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General Category => Off the Record => Topic started by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 12:52:20 PM

Title: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 12:52:20 PM
Colombia

As part of my job I have smuggled contraband into Colombia.  While waiting in the customs line in Bogota it occurred to me that my annual performance reviews are more exciting than most peoples' bucket lists.

I wasn't smuggling guns or money, just technology.  The project I was working on had an abbreviated time frame.  Legitimately importing goods into Colombia takes a minimum of four weeks; and nothing in Colombia ever occurs in the minimum amount of time. To have any hope of meeting our deadline we had to hand carry vital goods into the country.  "Hand carry" was open to interpretation; I was bringing in a workstation, half a dozen radios and three laptops.  To make it extra subtle my coworkers had put all this in a hard plastic pelican case.  The Colombian customs agent took one look at that and sent me over to the inspection line.

The gear was packed in so tightly that the latches wouldn't open.  The inspectors didn't have a pry bar or any sort of lever.  They found a long metal pole the sort that would hold a "Keep off the grass" sign.  With that and with a great deal of difficulty they levered open the latches. When the last latch burst the case sprung open like the Ark of the Covenant, bubble wrap bulging out everywhere.

"What's that?" asked the inspector, pointing at the work station on top.

"It's a desktop; my boss is too cheap to buy me a laptop."

Fortunately he didn't dig any deeper to find the many laptops I was carrying.  I don't think he wanted to deal with the hassle of seizing the equipment or fining me, so he made me promise that I was taking the equipment out of the country with me; and who knows, maybe one day I will.  In order to close the case we had to get another custom officer to stand on the case so we could latch it up.  Even like that we had to pop about half the bubble wrap on top to get the case closed; how Jeremy ever got it latched up in the first place remains a mystery.  With a stern reprimand and a solemn promise I was on my way.

You're allowed to bring in $1500 worth of goods into Colombia; I had easily ten times that amount.  Originally the office group had approached our network technician, Glen, about bringing this in.  He refused.  Glen was a contractor and thought GE would just let him rot in a Colombian jail if he got caught.  As an employee, I figured GE would at least consider paying my bail, maybe, so I agreed.  This was my first trip to Colombia, later I would always fly the national carrier, Avianca.  They have a deal with the Colombian government so that goods can be taken to their final destination in country rather than stopping for inspection in Bogota.  Our project is headquartered in Santa Marta on the north coast of the country.  There customs is almost non-existent, and so many crates, boxes and odds and ends are brought through that nothing I had would stand out.  Our program manager, Kevin, said that he had once seen a man pick up a transmission for a car off the baggage claim belt in Santa Marta.

While I never had problems with this method, it is not a foolproof scheme.  Our project manager, Bill, had notoriously bad luck with customs into Colombia.  He followed the same route that I did, and as he was getting off the plane once in Bogota he received a notice that customs would like to speak with him.  He had brought in his luggage a large number of plastic labels to be put on coaxial cable.  He tried to argue that it wasn't worth anything, but customs wouldn't listen and seized his suitcase.  That was the suitcase with his clothes and personal effects; so he had to wait for GE legal to pay his fine before he had anything to wear.  His other suitcase held seventy five pounds of brass fittings; customs didn't even inspect that.

Glen, despite his initial reluctance, would later go on to do the most heroic smuggling job of all of us.  He took 100 pounds of brass fittings and put them into his carryon so that they wouldn't incur the heavy baggage fine.  TSA could not believe what they saw on the monitor and made him open up the bag.  Even after he opened it they had a hard time believing it.  Glen is an enormous man, he had been in the Marines, but even he struggled to get that into the overhead bin. 

Despite the ease of getting through customs; many of my coworkers refused to fly Avianca.  It goes by the well-earned sobriquet "Avianunca."  The only major delay I had an issue flying on it was my first trip home around Christmastime.  The check in girl cheerfully told me that she had put me on an earlier flight as I checked in.  That earlier flight left two hours after my original flight was supposed to.  It was good I got on that flight, though; my scheduled flight hadn't even arrived in Santa Marta when I took off.

Our lead communications engineer, Gary, had much worse luck.  He had scheduled a flight out of Orlando.  It was a rainy day with the heavy thunderstorms common to peninsular Florida.  He had installed an app on his phone to listen in on the communication between the control tower and flights.  So, at boarding, he knew full well that there was no chance of an on-time departure; they were only loading passengers on the plane to make their gate time statistics look better.  As they sat on the tarmac there was a ray of hope, in fifteen minutes there would be enough clearing to take off; did they have enough fuel?  The pilot assured the control tower he did; and then five minutes later said that they had to return to the gate for fuel.  They had missed their chance, an hour passed, and then another and then the flight was cancelled.  The passengers on the plane were mostly Brazilian and Colombian.  They took the news of the cancellation with the sort of sangfroid that Latin Americans are well known for and the Orlando police had to be called in.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: The Brain on June 17, 2015, 01:04:41 PM
I see. :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 17, 2015, 01:05:38 PM
Glad to have you back, Sav.  :D
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 17, 2015, 01:13:24 PM
I thought we had some sort of free trade dealy with Colombia.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on June 17, 2015, 01:40:40 PM
Is there flights directly to Macondo?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 01:53:19 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 17, 2015, 01:13:24 PM
I thought we had some sort of free trade dealy with Colombia.

We do.  Tariffs have been eliminated on most goods; however you still have to go through a customs procedure when bringing goods into the country.  So it still takes time and bureaucracy to import goods.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 02:00:12 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on June 17, 2015, 01:40:40 PM
Is there flights directly to Macondo?

It depends who you ask... 

The Colombian tourist ministry has adopted the slogan "Colombia is magical realism," and claims that Cartagena seems to leap out of the pages of a Gabriel García Márquez novel.  However Márquez was actually from a little town called Aracataca both that and the neighboring town of Fundación claim to be Macondo.  Cartagena has direct flights, the other two share an airport for crop dusters.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 02:00:29 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 17, 2015, 01:05:38 PM
Glad to have you back, Sav.  :D

Thank you  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Caliga on June 17, 2015, 02:01:23 PM
I want to go to that part of Colombia (rain forest on the Pacific Coast) where the build the drug subs deep in the jungle.  That's fascinating to me.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 17, 2015, 02:04:45 PM
I priced some hotel and air packages in Cartagena and the place is definitely not cheap.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 02:35:41 PM
Quote from: Caliga on June 17, 2015, 02:01:23 PM
I want to go to that part of Colombia (rain forest on the Pacific Coast) where the build the drug subs deep in the jungle.  That's fascinating to me.

Gringos  :rolleyes:

Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: jimmy olsen on June 17, 2015, 05:49:23 PM
Awesome story Sav.

Is your wife there with you?

How's your Spanish?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: katmai on June 17, 2015, 05:55:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 02:35:41 PM
Quote from: Caliga on June 17, 2015, 02:01:23 PM
I want to go to that part of Colombia (rain forest on the Pacific Coast) where the build the drug subs deep in the jungle.  That's fascinating to me.

Gringos  :rolleyes:

No just Caliga
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 17, 2015, 06:00:58 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 17, 2015, 05:49:23 PM
Awesome story Sav.

Is your wife there with you?

How's your Spanish?

Thanks, Tim, there's a lot more to come. 

CB remained here in Florida while I was there.  I wasn't down there continuously, I made seven trips between two to three weeks apiece between December and the beginning of this month.

My Spanish is much better now than it was in December.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on June 17, 2015, 06:07:06 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 17, 2015, 05:49:23 PM
How's your Spanish?
Better than yours.

Sorry for responding for you Sav.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 18, 2015, 10:42:25 AM
Airport

Colombia has four seasons, but unlike in temperate zones the seasons don't come to you, you have to go to them.  There are the fire lands, which is where our project was located.  It's always summer there; it can be windy, wet or dry; but the heat is relentless.  There's perpetual winter high in the mountains.  In the hills lie the temperate lands.  Even though the fire lands compose the largest part of the country; most of the population lives in the temperate region.  Some parts of these are always spring; this is where Colombia's large flower growing industry is located.  Bogota is always in autumn.

Bogota is located at 8000 feet above mean sea level; it's usually cool and quite frequently rainy.  This came as a shock to some of our engineers coming down for the first time.  The one who had it worst was WD, who spent an evening in Bogota in order to get his visa.  He dressed in the height of Florida fashion, shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt; only to arrive and find that it was 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  He had his baggage shipped on to Santa Marta so he had nothing else to wear.  Traffic is so awful in Bogota that it's necessary to leave early in the morning (when it is even colder) in order to make it to the government offices.  He froze throughout the morning as he was driven through the city and waited outside offices.

Sofia, our project den mother, lived in Bogota for several years.  She explained that dress in Bogota is usually conservative, while it is informal in the rest of the country.  Anyone dressed casually is assumed to be either a gringo or a bumpkin from the provinces.  WD took it much further than most, but he is Chinese, so no one would have thought he was a native.

Even going from international to domestic in the El Dorado Airport requires some time out of doors.  The international airport looks amazing; it's a large steel, glass and marble structure.  As you exit passport control you pass through an enormous glass atrium with the baggage terminals.  It's all very sleek, shiny and modern.  Then you turn towards domestic, which takes you down a dingy cinder block corridor to a set of steel emergency exit doors with a bench bolted to the wall.  There you must wait for the bus, which comes every five minutes, or ten, or fifteen.  Eventually the bus will arrive, with the sort of Latin American clockwork regularity you'll come to expect if you spend any amount of time there.

The bus takes you across the tarmac to the run down domestic airport.  There aren't gates there; instead the planes are lined up next to a covered walkway outside the terminal.  You're supposed to go into the airport, through security, and wait in a large room until they announce your flight.  Then you march back out and go past the place the bus dropped you off and to your boarding staircase.  It's quite possible to simply walk from the bus to your staircase.  There no one checks IDs; you could be anybody with a ticket.  I had to do that a couple times when my connecting flight was late.

If you make a wrong turn going to domestic you'll end up in the main part of the international terminal.  Our lead network engineer, Ken, did this.  Once you've entered the international you can't simply go back into the domestic terminal; they're regarded as separate airports.  You can take a public bus from the international to domestic terminal; but GE has hired a private security firm for us and they won't allow us to engage to go into unsecured areas like public buses.  Ken had to call the head of security and wait to be driven two blocks to the domestic airport.

Flying out internationally is considerably more secure.  You have to go through civil aviation to make sure your tariffs are paid.  Then you have to show tickets and passport to get into the security zone.  Then the military pats you down as you enter the line for passport control.  Then you go through passport control.  Then you go through the x-ray scanner and get wanded.  Then they select a number of people at "Random" to be further searched.  (I must look suspicious since I got selected on two different trips.)  They go so far as to remove the inside lining of your shoes.

Even with so much security there's still the danger of petty theft.  Our original project manager, Jason, placed his iPad on the ticket counter as he bent down to get his passport out of his bags.  By the time he had gotten back up it was gone, and no one had seen anything.

Simon Bolivar Airport in Santa Marta is a world away from either terminal of the El Dorado airport.  The people there aren't usually frequent fliers.  For them this is an exhilarating experience, one to be commemorated.  They take pictures of themselves with the airplane.  They take pictures of their children with the stewardesses.  They take pictures of the inside of the airplane.  Everyone crosses themselves on takeoff and applauds on landing. 

Sofia, our project den mother, said that she's seen much worse.  On one flight an older woman, a complete stranger, who gripped onto Sofia tightly as they were boarding the plane.  The woman was terrified and they were still on the ground.  She wanted Sofia to switch seats so they could be next to each other.  Sofia said that she couldn't because she was traveling with her daughter.

(Simon Bolivar died in Santa Marta; hence the airport name.  He had planned to leave South America for Europe, but died while in the process of packing.  He was buried in the Cathedral at Santa Marta, but his remains were eventually moved to Caracas.  This proved to be fortunate for everybody's favorite caudillo, Hugo Chavez.  Chavez accused the Colombians of poisoning Bolivar, and had him exhumed to perform an autopsy on him.  There was no evidence of poisoning.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on June 18, 2015, 01:59:03 PM
Interesting time there Sav.  Cool story.  :cool: 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 18, 2015, 02:33:30 PM
Quote from: KRonn on June 18, 2015, 01:59:03 PM
Interesting time there Sav.  Cool story.  :cool:

Thanks, Kronn   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 19, 2015, 10:46:55 AM
SIMS

We're met by our security detail when we get past the baggage claim in Santa Marta.  GE contracts with a company called "SIMS" (which I like to think stands for Seguridad del Primero Mundo, but probably doesn't.)  Every time we go anywhere outside a secure facility (such as a port or the hotel) we have to have our security detail with us.  We're not allowed to drive ourselves (though, given the rules of the road in Colombia are... flexible... that's for the best) so our security and drivers are one and the same.

