Charlie StrossRE: https://mastodon.social/@jef/116308472633215904
Can't park there, mate.
Graydon@graydon Just adding that "can't park there, mate" has become a catch-phrase on /r/Edinburgh, usually relating to photos of cars with drivers who blindly followed their Satnav and drove onto the top of a staircase …
@cstross Got that bit!
Parts of the western US there are are active freight lines down city streets plus there are semi-fossil rights-of-way still on streets that are not used very often but the clearances are maintained against the day. This looks like one of those; someone missed a switch, and it's very possible that they really don't want to run the whole freight wherever this bit of track is going. ("The factory that was there closed down in 2003" sorts of circumstances.)
@cstross I'd think it's entirely possible something will have to show up to tow it, probably after they fix the switch. (and it's this far down the street to make sure they have cleared the switch; "train on top of switch as needs fixing" improves things for no one.)
Or possibly just to refuel the existing engines, which will be entertaining enough for traffic purposes.
@graydon There was this time in 2018 when Feorag and I were driving from Vancouver to Edmondton and after one particularly late day's driving we were half a kilometre from our hotel in a small town when we ran into a level crossing. And guess what we met, inching slowly across it onto a turning loop then back out again ...
(That was an annoying half hour long wait!)
@cstross I am laughing the laugh of familiarity over here.
(Grew up at a time when Smiths Falls still had rail rolling stock service facilities; trains that were backing at barely perceptible speed through the level crossing were absolutely a thing.)
@graydon I'm kind of glad we don't do long trains in the UK—or level crossings, for that matter: there are still some, but the main thing is to not try and bull through against the lights. The barrier will only be down for 30 seconds before the commuter train blasts through at 100mph ...
@cstross Oh-mother-of-god thirty years ago I was standing on a street corner when someone in a tearing hurry did a left in front of a streetcar ("tram", but not in Toronto; about 27 tonnes) that was just leaving the stop. Can't have been going more than 3 m/s and probably more like 2 when it hit the car.
The car's driver was undamaged but the left front wheel assembly fell off the car when the tow truck hoisted the mangled front end.
Not messing with rail traffic is wise, amen.
@graydon Low speed does not correspond to low energy when there's enough mass involved! (I wouldn't have wanted to be standing on the canal bank when the Ever Given cut loose, either!)
JulesJones@cstross @graydon Ah, the memory of site safety briefings for visitors with gruesome photos of vehicles which had lost an argument with a slow-moving remote controlled train, and the warning "Do not ignore the crossing control lights. Survivors will be dismissed for gross misconduct."
And my husband wonders why I freak out when he plays chicken with a train or tram...
James 🌈💜Metro's safety ad for crossings is still brilliant.
Dumb Ways to Die
Check out our latest game!https://youtu.be/waKAtVn8v64Download the song: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/dumb-ways-to-die-single/id575962249or http://sound...
Tubemeister@cstross @graydon Otoh if you’ve ever seen (or been in) a tram doing a full emergency stop, those things scrub off speed quite impressively despite being 30-odd tons of angry metal.
I don’t miss the office on the Nieuwezijds where the ding-ding-crunch of a car pulling a quick u-turn into a tram was a weekly event.
Alan Bellingham@cstross @graydon Oh sweet summer child! There's a crossing on the A10 between here and Cambridge where my SatNav ETA will drop by 3 minutes as I pass, because that's the *average* delay that that crossing causes. The problem in this case is when the barrier stays down after the up train, and the down train, and until after the next up train, the one that's coming to a halt at the platform that extends to the crossing
I did know a taxi driver who died at that crossing, 30+ years ago
@cstross @graydon The big issue is that the train frequency on that line is high
I have seen an ambulance stuck there, blue lights flashing, for the entire long cycle. It came up to the back of the queue of traffic, switched to the wrong side of the road to get to the barrier, and when that finally lifted did an interesting diagonal move to get back on the right side while everyone else kept out of its way. I presume ambulance drivers hope it won't happen, but the alternate routes are worse
MidgePhoto@Photo55 @cstross @graydon By most level crossing standards, yes. For this crossing, it's not unusual
I think the train schedules are set to try to get two trains through that crossing any time it is closed. The problem is the third train arriving, slowly compared to the first two going through at full 100mph line speed. It's not every closure that's that long, but IME it's enough
Abram Kedge🏴🇨🇦@graydon @cstross It didn't happen often, but outside the Kodak chemical plant in Rochester NY you could sit at a level crossing for half an hour as a train slowly shunted backwards and forwards. I think they were separating freight cars onto different sidings according to content.
Major dual carriageway, no escape once you were trapped.
Mark Eichin@graydon @cstross There's a spot in Cambridge MA where a rail line (used to, before it got railtrailed) crossed the busiest/worst rotary in town (possibly in state) - before it closed, it had one user, a 2x/year corn syrup tanker delivery for a bread company. They just had police cars show up and block the intersection for the crossing rather than expect zoned-out commuters to handle the signals sanely :-)
Matthew Garrett@graydon @cstross That's Jack London Square in Oakland. It's the main southbound freight route for all the cargo coming out of the port of Oakland (and also Richmond and some points further north), and also one of the most heavily used Amtrak paths outside the North East - San Jose to Sacramento goes through there, as do the Oakland to central valley trains, and even the Coast Starlight from LA to Seattle. It is, uh, disconcerting to be driving down there with a freight train in the mirror.
Jef Poskanzer
Matt Blaze