Just heard from my daughter who's husband works for the railroad. She said the railroads will be shuting down 72 hrs for TESTING when the clock rolls over. They do not want any trains running on the tracks at the roll over. I wonder how long it will take to park every train there is?

-- Emerald Green (Emerald.Green@Emerald.com), December 08, 1999

Answers

Gee, I wonder if parking all trains will cause disruptions in the infrastructure? Can you say 'trigger effect'. So, if all planes, trains, etc are 'parked' for the rollover, it will be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting to see what happens when they attempt to reboot the whole damn thing...

-- timemachine (con@tin.uum), December 08, 1999.

Not talking about rebooting the power network if it goes down... Never been done before!!! I wonder if it is at all possible.

-- JD (cogito_ergo_sum@usa.net), December 08, 1999.

Shoot! I was looking forward to seeing at least ONE TRAIN fall out of the sky!!

Taz

-- Taz (Tassi123@aol.com), December 08, 1999.

The railroad employees who actually operate the trains will not want to drive the darn things if they have even a hint of a safety problem.

You can take that to the bank!

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), December 08, 1999.

Good one, Taz.

-- Vic (Rdrunner@internetwork.net), December 08, 1999.

ROFLMAO Taz!!!

With this rash of train wrecks we've been having, I guess they'll save more money shutting down 72hrs then losing more trains not to mention lives.

What do you whiz kids see the impact as being?

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 08, 1999.

Emerald,

What railroad does your son-in-law work for? Does he mean that his company has decided to be running no trains during the entire 72 hour testing, or does he mean that they will have have no trains running during the actual rollover? Seventy-two hours with no railroad freight cars running would be a bump in the road all by itself.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 08, 1999.

This sounds like the makings for the mother of all SNAFUs.

-- Ocotillo (peeling@out.===), December 08, 1999.

BTW I wonder if trucking companies will start announcing roll over shut downs next? My guess is that they will.

-- Ocotillo (peeling@out.===), December 08, 1999.

JD, Rebooting the power system, also know as a black start, HAS been done before. Maybe not in USA, but certainly in many other parts of the world. I have personally assisted in controlling one black start, and have just been reviewing plans in case we have another. It seems incredible that USA would not have sufficient trained controllers who are able to manage a black start, however if that is the case, I would be prepared to come over to USA and train them. (For a suitable fee of course).

Malcolm

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), December 08, 1999.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/342/world/Croatia_s_trains_ready_for_m an:.shtml

Link

Croatia's trains ready for manual operation as Y2K approaches

By Snjezana Vukic, Associated Press, 12/08/99 13:33

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) With aging computers that may be vulnerable to Y2K glitches and no money to upgrade them, Croatia's state railway is counting on traditional methods like engineers' skill and common sense to make sure nothing goes tragically wrong come Jan. 1.

This country's old-fashioned railroad signal system may help too: The cash-strapped state-run railway company never managed to computerize it.

''In that sense, our backwardness is to our advantage,'' said Vlatka Skoric, a spokeswoman for the railway company.

Government officials have pledged that no major problems will occur here at midnight Dec. 31, when some computers may confuse the year 2000 with 1900 and fail. Croat authorities insist that the assessment by a London technology consulting group that this country is one of Europe's least Y2K-ready is unjustified.

The government's Y2K control team has assured the public that hospitals, electrical systems and other utilities should function normally. Croatian Airlines, the national carrier, says it does not plan to cancel any flights.

But in a sign that all may not be as rosy as advertised, Croatian Railways recently admitted that its 15-year-old computers ''are sensitive on Y2K.''

Since the national train-tracking system is computerized, ''some trains could get lost'' after midnight Dec. 31, Mato Simunovic, the head of a computer company that cleans up Y2K bugs, told the newspaper Vecernji list.

''No way,'' Skoric responded. ''Our job will be harder and slower, because we may be forced to do many things manually. But no train would be lost and the security of the traffic is not in question.''

The rail company has been preparing backup plans for a long time, Skoric said. But it only recently contracted Simunovic's firm to upgrade computer systems ''because we have financial problems,'' she said.

The railways, financed from the state budget, have been operating at a loss for years.

''We are now fully prepared to do all the work manually, until computers are adjusted,'' Skoric said, admitting that the upgrade will likely not be done by Dec. 31.

She said Croatian Railways has no plans to follow the lead of national rail companies in countries like France, Germany, Poland and Italy, which will temporarily halt their trains before midnight on Dec. 31. Croatian authorities will simply rely on pre-computer age skills.