GE classifies Colombia as a dangerous country due to the ongoing war between FARC and the Colombian government.  There were a number of cease-fires while I was in Colombia, but they never lasted for long.  Santa Marta and the area near the Venezuelan border was at one time a hot spot for violence.  With the death of Chavez and the collapse of oil prices, Venezuela is no longer the safe haven for FARC that it once was.  Instead most of the fighting is centered near the Ecuadorian border.  As of late the government has been cracking down hard on FARC; so FeNoCo is worried that FARC will start targeting infrastructure again.  About five years ago they blew up the tracks on our line.

Javier, a Spaniard, who is one of our supplier's engineers, was here in more violent times.  He said that he was told if he was captured by FARC to say that he was a working on contracts and just here for meetings.  If the rebels learned that you had experience with radio they'd draft you.  Javier speculated that, if they did, "You'd probably get paid more, in the white money."

Even without FARC there's plenty of trouble.  We had a guy chain himself and a Colombian flag to the tracks in Bosconia (one of the larger cities on the line.)  FeNoCo asked the mayor to remove him; he refused since the last time he helped FeNoCo townspeople kidnapped his son. 

There are still some remnants of the violent days in Santa Marta.  The military is everywhere; there's always some sort of exercise going on.  You can tell you've found a really good restaurant when you find officers in uniform there.  The army isn't the best funded, frequently they ride motorcycles usually in tandem.  It's odd seeing a man brandishing an M-16 while riding bitch.

The other notable remnant is that in the city of Santa Marta it's illegal for two (civilian) men to ride on the same motor bike.  In the old days FARC did their drive-bys that way.  While it seems that there would be an obvious work around to this; FARC would be laughed out of the international brotherhood of Latin American Revolutionaries if they used either women drivers or women gunmen.  I found it amusing that the medieval theocrats that make up ISIS are more open minded about the role of women in their cause than the godless progressives.  Motorcycles serve as taxis in this part of the world; so this law has given many women a career opportunity as taxi drivers for men.

SIMS is led by Ricardo; who is a successful man by the standards of Latin American in that he has fifty four children.  He keeps nine phones on him at all times; one for work, one for his wife and seven for his various mistresses and baby-mommas.  He flips from phone to phone with amazing agility.  He's still on the prowl for the mother of number fifty-five.  I once went to the mall with him, I thought he was going to give himself whiplash from checking out every single women in the place.

When I first got to Santa Marta we had drivers who were sub-contracted through SIMS (this practice ended after the Gerhard incident.)  One of the subcontractors, Cristoban, owned his own fleet of cars.  Most of his business, he explained, was shuttling children from affluent families to and from the university.  The SIMS drivers were mostly ex-military or ex-police officers.  The sub-contractors were obviously not; one of them was Cristoban's son, who didn't look to be yet eighteen.  What he possibly could have done if there had been trouble was a mystery.

Other contract drivers had side jobs as well.  When Jeff, our lead wayside engineer and project drama queen, was arriving in Santa Marta once the driver asked him if he liked women.  Jeff, perplexed by the question from a total stranger, said, yes he was heterosexual.  The driver then asked him if he would like them for a two hour shift or for all night.  We got rid of that driver quickly.

Javier was the favorite driver; our project manager, Bill, always requested him.  He was from Bogota, and found the quaint ways of the locals amusing.  One time, for instance, we came upon a man standing by a stream with a bucket of rocks.  Javier asked him what he was doing; he explained that he was picking up stones for construction.  The best ones come from streams.  Javier thought that was the greatest joke.  Some of the sub-contractors took offense at this behavior, and called him a "City-boy."  He'd call them "Coastal Donkeys."

Most of the other drivers would be cycled through.  We didn't always coordinate well with SIMS.  The ports require an in depth training before you can drive in them.  We sent one driver to that training, and the very next day he was cycled through and sent to Bogota.  It took us weeks to get another driver certified for the port.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2015, 04:03:18 PM
Do you get any kind of danger pay?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 19, 2015, 05:28:59 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2015, 04:03:18 PM
Do you get any kind of danger pay?

No, none of the GE employees got hazard pay.  Originally contractors like Glen were supposed to get hazard pay.  Our leadership balked at sending them to Colombia due to the higher rate.  Since we didn't have enough people to do the job they offered Glen a "Deal."  They would provide GE security for him instead of him getting hazard pay.  That was one reason why Glen refused to bring the pelican case into Colombia in my first story; since GE was in effect forcing him to pay for his own security he assumed they would not have bailed him out.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: katmai on June 19, 2015, 06:09:10 PM
I thought the meat for these stories was his danger pay?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 10:53:15 AM
Quote from: katmai on June 19, 2015, 06:09:10 PM
I thought the meat for these stories was his danger pay?

Pretty much; come work for GE, it's not just an adventure, it's a job.   :bowler:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 10:53:32 AM
German

Our most memorable driver was German.  He was an enormous man with many passions.  He loved his sports.  He asked me if we had cock fighting in Florida.  "Not legally," I told him, but it goes on in Miami.  His eyes lit up at that for Miami is the Emerald City for South America.  When I tried to explain where I lived to the Colombians, they had never heard of Orlando, Cape Canaveral or Disneyworld, but they knew exactly where Miami was.  He followed baseball, soccer, bull fighting, luchadoring, but he had a special passion for cock fighting.

Often as we would leave our hotel, he would stop after a few miles on the main road, run across the street and hand a kid on a bicycle some money.  The kid would peddle off and he would run back.  He insisted that it was for his wife, but we all suspected he was paying off his bookie.

He also loved music.  He asked me what sort of music did I listen to, Reggaeton, Salsa or Champeta.  I told him I didn't think I could tell the difference between those styles if my life depended on it.  He played some samples of the different genres; and I still couldn't hear the difference.  He could, though, and could tell if the song was more typical of Cartagena or Baranquilla or Bogota.  I was with Javier (our supplier's project manger and a Spaniard), and asked him if any of this music ever made it back to Spain.

"No," he said, "This is the reason why we left.

Then I came back after the Christmas break and found out that he was gone.  What happened to him was a matter of some speculation.  He had started to bum cell phone calls off of the GE employees; this had upset some people.  He had a collection of girlfriends and had their pictures on their phone; some more déshabillé than others.  He showed them to Glen, our network field technician, while Sofia, our project den mother was nearby.  Then he told Alejandra, Sofia's daughter and an engineer on the project, that he and his wife had an open marriage.  That is what I think did him in; for Alejandra tells everything to her mother.  We were told that he was on vacation; but how much of a vacation could you take when you have to bum cell phone minutes?  He never returned to the project.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Syt on June 22, 2015, 11:25:41 AM
He doesn't sound like a typical German.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Legbiter on June 22, 2015, 01:37:11 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 22, 2015, 11:25:41 AM
He doesn't sound like a typical German.

Translatin, obviously.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 03:21:55 PM
That wasn't the strangest name I heard down there.  One of our drivers was named William, (not Guillermo, William) and he pronounced it just like the English name (Will-yam, not Weel-yam.)  He spoke absolutely no English.  His father adored the English and gave his children English names and used the English pronunciations.   :bowler:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2015, 03:22:59 PM
How many people have you met with Commie names?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 03:28:24 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 22, 2015, 03:22:59 PM
How many people have you met with Commie names?

The closest I came to that was an Ivan.  Almost every man seemed to be named Jorge, Javier or Jose.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Syt on June 22, 2015, 03:30:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 03:21:55 PM
That wasn't the strangest name I heard down there.  One of our drivers was named William, (not Guillermo, William) and he pronounced it just like the English name (Will-yam, not Weel-yam.)  He spoke absolutely no English.  His father adored the English and gave his children English names and used the English pronunciations.   :bowler:

Well, the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo had his second name picked after his Dad's favorite actor, Ronald Reagan.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on June 22, 2015, 03:43:13 PM
Quote from: Syt on June 22, 2015, 03:30:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 03:21:55 PM
That wasn't the strangest name I heard down there.  One of our drivers was named William, (not Guillermo, William) and he pronounced it just like the English name (Will-yam, not Weel-yam.)  He spoke absolutely no English.  His father adored the English and gave his children English names and used the English pronunciations.   :bowler:

Well, the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo had his second name picked after his Dad's favorite actor, Ronald Reagan.

A real fan of Bedtime for Bonzo?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 23, 2015, 10:34:14 AM
El Mall

My first trip to Colombia was around Christmastime.  There was a huge line at passport control in Bogota with people returning from overseas or visiting family members.  After that, I had issues with customs which delayed me further.  I barely made my flight and my luggage did not.  The Avianca representative assured me that it would come on the next flight.  The SIMS drivers who met me expressed grave doubts that my luggage would arrive that evening, or the next day.  Consequently the first thing I saw in Colombia was the mall.

The mall was amazingly norteamericano, right down to the hordes of bored teenagers wandering about it.  There was a five screen movie theater and a food court.  Even the name "Buena Vista" could be the name of a mall in the United States.  The only major difference is that there's an iron gate around the parking lot, and you need to register to come in, and show your ticket on the way out.

One of the anchor stores is The Home Store; this was El Home Depot.  I had to go there because my safety equipment was in my luggage.  I got some hard hats, glasses, safety vests and steel toed shoes.  I got the largest pair they had; but they were still small and pinched my size 11 US feet.  They were cheaply made too.  Ken, our lead network engineer, had a similar experience to mine, but he kept using his Home Store shoes.  Throughout his time in Colombia he was always complaining about pain in his feet, his back and his legs.  Fortunately for me, my luggage did arrive that night and I was able to wear my Red Wings all my time in Colombia.

There was a store in Santa Marta called "Tauro" which was El Home Depot, but almost all of the other stores in Santa Marta were hole in the wall places.  Often they're completely open in front without any doors.  Prices are never put on the merchandise.  When I would go to shops with Sofia, our project den mother, she would always tell me not to say anything.  "If you open your mouth the price will triple." 

Surprisingly we found a number of electronics and hardware goods needed for the project in a district called El Martelo.  No one had a large or consistent collection of anything.  We'd show up with a fuse or a connector and show it to the shop keeper.  He'd look at it, shake his head solemnly and send us off to another store which he was sure had something like this.  We'd go three or four stores until we found what we were after.  It was surprising what we could find there.  How the merchants got industrial specced coaxial connectors or high voltage fuses was a mystery.  Who the market for this stuff was, besides gringo engineers, I don't know. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 24, 2015, 09:47:24 AM
The Digs

Our project was headquartered out of a luxury resort in Santa Marta, Colombia called Hotel Irotama (su hogar sur la mer.)  You could tell it was a high class resort because, even though all the guests were Colombian, they were all about as dark as my ghostly Irish complexion.  The help stood out, they were all a deep shade of red.

Santa Marta is built upon a bay.  Irotama was located on beyond that bay on the side facing the coal ports.  Every morning a dozen coal ships would line up down the shore out from the beach.  It looked like D-Day from the German perspective.

A few years ago the water was black from the coal being dumped as it was being moved from barge to ship.  The government required that coal be loaded directly onto ships.  It's helped dramatically, but there's still a thin ribbon of black along the surf from coal dust being washed along the shore.  Children building sand castles will dig up nuggets of coal.

There's rules posted on the beach.  The first two are what you'd expect, (no horseplay, swim when lifeguard is on duty) but then the third rule is "If you see anyone dynamite fishing on the beach please alert the staff."

Irotama was the second headquarters for the project.  The first was Las Ventanas a little further up the beach.  Las Ventanas was a time share, so people staying for any length of time were inevitably shuffled from room to room.  While Irotama wasn't in the best of shape (hot water was a dubious proposition) Las Ventanas was run down.  The team members complained to our management; and they got the "We feel your pain/let's all work together to get this done!" speeches.  Then Kevin, our program manager, got stuck in a room without air conditioning.  The very next day the team was moved to Irotama.

