Why would anybody steal signalling?

OK, this is a bit of a rant really.

I’m currently sat on a train at Taunton station, and at the time I write this paragraph my computer tells me it’s 10.00am. I left Tiverton Parkway station at 9.04. This train was due into Paddington at around 11.30.

The reason for this delay is because ‘somebody in the Bridgwater has solen the signals’. Now, I know it’s not the signals themselves that have been stolen, more the signal cables. A while ago, again on a London trip I made, my return journey wasn’t actually late per ce, but it was the first train out of Paddington all evening – a 10.30pm train that I caught was the first to leave Paddington for the West since about 8.30 (a cancelled train which, incidentally, would have been the last train to go through Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter et al and therefore the train I would have caught had I not driven to Bristol.) Again, delays of quite a magnitude caused by somebody just outside the M25 boundary stealing signalling cable.

What possible use could they have for this cable? I guess signal cable is just a heavy-duty electrical cable as it just sends electrical pulses down it. Who would need that cable, except railways? Who would buy the cable off the people who stole it? Unless it’s some hard-strapped heritage railways probably not many uses could be found for it. Of course, I do not know; I did warn you that this was a rant.

For kicks then? Possibly. Causing disruptions to what must be a good couple thousand passengers across a railway network.

(I have just heard a whistle which means we’re probably leaving Taunton now, at 10.09. The train hasn’t started moving yet and there are still whistles going on on the platform…)

I don’t know what the capacity of an HST is. A quick search (and it was quick I’m afraid) yeilded no results. (Now we’re moving, computer time 10:11.) Actually, the update of the train departure proved a point there.

We’re on single block working at the moment, one train in, one train out between Taunton and Bridgwater. Our journey between leaving Tiverton Parkway and leaving Taunton took around 65 minutes. I will see how long it takes to get to Bridgwater to see now many trains could have travelled up the line from there onwards.

It’s quite interesting hearing what people are saying on their mobile phones to their loved ones (not ‘Aagghh I’m going to die!’ unfortunately). There is somebody who has said that they’re using stop-go boards on the line (that would be quite interesting actually). (We’ve stopped again now – 10.13 – waiting for what we have been told is the second train ahead of us to clear the section. So that’s at least two trains disrupted, not to mention the trains since it happened around 6.30 this morning.)

I’m kind of losing my train of thought here (no pun intended – seriously) so please bear with me.

Yes, I was talking about what people have been saying in their mobiles. We’ve had the stop-go boards, we have somebody on here who appears to be going to an interview at, what I assume will probably be an office of Marks & Spencer’s who was apologising that they would be late, we’ve had somebody who seems to be in the middle of a corporate merger and is unable to make the official handover (or something like that).

Believe it or not, when we were first told about what the problems were, there was a tiny ripple of laughter pass through the carriage at the thought of somebody stealing signals. Of course, that was almost an hour ago now, and I think a lot of people have realised that it’s not really a funny thing that has happened.

Something has happened which has reminded me of it happening. We’ve had a few announcements – recorded ones mind – saying ‘Would the train manager please contact the driver?’ which I’ve never heard before, even when I have been on delayed services. (Last year, there was flooding on the line between Exeter and Tiverton, which meant that I couldn’t get down to Exeter to get my ‘megatrain’ service to Waterloo, so had to get a single to Paddington which again was late running. A Cross Country service came down and obviously couldn’t continue, so turned around and took us all, initially to Bristol to change, but it turned out it was only as far as Taunton when we were told that the HST in the opposite platform would be going direct to Paddington and we should get that one. OK, it did go direct to Paddington, but there was a looooonnnnnggggg wait at Taunton, and although we were a fast service, we were stuck behind a slow service as far as Westbury. anyway – I think I’ve digressed from my point slightly!) (10.22 and still waiting the other side of Taunton.)

I wonder what other pre-recorded announcements the driver has to play with, or whether he has the ability to do live ones. I remember a while ago being on a train where the train manager seemed to have been a failed radio presenter (no snickering at the back there please). “I’ve been John, your train manager for this journey. Your driver was Mike, and your canteen staff were Janet and George. This has been a First Great Western service to London Paddington, thank you and see you soon.” (then added the “all change please, all change” which I think is something they have to say when a train terminates)

Have you had one of those days when things start to go right, but very soon go wrong but you carry on regardless?

This is one of those days I think. Just like the story I told earlier about last October when there was flooding. I could have just turned around and gone home again, but no, I will continue!