''Our locomotive engineers are smart enough to drive to the first station and call headquarters'' if needed, Skoric said. ''There were no computers in the past, and phones were quite sufficient in keeping track of trains.''

That's assuming, of course, that the phones work. Some phone systems are vulnerable to Y2K bugs.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), December 08, 1999.

Has anyone heard anything about the problems the railroads in the east were having due to taking over Conrail? They were supposedly behind on their coal deliveries a month or two ago, but I haven't read anything recently.

-- Danny (dcox@ix.netcom.com), December 08, 1999.

Danny,

We've a Conrail/CSX line three houses down from us. Coal deliveries have been VERY slow here in Central Ohio. Usually we have at least three or four trains per night going through and some nights we haven't had any... It's picked up a little lately, but not enough to catch up.

This slowdown has been happening for at least three or four months now, that I can recall.

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), December 08, 1999.

Malcolm,

Just out of curiosity: how do you manage to balance the load among the various power plants AND the consumers during a black start? Do you go tell the guys at the other plant: "You guys wait until we count to 10 and then you flip your switch on, OK"? Do you go around and tell all the customers to disconnect and wait patiently? How do yo do it without the phones, the media, etc.? Furthermore, does your scenario of a black start include rebooting the plants too, not just the distribution network (which I assume means flipping back the right switches)?

-- JD (cogito_ergo_sum@usa.net), December 08, 1999.

JD, To answer your questions, a Black Start does include restarting the generators, and not just the distribution system.

The basic principle of any black start scenario is to first open All line circuit breakers throughout the grid, and all feeder circuit breakers on all distribution circuits. One station which is designated a black start station (and will have tested its black start capability within the previous 12 months) will start a generator and liven its bus, and supply a small amount of local load (up to 10% of its MCR). It will then synch another generator. The grid controller will close in a circuit to another substation and allow the distribution system to close in one or two feeders and pick up some load. A circuit to another power station will be closed in, and that power station will then synch to the system. Piece by piece the grid gets rebuilt as more lines are closed in, more generators connected, and more load restored.

The balancing of load between generators is carried out through a governor characteristic known as speed drop. See Electricity Generation and Distribution 101 for a more detailed explanation of how load sharing works.

There is no need for the type of conversations you describe. All switching is either carried out via SCADA, or manually. An example of a manual instruction would be:

Grid Controller to Substation operator: "At XYZ (which is the name of the sub) Open 312, 322, 332, 342, 352 and 308. Report back."

Substation operator: "Understand XYZ to Open 312, 322, 332, 342, 352 and 308. Report back."

Controller: "That is correct"

An operation such as this would take around one minute at which time the substation operator would report:

Substation operator: "At XYZ, we have opened 312, 322, 332, 342, 352 and 308"

Controller: "XYZ, has opened 312, 322, 332, 342, 352 and 308"

Substation operator: "That is correct"

No part of any black start requires the media, but yes, phone communications are important. That is why the grid communications tests of 9/9/99, and it is why we have at least three methods of communication, and only one of these is Telecom.

Malcolm

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), December 08, 1999.

Did I read back there that Taz saw contrails on the trains?

(Or was it Contrails own the trains, Conrails, heck I never could spell)

-- Helium (Heliumavid@yahoo.com), December 08, 1999.

Hi Folks,

In Sydney Australia all Suburban trains are shutting down from 23.45 on 31 Dec until 01.15 on 01 Jan for fear of power failures causing them to get stuck in tunnels. Strange really, since there are no problems with power, or so we're told. Nevertheless, at what will be a peak time as folk try to leave the inner city harbour area after the fireworks there will be no trains.

There won't be any ferries either (they're a big means of transport in Sydney) due to the number of pleasure craft expected on the Harbour.

Only about 30% of taxis are expected to be on the road also!

Buses are banned from the city area too.

Gee, there's going to be fun and games, I think you guys in the States are getting live broadcasts of our fireworks, watch them if you can, Aussies do fireworks *really* well, but I think the real fireworks will start when people try to get out of the city afterwards, let's pray the lights stay on!

RonD

-- Ron Davis (rdavis@ozemail.com.au), December 08, 1999.

Actualy, there have been near-complete two and three day rail shutdowns before. It depends on how the calender falls on holidays and weekends. As an example, some railroads gave their crews long breaks over Thanksgiving.

It was awfully quiet around here without the freight rolling by every hour.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), December 08, 1999.