Irotama sells itself as a family resort.  The receptionist told Glen, our network technician, that if he brought strange women into the hotel they'd have to charge him extra.  The beach is closely monitored there and anyone coming in has to be licensed by Irotama.  Las Ventanas didn't have such a strict policy.  Gary, our lead comms engineer, met a girl offering massages on the beach there.  Her pimp called himself "El Rey de la Playa."  He explained that Las Ventanas didn't allow guests to bring prostitutes into their room; so what you did if you wanted to get one was give him a towel.  At the appointed time he would give his girls the towel and she would walk in as though she belonged there.

GE allowed people staying in Santa Marta for any length of time to bring their spouses.  Only two engineers took advantage of this; Kumar and Vinicius.  Kumar is from India and his wife wore the traditional garb of their region; gold earrings, a long silk skirt and an ankle bracelet which gave a melodious chime with her light step.  They had a young daughter who was dressed identically.  The girl thought the chime was the greatest thing in the world, and would constantly stomp her foot; much to the annoyance of everyone around her.  Vinicius is from Brazil; his wife, at least in his stories, was demanding.  This posed a problem as Vinicius was constantly gone down the track and had to spend a length of time at our second approved hotel in Bosconia.  GE didn't allow the wives to leave the resort without security; so they were trapped there during the day.  Vinicius's wife constantly complained about boredom when he was away.  He invited her to Bosconia.  A week later Jeff, our senior signaling engineer and project drama queen, saw the wives returning from Bosconia.  He asked them how Bosconia was, and they both just glared at him.

I got to stay in Bosconia later myself, at the Hotel Jorlin.  Bosconia is a noisy, chaotic city.  There's a constant ocean breeze in Santa Marta; not so in Bosconia.  That is 150 Km inland and is always hot and stifling.  The hotel doesn't have hot water at all, or cold water, the water is always lukewarm.  The showers don't have heads, showering is like standing under a faucet.  Water and electricity cut out from time to time and the air conditioning units are inadequate to cool the room during the day.  The hotel did have a pint of Aguardiente (literally fire-water, it's the national liquor of Colombia) in the mini-bar.

Bosconia isn't a very safe city; the ATM right next to the hotel had a guard with a stockless shotgun resting on his shoulder.  There's a sign right at the hotel that discourages trafficking of minors.  Inside the hotel there's not much to do; there's a pool and restaurant but no other amenities.  When I stayed there I was in the field all day every day.  Vinicius's and Kumar's wives, though, were trapped their all day long without anything to do.  That this didn't end up in divorce court is miraculous.

"You have to go through the hell of Bosconia to appreciate the heaven of Irotama," explained Vinicius.  His wife never again complained about being left alone at Irotama.

The only other place I stayed was at the Marriott in Bogota, just one time when I had to get there early for a flight.  It was opulent, well maintained and a world apart from the other hotels.  The only thing which separated it from a large hotel in a major American city was the drug sniffing dog at the entrance.  Once you got passed him, the security guard said "Bienvenidos a Bogota."

"Bienvenidos a Bogota," I thought.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 24, 2015, 09:57:17 AM
,sardonically.

Very noirish fade-out.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 25, 2015, 10:03:04 AM
Chikungunya

The trip to Colombia doesn't begin with the mall or even the airport.  Before I went I had to get my shots.  Yellow fever, hepatitis, malaria and typhoid are all endemic to the part of Colombia where our project was located.  GE requests that we go get these at a "Health Center" which is a mall of doctors.  The company nurse assured me that they'd have everything I need.  Of course they didn't, they only had Hepatitis A and B; and the doctor wrote me a prescription for an anti-Malarial medication.

My doctor wasn't bad, but Jeremy, one of our office engineers, got a strange one.  When he told the doctor he was going to Colombia, the doctor replied, "That's fitting, you look like a Colombian drug lord."

"That's an odd thing to say to a stranger," replied Jeremy, and he got another Doctor.

In order to get the shots for yellow fever and typhoid I had to go to a Community Health Center; which is where you go if you don't have regular insurance.  The one located in my city of Melbourne was dingy, squalid, and filled with unwed Latina mothers and their brood of children.  They only had the typhoid shot.  They sent me to Vierra for the yellow fever.  Vierra is a more upscale city and their community health center is a gleaming, antiseptic palace filled with old people.

Then upon arriving in Colombia I discovered that there was a new epidemic, chikungunya.  Chikungunya originated in the 1950s in Tanzania and Mozambique; and has since spread throughout the developing world (including south Florida.)  The disease is spread by mosquitoes and is characterized by severe pain in the joints.  Its symptoms are similar to dengue fever; so similar that one of the rail shops had a poster listing symptoms of the two diseases so you'd know which one you had.

The disease was epidemic along Colombia's Caribbean coast and along the border of Venezuela.  The ports were on Colombia's Caribbean coast and the rail line ran near the border with Venezuela; so we were in the high risk zone.  The disease was so prevalent that it became the subject of jokes.  Computers, cars or phones that didn't work had chikungunya.  One day one of our driver's kids came home in tears.

"What's wrong?" Cesar asked him.

"Kids at school told me Santa Clause isn't coming," his son replied.  "He has chikungunya."

At times our rail crews were down ten percent due to the disease.  Sofia, our project den mother, was deeply skeptical that so many people were ill right before the holidays.  She attributed it to another of Colombia's endemic disease chikulaziness.  She had known people who worked six weeks out of the entire year; the rest of the time they got doctor's notes and sat at home.  After the holidays passed the number of chikungunya cases the rail crews experienced dropped off dramatically.

With the outbreak our project safety group leapt into action.  We all got an official GE e-mail saying chikungunya is a threat in Colombia.  Don't get bit by mosquitoes if you're there.  Later on I met the project safety leader, Ricardo.  The other members tried razzing him about that e-mail, but he was oblivious.  He really believed he had accomplished a valuable service by telling us not to get bit by mosquitoes.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on June 25, 2015, 10:12:53 AM
:D
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 26, 2015, 10:21:38 AM
Training Days

In order to go into a port or onto the train lines you need to go through inductions.  Every company has its own inductions, so I had to go through four different courses.

The first was the rail line itself, FeNoCo.  Their course is all day and conducted entirely in Spanish.  I didn't get a lot out of it, and neither did anyone else in my group.  The gold standard for rail safety in the Americas are the Canadian regulations.  So FeNoCo took safety videos developed by CNR and dubbed them into Spanish.  Consequently we learned about the hazards of snow and ice in a land where it never gets below 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

The other memorable video there was one about hand safety.  In order to drive the point home they held up hands and moved them up and down as though they were talking.  Most of the hands were missing digits.  While it was supposed to be horrifying, watching a single pinky "Talk" in high pitched Spanish was actually hilarious.

The next day we went to Prodecco.  My name had been left off the list to get into the port.  Fortunately Sofia, our project den mother, was there with us.  She told the guards at the gate that I had come all the way from America just to take this class.  They remained unmoved.  Then she said that I was their boss and they couldn't do anything without their boss (a real concern in Colombia; initiative is not a national trait.  I've seen the escalator stop at the Bogota airport and everyone just stood there until the security guards told them to start climbing.)  That didn't get us anywhere either, so she told them that I was the son of the president of GE.  Not only did that get me in, the port director came by personally to give us our certificates of completion.

CNR had about two hours' worth of video for us to watch.  All of the ports and the rail had a video telling about the extensive lengths they went through to protect the environment.  The longest and the most prominent was CNR; which was funny since their port had been shut down due to environmental violations.

Drummond had two trainings, a twenty minute one for English speakers and an eight hour one for Spanish speakers.  Everyone on our team denied they could speak any Spanish in order to get into the shorter course.  Even Sofia's daughter, Alejandra pretended she could not speak Spanish.  The secretaries at Drummond were skeptical; "Your name is 'Alejandra', and you don't speak Spanish?"  She just stood there with an uncomprehending gringa grin on her face.  They shrugged their shoulders and let her into the English course.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 26, 2015, 10:26:24 AM
 :lol:  She's not your den mother; she's your fixer.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 29, 2015, 11:49:46 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 26, 2015, 10:26:24 AM
:lol:  She's not your den mother; she's your fixer.

She was both:

Sofia

Sofia's real masterpiece of fast talking wasn't getting me into the port, but getting our project manager, Bill, out of trouble.  There's a direct flight from Miami to Barranquilla.  Without traffic it takes about 90 minutes to drive from Barranquilla to Santa Marta.  So it seemed like a good idea to go that way, rather than flying all the way south to Bogota and then back to Santa Marta.  The problem is that the airport is so much smaller that both customs and security have little to do.  Gringos aren't a usual sight in the airport, so the agents are suspicious. 

On Sofia's first trip to Colombia she and Bill had come on the same flight to Barranquila.  Bill had got sent to the x-ray machine.  Customs mistook the skate antennas (so called because they look like an inverted ice-skates) for a gun.  They thoroughly searched Bill's bags after that

"What's this?" the custom officer would ask.

"It's coaxial cable for a GPS," said Bill.

"How much is it worth?"

"I don't know, ten, fifteen dollars."

It was actually worth more like a hundred.  They were really starting to pressure him over the many goods he was bringing in.  He was just about to tell them to go ahead and seize it when Sofia stepped in.  She told them that she was Colombian who had lived in the United States for 30 years.  Today was her first trip home since she left.  Her mother, who lives in Santa Marta, is going to be 90 years old this week.  She wanted to show her mother what she did, but now they were going to take that opportunity away from her.  Not only did they allow Bill to bring his cables into Colombia; but they also packed his bags and apologized profusely.

It was actually Sofia's mother's 90th Birthday when we were there.  She did visit her mother, but left the GPS cables with us.

The strange part is that Sofia was supremely confident when dealing with Colombians; she was often at a loss when dealing with Americans.  She's married to an American, and has lived in the United States on and off for three decades, but she wouldn't do something as mundane as changing tickets.  I always had to call the GE travel desk for her and change her flights.  Our project leaders changed her schedule so often that by the end of the project the GE travel agents knew who I was.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 29, 2015, 11:54:11 AM
Does she also handle the baksheesh?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 29, 2015, 12:04:12 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 29, 2015, 11:54:11 AM
Does she also handle the baksheesh?

"Local customs" are what we call that at GE.  We're not allowed to bribe anybody; but we are allowed to follow "Local customs."   ;) ;)

In any event, no the drivers took care of that.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Iormlund on June 29, 2015, 12:38:15 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on June 22, 2015, 10:53:32 AM
German

He also loved music.  He asked me what sort of music did I listen to, Reggaeton, Salsa or Champeta.  I told him I didn't think I could tell the difference between those styles if my life depended on it.  He played some samples of the different genres; and I still couldn't hear the difference.  He could, though, and could tell if the song was more typical of Cartagena or Baranquilla or Bogota.  I was with Javier (our supplier's project manger and a Spaniard), and asked him if any of this music ever made it back to Spain.

"No," he said, "This is the reason why we left.

Reaggeton is everywhere, unfortunately. There are few things I hate more.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 11:07:32 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 29, 2015, 12:38:15 PM

Reaggeton is everywhere, unfortunately. There are few things I hate more.

:(  :console:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 11:07:46 AM
Project

Our project was to upgrade the TETRA system and install an Intelligent Train Control System between the port of Santa Marta and the coal mines in La Loma.  There are three mines which operate in La Loma; (CNR, Prodecco and Drummond) and each of these mines has a port in Santa Marta.  The mines jointly own the rail company FeNoCo.  This system has led to squabbles between the individual carriers as Prodecco and Drummond both accuse FeNoCo of favoritism.  They'll go so far as to block one another's entrance points while they're delayed in order to make sure the rival company's train doesn't get out first.

Upgrading the TETRA system was necessary because the original system was installed in such a way that there's an ongoing investigation over fraud and corruption.  There wasn't continuous coverage, the backbone system fails regularly and some of the point to point microwave dishes which point directly into mountains.  While fraud and bribery seem likely in this case; in Colombia you can never rule out incompetence.

Intelligent Train Control System is one of GE Transport's major products.  It allows an operator to know where a train is at all times, to operate gates automatically and to operate rail switches remotely.  Before this all the switches on the line were thrown by hand and trains had to call in at routine intervals in order to give their location and request permission to advance.  Even today all crossings require security guards to manually put up barriers before the train approaches. 

These products were mandated by the government after a number of bad accidents had occurred on the line.  FeNoCo was given three years to implement it; but put off doing anything about it until they had only a year and a half left.  (Sofia, our project den mother, compared that to a kid with a looming homework assignment.  He puts it off and put it off until the last minute.)  By the time contract negotiations were completed we had a year to implement a program which should have taken two.