I’m kind of running out of things to say here. This started out as a rant, but has kind of petered off a bit. I sent an email at work like that once. It started off as a proper rant at people who were having a go at me for no real reason, or where there was a reason but the reason meant it was ultimately their fault. (I should have taken that sandwich mum made me…) The email started with good intentions of being rant like, but kind of ended up as a ramble by the time I finished. And given that most people seem to read the first sentence of what I write and the last sentence, all the meaty stuff in the middle was pointless.

In that vein, I guess I should finish now as the people who have read the first sentence will be coming back to join the service now.

It’s 10.30. I left Tiverton Parkway station roughly on time at 9.04. I need a coffee so will go up to the buffet in a bit. We are currently waiting outside Taunton. I don’t think we’ve even gone under the Obridge yet. Oh well. I will update you.

It’s times like this (well this is the only time really) that I think I should have a Twitter account, then people would actually be in a better place to read my random rants like this. You know, I was introduced to Twitter before it became ‘famous’ with Stephen Fry being the unofficial spokesperson for it. Now everybody has an account and it’s kind of lost its geekiness.

We’ve just been told that I can’t have a coffee because the buffet car boiler has broken down…

* sigh *

December 19, 2009  Tags: , , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything, Public Transport Geekery, Railways   No Comments

Radio stuff

For reasons that I’m not going to go into at this time (and I would rather those people who do know don’t spill the beans at the moment too!) I’m going to start to put a load of my radio stuff online here. I’m going to put them onto a page on their own as well as create an individual blog post for each one.

[wpaudio url="http://www.stupidstupidity.co.uk/R15w.mp3" text="Random 15 Report, October 2009" dl="0"]

The first one is a sample radio report done at the October 2009 Tube Challenge Random 15. OK, the first song I used on it is a little predictable, and while editing it I realised that I use the same phrases a lot (“… but we shall see” being one of them) but given that it’s kind of the first time I’ve done something proper like this I don’t think I did too bad a job really!

Duration 17m26s. Created 20 October 2009.

December 12, 2009  Tags: , , ,  Posted in: Public Transport Geekery, Radio, Railways   No Comments

Is this the most autumnal autumn ever?

Just a quick post…

There seems to be more leaves on the roads (and probably railways too), the colours seem to be a bit of a richer browns, oranges and yellows than they have been in the past.

Ah well, the weather isn’t great so that’s a bonus.

October 24, 2009    Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

2+2=5

… and this is how.

2.4+2.4 = 4.8

If you round to the nearest whole number, that gives you
2+2 = 5.

QED.

October 10, 2009  Tags: ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Dreaming

(CC-BY-NC)

So, last night I was asleep. Nothing unusual there (well actually given my sleep patterns recently, but that’s another post for another time!) except that I found myself dreaming – which actually isn’t that unusual either.

I have heard that you only know you’re dreaming when you’re not in a deep sleep, or that you can only remember that you dreamed if you weren’t in a deep sleep when you were dreaming. Anyway, I’ve digressed slightly.

Last night in my dream, I realised that I had come across an idea that I needed to remember. Of course, in that subconscious way you do sometimes, I knew that I was in a dream and that this idea needed to become reality so had to think of a way of doing this. The cartoon from XKCD as shown above came to mind, so I found a keyboard and started typing.

I could feel my real fingers moving as if I was typing, and I assumed that I was using my laptop keyboard to do so – my laptop being still switched on on the floor beside my bed (no officer, I wasn’t downloading anything…) so I assumed that I had managed to pick it up, open it, and start typing.

You can therefore imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that absoutely nothing had happened.  I hadn’t typed a message to myself in my sleep, nor had I remembered this idea that I needed to remember.  Knowing my dreams though, it was probably either a very extraordinarily good idea or a pathetically bad one. I also found that my laptop had turned off as the night went on as the power went in the house at some point during the night and the battery ran out. This is also the reason why I was late for work, because I woke up and looked at my phone and realised that it was half past 8.

The moral of the story? Well, there isn’t one to be fair. There usually isn’t.

September 29, 2009  Tags: , , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Photographs, London, May 2009

I know these are photographs from the beginning of May and it’s now nearly the end of September, but I’ve finally got round to editing and uploading some of the photos from around that sort of time.

