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ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit
Bumping posts have been delivered to Fairway Station.
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Yes, I read that article and laughed, that four years later and people are still crying about the LRT!!
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(10-27-2017, 11:55 AM)Canard Wrote:
(10-27-2017, 11:49 AM)timc Wrote: Is the amount of ice that could build up in that area really strong enough to stop a train dead in its tracks?

Yes

Reference? My non-expert expectation would be that in the presence of the amount of force associated with an LRV, ice will be irrelevant — it will just liquefy. I’d be interested to learn however if this is incorrect.
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(10-27-2017, 11:56 AM)Canard Wrote: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Check this out for a good laugh. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wrLRT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#wrLRT</a> <a href="https://t.co/g2Te2dfqGS">pic.twitter.com/g2Te2dfqGS</a></p>&mdash; Iain Hendry ? (@Canardiain) <a href="https://twitter.com/Canardiain/status/923582545073262592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2017</a></blockquote>

It’s an absolute masterpiece.

Of bollocks.

I like how the stupid is multi-layer. He brings up “mall-to-mall”, and talks about a one hour time between the malls when I understand it is to be more like 45 minutes, even for those few people who actually want to travel the whole route. The complaints about the size of the vehicle are quite amusing, especially the idea that a city bus is bigger than one of our LRVs. And what’s with the “special gauge”? He thinks it’s narrow gauge? Maybe he confused the LRT mockup with the little kids’ train at the busker festival.

Letters like this make me think that democracy cannot work except by dumb luck.
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I know that ice can be really strong, enough to break rock. I'm not really sure what sort of pressures it would be under in a overrun scenario, though.
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(10-27-2017, 11:56 AM)Canard Wrote:

He's quite active in his LRT "support":
https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...oo-region/ (October 2017)
https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...rt-system/ (August 2017)
https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...-phase-2-/ (June 2017)
https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...-by-2031-/ (April 2017)
https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...-was-poor/ (December 2015)

There is lots more out there if you enjoy reading these ...
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It would seem like there's a two month limit on publishing his pieces, and he makes the most of that potential.
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(10-27-2017, 11:56 AM)Canard Wrote: Check this out for a good laugh.

Quote:I live on the seven and eight city bus routes and a lot of the time these buses go by with only one or two people on them.
Stopped reading right there. One or two people? Yeah, maybe on the last 8 Franklin leaving Fairview on a Sunday night.

Rolleyes
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(10-27-2017, 01:05 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Reference? My non-expert expectation would be that in the presence of the amount of force associated with an LRV, ice will be irrelevant — it will just liquefy. I’d be interested to learn however if this is incorrect.

I'm sorry, what do you mean by "Reference"? I'm saying that there's a very specifically engineered force that the retarders (the things that clamp onto the rail head) are engineered for. Anything blocking the path of the bumping post will cause that resistive force to rise beyond the engineered value. If it rises too high, you're going to cause severe damage to the train. As it is now, the force required to push the bumping post is probably less than the force that would cause structural damage to the train. That only makes sense. No?

I have never seen ice just "liquefy" by being hit by something. Can you provide an example of where this has occurred?
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He's probably talking about the trains being 100% low floor. If they were partial low-floor they would be configured with the back end raised over the rear bogey resulting in more seating.
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(10-27-2017, 03:11 PM)Canard Wrote:
(10-27-2017, 01:05 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Reference? My non-expert expectation would be that in the presence of the amount of force associated with an LRV, ice will be irrelevant — it will just liquefy. I’d be interested to learn however if this is incorrect.

I'm sorry, what do you mean by "Reference"?  I'm saying that there's a very specifically engineered force that the retarders (the things that clamp onto the rail head) are engineered for.  Anything blocking the path of the bumping post will cause that resistive force to rise beyond the engineered value.  If it rises too high, you're going to cause severe damage to the train.  As it is now, the force required to push the bumping post is probably less than the force that would cause structural damage to the train.  That only makes sense.  No?

I have never seen ice just "liquefy" by being hit by something.  Can you provide an example of where this has occurred?

I don’t mean the whole block turns to water, although that would be a cool effect in a video game. Imagine a lump of ice on the track being run over by a train. To the extent the whole lump doesn’t just go flying off but actually gets run over, what will happen to it? It’s not going to divert the train upward from its path measurably; instead any ice trapped under the wheel will either be reduced to a fine powder or, I suspect, actually turn into a liquid. I just remembered that the reason skates work is because the weight of the person using them turns a tiny amount of the ice under the blade into liquid, so the weight of a train will definitely have that effect on any ice stuck under the wheels.

What we’re talking about here is of course not direct compression by the train on top of it, but the force required to move one of those retarders which is as you say specifically designed. Clearly the presence of ice will somewhat increase the required force, but in the context of the large forces associated with rail vehicles I suspect not a significant amount. So essentially I’m asking what source you have for the claim that ice will jam it up enough to affect what happens when a vehicle hits it. Just observing that the force will obviously increase is not enough.

Somebody else commented that ice is “hard as rock”. I don’t believe ice is anywhere near as hard as rock under any normal circumstances. It can seem that way when you’re responsible for chipping it off of a car, but if it were really hard as rock you couldn’t chip it off the car without damaging the car. It’s actually very soft, not to mention flexible, compared to rock. That’s why glaciers can flow.

Here is a video which is at least somewhat on point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5drElvAns
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(10-27-2017, 03:41 PM)JoeKW Wrote: He's probably talking about the trains being 100% low floor.  If they were partial low-floor they would be configured with the back end raised over the rear bogey resulting in more seating.

I had the same thought. Edmonton and Calgary both run high-floor equipment, so it does feel roomier. But, that's at the cost of all of their platforms being very high up - probably an issue in some areas for accessibility.
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(10-27-2017, 01:21 PM)jamincan Wrote: I know that ice can be really strong, enough to break rock. I'm not really sure what sort of pressures it would be under in a overrun scenario, though.

Ice breaks rock through crystal growth, which is not the same a simply crushing ice, given my fridge can crush ice, I don't think an LRT train will have much difficulty.

It's possibly the buffers are calibrated very exactly, but I doubt it's that close, like I said, my fridge, with a tiny little electric motor crushes ice.

As for the Letters to the Editor, that guy is either delusional or lying.  Anyone who's visited the actual LRT train and yet claims GRT buses are bigger isn't dealing with our reality.

This type of response isn't the one I worry about, I have to have faith that most people are more grounded than this.
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(10-27-2017, 03:41 PM)JoeKW Wrote: He's probably talking about the trains being 100% low floor.  If they were partial low-floor they would be configured with the back end raised over the rear bogey resulting in more seating.

You’re may be right, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that you’re giving him too much credit. He seems to think the trains are a “special gauge”.
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(10-27-2017, 03:54 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: I don’t mean the whole block turns to water, although that would be a cool effect in a video game. Imagine a lump of ice on the track being run over by a train. To the extent the whole lump doesn’t just go flying off but actually gets run over, what will happen to it? It’s not going to divert the train upward from its path measurably; instead any ice trapped under the wheel will either be reduced to a fine powder or, I suspect, actually turn into a liquid. I just remembered that the reason skates work is because the weight of the person using them turns a tiny amount of the ice under the blade into liquid, so the weight of a train will definitely have that effect on any ice stuck under the wheels.

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