I was brought into the project in December; when they were looking for warm bodies to send to Colombia.  My area of specialty is analysis of radio propagation and radio traffic; suddenly I found myself a field engineer.  At least we had someone to send in our group; for most teams had no one.  In those days our project manager, Bill, tried to impress upon our leadership the dire straits of the project by holding 7 AM and 6 PM meetings with the outside world.  They felt our pain.  Sometimes they even sent managers to find out why we were so far behind schedule.  In the end the government allowed us additional time and we were able to get our product into commercial service at the end of May.

Our product allowed trains to run quicker and safer with smaller crews.  The latter turned out to be a huge cost savings for FeNoCo, since they no longer had to have people in the field to throw switches.  Naturally they boasted about their increased profitability due to all the people they were able to lay off at their all employee meeting.  For about a week after that it was hard to get any worker from FeNoCo to help us.

That sort of tone deafness defined FeNoCo.  For forty years no trains had run on the tracks in our area.  Shanty towns of illegals squatters had sprung up along them and people used the tracks as a road.  Then the trains started again and trouble began.

Colombian culture is based upon consensus.  Sofia gave us an example that when she was younger the government built a highway over the grounds of the Wayuu Indians.  The government held numerous town hall meetings and, afterwards, offered the Wayuu a school with a couple teachers speaking the native language and a detailed archeological excavation of the graveyard.  The token payoff at the end was important, but what was much more important for the Colombians was holding a meeting and listening to the people.

FeNoCo did none of that before running trains.  Now people had trains running right next to their houses at all hours and trains baring down on the trails they and their donkeys had taken the day before.  To make matters worse the trains were overfilled and coal dust flew about covering the surrounding villages.  The people exploded in rage.  Fiber was dug up and equipment was vandalized.  FeNoCo had to post a guard every kilometer and keep them there at all hours.

They've since calmed down the natives a little.  Fiber cuts are now much less prevalent.  Guards are posted every two kilometers.  We did have someone attack one of our poles with a sledge hammer.  It stood, battered and dented, but it still carried fiber.  In some cities there were days of unrest, where we were told not to go there, especially after dark.

The real contentious issue became trees.  As we were running new strands of fiber along poles we ran into areas where the lines were blocked by branches.  Cutting a tree down, or even cutting branches came with a risk of a lawsuit, (or worse, one of our sub-contractors was thrown into jail for cutting down trees.)  So every time we cut down a tree we had to take a FeNoCo lawyer with us and get his explicit written consent to cut down the tree.  This was to insure that FeNoCo had clear legal right to the tree; or would accept responsibility if it turns out they did not.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 30, 2015, 12:19:29 PM
great reads, all of them.  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Iormlund on June 30, 2015, 12:38:50 PM
I'm curious, does your supplier's name start with a 'T' and end with a 'c'?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 01:34:16 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 30, 2015, 12:38:50 PM
I'm curious, does your supplier's name start with a 'T' and end with a 'c'?

That's the one.  Have you worked with them?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 01:34:29 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 30, 2015, 12:19:29 PM
great reads, all of them.  :)

Thanks.   :) :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Iormlund on June 30, 2015, 02:05:08 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 01:34:16 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 30, 2015, 12:38:50 PM
I'm curious, does your supplier's name start with a 'T' and end with a 'c'?

That's the one.  Have you worked with them?

No, but it's a small city. It's on my way to work, as well.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 30, 2015, 02:06:23 PM
Tempurpedic. :smarty:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 30, 2015, 02:53:19 PM
Technotronic?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on June 30, 2015, 02:57:42 PM
I'm hesitant to write their name here and have it show up in Google; but if you Google "TETRA radio manufacturer Zaragoza Spain" you should find them
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Iormlund on June 30, 2015, 03:22:46 PM
As I said, it's a small city.  :P
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: The Brain on June 30, 2015, 05:25:12 PM
Tetrapac?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: jimmy olsen on June 30, 2015, 06:36:07 PM
You really should write a book Sav.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 01, 2015, 07:35:27 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 30, 2015, 06:36:07 PM
You really should write a book Sav.

Thanks, Tim, I think I'll go back to writing fiction once I'm done with this.   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 01, 2015, 12:50:55 PM
Ports

Each one of the mining companies has their own part.  They're all lined up one after the other between Cienaga and Santa Marta.  The company where I spent the most time early in the project was CNR.

CNR was shut down by the government over a year before we started for failing to build a system which could load coal from the port itself directly onto ships.  In the past the ports all had loaded onto barges which then loaded the coal on the ships.  The other two ports had built a long system of conveyer belts into the ocean.  They lit these up at night, creating what looked like a strange, luminous city of octopus tentacles.

Even though there was no work at the CNR port, they still had a full staff.  The GE employees marveled at that, we would have laid everyone off and left the janitor to make sure no one stole our trains.  They had train crews with no trains to run and shop maintenance with only minimal maintenance to do.

This was an ideal place for us to build our prototypes.  We weren't ever in anyone's way, since they didn't have anything to do.  We could always get help when we needed it too.  They even gave us our own little air-conditioned office in the rail shop.  That last part proved crucial, because it's always miserably hot in that part of Colombia, and much hotter on the trains. 

As we were building prototypes we had a large contingency of on-board people there.  There was Max, the on-board lead; Mike who had been a project manager, when his project ended he was made an onboard engineer; and Flavio, a kid from Brazil who didn't look old enough to drive.  Max would get wound up over minor issues.  A dozen people would be stepping on a power cord; but then I did it and it's a five minute lecture on the importance of power safety.  It wasn't me personally, if he was in the wrong mood and you were there, you were the target.  Everyone coped with this pretty well; except our lead comms engineer, Gary; he and Max would engage in vicious shouting matches

The first one I witnessed was over a train.  The on-board people had taken our spot inside the loco shop.  The locomotive we wanted to work on was outside, baking in the Colombian sun.  Max offered us an extension cord and a ladder so that we could work on the train.  Life is good.  Gary refused citing safety issues and heat.  That escalated to the point that I thought it was going to come to blows.

Later on the on-board team was working on their loco as it came into full sun in the garage.  After about an hour of that we found all three of them sitting motionless in the office letting the air conditioning wash over them.  "Revenge," said Gary, "Is a dish best served cold," with glee.

Before I arrived the air conditioner in the office didn't work.  Gary dubbed the office the "CNR sweat lodge."  The AC was an incredible luxury, after working in the hot locos.  The unit could only be operated by remote control.  One day we arrived to find that someone had stolen the batteries out of the remote and there were no spares.  Fortunately the AC was on, but it was on full blast.  The office became an ice house, cold enough to store meat.

Max got his own revenge against Gary later.  Going into the ports requires going through security.  CNR's was pretty lax since there wasn't even coal to steal there.  One of the security guards, Gabriella took a special liking to Gary.  Whenever we were entering, if he wasn't there she'd ask us where he was, and when he was coming back.  One day, as Max was entering he gave Gabriella Gary's cell phone number.  That evening Gary got a text from Gabriella telling him that he had left his safety glasses there; she was very concerned about this, could they meet over coffee or juice to discuss this?  He got similar texts regularly for several months.

Our setup with an office at CNR was ideal; so much so that we had Sofia and Alejandra join us there at first; even though, at the time, they were doing no more than translating documents for us.  Rail is male dominated industry and they were the only women at the loco shop.  There was only one restroom, and the toilet had no seat.  Sofia and Alejandra would have to lock the door and hope for the best when nature called.

Max was Nicaraguan and Gary spoke passable Spanish from having lived in Panama for four years.  Even with the both of them as well as Sofia and Alejandra there it was difficult to get the Colombians to do what we wanted.  This all changed the moment Javier walked in.  Javier is our supplier's project manager.  He's a Spaniard, from the Extremadura, the land of the conquistadores.  That might explain why, when he told the Colombians what he wanted, they did it within minutes; they were afraid he would come back with an army if they refused.  Our trains were in the bins and a crew was there to assist us as we installed the antennas.  That was an enormous change from where we had been.

Javier always tried to dress the part of a manager, wearing a dress shirt and pants even in the loco shops.  Everyone else wore jeans and a work shirt.  Javier's look was odd with the hard hat and safety glasses we had to wear; and by the end of the day his nice clothes were soaked in sweat.

Jeff, our project drama queen, called CNR "Our slow country cousin."  For most of the project the port was a sleepy affair which seemed to have all the time in the world.  This changed at the end when they contracted with the port of Santa Marta to move their coal through there.  They ran their coal by train from the mine to their port and then loaded it onto trucks.  Then there was always a long line of enormous dump trucks at the entrance of the port.  One by one they left overflowing with coal.  Everywhere in the yard a thick, black dust was blown about by the wind.  The roads were black with coal, street sweepers ran back and forth, never seeming to allow pavement to be visible for more than a second.

Drummond was anything but slow.  Trains were constantly coming and going.  There wasn't the black wind from CNR, but the loco shop was filthy with black coal dust covering every surface.  Drummond ran twenty trains a day, more than twice as many as the other two companies combined.

Drummond occupies a large amount of land.  Throughout the area there were large chunks of coal set out like statues.  It was also an iguana reserve; trucks would slow down to let the iguanas pass.  The company's mascot was a tamed iguana who sat every day by the entrance.  Workers would pet the iguana for luck as they walked in.  If you were drinking water about it, it would open its mouth and tilt its head up in expectation of you dropping some for it.

The first time I was there I noticed that there was an "Alabama Crimson Tide" logo in the loco shop.  That struck me as the incongruous thing I had seen in Colombia.  It turns out that Drummond was an American company out of Alabama.  According to the shop supervisor Mr. Drummond had made his fortune as a pawnbroker and bought a coal mine in order to diversify.

Drummond was eager to get our product installed and get their locomotives in service.  We met with the Vice President of Operations, who gave us the talk about if we needed anything see him.  After he was finished Jeff said, "You speak English really well."

"I should," said Leroy, "I'm from Alabama."

It turns out that all of the executives were foreigners, either from Birmingham, Alabama or from Europe.  They had their own private compound in the Drummond port.  Jeff would invite himself to lunch there; they had their own private chef, ice cream that (unlike the rest of ice cream in Colombia) didn't taste like chalk and American television.  They always seemed to have it on Fox News, but it was still a relief to see a little bit of home.

Drummond was too large to have people walk about; instead they had a series of busses that shuttled people to the various facilities.  The busses were irregular and sometimes I'd be stuck at the entrance gate waiting half an hour for the bus to come.  In time we got our own driver that could go into the port.  Jeff tended to view the driver as his own personal property.  One time Gary was coming in with some equipment while Jeff was at the locomotive shop with his driver.  Gary asked Jeff to send the driver up, and Jeff refused; he might have needed the driver in the ten minutes it would have taken to pick Gary up.  The exchange got heated; with Jeff refusing to budge.  Both Gary and Jeff called Bill within minutes.  After listening to the both of them Bill sent out his dictate via text:

"Boys, share your toys."

Busses didn't run at all on Sundays.  Usually we got the shop supervisor to pick us up.  One time, when he was unavailable, Jeff, rather than flag someone down, called Leroy.  "You might as well go to the top," he said; so we had an executive arrange rides for us.

Drummond had tight security; but they moved people in quickly.  Prodecco, on the other hand, moved at a glacial pace.  There was always a long line to get in.  You'd see all sorts of people in line; on time the guy ahead of me had a swastika tattoo on his hand.  He was as red as the setting sun.  Another time there were three women in short skirts and high heels; all were carrying lunches.  I don't think they were there to load coal.

It was easy to bring a laptop in, but any other tool had to be registered beforehand, as we learned the hard way.  One time we tried to bring in a cheap spectrum analyzer; it looked like a toy from radio shack.  We tried to get permission, but the woman at the desk didn't have the authority.  She worked on her computer, her coworker's computer, her cell phone, her desk phone and made notes in her ledger, but couldn't get anyone who had the authorization to let us bring it in.  Eventually we called our driver back and had him hold onto it.

Even if you had authorization it wasn't always possible to get in.  We once had a couple engineers show up at lunch time.  Anyone with authority to clear their equipment was at lunch so again they got the woman with the computer, her coworker's computer, cell phone, desk phone and ledger.

