Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion - Page 669

logicbomb · #**13361** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 12:02 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

But why did it shut down comms for the whole line? That part seems pretty inexcusable.

Canada Line had a fire at some point in the last several months and it was a minor issue that was quickly resolved.

That's the million dollar question right now. Why did a burnt-out linear induction motor completely shut down communications on such a large portion of the line? That's the thing about Translink. They provide us with an answer that spurs on dozens of more questions. Will this occur the next time a train craps out? Is dated technology to blame? How can we ensure that this incidents like this, and previous incidents do not occur again? What occurs when a shutdown finally results in a death?

When we talk about an aging system, we are talking about one that will only see an increase in demand as we progress forward. So, one would expect more wear-and-tear and it seems like TL isn't doing a damn thing to improve the technology.

Just like how we STILL have birds nests present near vital communications cables. Nothing has been done since that incident a few weeks ago.

Geof · #**13362** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 1:41 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by logicbomb

we STILL have birds nests present near vital communications cables. Nothing has been done since that incident a few weeks ago.

From what I have heard from the inside, TransLink is a good organization, but bureaucratic (which is not surprising given the pressure they are under to account for every decision they make). I am told initiatives take place on a time scale of months, not weeks or days. If TransLink were to do something about birds' nests, it might take six months to get a proposal through.

dpogue · #**13363** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 3:27 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

But why did it shut down comms for the whole line? That part seems pretty inexcusable.

Canada Line had a fire at some point in the last several months and it was a minor issue that was quickly resolved.

I heard that when the motor burned out it partially melted one of the train control cables on either side of the centre rail, which would cause a communication loss with the trains.
However that still should have only caused trains in a roughly 1km area to time out, so I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the line.

Quote:

Originally Posted by logicbomb

we STILL have birds nests present near vital communications cables. Nothing has been done since that incident a few weeks ago.

Maintenance work is generally planned far ahead of time. You don't want to pull staff off of in-progress maintenance work, but it's probably been added to the list of work to be scheduled over the next few months.

WarrenC12 · #**13364** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 4:07 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geof

From what I have heard from the inside, TransLink is a good organization, but bureaucratic (which is not surprising given the pressure they are under to account for every decision they make). I am told initiatives take place on a time scale of months, not weeks or days. If TransLink were to do something about birds' nests, it might take six months to get a proposal through.

I've heard employee morale is (understandably) in the toilet in that organization.

Kisai · #**13365** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 8:26 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanSpice

TransLink announced what caused yesterday's outage: a burnt-out linear induction motor. It's a good thing a shutdown is all that happened!

Based on the shape of the damage, I'm going to say that some metal object on the track or broke off and got wedged into the LIM and was vaporized, damaging the LIM, and likely overheated or damaged the communication cable RF loop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

But why did it shut down comms for the whole line? That part seems pretty inexcusable.

Canada Line had a fire at some point in the last several months and it was a minor issue that was quickly resolved.

The Canada line issue was more severe in that it actually resulted in smoke, and from what I heard it was a third-rail shoe that had come off, but I think that may have been somewhere else on SSP speculating on it.

The Expo line is made of up communication loops, and a break in the communication loop would make the train time out.

Canada line has the auto-restart software, Expo does not.

xd_1771 · #**13366** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 8:30 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dpogue

I heard that when the motor burned out it partially melted one of the train control cables on either side of the centre rail, which would cause a communication loss with the trains.
However that still should have only caused trains in a roughly 1km area to time out, so I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the line.

These weren't the guideway ATC cables, actually. The nest was on a cable rack supplying all sorts of different communication cables, running alongside the guideway. The reference pictures on Twitter/etc showing the repairmen working on the cable box show this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Canada Line had a fire at some point in the last several months and it was a minor issue that was quickly resolved.

That fire at Aberdeen was no "minor issue". In fact it shut down service on the entire Richmond branch for over 3 hours (longer than Tuesday's incident).

Quote:

Originally Posted by logicbomb

That's the million dollar question right now. Why did a burnt-out linear induction motor completely shut down communications on such a large portion of the line? That's the thing about Translink. They provide us with an answer that spurs on dozens of more questions. Will this occur the next time a train craps out? Is dated technology to blame? How can we ensure that this incidents like this, and previous incidents do not occur again? What occurs when a shutdown finally results in a death?

