4 ms·

I'm struggling with the first paragraph: > A fellow engineer passed along information from another engineer, who I have never met, Mike, 17 years an engineer,

I'm struggling with the first paragraph: > A fellow engineer passed along information from another engineer, who I have never met, Mike, 17 years an engineer, like me, with a degree, like me (art, English), which has led to writing this body. Am I reading this right? The content of this article is hearsay twice removed?

_Algernon_ 5y ago
I was much more offended by the abuse of commas.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chefandy 5y ago
  I'm a bit rusty, but I think they are technically correctly placed— they separate many dependent clauses, interruptors and a time phrase from one independent clause at the beginning. The sentence is too structurally complex, though. My very strict undergraduate intro to expository writing class required using commas like this but it's definitely passé.
  - _Algernon_ 5y ago
    I have no opinion on the technical correctness of the sentence. But I know I would do a lot to avoid writing such sentence in my own writing, and that I would stop reading anything that hits me with such a monstrosity in the opening paragraph.
    - chefandy 5y ago
      Right. It's too structurally complex but it's not the comma's fault.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hammock 5y ago
You may be onto something. >The Surface Transportation Board already knows this; the FRA knows this, the shippers know this; the car owners/lessees know this, the executives know this; and certainly the front line knows all too well If all these people know about it, why haven't we heard of this before?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I presume we all here work at some kind of tech firm? Do you think railroad engineers / conductors would know about a crappy API being pushed by Microsoft or Apple that would affect application development over the next 5 years? Its not like we computer-engineers/software-engineers air out our dirty laundry each day to the public.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Or how many of us know about a terribly unreliable internal database that backs a product critical to core business functionality?
    - bombcar 5y ago
      One difference is that when the HN crowd screws something up, twitter goes down for a few minutes, GitHub is offline for hours, not much to really complain about. A PSR leaves the rails and people can very easily die, and at some point there will be a major event.
- pooper 5y ago
  > If all these people know about it, why haven't we heard of this before? While I submit that the article has probably no value on its own, I don't think your argument makes sense either. I think it is expected that people in position of power don't publicly speak about everything. I mean on one end of the spectrum nobody talked about dragnet until someone did. On the other end, "no one" talked about the problems with Boeing 737 max problem until planes started falling off the sky in the sense that we didn't pay attention. I think why haven't we heard of this before is not an argument.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mattbee 5y ago
No, I took it as "asking for a friend"
dragontamer 5y ago
Buy the rumor, sell the news. Rumors aren't admissible as court evidence. But rumors are worth looking into, they might have insights into communities we otherwise are ignoring. If railroad engineers have a well known issue, such as the sudden loss of engineer/conductor skills due to retirement and/or quitting for other jobs, that's something that can be verified by other railroad engineers. We all know that last year was "The Great retirement". I can imagine that a large number of skilled people have left the workforce... and their replacements are going to have to learn all of the problems and take years to retrain to their level.
mschuster91 5y ago
Talk with locomotive operators, read their feeds on Twitter. This shit has been circulating all over the world, even here in Germany we have issues of that kind (not the massive length of the trains or double stacking because both is illegal here, but how staff is treated).
zaphar 5y ago
The genesis may have been hearsay but the claim itself is verifiable. Are trains of the size he is describing derailing on a higher frequency? Are train lengths exceeding the safety margins of the yards and equipment? Hearsay can be a valuable tool in prompting that process of verification.
- its_ethan 5y ago
  For what it's worth, there's another thread in these comments that point to data supporting that the length of trains is going up (+ ~25%), but derailments have gone down, by more than 25%. So maybe fewer trains derailing, but the ones that do are having bigger negative consequences.
  - zaphar 5y ago
    yeah, I did a very quick look at some literature, most of it was behind paywalls so my search wasn't comprehensive, but it looked like a large train was more susceptible to derailment but the reduction in the number of trains running actually resulted in a decrease in total derailments. To me this suggest a much more in-depth analysis is needed.
sophacles 5y ago
When his bosses come after him for being a dirty scumbag killjoy (they won't use those exact words, but whatever words they use mean that), he can point to that sentence and say "I was just passing information, that's what I'm supposed to do - see employee handbook section X" (or similar).