That was typical of Prodecco.  One time Gary had an appointment with the Prodecco's chief radio engineer.  They were supposed to discuss a radio system that Prodecco was setting up in the port, and how it would interact with ours.  As he got passed the gate he called the guy for a ride and got no one.  So he went back to security and asked them to contact him; no one could find him.  Eventually Gary gave up and went to the locomotive shop.  There was never an explanation of why the appointment was missed, but Prodecco tried to set up another meeting.  Gary told them "No" using the most colorful language imaginable.

At Prodecco you always had to have long sleeves; but you could have them rolled up.  Why this rule was in place no one seemed to know, but rules were rules and we wasted an hour as another of our engineers had to go back to the hotel to get his long sleeves.

Once we got in then we had to arrange a ride.  This again was an enormous problem.  We had a GE liaison who worked full time at Prodecco.  We called him, he arranged a ride, the ride didn't come, we'd call him again and so forth.  Eventually we would get where we were going.

Once you got in, though, the rail shop was immaculate.  You could have eaten off the floor.  The shop was usually deserted; all the workers were above the shop in their cubicles.  Nothing ever seemed to get done, and they lagged far behind the other shops in installing our system.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 01, 2015, 12:55:24 PM
I thought Galicia was the land of conquistadores.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Valmy on July 01, 2015, 12:57:03 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 01, 2015, 12:50:55 PM
After he was finished Jeff said, "You speak English really well."

"I should," said Leroy, "I'm from Alabama."

Huh. Speaking English really well is not something usually associated with being from Alabama :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 01, 2015, 01:01:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 01, 2015, 12:55:24 PM
I thought Galicia was the land of conquistadores.  :hmm:

I believe Cortes and Pizarro were both from the Extremadura.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Valmy on July 01, 2015, 01:02:35 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 01, 2015, 01:01:30 PM
I believe Cortes and Pizarro were both from the Extremadura.

You are correct.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 01, 2015, 01:07:17 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 01, 2015, 12:55:24 PM
I thought Galicia was the land of conquistadores.  :hmm:

Dictators maybe, since Fidel Castro and Franco came from there.  :P
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 02, 2015, 11:38:59 AM
The Road

Highway 45 runs the length of Colombia from Cienaga into Ecuador.  For the scope of our project it runs parallel to our track.  From Santa Marta to the mines it runs past a number of small cities.  To the east for the first 150 Km are the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta Mountains.  These are a heavily wooded, isolated mountain range.  The peaks rise up to 5700 m, making them one of the tallest coastal mountain ranges in the world. 

On the first leg of the drive we went along highway 90, which is a coastal highway.  That leg of the drive has the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other.  First you pass the resorts, then the coal ports and finally the town of Cienaga, (which literally means "Swamp" in Spanish.)  It's there we get onto the main highway.

The distance between Santa Marta and La Loma is about 200 Km but, due to the condition of the roads, it takes about four hours to get from one end to the other.  The highway, today, is two lanes for almost its entire length.  This is a main line for truck traffic, and often the trucks are heavy and quite slow.  The trucks are slowed even further as they pass through the little towns along the route.  Every one of the little towns has a set of speed bumps.  Vendors stand their hawking wares in the middle of traffic.  These speed bumps also serve as passing lanes.  Trucks must slow to a standstill allowing people to pass them if there's no oncoming traffic, or if the oncoming traffic isn't going too fast, or if the oncoming traffic looks like it can get out of the way fast enough.

Almost everything is for sale on the roadside.  Most of the hawkers sell ice cream, candy, fruit and coffee; but much more can be found.  I saw a man selling a tame squirrel, another with vulture chicks, a few men with hand carved bats and mallets, one guy selling a hogs head and another trying to sell a live piglet. There are bootleg DVDs and late in the evening women will mill about with a smile and a wink for each passing trucker.

There are a number of shrines to the Virgin along the road.  Since this was a dangerous area until the very recent past a number of shrines are locked up; it's an odd look, the land of the caged Madonna.

This area is mostly banana plantations.  All manner of creatures live in the banana groves.  As we worked upon cases nearby we would hear rustling in the tall grass or from the plants all the time.  Glen, our network technician (who does not speak Spanish) named these "Los niños del bananos."  Workers get paid in bananas here.  It's common to see a man driving home with his daily wages perched over the handle bar of his motorbike.

The first two larger towns one comes to are Aracataca and Fundacion.  Aracataca is the home town of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; but Fundacion claims to be his model for Macondo.  Marquez is a source of national pride in Colombia and all of the drivers pointed to the city out and told us about him.  There are a number of crudely drawn murals of Marquez in Aracataca with quotes from his works of his written on them.

Colombia's tourism council adopted the name of Marquez's style and says "Colombia is Magical Realism."  It might be, but it's the other sort of realism all too often.  In Fundacion, about a year ago, there was a bus full of children who all died.  What had happened is that the driver brought an open container of gasoline on the bus and let it sit.  When he started the bus everyone perished in a fireball.  There's a little shrine, a tent with desktop printer pictures of the children and flowers.  There are a couple bible verses written on a nearby wall.  Fundacion is a small town, so nearly everyone was affected by the tragedy.

South of Fundacion the banana plantations start to give way to forests and range land.  The oil palm is a major crop here and occasionally you'll see trucks overspilling with oil dates moving slowly down the road.  There's also livestock grazing by the side of the road with no one watching them.

While motorcycles are prevalent in Santa Marta, here they become the principle mean of transportation.  It's common to see a family of five crowded on a motorcycle.  Dad drives, the middle child sits in front of him, holding onto the handlebars, the older child comes next, then mom holding onto the baby.  No one wears helmets.

You'll see horse, ox or donkey carts as well.  The carts have rubber tires; but otherwise look like they come out of Little House on the Prairie.

There aren't the same standards of safety in Colombia as there are in the United States.  One time when we were on the highway we saw a white cloud ahead of us.  As we got into the cloud we found ourselves choked by the smell of burning oil and plastic.  At the front of the cloud was a flatbed carrying an SUV which had an engine fire and was then still smoldering.  We followed behind in that toxic cloud for several dozen kilometers before we were able to pass them.  They even drove it through a set of toll booths.

The semi-trucks along the roadside function as a sort of public transportation.  Teenagers and young adults will hop on the trucks to get a ride.  I saw a group of six people climb onto the back of a truck once; five guys and a girl.  Three of the guys climbed straight up to the roof.  Then two guys stood on the hitch, one hoisted the girl up on his shoulders and the guys on the roof pulled her up.  All this happened while the truck was moving.  It was amazing.  They all sat up there as if it were a picnic, unperturbed by the traffic or the movement.

"They're heading to Bogota," my driver told me.  "They're hungry, they're tired, they're thirsty, but what an adventure."

Given his tone I wondered if he had done something similar when he was young.  Hitching rides that way is illegal.  I once saw a group of school kids climb up on a flatbed truck; presumably to play hooky.  The driver saw them and told the police at their next makeshift station.  (The police are stationed along the road under folding canopies; usually with tables and chairs.)  The officers dragged them out and sent them marching.  Javier, our driver that day, told us that the police would likely detain them for twelve hours.  Their parents would be furious with them upon their release.

It's also a dangerous too.  I saw two young teenagers hanging onto the door handles at the back of the semi while the truck was going over 70 KMPH.  They were young enough that they were fearless.  As we got close to pass them one of the kids did a butt dance for us.

Most of the houses in the towns are made of cinder block; usually painted bright colors as is common in the Caribbean.  Poorer houses are made out of wood, sticks, corrugated aluminum or even wattle and daub.  One time some of our workers were uncrating one of our sites.  They turned their back for a second as they got the equipment out.  They turned around and saw two women running off with the crate; that would become part of someone's home.  Glass is a rare luxury; most homes have tiny windows to allow ventilation. 

There isn't a lot for people to do in the area.  You'll often see whole families sitting on their porch watching traffic pass.  As we were going by one truck stop in the area we came across a semi with two of its wheels off the ground.  The entire village had shown up to watch him try to right himself.  That was the most excitement they would have all week.

The largest city on the route is Bosconia, which is about 35,000 people.  A decade ago this was a place to go buy drugs or get murdered.  Today it's much nicer.  There are no traffic lights in town, even though two of Colombia's larger highways intersect here.  A jumble of cars, motorcycles, and bicycle carts dart in and out of the long streams of traffic.  Somehow it all works.

The Sierra Madres de Santa Marta end at Bosconia; south of it the land becomes open range land.  It's here that you find a type of flowering tree with neon yellow flowers.  In the dry season they stand out like a flame in the brown land.

South of Bosconia is El Paso; which is no-man's land.  The police and the military never come here.  Most of the shops here are green plastic sheeting wrapped around a wooden flame.  Everyone sells gasoline; all of it is smuggled in from Venezuela.  Barrels or large plastic containers are lined up in each shop.  The whole city looks like a Shangri-La from Mad Max.  At night the entire city is lit up by strings of electric lights that run from tent to tent.  The gasoline is sold by filling up plastic two liter pop bottles with gasoline and putting and pouring it over and over.  Most of the customers are big rig trucks so the process is long and laborious.  The ground is always wet, soaked in gasoline.  There's no grounding on the containers.  Every so often you'll see charred sticks, the remains of a gas station.

Even with such a questionable operation, there's still advertising.  Some of the signs feature a Madonna and child with a big rig; others have a scantily clad woman and a big rig.

Sofia told me that after the military had chased FARC out of the area they went in to clean up El Paso.  They were met at the outskirts of the town by a group of men with torches.  The men had set up several barrels of gasoline and told the military not to come any closer.  The army backed off and since left them alone.

There's nothing there besides the illegal gas stations and prostitution.  Every day gangs of men gather trying to hitch a ride out; older men, not the kids looking for adventure you see on the rest of the route.

Once when I was coming into El Paso I saw a line of flame (well outside the town.)  Coming closer I saw they were burning tar in a thin line across the road.  There was a bucket of tar on fire suspended from a tripod.  Later in the day I got an e-mail from Sofia, our project den mother, warning us not to go to La Loma.  Our wayside engineer, Vinicius, had gotten caught in a protest in El Paso.  He said that it was a huge traffic jam of angry truckers and piles of burning tires outside the city.  What should have been a one hour drive from Bosconia to La Loma had turned into a four hour epic for him.

I returned back that evening around six, greatly worried that I was going to be spending the night in El Paso, but the protest had ended, the truckers had all gone home, and the burning tires were nowhere to be seen.  There was still a crowd of disaffected men milling about.  Everyone was staring at us.  My driver locked the doors and looked about warily as we drove through.

South of El Paso the highway changes from a single lane to a two lane road.  Drummond, the largest mining operation, is building a highway in order to facilitate transportation.  Soon (by Latin American standards) all the speed bumps and slow-downs will be no more.

The mines come next.  The area around them is a parched land where the temperature is routinely above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  When I was there I felt as though I was in a spaghetti western; and in the scene where the protagonist is left to die in the desert.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on July 02, 2015, 01:01:31 PM
Sav, El Gran Gabo is happy to read this from heaven (they have internet right?). :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 06, 2015, 03:46:31 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on July 02, 2015, 01:01:31 PM
Sav, El Gran Gabo is happy to read this from heaven (they have internet right?). :thumbsup:

I hope so, on both counts; although I'm pretty sure they have Facebook and Twitter in hell.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 06, 2015, 03:46:41 PM
Jeff

When I first started on the project we would have a 7 AM "Prayer Breakfast" at which we told about all the things we hoped to accomplish that day.  At 6 PM we had the "Come to Jesus" meeting where we confessed all that we had failed to accomplish.  Usually it was the same list.  It was at one of the morning meetings that I first met Jeff.

Jeff had skipped the evening meeting the day before.  On that day he had asked for dedicated resources (a FeNoCo crew) to meet him early in the morning at some part of the track.  He was four hours late and his dedicated resources had gone off to do their job somewhere else.

"I can't work like this," shouted Jeff, "When I have dedicated resources they need to be dedicated to me."

"We can't waste FeNoCo's time like that," shouted back Bill, "You have to be where you say you're going to be."

"This is a dynamic environment, they need to understand that," Jeff continued.  This went on for a half hour as the rest of the team sat quietly and watched.  There were about twenty of us.  Mommy and daddy are fighting; just keep your head down and keep on eating your Lucky Charms.

It was all about Jeff, all the time.  Every resource was his and everybody worked for him.  My group had set up a cheap laptop with a few applications.  Jeff also had a test laptop but he found it difficult to use since it had Spanish language Windows 8 on it.  So he took our laptop and stuck us with his.  Complaining would have done no good; so we downloaded all our applications again and learned how to use a Spanish keyboard.