:thumb137628756: The Life of a Leaflet. This person was distributing leaflets outside of Oxford Circus station on the Underground.  Many people – myself included I’m afraid – ignored her as we walked past as she thrust the leaflets into our paths.  Some people took them, immediately dropped them on the pavement (if you look under the distributors foot there’s one there too) where they were trampeled over by the hounds of people trying to get into the station.  Others ended up squashed with their fallen comrades with the discarded drinks cans and cigarette butts on the steps into the station, to be (unphotographed) washed away and made soggy on the next rainfall (which happened that night).

:thumb137629793: Non Drying Paint. There are loads of these signs on walls around where my friend lives in London, and they always make me giggle inside when I see them.  Apparantly, the ‘non-drying paint’ is supposed to deter either people who are intending to climb the walls, or people who are intending to graffiti the walls.  I’m not entirely certain what non-drying paint is, so bear with me for a few moments while I Google it for you. A few moments later: Yes, indeed the non-drying paint is an anti-climb measure, and is supplied by this Australian company. Seems quite interesting really. Still got no idea how it works. Perhaps that’s the idea.

:thumb137630763: Don’t you forget about me. Don’t You Forget About Me / Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t / Don’t You Forget About Me / Will you stand above me? / Look my way, never love me / Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling / Down, down, down / Will you recognise me? / Call my name or walk on by / Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling / Down, down, down, down (Extract from Don’t You (Forget about Me) by Simple Minds). So how many times do we see somebody sitting at the side of the road, in a shop doorway, or wherever and just walk past them? Do we forget about them within five minutes? Do we not even notice them any more? I also liked the symmetry that the bloke sitting in the middle of the bridge approach gave :)

:thumb137631464: Photographs of Photographers 6. OK, no photo set would be complete without at least one photo of somebody else taking a photo!  Actually, there were a lot more in this set that I haven’t got round to sorting out yet.  I believe that the backdrop for this photo would have been St Paul’s Cathedral.  I do have an intro to the Photos of Photographers (‘p-o-p’) series somewhere; might post that here sometime.

:thumb137632172: Bikes. A simple photograph taken outside the Cyber Candy shop near Covent Garden in London.  While waiting for my friend (who had gone into said shop for the third time that day), I just saw these bikes all lined up and took a photograph of them.  Actually, I took a few but this was the best one.  Unlike other pictures, this is exactly as its come out of the camera with no editing done at all except resizing.  Others usually have some post-production done on them in the GIMP.

That’s it for now.  All of the photographs here link to larger-size versions on my deviantART page where you will also find other photographs and some other stuff too.

(Later that same day…) And here’s more!

:thumb137645346: Art on the Underground. To celebrate 100 years of the ‘Roundel’ (London Underground’s iconic logo), TfL asked 100 artists to create 100 pieces of work (one each, not 100 each!) based on the Roundel. These are two of those pieces of work on posters in situ at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. If you’re interested, you can see my ‘version’ of the Roundel which I’m using for my Tube Challenge for Tearfund charity thingy on the ‘Tube Challenging’ page.

:thumb137646635: Pipes. Also at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, these are the steps down to the station with a maze of pipes and cables and other stuff in between them. Somewhere, somebody out there knows what each of these pipes and cables does, and where they’ve come from, and where they’re going…

September 20, 2009  Tags: , ,  Posted in: Photographs   No Comments

The Rice and the Chessboard – how the Internet has ruined life for the better

There is a story about a Chinese man who invented the game of Chess. The Chinese emperor at the time said something like ‘what can I give you for your reward?’. The gentleman replied that on his chessboard, he would have one piece of rice on one square, two on the next, four on the next, eight on the next, sixteen on the next and so forth.

I was told this story by my Granddad this afternoon, with the question ‘how many grains of rice were there in total?’. Being the former IT student that I am, I recognised this as being binary – which to a certain extent it is. A square on the chessboard is equivalent to 1 bit, a line on a chessboard is 8 squares, therefore a line is equivalent to a byte and would have 128 grains of rice on the line.

This is where things started to go a bit awry in my mind. Not having any pieces of paper to work things out on, and realising that it wasn’t simply a case of having 8×128 (the ninth square would be 256), I figured that this was impossible for me to work out. Nevertheless, I started to think that I might be able to work it out once I returned home and had the computer in front of me.

8×8 is 64, thought I, therefore a chessboard is effectively 64 bit, and the answer would be that number, multiplied by itself, minus 1 (which in binary would be 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111)

Thinking that it would be easy to work out what the 64th number in the binary world would be, I did a quick Google search but gave up. (I have since worked this out, see below.)