As far as I understand a lot of this ends up coming down to safety, especially with many trains running close together. Considering the visible, serious-looking damage to the pictured LIM I wouldn't be surprised if the system did this automatically as a measure of safety (I was following the accounts on Twitter and some were reporting that trains emergency-braked to a halt). Since we didn't take that 1990s upgrade described in the SkyTrain review, the "timed out" trains would have to be re-entered manually and that contributes largely to the length of the delay.

The other thing however is that the doors were pried open on 3 separate SkyTrain cars, so obvs. you can't start running again that quickly. We know the problem train itself was located at Nanaimo Station, so theoretically you could've had trains running again earlier between Waterfront/Commercial-Broadway, switching west Nanaimo. Same with the Joyce-Edmonds section. So depending on where the doors-opened incidents were, that may have been a contribution to the continuation of the delay west of Commercial-Broadway and east of Joyce.

Quote:

A Broadway extension would have meant people could still make it to Surrey on the train via Canada-Millennium-Expo.

Very good point. Truly, we could deal with a lot of these issues better with the transit investment needed in this region. I would think though that for an alternative to Metrotown, most people would take a bus/B-Line from Brentwood (shorter).

**************

Anyway, if anyone wasn't paying attention, #SkyTrain and the new hashtag #SkyHostage have both been trending pretty big all the way in Toronto - and that's because the entire subway there had a 95-minute shutdown just this Monday (worse yet, TTC didn't deploy a single replacement bus). Clearly these types of issues aren't exclusive to our system, even though the issue was with a LIM.

http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/ent...down-all-four-lines-no-replacement-buses

dpogue · #**13367** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 2:29 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xd_1771

These weren't the guideway ATC cables, actually. The nest was on a cable rack supplying all sorts of different communication cables, running alongside the guideway. The reference pictures on Twitter/etc showing the repairmen working on the cable box show this.

When the bird nest caught fire it damaged the communication cables underneath the centre walkway, but I was refering to Tuesday's burnt out LIM which allegedly also damaged one of the ATC cables.

MIPS · #**13368** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 4:26 PM**

If you were not on the line yesterday, trains were bypassing through the pocket track inbound between Nanaimo and Broadway. The main line was. Full of parked service vehicles. Either they found another odd place to park them during the day while they replace power rails on terminal or that portion is still dead. Someone probably thrown something on the tracks again. Personally I have seen a pipe wrench and a camper toilet (eww) but who remembers that piece of rebar that went under the train a few years ago? The trains used to briefly have cow catchers but that was 30 years ago after someone threw a sign post on the tracks.

I swear I read somewhere that the OBC can handle single LIM failures by disabling it, then notifying control of the fault so they can more gracefully get it out of service.
My guess is that instead the LIM failed, the OBC halted the train and as it sat there it caused other trains to wait for it to resume, causing a runaway timeout condition until control realized what was happening and halted the system completely.

Sheba · #**13369** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 4:53 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Anyway, if anyone wasn't paying attention, #SkyTrain and the new hashtag #SkyHostage have both been trending pretty big all the way in Toronto - and that's because the entire subway there had a 95-minute shutdown just this Monday (worse yet, TTC didn't deploy a single replacement bus). Clearly these types of issues aren't exclusive to our system, even though the issue was with a LIM.

http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/ent...down-all-four-lines-no-replacement-buses

Sound familiar?

Quote:

The mayor also suggested chronic underfunding exacerbates the TTC’s woes.

“We understand we have to do better than this,” Tory said. “When you have instances where you haven’t invested over the years, you’ve been slow to invest, where you perhaps haven’t had really rigorous focus on customer service for some time, it takes time to change a culture. It takes time to change equipment.”

CanSpice · #**13370** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 4:56 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MIPS

If you were not on the line yesterday, trains were bypassing through the pocket track inbound between Nanaimo and Broadway. The main line was. Full of parked service vehicles. Either they found another odd place to park them during the day while they replace power rails on terminal or that portion is still dead. Someone probably thrown something on the tracks again. Personally I have seen a pipe wrench and a camper toilet (eww) but who remembers that piece of rebar that went under the train a few years ago? The trains used to briefly have cow catchers but that was 30 years ago after someone threw a sign post on the tracks.

They've been doing bypassing through the pocket track for a few weeks now. It's annoying on the Mark II trains because they get up to speed leaving Nanaimo, then there's a brief heavy braking that makes everybody jolt (not as bad as an emergency stop but still a decent jolt), then they slow down to negotiate the switches. The Mark I trains don't do this, they slow smoothly to the switches.