Jeff had spent a year on and off in Colombia by the time I first arrived.  He had a great deal of knowledge about how the signaling system worked.  One day I had gotten shanghaied by Jeff out into the field.  We were looking at a rail switch that was stuck into the open position (that is it would send all trains off the main track and onto the siding.)  He knew immediately what the problem was; the relay was stuck in the contact position.  To fix it he took out an Emory board from the hotel and filed it down.  To my amazement it worked.

We had a FeNoCo team with us when he did that work; Jeff called them "The FeNoCo Four."  These were the "Dedicated resources" that Jeff had complained about; they were the track engineers for FeNoCo.  One of the linemen, who was nicknamed "Princesa" picked up the Emory board and made as if he was filing his nails.  Then he blew kisses at everyone and called them "Mariquita" (sissy).  I met up with Princesa again a couple times and he always did the kisses and "Mariquita" thing; it was very strange.

Jeff was a man of enormous appetites.  Every day at breakfast he drank a pot of hot chocolate.  Vinicius, another wayside engineer, would complain about getting stuck with the bill when he went with Jeff to lunch.  "He had 10,000 pesos in limonada de coco alone."

"That's what, $4?"  I asked.

"It's the principle," he replied.

Consequently Jeff was an enormous man.  He was so fat that he couldn't easily walk along the platform around the train.  The guard rails would force his gut right up against the locomotive.  He'd call that "Polishing the loco."

Jeff was often a source of irritation to FeNoCo.  When he wanted to work on the electronics he'd tell the FeNoCo representative that he needed half an hour.  During that period they couldn't run trains along that part of the track.  If there were no trains coming they'd let him; but if there were they'd say no.  When they'd say no, Jeff would ask for fifteen minutes instead.  They always agreed to that, and at the end of fifteen minutes they'd tell him his time was up.

"I'm not done.  You can't run the train because it's not safe," he'd say.  Which was true; and Jeff would then take his full half hour or more to finish up the work.  He did this multiple times, and FeNoCo never seemed to catch on, or so we thought.  Then one day on the radio, Glen, our network technician reported that he couldn't get into one of the stations.  "They're telling me that they had another GE engineer here and he did something so we can't go in."

"Who was there?" Gary asked.

"No one," said Ken, "Except Jeff."

Then the radio traffic fell to silence as everyone realized what must have happened.  Jeff had thrown a switch at one of the yards and wouldn't put it back; this prevented the station master from moving trains about the yard.  Jeff got all huffy when confronted about this, saying the system wasn't turned over to the client yet and they had no right to interfere with his work.  FeNoCo wouldn't let us stop trains, though; that took precedence over our work.

So for a month every time we went into our equipment room in the three northernmost systems we had to have a babysitter from FeNoCo.  It couldn't be just anyone either; it had to be one of their IT people. It didn't matter what we were touching in the system room; (in my case it was usually a radio system completely unrelated to the switching), we still had to make an appointment and inevitably wait until the FeNoCo IT team showed up.

This lasted about a month before FeNoCo finally relented.  That was probably a bad idea because Jeff threw another switch that he shouldn't have from the same station.  This time the switch was under a train.  Fortunately the train was stationary otherwise he would have caused a derailment.

That was the end for Jeff on this project.  A week later we got a notice in writing that FeNoCo wanted Jeff kicked off the project.  When he left he took eleven suitcases with him.  He had kept his room at Irotama for over a year, so he did have a lot of his own personal effects stowed there; but he also had a lot of equipment that belonged to the project.  We ended up missing a number of items, only to discover that they were with Jeff.  He went to another GE project, and it wasn't worth the effort to try to get them back.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on July 07, 2015, 07:57:32 AM
This is an awesome read, Sav. I haven't made any comments because I have nothing to add - just to say I am following yout thread avidly. Keep posting!  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 07, 2015, 11:20:00 AM
Quote from: Malthus on July 07, 2015, 07:57:32 AM
This is an awesome read, Sav. I haven't made any comments because I have nothing to add - just to say I am following yout thread avidly. Keep posting!  :)

Thanks, Malthus  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 07, 2015, 11:20:26 AM
WD

The drivers were not the most politically correct of people.  One time when we were setting out in the morning Glen, WD and I were going in the same car.  To indicate who was going Ricardo pointed to Glen and I and then pulled his eyes back to indicate WD.  The drivers had nicknames for all of us.  Glen was el hombre gordo, Jeff was el hombre muy gordo, Ken was el hombre con gafas, Sofia was Doña Sofia and WD was el chino.  In time all the Spanish speakers started calling him that; suppliers, linemen, men in the shops, conductors, everyone.  Simply say "El chino" and they knew exactly who you meant.  This was a problem, briefly, when WD's mentor, Felix, joined us.  That was resolved quickly, though Felix was Señor Chino.

WD is an expert on the messaging our system generates and receives and so works on all aspects of the system.  He is a dynamo routinely working very long hours.  Sometimes he crashed out on the concrete floors of the stations to get back up in a few hours to continue a multi-day shift.  He seemed to be everywhere at once and always working at a lightning pace; this is why everyone knew "El chino."

WD always saw his work as the highest priority, and any tool needed to get the job done was his.  The standard voltage on a train is 74 V DC.  Gary, the lead communications engineer, had worked in another department at GE before becoming part of our team.  They had an inverter that would go from 74 V DC to 120 V AC that you attached by alligator clips to the main knife switch on the train.  For long trips on locomotives this was necessity; otherwise you couldn't keep your laptop powered up.  Even better, if you put a power strip on the inverter it you'd become Mr. Popular with the FeNoCo engineers as they would power up their phones.

WD was going on a long ride in a loco, so Gary let him borrow the inverter.  As Gary was leaving Colombia he asked for the inverter back.  WD told him that he'd give it back when he was done with it.  Gary tried to explain that's not how it works, but that didn't sway WD.  So Gary had to go hat and hand to apologize to his old teammates.  Right after Gary had returned WD sent out an e-mail asking if that team had any more inverters they could loan out.  Gary wrote a couple drafts of e-mails mostly consisting of curse words before finally settling on "NO!"

We had difficulty with shipments, so our equipment didn't always arrive when it was supposed to.  There was a shipment of EPROMs that WD needed to program.  They were supposed to be in country, but no one was sure where.  WD questioned everyone over it; no one knew where they were.  He went to the warehouse and started digging through things; and even tried to lift loaded pallets by hand.  Fortunately someone stopped him before he injured himself, but there were still no EPROMs to be found.  He kept calling our project manager, Bill, in greater and greater desperation.  Bill tells the story with such an amazing caricature of WD that I'm sure some day he's going to have to do it for HR.  Finally Bill told WD that he couldn't crap out EPROMs, there was nothing he could do.  In desperation, late in the day, WD decided to look for the EPROMs in one of the stations 100 Km down the track.  He and Glen had shared a driver that day; so WD drove up and Glen thought his ride home was there.  WD told Glen he was going to Aracataca and he drove off leaving Glen stranded on the line.  Fortunately for Glen, Jeff was working three Km down the line, so Glen picked up his equipment and hiked the distance.

Glen usually seemed to be the victim of WD's monomania.  We had a shipping container turned into an office at one of the stations.  Glen walked in and WD said "Give me your laptop."

"What's wrong with yours," Glen asked.

"When I plugged it into this cable it fried my board."

"You are not touching my laptop," Glen replied.

We had taken one of our components from a different project.  The engineers on that project had put floating power on two of the pins, but didn't tell us about it.  We discovered their change the hard way.

Glen did finally get his revenge later.  WD had borrowed one of Glen's laptops, and, as usual, refused to give it back.  Glen had ended up with an additional radio.  Our office needed a radio but when Alejandra, who was then an office engineer, called for it, Glen refused to turn it over until he got his laptop.

Alejandra was furious.  The radios were catalogued by Gary, so Alejandra called Gary.  Then Sofia, Alejandra's mother, called Gary.  Then Kevin, the program manager, called Gary.  What Gary was supposed to do, or how this was his responsibility wasn't clear, but it escalated all the way the way to the top.

I met Glen for dinner that night.  He said that he had actually agreed to turn over the radio to Alejandra, but Alejandra was in the middle of ranting at him and didn't listen.  WD called Glen while we were out and agreed to give his laptop back.  We told Glen that he should do it in an area with plenty of witnesses, where they each take their item and back out slowly.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 07, 2015, 12:01:03 PM
heheh. Excellent stories :)
They remind me alot of the stories my uncle tells about his work all over the globe.
Kudos for sharing.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 08, 2015, 12:46:36 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 07, 2015, 12:01:03 PM
heheh. Excellent stories :)
They remind me alot of the stories my uncle tells about his work all over the globe.
Kudos for sharing.

Thanks  :)

I have a nephew whose too young now to tell these stories to; however he does have a fantastic collection of Colombian Peso coins. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 08, 2015, 12:46:48 PM
The Two Track

Throughout most of the system there's a dirt road that runs alongside our track.  Sometimes it's a narrow two track, other's it's a wide city street.

At points along the road, or on other side streets off the highway, women or children will put up a rope in front of the car and demand a toll.  This happened to Jeff one time and he was outraged.  He got out of the car and started cursing out the rope holders.  His driver told him to come back into the car, but he didn't.  Men started coming around, they're the muscle watching from the shadows as their wives and children work the roadblocks.  Jeff started cursing out them too, by now his driver was begging him to get back into the car.  They let him pass without paying anything, probably muttering something about gringos locos under their breath.

Outside the cities the road wasn't always well maintained.  Ken and Glen would drive down the track into progressively worse areas.  One time they came across a river; the trail started back on the other side.  They were in a sedan at the time and the driver was obviously frightened about going in.  He got out and walked down the shore until he found a couple men bathing.  They told him that he could cross the river, just a ways down.  The driver needed quite a bit of reassurance from the men that his little sedan could make it.  They told him it was no problem  and walked over the shallow spot to show him.  He was still nervous and drove in cautiously; then gunned it when they were in the water.  The car made it without problem.  Glen and Ken tipped the two men generously.

Some time after that I was given the task of installing fiber jumpers at a number of cases on the southern part of the line.  To get to the cases we had to drive that dirt road.  Fortunately my driver had an SUV, so that we were able to make it past most of the obstacles.

We got to an area that the trail was deteriorating badly.  It would branch into different directions, some which led to dead ends, others that led to the barbed wire "Gates" onto cattle land.  We went down and up dry runoff ditches.  My driver kept asking the FeNoCo security guards posted along the tracks if we could make it to the next case.  They kept assuring us that we could; so we kept going forward.  At points my driver had to get out of the car to look around and find the way forward.  We kept going until we got to an unpassable obstacle, there was a tree in the path and there was no way around.  My driver turned around and as we were going back across the first runoff ditch on our return we heard a bump and it sounded like we were dragging something.  We had lost the muffler.

My driver took his Leatherman and snipped off a piece of the barbed wire on a nearby fence.  He then made a ramp out of a discarded rail tie and some rocks and drove the car up that.  We found a long sturdy branch and levered the muffler into place as he got beneath the car and tied it on with the barbed wire.   That held for about a kilometer before it fell off again.  We did the same thing again, but this time we only had rocks to hoist up the car with.  He tied the muffler on with an Ethernet cable rather than barbed wire and that held on until we finally made it to a ranch.

The ranch was just a collection of little houses made of rough wood.  Most of the family was sitting about when we arrived.  One of the children ran and got her father.  Then the entire clan gathered to watch as he, his eldest son and my driver attached the muffler with baling wire.  They had a ditch that they had us drive across and they were able to get under the car with ease.  That held and we were able to drive the rest of the day without issue.  We were nearly one hundred fifty Km south of Santa Marta when that happened, and even went a little further south before heading home along the highway.  Even with all the speed bumps we made it back to Irotama.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on July 08, 2015, 12:59:16 PM
Was it a Toyota?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 08, 2015, 03:00:47 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on July 08, 2015, 12:59:16 PM
Was it a Toyota?

Yes, it was a RAV4.  Almost all the driver's cars were Toyotas and the trucks were GMCs.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 09, 2015, 04:32:58 PM
Colombian Engineering

Rigging things like the muffler with an Ethernet cable is called "Colombian engineering" even by the Colombians.  It's not easy to find parts in Colombia and even when they are available a lot of people can't afford them; so they have to Colombian engineer their way around many issues.  Everyone was adept at this sort of rigging.  I had a two hole power supply into a four hole plug which kept falling out.  One of the drivers took it, twisted a couple pieces of insulated wire about and it held to the plug just as if it were made for it.

