Let's hope someone has taken into account that many tube tunnels have far tighter curves, or there's likely to be a serious incident once they're brought into service.
Still, as Bungle73 said, they'll presumably test them before they're brought into service, so any problems like having to scrap the originals, re-design and rebuild won't really count as proper accidents.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
The new design has articulations much more often than regular trains; each unit is made from 12 "cars" rather than the 6 cars of the current trains. Each articulation sits on top of a shared bogey with the next unit. Means each articulation has to bend through a much shallower range.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Having watched the video, I see what you mean about the greater number of articulations and the shallower amount of bending for each one - that bit looks good.
But I don't understand what you mean about shared bogies. At the moment, if I remember correctly, each carriage has two bogies, one at each end, with two sets of axles. All of that, carriage with its two bogies, is fixed rigidly together.
Unless they've totally revised the idea of a bogie (making them flexible in the middle, or not rigidly attached to the carriage, I don't see how two units can share the same bogie...
Unless they've totally revised the idea of a bogie (making them flexible in the middle, or not rigidly attached to the carriage, I don't see how two units can share the same bogie...
It'd be like the TGV/Eurostar:
Code:
___||___________||___________||_______...
------- ------- -------
o o o o o oBloody hell, what happened to the CODE tag?
Each bogie has two bearings, with one end of one carriage resting on one and one end of the next carriage resting on the other:
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And there was going to be armageddon when they got rid of the guards from the tube too.
Countless systems around the world work fine without drivers. The DLR has a very good safety record (that minor incident in 1991 seems to be the worst passengers have faced) and it's actually a very pleasant train to use with a nice friendly member of staff actually available to help passengers! I'd take the DLR conductor over a faceless tube operator any day of the week.
It will happen, it will cost, it will take time, it will have teething problems and once that's all out of the way we'll look back at the concept of tube operators as being as quaint as having a man walk in front of a car with a red flag.
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andysays
Love and solidarity
Yeah, that was how I was imagining it.
So the bogies must be attached to the carriages in some way which allows them to pivot, rather than rigidly as I thought they were now, on conventional trains at least. Are you suggesting that the TGV/Eurostar already works like this?
As I said above, my first hand knowledge is about 20 years old, so technology may have moved on since then.
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BTW does anyone actually remember the DLR crash of 1991? Pickman's model has brought it up many times but I can only find a brief mention on the DLR Wiki which references a couple of comments on an email list. I'm not denying it happened but I'm curious now. How many injuries/fatalities? How long was the line out of action? What was judged to be the cause?
andysays
Love and solidarity
I think what we need to be clear about is the difference between trains without conventional drivers, which is one thing, and trains running without any staff at all.
And with the greatest respect to the staff of the DLR trains, their trains run almost entirely in the open and not at all in deep tunnels as much of the tube network does, so safety comparisons are pretty meaningless. It's not simply about if there is an accident, it's about what the consequences of that accident would be.
In the worst case, if you had to evacuate a DLR train without a member of staff, you could smash a window and jump out into the open.
Now imagine trying to do that in a tube train in a tunnel, how do you get out? The answer is you can only get out at one end or the other. Assuming you have a choice, which end should you try to get out of? How do you ensure you don't get run over by a train? Now imagine that there's a fire, the smoke produced by even a small fire in a tunnel will mean that very quickly you can't see where you are, either on the train or once you get off it. And unluckily for you, this is going on during the rush hour, so there's not just a few people on the train, it's jam-packed. This will very quickly turn into a panic situation, one which you will be very lucky indeed to escape from.
But the idea of having a trained member of staff who understands how the system works and how to evacuate at least some of the passengers (it would have been better to have two, one at each end, like when there used to be guards, but I suppose one will do, at a pinch), that's been over-ridden by Boris's promise for driverless trains and his power trip against the RMT, and you, idiot that you are, have gone along with it by saying we'll look back at the concept of tube operators as being as quaint as having a man walk in front of a car with a red flag.
If this ever happens, and I really hope it never does, you're welcome to travel on a system where safety has been cut to the bone to save money, but don't expect me or anyone else who might have an inkling of how to save you if such a scenario does happen to be there to help you, because anyone who actually knows anything about the underground and appreciates the importance of properly trained staff for passenger safety will be long gone.
Nah, a conventional car sits on two pivots on top of its bogies.
That's the whole point
The last time anyone built a carriage without pivoted bogies was early in the last century, AFAIK.
Experiments with such "articulated" cars go back at least to the 1920s. They make intuitive sense given how much of the cost is in the bogies, and the weight, and how that affects track wear.
I think the reason they kept being abandoned was managers' preference until the 1970s for sending out only as many carriages as the traffic would bear. That idea has long gone now: even the DLR, which could easily run 2-car trains off-peak to save a bit on the leccy bill, runs 6-car trains all the time. Presumably somewhere there's a spreadsheet showing that the pay of the two or three extra workers required to supervise coupling and uncoupling the units would exceed the savings.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Nah, a conventional car sits on two pivots on top of its bogies.
That's the whole point
The last time anyone built a carriage without pivoted bogies was early in the last century, AFAIK.
Experiments with such "articulated" cars go back at least to the 1920s. They make intuitive sense given how much of the cost is in the bogies, and the weight, and how that affects track wear.
I think the reason they kept being abandoned was managers' preference until the 1970s for sending out only as many carriages as the traffic would bear. That idea has long gone now: even the DLR, which could easily run 2-car trains off-peak to save a bit on the leccy bill, runs 6-car trains all the time. Presumably somewhere there's a spreadsheet showing that the pay of the two or three extra workers required to supervise coupling and uncoupling the units would exceed the savings.
Thanks for clearing that up, it all makes sense now.
at self...