That is when I started to write this blog post, thinking that I could allow you all to see me work through this mathematical problem. To give the story a proper retelling, I then searched Google for ‘rice chessboard’ or something like that. What should pop up high on the list, but an article from good old Wikipedia, which not only told me the story – the Chinese gentleman was in fact an ancient Indian mathmetitian named Sessa so -1 point for my grandfather there – but also the answer.

The answer is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 – which when read out is eighteen million four hundred and forty six thousand seven hundred and forty four million seventy three million seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty one thousand six hundred and fifteen (I think anyway).

Now, having the answer to this conundrum has made me a much better person.  Admittedly, I didn’t work it out myself (which actually would have made me a much better person) because I looked it up on the Internet. I was going to, but the Internet stopped me from doing it as it made it quite a pointless thing to do.  The Internet has ruined my life. But it has made me a better person for it.

Possibly.

(To conclude, the 64th number in the ‘binary sequence’ is √(18446744073709551615 + 1) which is 4294967296. That bit was worked out by myself, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s wrong…)

August 23, 2009  Tags: ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Overheard

Overheard on a train.  A man and a woman have just walked through the carraige, it’s late night (around 10). Conversation between two people behind me.

A – Did she just say ‘is this second class’?

B – I think she did

A – I’ve got a good mind to go up to her, crush a can of Stella on my head and urinate on her leg.

B – She’ll probably get her butler to beat you up

Well, I thought it was funny.  Perhaps you had to be there…

(I later found out that these two people on the seats behind me didn’t know each other before they got on the train.)

July 12, 2009  Tags: , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything, Railways   No Comments

Alice and Kev

It’s not often that I will link to another website in a post.

Well, that’s a little odd to say given that I haven’t really done that many posts here (I started with good intentions, but meh).

It is quite often that I find myself in a situation where I really feel for a fictional person.  A few years ago, author Tim Bowler came to my secondary school and before that I read his book Shadows.  I found myself very affected by this book for some reason.  There have been other instances where this has happened but I won’t go into them now.

I was recently shown this blog about Alice and Kev (http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com) , where these two characters, child Alice and her father Kev, have been made in The Sims 3, been made homeless, moneyless, and with certain personality traits. It could be considered a social documentary on the homeless, an amusing yet toughtful story, or somebody with nothing better to do playing The Sims and writing about it on his website.

I’ve often thought about the homeless, especially homeless children.  As I write this, I am lying on my bed, fairly comfortable (aside from the fact that I’ve done my back in) and the fridge downstairs has food in it, I’ve got clothes in my wardrobe, and am typing this on a computer bought within the past couple of weeks.  I’m lucky, I also live in an area where there isn’t homelessness.  But even twenty miles up the road in Barnstaple there are people living homeless, some by default some by choice.  I don’t know what the case is with children being homeless, but I know there are some.

Reading through Alilce and Kev, I got this overwhelming urge to find Alice and just give her a hug. A few times I’ve wanted to be able to do something with homeless children but don’t know what.

There is something else that I won’t go into now though about something that happened a while back that I haven’t forgotton about.

Anyway, I’d go and read Alice and Kev if I were you.  It’s being updated daily (or so it seems), and if you don’t start feeling for Alice then I think there’s something wrong with you.

June 13, 2009  Tags: , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

The Accident Rating and Punctuality of Sodor Rail

I’m not entirely sure what brought this to my mind today, I think it could have been when I was in the library earlier and a number of Thomas the Tank Engine books were returned.

Sodor Rail – the Fat Controller’s new privatised railway company serving the Island of Sodor – must have the worst safety and timekeeping record for any railway.  I shall prove this now by going through the Thomas the Tank Engine Collection – a book I received for Christmas a few years back.

Thomas and Gordon: Thomas, on coach shunting duties, comes into the station later than intended, meaning that Gordon’s express leaves only just on time. Thomas is not uncoupled from the train. OK, so it’s not an accident or anything, but a potential late running express train. However, Thomas did end up at a station that wasn’t his own, required posession of a siding and also a path to return to his own station and yard.

Thomas’s Train: Due to an engine (Henry) failure, Thomas is entrusted with pulling the passenger train that Henry cannot.  He leaves the station without being coupled to his train, and has to return to get them. This would have left the train to leave the station late, due to an engine failure, and as Thomas wasn’t correctly coupled to the train it would have left much later than scheduled. Again, a path would have been required for this late running train as well as Thomas having to return to the station. I will disregard the incorrect punctuation in the title for now.