Our security company did almost all their own auto repairs just as if they were field repairs even when we were in Santa Marta (though without barbed wire or Ethernet cables.)  One time I was waiting at a station wile two of the drivers put running boards back on their car using a rail tie and a long metal pole.

Even the rail companies were adept at this sort of innovation.  When we were first working at CNR it was Christmastime.  In the spirit of the holidays they played Christmas carols throughout the day on a Colombian boom box.  It was made by putting a smart phone inside an orange traffic cone.  Whenever we needed to find someone at a rail shop the easiest way to find them was to ask one of the workers.  They'd get on the Colombian PA by cupping their hands over their mouth and shouting out the name of the person we were looking for.  The other workers would do the same until we located the person we were looking for.

Traffic cones were among the favorite items for Colombians.  One time when we were traveling down the highway I saw a truck carrying a wide load of timber.  In order to insure that it wouldn't be damaged they had attached bumpers of orange traffic cones on each of the corners. 


Some of the results of this ingenuity were spectacular.  Along the road I came upon a man with a foot powered rotating press that squeezed juice out of sugar cane.  It was made out of wood entirely carved by hand.  It was probably ancient; the man was quite old and looked like he had been at this job for a while.  That he could keep it running throughout the years was amazing.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 10, 2015, 10:01:31 AM
The Warehouse

While I was in Colombia I read a story on CNN about how a number of the companies in Silicon Valley offer so many amenities that their workers spend all their time on the corporate campus.  Their work and their social life are all done at the office.  The article described this as a "Hotel California" company; they can never leave.  GE in Santa Marta was more along the line of "Lord of the Flies," there was no way out and it was filled with crazy people.

That analogy first occurred to me when watching one of the battles between Mike, the lead on board engineer, and Bill the project manager.  Mike's background was in oil and gas.  He believed that we needed to have complete kits and detailed instructions before we started work; that is how it had been done in his previous projects.  That's not how Colombia works, though, even under the best of circumstances, and GE was determined not to give us the best of circumstances.

Our warehouse in Missouri had ordered equipment and shipped it as it arrived to the warehouse in Colombia.  The Colombian warehouse was badly disorganized with pallets placed everywhere, and no system to find goods.  The warehouse workers would try to assemble kits from this jumble of pallets and ship them on to the ports.  The kits were always missing pieces, but we had no way of knowing if the missing pieces were with the suppliers, in the rail yards, in our Missouri warehouse, in customs, or buried at the warehouse in Colombia.  The best we could do was go to the warehouse and root around stuff until we found what we were after, or wasted the day.

One time Glen was asked to do an inventory of an on board controller.  He was supposed to go train by train and see in which one which device was located.  He got a print out of all the serial numbers, and seeing a few of these were in the warehouse he went over to inventory those first; only to find half of them weren't on the list.  When he asked the warehouse supervisor about this she explained that before a certain date everything that had come into the warehouse was inventoried on a laptop.  The head of operations for our Colombian work crew had taken that laptop home, and it had been stolen right off his couch.  So we had no records of anything that had arrived more than a couple months previously.  Glen was deeply skeptical about that story, but there was nothing we could do.

Mike complained about the state of the warehouse to Bill non-stop.  Every meeting, every breakfast and every dinner turned into a brawl about the warehouse.  From Mike's perspective this was a colossal waste of engineering time.  From Bill's perspective waiting until the warehouse was organized made our already impossible deadline even more impossible.  One night, shortly before Mike was to return to the United States, Mike suggested that, since Bill had the greatest knowledge of the project as a whole, Bill should be the one to organize the warehouse.  This argument lasted well into the night.  I wasn't there to see it; but Max said that had truly given Bill something to think about.  Apparently it did, because Mike was asked not to return to Colombia. 


In truth we frequently made our own problems worse.  One day when we were at Drummond shop Jeff needed a set of cables; but he didn't know the part number.  So he described what he needed and sent the driver out.  The driver returned with the wrong cables.  He sent the driver back out with a new description and the driver again returned with the wrong cables.  Again he sent the driver out and again he got the wrong cable.  I gave him the part number after the second attempt, but he didn't give the driver that, just a description.  So he called Sofia to tell me to go to the warehouse to get the cable.  I knew better than to tell Sofia "No," so I went to the warehouse, gave the attendant the part number and got the cables a minute later.  Jeff had wasted his entire day in order to avoid a 30 second part number look up.

Alejandra was sent to the warehouse to clear things up.  It got organized well enough to get the parts we had out and the kits into a more organized format.  It wasn't perfect; given the circumstances it couldn't have been, but it was much better than what we had before.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 13, 2015, 02:13:59 PM
Food

Every port has a cantina (or "Casino" in Spanish, which led to some double takes from the gringos) where they provide lunch to the crews on site.  The meals always begin with a soup flavored with guasca, a green plant that everyone but the Colombians thinks is a weed, lime juice and whatever leftovers are available.  This provided some humor as Glen and Fenton got a bowl of soup with tripe.  They both took one bite, and ate nothing else that day.  From then on they refused to eat the "Asshole soup," that the Colombians were so fond of.

The main meal is usually beans, rice, carne asada (thin sliced and grilled beef) or pechuga (chicken prepared the same way) and a plantain.  The plantains could be grilled or fried (patacones.)  Since we were in a banana producing region sometimes the patacones were made out of green bananas.  Sometimes a green salad, or a salad made of beet root will accompany this.  There are all sorts of warning not to eat raw vegetables, which I strictly adhered to my first time there.  Afterwards I found myself thinking "To hell with it, if I die, I die, I'm eating that tomato."

This was the usual meal at almost every roadside stop in Colombia.  In Santa Marta and along the coast fried or grilled fish was available, as was the rice and shrimp dish common to the Caribbean.  They also had a stew like bouillabaisse.  At some restaurants they would cook it in an iron bowl, and heat up a second iron bowl in the oven.  When it was presented the hot bowl was placed underneath and the stew would boil and bubble.

There were more exotic dishes as well; I had iguana eggs at the Hotel Jorlin.  They're small and round and have a creamier taste than hen's eggs.  They're usually eaten with salt, or with sausage and mustard.  Sofia explained that they were available only in the winter months.

There are a large number of fruits available.  One of the most prevalent is the soursop, which looks like an orange, but has an inside made of membranes and seeds.  I thought it was delicious, with a taste similar to passion fruit.  Other members of our team thought it looked like mucus with seeds and refused to touch it.  Corozo is another unusual berry found in Colomia.  Usually it's used to make juices; but the Colombians will stew them.  They taste vaguely like cranberries, but are much more fibrous; so much so that they turn into a dense, fibrous mass in your mouth.

Fresh juices of all sorts are widely available; they can be served with either milk or water.  The greatest invention of the Colombians is limonada (which is limeade, not lemonade.  In Colombian Spanish, limon is the word for both lime and lemon.  Max said he didn't know there were such things as lemons until he came to the United States.  He called them limon amarillo.)  The Colombians frappe their limeade with ice for limonada natural.  They'll also mix it with all sorts of different flavors, limonada de cerezada (maraschino cherries), limonada de albahaca (basil), limonada de menta (mint), and limon de coco (coconut milk.)  The latter was the star; all the gringos loved that.

Usually we would get breakfast at the hotel.  Arepas were almost always served with breakfast.  The ones at the Irotama were baked with parmesan cheese; I thought they were good, but most of my coworkers did not.  They also had an unusual dish of an egg fried inside an arepa shell and served with sour cream.   They made some other Americanized dishes as well, they had a hot dog, but they served it in a hard roll with parmesan cheese.  There was no mustard to be found only catsup or mayonnaise.

One time I did get breakfast on the road; they served something called Peto Rico.  My driver insisted that I had to try it.  It was like rice pudding, but made with corn rather than rice.  It was delicious.

Coffee is always present.  All along the roadside the Colombians would have thermoses filled with coffee for sale.  Colombians would drink coffee even in the heat of the midday.  They drink it American style, not like espresso and they usually add sugar to it.  The blends they have tend to be bold (fuerte.)  One peculiarity of the language is that Colombians refer to coffee as "Tinto."  Black coffee, for instance is tinto solo.  However in Spain "Tinto" is red wine.  I imagine there's some surprised Colombians at breakfast in Spain, or disappointed Spaniards at dinner in Colombia.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on July 13, 2015, 02:25:56 PM
Heh, fresh fruits and drinks made with local ice: any interesting days on the toilet involved?  ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 13, 2015, 02:33:31 PM
Quote from: Malthus on July 13, 2015, 02:25:56 PM
Heh, fresh fruits and drinks made with local ice: any interesting days on the toilet involved?  ;)

The fruits all had a peel (although Colombians will eat the mango skin and all) so there wasn't so much danger there.  Ice was something to be concerned about; when we got into small towns even the Colombians would throw away the ice that came with their drink.  I only had the frappes at reputable restaurants, but I did eat raw vegetables everywhere.  After days of 100 degree temperature on a locomotive I developed a more fatalistic outlook.

One of our company, Ken, got some nasty stomach bug.  The Irotama doctor gave him some medicine and Ken couldn't figure out why he didn't seem to get any better.  Later on he realized the doctor had given him a bowel stimulant, and it wasn't  until he stopped taking medication that his symptoms disappeared.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2015, 02:59:07 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 13, 2015, 02:33:31 PM
it wasn't  until he stopped taking medication that his symptoms disappeared.

:lol:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 14, 2015, 01:44:02 PM
Freddy Panda

There weren't a lot of options for our electrical, civil and mechanical subcontractors in Colombia.  For the electrical group we ended up with a company called ET Solutions.  They ended up being a really good group; to our amazement we had no problems getting the wiring installed.  The only issue is that all four members of the team went everywhere with each other.  Even tasks as simple as getting parts from the Home Center would be done by all four at once.  It was like working with a Clockwork Orange gang.

The mechanical and civil work was done by a group called Jovega.  The Jovega project manager was a rotund man named Freddy.  Freddy always had a mournful look and always had a meandering story as to why he was so far behind.  One time when Jeff was relating one of Freddy's stories, Gary added "And that would make me a sad panda."  The nickname stuck.  Freddy did actually look like a panda.  One of our team members found a stuffed panda at the mall and bought it using the GE Purchase card.  That  became our office mascot, Freddy Panda.

The reason why Freddy's group was always so far behind is that Freddy never came out to the field.  So the team rarely worked.  Whenever I'd encounter them in the field the entire team would be sitting under a tree, trying to escape the hot Colombian sun.  If Sofia or Bill was with me, about half the group would get up and try their best to look busy, the other half didn't even bother.

That was often for the best.  When they did work, Jovega would usually mess things up badly.  Bill would demand that the person responsible would be kicked off the project.  Freddy would tell Bill that they had been fired; but "Fired" means something different in Colombia than it does in the United States.  Within a week or two we'd see them again, back on the project.

We had them construct a couple new towers for us.  We have a shelter with our equipment next to the tower.  In order to communicate to the radio antennas they need to run cable between the shelter and the tower.  Usually there's a rugged cable tray that connects the two, so that the cable can lie on it without concern for the elements.  They didn't get that, instead they got a wire rack that looks like it came from El Office Max.  It was too flimsy to be run straight, so they sunk a couple poles into the ground to support it; only they sunk the poles too deep to support the tray, so they attached the tray to the poles with twist ties.  Jovega the quality you've come to expect.

Eventually Freddy found another job.  It wasn't a surprise since he had sounded each of us out about a job with GE.  I think everyone told him something along the lines of "We don't have a lot of open positions here in Colombia."  After that the pace picked up and we met our extended schedule. Our mascot went to a good home; the warehouse manager had a young daughter.  Unlike us she was delighted to have Freddy Panda.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 15, 2015, 10:23:23 AM
News

Jeff told me one time he had seen a newspaper that showed a fatal traffic accident on the front cover.  This photograph on the front page showed the victim in full color blood and gore.  His driver told him that was a sleazy, low class newspaper.  In respectable newspapers they would blur the victims face out.

Colombian news was tabloidish, filled with gossip and investigative news reporter hunting down the mundane.  I once saw a story about people who jumped the turnstiles on Bogota's subways.  The news people tried to shame the ones who would talk to the reporters and chase down the ones who ran away.