WarrenC12 · #**13371** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 5:26 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanSpice

They've been doing bypassing through the pocket track for a few weeks now. It's annoying on the Mark II trains because they get up to speed leaving Nanaimo, then there's a brief heavy braking that makes everybody jolt (not as bad as an emergency stop but still a decent jolt), then they slow down to negotiate the switches. The Mark I trains don't do this, they slow smoothly to the switches.

They have been doing this intermittently on various sections of Expo with the power line replacement project, particularly after 9pm, which has been going on for at least a year now.

dpogue · #**13372** Posted **Jun 11, 2015, 10:40 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MIPS

If you were not on the line yesterday, trains were bypassing through the pocket track inbound between Nanaimo and Broadway. The main line was. Full of parked service vehicles. Either they found another odd place to park them during the day while they replace power rails on terminal or that portion is still dead. Someone probably thrown something on the tracks again. Personally I have seen a pipe wrench and a camper toilet (eww) but who remembers that piece of rebar that went under the train a few years ago? The trains used to briefly have cow catchers but that was 30 years ago after someone threw a sign post on the tracks.

The inbound track beside the Vanness Pocket is being used to park equipment for power rail replacement. They can't store it in the pocket because it's too long and would block the switches.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MIPS

I swear I read somewhere that the OBC can handle single LIM failures by disabling it, then notifying control of the fault so they can more gracefully get it out of service.
My guess is that instead the LIM failed, the OBC halted the train and as it sat there it caused other trains to wait for it to resume, causing a runaway timeout condition until control realized what was happening and halted the system completely.

There's definitely a fault code for when the LIMs get too hot. I believe they're allowed to run a train with 1 of the LIMs disabled, but if 2 of them go then it must be taken out of service.

From the photos, this doesn't look like a gradual overheating of the motor, it looks more like something stuck in the motor and sparked or burned up. TransLink said they were still looking into what exactly happened to cause the LIM issue.

officedweller · #**13373** Posted **Jun 12, 2015, 3:59 AM**

Video of MKI renovations posted 3 weeks ago:

https://instagram.com/p/286G3cHd1Q/

**********

Government St. Bus Ramp Bulletin:

http://www.pmh1project.com/info-centre/w...nt-Street-bus-only-on-and-off-ramps.aspx

Millennium2002 · #**13374** Posted **Jun 27, 2015, 10:03 AM**

Apparently it's been 125 years since transit first started in Vancouver.

To celebrate, a vintage Brill trolley will be brought out this Sunday for the first time in years!

http://buzzer.translink.ca/2015/06/a-cel...s-of-transit-with-a-vintage-trolley-bus/

csbvan · #**13375** Posted **Jun 27, 2015, 4:08 PM**

I saw that trolley from my office going down Pender yesterday. I was wondering what it was for.

MIPS · #**13376** Posted **Jul 1, 2015, 4:32 PM**

This Month in History
July 1985

As with last month, three stations again open for a weekend open house event. This time it's 29th Avenue, Metrotown and Edmonds.

More importantly, July marks the first time the system begins operating under full automatic. Now begins the commissioning and system debugging and it will continue right up until the official opening in five months. The trains, computer and every part of the system will be run through every possible passenger load, switching condition, simulated failure and anything that comes to mind for the checklist. This is incredibly important. The last thing the government, BC Transit or UTDC want is bad PR for a system which cannot operate to specifications or worse, breaks down during the expo. They have several months to fix anything that comes up.
Meanwhile reports are coming out of Scarborough** of numerous problems with both the signalling system (phantom trains are popping up in blocks and causing trains to emergency brake) and serious hardware problems, not limited to a high LIM failure rate. Apparently the weatherproofing and debris protection was not sufficient on theearly versions of the motors and moisture and small objects were getting into the coil windings, causing corrosion and premature failure. In the end the TTC had to have all of its LIMs either replaced or rebuilt.

It is also worth noting that in these months the SkyTrain would have its only known reported case of trains colliding with eachother.**
A manually driven train in the OMC was deleted out of the VCC by an operator. Now invisible to the computer, it reallocated the now empty block to another train running in automatic and moved it to that location. A low speed collision occurred with no injuries and minor coupler damage to both trains. A software patch was released that would prevent similar incidents from occurring again.

**Sources for these incidents can be found in the Vancouver news archive and online archives of the Greater Toronto Newspapers (eg: the Toronto Sun)

Screengrab courtesy of Yaletown Productions

Image courtesy of Alan M.