4 ms·

From what I can gather, the current crew for most trains is 2. There are no cabooses anymore, so it's just what crew can fit in the engine compartment, and the

From what I can gather, the current crew for most trains is 2. There are no cabooses anymore, so it's just what crew can fit in the engine compartment, and there is no provision for crew rest or sleeping on the train. Engineers and crew are swapped out at specific points, when the train arrives at that spot. The workers suspect that the railroads want to go down to 1-man crews on the trains, for cost savings, but they feel (and I agree) that that's probably unsafe. There are on-the-ground people at endpoints, some bridges, critical crossings, etc., and the number of fixed ground staff would go up with 1-man crews, but that doesn't help when you have a problem 60 miles into the cascades. Standby people is a possibility, but trains are often out in rural, or even inaccessible places; it may not be possible to get a supplementary crew member to a train without a helicopter or at least a multi-hour drive.

cperciva 4y ago
Never mind one-person crews; why don't we have zero-person crews? In most cases the crew are just responding to signals anyway; trains accelerate slowly enough that it's very rare that train crew can see a problem in time to do anything about it anyway.
- colmmacc 4y ago
  How do you find the Skytrain in Vancouver? As an occasional visitor I've found it reliable and friendly, but it is also a fully-isolated track (right?). I'm not sure how well current automation would cope with the semi-open train yards and crossing points that we have in Seattle's Interbay or SODO districts.
  - cperciva 4y ago
    Skytrain is awesome. Tracks are isolated for some definition of "isolated"; skytrain doesn't have to interoperate with any other rail traffic (unless you count maintenance vehicles) but there isn't any wall separating the track from the station platform like e.g. the Las Vegas airport has (it has been discussed as a safety measure, but skytrains don't presently park accurately enough to line up the doors) and there are many places where you can hop a fence and get onto the tracks (resulting in trains being stopped and police showing up to escort you away).
    - jen20 4y ago
      The DLR in London is another example of how zero-person trains may work.
    - secabeen 4y ago
      That's still a significant difference from running traditional trains on unprotected track. Skytrain has no grade crossings.
- simlevesque 4y ago
  Here's why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster RIP to all 47 victims.
  - mecsred 4y ago
    That was an interesting read, thanks for posting that. However, in the write-up the TSB cites several sources of human error and a _lack_ of automation such as rail circuits as key factors.
  - rektide 4y ago
    The article notably specifically cites oil as an hazardous & risky thing to carry. Let us not find fault with the whole idea for but one aspect which we ought not implement (carrying oil).
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Let us not find fault with the whole idea for but one aspect which we ought not implement (carrying oil). We can't find fault with that; oil's got to move somehow. It can move by truck, by rail, by ship, by air, or by pipeline.[1] How much worse is rail? [1] Technically, I guess we could also pour it into the ocean somewhere and hope it naturally floats to somewhere more useful.
  - cperciva 4y ago
    Add mecsred notes, this disaster illustrates the risks of rail, especially with hazardous cargo (which could have been carried far more safely by pipeline!) but it also illustrates an over reliance on humans. A zero-human-drivers railway would have (a) had automatically locking trains rather than relying on humans to hit the breaks, and (b) more remote monitoring to detect if anything went wrong.
    - lmm 4y ago
      A zero-human-drivers railway sounds extremely vulnerable to "the train is on fire, the fire brigade shut off the generator, which it turns out the brakes depended on" which is the essence of what happened there.
- jimt1234 4y ago
  Does anyone have any up-to-date info regarding fully autonomous freight trains? Self-driving cars and semi-trucks seem to grab all the headlines, but someone's got to be working on automating freight trains. It seems like a much easier problem to solve. Or is it?
  - arebop 4y ago
    The incentive is also much lower, given the ratio between driver comp and freight volume.

cperciva 4y ago

Never mind one-person crews; why don't we have zero-person crews? In most cases the crew are just responding to signals anyway; trains accelerate slowly enough that it's very rare that train crew can see a problem in time to do anything about it anyway.

colmmacc 4y ago
How do you find the Skytrain in Vancouver? As an occasional visitor I've found it reliable and friendly, but it is also a fully-isolated track (right?). I'm not sure how well current automation would cope with the semi-open train yards and crossing points that we have in Seattle's Interbay or SODO districts.
- cperciva 4y ago
  Skytrain is awesome. Tracks are isolated for some definition of "isolated"; skytrain doesn't have to interoperate with any other rail traffic (unless you count maintenance vehicles) but there isn't any wall separating the track from the station platform like e.g. the Las Vegas airport has (it has been discussed as a safety measure, but skytrains don't presently park accurately enough to line up the doors) and there are many places where you can hop a fence and get onto the tracks (resulting in trains being stopped and police showing up to escort you away).
  - jen20 4y ago
    The DLR in London is another example of how zero-person trains may work.
  - secabeen 4y ago
    That's still a significant difference from running traditional trains on unprotected track. Skytrain has no grade crossings.
simlevesque 4y ago
Here's why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster RIP to all 47 victims.
- mecsred 4y ago
  That was an interesting read, thanks for posting that. However, in the write-up the TSB cites several sources of human error and a _lack_ of automation such as rail circuits as key factors.
- rektide 4y ago
  The article notably specifically cites oil as an hazardous & risky thing to carry. Let us not find fault with the whole idea for but one aspect which we ought not implement (carrying oil).
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Let us not find fault with the whole idea for but one aspect which we ought not implement (carrying oil). We can't find fault with that; oil's got to move somehow. It can move by truck, by rail, by ship, by air, or by pipeline.[1] How much worse is rail? [1] Technically, I guess we could also pour it into the ocean somewhere and hope it naturally floats to somewhere more useful.
- cperciva 4y ago
  Add mecsred notes, this disaster illustrates the risks of rail, especially with hazardous cargo (which could have been carried far more safely by pipeline!) but it also illustrates an over reliance on humans. A zero-human-drivers railway would have (a) had automatically locking trains rather than relying on humans to hit the breaks, and (b) more remote monitoring to detect if anything went wrong.
  - lmm 4y ago
    A zero-human-drivers railway sounds extremely vulnerable to "the train is on fire, the fire brigade shut off the generator, which it turns out the brakes depended on" which is the essence of what happened there.
jimt1234 4y ago
Does anyone have any up-to-date info regarding fully autonomous freight trains? Self-driving cars and semi-trucks seem to grab all the headlines, but someone's got to be working on automating freight trains. It seems like a much easier problem to solve. Or is it?
- arebop 4y ago
  The incentive is also much lower, given the ratio between driver comp and freight volume.