_Algernon_ 5y ago

I was much more offended by the abuse of commas.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chefandy 5y ago
I'm a bit rusty, but I think they are technically correctly placed— they separate many dependent clauses, interruptors and a time phrase from one independent clause at the beginning. The sentence is too structurally complex, though. My very strict undergraduate intro to expository writing class required using commas like this but it's definitely passé.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  I have no opinion on the technical correctness of the sentence. But I know I would do a lot to avoid writing such sentence in my own writing, and that I would stop reading anything that hits me with such a monstrosity in the opening paragraph.
  - chefandy 5y ago
    Right. It's too structurally complex but it's not the comma's fault.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hammock 5y ago

You may be onto something. >The Surface Transportation Board already knows this; the FRA knows this, the shippers know this; the car owners/lessees know this, the executives know this; and certainly the front line knows all too well If all these people know about it, why haven't we heard of this before?

dragontamer 5y ago
I presume we all here work at some kind of tech firm? Do you think railroad engineers / conductors would know about a crappy API being pushed by Microsoft or Apple that would affect application development over the next 5 years? Its not like we computer-engineers/software-engineers air out our dirty laundry each day to the public.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Or how many of us know about a terribly unreliable internal database that backs a product critical to core business functionality?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    One difference is that when the HN crowd screws something up, twitter goes down for a few minutes, GitHub is offline for hours, not much to really complain about. A PSR leaves the rails and people can very easily die, and at some point there will be a major event.
pooper 5y ago
> If all these people know about it, why haven't we heard of this before? While I submit that the article has probably no value on its own, I don't think your argument makes sense either. I think it is expected that people in position of power don't publicly speak about everything. I mean on one end of the spectrum nobody talked about dragnet until someone did. On the other end, "no one" talked about the problems with Boeing 737 max problem until planes started falling off the sky in the sense that we didn't pay attention. I think why haven't we heard of this before is not an argument.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mattbee 5y ago

No, I took it as "asking for a friend"

dragontamer 5y ago

Buy the rumor, sell the news. Rumors aren't admissible as court evidence. But rumors are worth looking into, they might have insights into communities we otherwise are ignoring. If railroad engineers have a well known issue, such as the sudden loss of engineer/conductor skills due to retirement and/or quitting for other jobs, that's something that can be verified by other railroad engineers. We all know that last year was "The Great retirement". I can imagine that a large number of skilled people have left the workforce... and their replacements are going to have to learn all of the problems and take years to retrain to their level.

mschuster91 5y ago

Talk with locomotive operators, read their feeds on Twitter. This shit has been circulating all over the world, even here in Germany we have issues of that kind (not the massive length of the trains or double stacking because both is illegal here, but how staff is treated).

zaphar 5y ago

The genesis may have been hearsay but the claim itself is verifiable. Are trains of the size he is describing derailing on a higher frequency? Are train lengths exceeding the safety margins of the yards and equipment? Hearsay can be a valuable tool in prompting that process of verification.

its_ethan 5y ago
For what it's worth, there's another thread in these comments that point to data supporting that the length of trains is going up (+ ~25%), but derailments have gone down, by more than 25%. So maybe fewer trains derailing, but the ones that do are having bigger negative consequences.
- zaphar 5y ago
  yeah, I did a very quick look at some literature, most of it was behind paywalls so my search wasn't comprehensive, but it looked like a large train was more susceptible to derailment but the reduction in the number of trains running actually resulted in a decrease in total derailments. To me this suggest a much more in-depth analysis is needed.

sophacles 5y ago

When his bosses come after him for being a dirty scumbag killjoy (they won't use those exact words, but whatever words they use mean that), he can point to that sentence and say "I was just passing information, that's what I'm supposed to do - see employee handbook section X" (or similar).