Thomas and the Trucks: Thomas and Edward swap duties, so Thomas is heading a goods train.  He fails to stop at the correct station and just about stops in time to avoid the buffers at the end of the line. To quote the book, ‘luckily the line was clear as they swerved into the goods yard’. Of course, there is also the unplanned swapping of engines between duties, which resulted in an engine not cleared for goods use to be used. There is also the issue that Thomas, who is ‘tired of pushing coaches [and] wants to see the world’ doesn’t have the correct route knowledge for this line.

Thomas and the Breakdown Train: A new engine, James, has an accident caused by his brakes catching fireand Thomas helps retrieve him. A derailment is never good news really.  The front trucks are all damaged in the crash and so is James’ tender.  Goods in those carraiges is also damaged then, as well as the rails and the lineside fencing.  James however is fine but is sent for repairs.

Thomas and the Guard: Henry’s train is late to Thomas’ branch line junction. He leaves quickly to get back to timetable, leaving his guard behind in the process, but is stopped at a signal. Now, the presence of a signal on a single-track branch line served by one train is a bit of a mystery in itself.  I must congratulate Sodor Rail in letting the branch line train wait for the late running main line train, caused by an engine problem; ‘my system is out of order’ (Henry – that’s two failures for Henry so far). I believe that Thomas did make up for the lost time on the route so that’s a plus.

Thomas goes Fishing: A water tower at a station is out of order, so Thomas is filled up with water from a nearby river with a bucket dropped from a bridge. Shortly after, Thomas experieces boiler problems and is sent to a siding where he is inspected to find that there is fish in him. First, an out of order water tower at a station is a problem, but not an uncommon one even on the mainland.  Thomas then stops on a bridge – what do the passengers think of this? – and is filled up with water from the river. This would have taken quite some time. At the next station, Thomas is uncoupled and sent to a siding, meaning that another engine would have to continue with Thomas’ train.  Fish is found in the boiler.  Why didn’t the driver and fireman notice the fish when they were pouring the water from the bucket into the engine? And why was Thomas blamed for it at the end – it wasn’t his fault…

Thomas, Terence and the Snow: Thomas, out in snow without his snowplough, gets caught in a drift and has to be pulled out with a tractor wile a bus comes for the passengers.  The wrong kind of snow? Maybe. Of course, we know from the beginning of this year what effect snow has on trains in this country, so we can’t really blame Sodor Rail for this one, and they did try and continue to operate a service despite the conditions.  I think that, despite the delays and cancellations to service, this one is a plus for Sodor Rail.

Thomas and Bertie: Thomas and a bus race between two stations. Thomas wins the race.  Such a common problem with the public transport infrastructure in this country. A bus and a train have been given the same route between two stations. I do think it’s a plus for Sodor Rail as they managed to get there first, and after this incidence, Bertie travels around the towns taking passengers to the station where Thomas then takes them onwards.

The Fat Controller’s Engines: All the engines on the Island of Sodor are going to the mainland.  While showing the shadowing replacement engines what they’re doing, Thomas has an accident and has to be repaired. Again, an accident which has left an engine damaged.  On the plus side, the workmen do manage to fix Thomas so he does manage to travel. Cause of accident, brakes I think.

Thomas comes to Breakfast: Thomas rolls out of his shed and, unable to stop, comes off the end of the (unbuffered) rails and into the stationmaster’s house (or the Fat Controller’s house on the TV series).  A cleaner has messed with the controls inside of Thomas, which is what causes him to roll out of the shed without a driver.  Temporary rails have to be laid on the road at the end of the siding in order to pull Thomas back, so the road would have to have been closed.  There is also sustainable damage to the stationmaster’s house and his garden (which included trees) while the stationmaster’s wife has to recook their breakfast.  ‘You miserable engine’…  A replacement engine – a diesel railcar of all things – has to be put onto Thomas’ branch line while Thomas is repaired. Again, Thomas gets the blame for this, rather than the cleaner who messed with Thomas’ controls…

I’ve just realised how long a process this is going to be.  This book is separated by character in the series and not in the order the stories were released in, so I shall continue next time with Percy, the Small Engine.

May 9, 2009  Tags: , ,  Posted in: Railways   No Comments