Some of antics of the Colombians were the stuff for tabloids.  Around Christmastime there are a number of fiestas.  Some of the towns celebrate their fiesta with a bull fight.  In one little town by Bogota the aquardiente was flowing a little too freely.  Some of the townspeople grabbed posts and stones and beat the bull to death.  There was video of this and for about a week all the news channels kept showing this.

Even tabloid news stories outside the country, if they were wretched enough, made the Colombian news.  I saw a story about a wedding in Lima where the bride and groom were confronted at the church doors by the groom's ex-girlfriend and two of his children.  The newly married couple had to flee on foot as the couple's family and the ex-girlfriend shouted at one another.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 15, 2015, 03:50:02 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 15, 2015, 10:23:23 AM
  The newly married couple had to flee on foot as the couple's family and the ex-girlfriend shouted at one another.

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theskinnystiletto.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F02%2Fkatharine-ross-2.jpg&hash=ffe90b63bc90635e46a46466a4af7e5c5150c909)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 16, 2015, 08:43:38 AM
Un Amour de Jeff Swaan

Derrick was from Cuba's northernmost province, Miami.  His grandparents had fled during the revolution; but he still identified with his Cuban heritage and talked it up all the time.  He did things a certain way because Cubans did it that way.  He made snap judgements, because Cubans made snap judgements.  He didn't take measurements because Cubans were good at eyeballing measurements.  He got reassigned to another project because the measurements he didn't take were wrong.

Even before that final incident Derrick's Cubanness annoyed Jeff to no end.  In those days the team would regularly get dinner at a restaurant called "Crepes y Waffles."  It was an Americanized restaurant, clean and air conditioned.  The only person who ever got sick there was Javier, but he seemed to get sick everywhere.  Every breakfast for him was toast and coffee as he was trying to get his stomach to settle.  He's a Spaniard, so we assumed this was the curse of Bolivar upon him.

While they were at Crepes y Waffles one night Derrick started talking about how he loved women with big asses, because Cubans loved women with big asses.  In fact all Hispanic men loved women with big asses.  There was a skinny waitress there named Laura whom Jeff and Bill started talking up.

"You guys are crazy," said Derrick, "She's got no ass.  No Hispanic man would like her."

They started going to Crepes y Waffles all the time.  Bill and Jeff would flirt constantly with Laura at first mostly to get Derrick's goat.  It moved into more serious territory and Laura started sending Jeff pictures of herself.  She was fully dressed in the pictures; just not in her Crepes y Waffles uniform.

We stopped going to Crepes y Waffles one night after having some extraordinarily bad service.  Jeff and Fabio had ordered a chicken stuffed crepe.  Two hours after they ordered it our waitress came by the table and told us they were out of chicken.  Jeff was livid.  He wouldn't order anything else.  He wouldn't consider ordering anything else.  He complained to the waitress (with Max translating.)  He had her bring over her manager and he repeated the complaints (again with Max translating) about the horrid service.  The manager listened very politely, and when Jeff finished asked, "Is that it?" She didn't care in the slightest.

The rest of us got our food shortly thereafter, but it was quite late by the time we left.  Jeff and Fabio went over to the frozen yogurt stand in the same mini-mall.  The server said they were closed.  As they were walking away, three young ladies came up and ordered frozen yogurt, and he promptly served them.  Jeff went back and said "You wouldn't serve us."

"Yes, but they're girls," the waiter said; but begrudgingly agreed to serve Jeff and Fabio.

We didn't hear anything else about Laura for a long time; then one night I saw Jeff sneaking a woman past the lobby (so far as a 250 pound man can sneak a woman half his age and weight without attracting attention.)  It was Laura.

The word spread like wildfire through our team.  Gary, naturally, took this as a great source of fun and would wait for about an hour after he saw Jeff slip in to Irotama with Laura, then he'd start texting him.

"You texted us in the middle of the act," said Jeff.

"I thought I might be," replied Gary

"Every time my phone would ding she'd open her eyes and look around."

"It's a good sign when they open their eyes.  It means they're still conscious."

Jeff got kicked off the project and Laura was left in Santa Marta.  Jeff had asked her to get a passport and visit him in the United States, but she didn't seem all that eager.  It was probably for the best as Jeff also has a stewardess girlfriend.  He told me not to date stewardesses as they keep odd hours and constantly have computer problems.  I told him I didn't think my wife would let me anyway.

Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on July 16, 2015, 08:48:24 AM
I take it the uncaring bad-service Crepes y Waffles waitress wasn't Laura?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 16, 2015, 08:54:10 AM
Quote from: Malthus on July 16, 2015, 08:48:24 AM
I take it the uncaring bad-service Crepes y Waffles waitress wasn't Laura?

Yes, she wasn't working that night. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 20, 2015, 12:47:39 PM
Un amour de Ken

Ken had a marriage that had been on the rocks for some time.  When we met on this project the divorce was going through.  His wife had moved on and her new boyfriend was a plumber.  Ken is from Connecticut; he was in Colombia during the cold snap during the winter.  The pipes in his house froze so he had to return.  Back in Connecticut he and his wife's boyfriend replaced the pipes.  It's a tight knit community up there.

Ken had gotten a girlfriend of his own.  She hardly slept and would text him all hours of the night.  They did crossword puzzles together.  She had sent her pillowcase with him; he wore it under his hard hat like a kepi.  It was all so cute that I resolved not to outlive my wife; no one should have to go through that twice.

Their relationship continued through the time we were in Colombia.  On my last trip I worked mostly with Ken.  As we were on the road he told me that he had started a short story to her.  He read it to me; it was a suggestive story, probably like something you'd find in a romance novel. 

"She wrote the ending to it," said Ken, "I'll give it to you to read, it would be just weird if I read it to you."

"It's pretty weird already," I said; but read it anyway.   She gave had given his short story a happy ending in graphic prose.

"What do you think?" asked Ken.

"I think you'd better go home pretty soon," I said.

"Yeah, it's like she's saying you've got a job back here and it's in my pants.  Though, I like it when she talks dirty.  The only dirty talk we had in our house the past ten years was about the laundry."
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: katmai on July 20, 2015, 05:32:03 PM
Poor CB and the "erotic" stories Sav sends :(
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Valmy on July 20, 2015, 06:46:35 PM
Quote from: katmai on July 20, 2015, 05:32:03 PM
Poor CB and the "erotic" stories Sav sends :(

:lol:

Tell her I feel bad for making fun of Michigan State Sav
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 20, 2015, 06:56:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 20, 2015, 06:46:35 PM
I feel bad for making fun of Michigan State

Why?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 20, 2015, 09:34:30 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 20, 2015, 12:47:39 PM
She gave had given his short story a happy ending in graphic prose.

Don't leave us hanging!  :mad:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 21, 2015, 12:31:16 PM
Quote from: katmai on July 20, 2015, 05:32:03 PM
Poor CB and the "erotic" stories Sav sends :(

:P
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 21, 2015, 12:31:38 PM
Ken and the Wasp

I was out testing with Ken one day.  As we were walking he yelped in pain.  Something had stung him, and every few steps we took he kept saying, "This really hurts."  By the time we made it back to the car his hand had noticeably swelled up.  By that evening his whole arm was swollen.  Ken had gotten stung by a wasp.  There's a small, aggressive variety of wasp in Colombia that we always ran into.  Everyone offered Ken Benadryl or Claritin; but he insisted he was fine.  The next morning his arm was swollen up like the Fred Flintstone arm.  He had to go to the Irotama medic and get some shots.  That incapacitated him throughout the day.  At Irotama there's a maid which opens the curtains in the morning, one who cleans the floors, one who makes the bed, then one who closes the thin curtains in the afternoon, one who puts macaroons on the pillows and one who closes the thick curtains at night.  Ken was woken by all of them.  He put the "Do not disturb" sign on his door, but in Colombia that's viewed of as a suggestion not to be taken seriously.  Even if you try to bar the door they'll beat on it several times just to make sure you really want to have it latched.

The reason why everyone had Claritin and Benadryl to offer is that GE had put together a "Travel kit" for people going to the third world.  It was filled with over the counter anti-histamines, Imodium, off-brand Tylenol and the like.  By the midpoint of last year they had run out, and didn't buy new ones.  They did give us a list of recommended over the counter medicines; probably assuming that no one would go get them.  I did; I made a trip to CVS and got a bonanza of unbranded medications.  Since I live in Florida the store clerk didn't even look twice, I'm sure that wasn't the strangest thing she had seen that day.

It was a good thing I got all that, because those wasps were everywhere.  One time I opened one of our cases and a swarm of them flew out.  They didn't go after me; instead they flew into the car.  This happened at our southernmost case, and all the way back to Santa Marta my driver and I both sat as still as we could.  Occasionally we'd open the windows and shoo them out.  I ran into them several other places, and got stung twice along the way.  Their sting packs a wallop, it hurts for several hours.  Ken, and also Gary, had a bad reaction to their sting; that put them out for a whole day.  I was lucky that I did not.  I took my store-brand Benadryl immediately after getting stung and bobbed around drowsily for the rest of day.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 22, 2015, 12:20:00 PM
The loves of Glen

The women of Colombia are voluptuous, like most Latinas.  In the fire lands they emphasize this by wearing very short skirts, plunging necklines and high heels.  Many of the women in cities are pretty with a darker complexion and smoky eyes.  Glen didn't have a girlfriend back home, so he was looking for a woman.  Unfortunately he was busy for most of his time in Colombia and had time for romance. 

In his three month stay he had only a couple days off.  Back in those days they were stingy with the drivers; so it was hard to leave the resort on a day off.  One time Glen had struck a bargain with Sofia.  He would have a driver, but only until noon.  So he and his driver went up to the Parque Tayrona.  Parque Tayrona has beautiful beaches and start of the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta Mountains, but locally it's probably best known for its hippy colony.  A number of middle-aged Americans on expired visas live there, smoke pot and live on the occasional check from back home.  The natives steer clear of them as did Glen when he went to the beach.  He and his driver stayed until the appointed time.  The driver started pointing at his watch, and Glen said "I'm staying, so you have to stay."  The driver didn't speak a word of English, but understood as Glen went and got another beer.

On his other day off he met a group of British tourists who stayed at Irotama.  They had a nubile daughter; but she was engaged.  As they got to talking, Glen discovered that she had a cousin who was interested in railroad.  They were going to meet her at the beach at Irotama.  Glen, assuming that she was trying to fix up her cousin, readily agreed to meet him.

It turns out that her cousin was actually interested in rail, and was about twenty years older than the girl Glen had first spoke with.  He answered her questions as quickly as he could, just to get the conversation over with.

Glen was hired by GE for a role unrelated to the FeNoCo project.  I talked with him on his last night in Colombia.  When I told him about Jeff's girlfriend; he said "I can't believe he got one before me.  I had one that I think was interested in me.  I asked her out, but she has to go to Bogota tonight."

"You wouldn't have seen her again," I said.

"Yeah, but I'm just trying to get laid."

"When did I become so old?" I asked.

He did keep in contact with her via text and mostly with the aid of Google Translate.  The division of GE that Glen now works for just got a product order for the rail systems in Santa Marta.  Being low man on the totem pole, Glen is probably the one who will have to return there.

"At least I'll get to see her again," said Glen.

"And have a romantic dinner with Google translate?"  I asked.

"We'll just meet for drinks and then it's down to business."

"When did I become so old?" I asked.

Bill once talked to one of the clerks when he was staying at Ventanas.  She said she made about $25,000 per year; by way of comparison the track security people make $6000.  Bill asked her if that was a lot of money.  She said it wasn't.  She wanted to get an American husband; then go to America and get a master's degree and a job in the United States.  I told Bill Colombian gold diggers are quite different than our own.  For this reason I was a little surprised Glen didn't have greater success, but he was almost always working and a rail yard is no place to meet a lady.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Syt on July 22, 2015, 12:25:39 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 22, 2015, 12:20:00 PM
The loves of Glen

The women of Colombia are voluptuous
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fm0.her.ie%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2F29202856%2Fmodern-family.jpg&hash=b2aeeb1f5a4486a8df7bfabae2529f969a2163f2)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 22, 2015, 02:11:30 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 22, 2015, 12:25:39 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 22, 2015, 12:20:00 PM
The loves of Glen

The women of Colombia are voluptuous
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fm0.her.ie%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2F29202856%2Fmodern-family.jpg&hash=b2aeeb1f5a4486a8df7bfabae2529f969a2163f2)

:lol:

She's very tall by Colombian standards, but otherwise about the right dimensions.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 23, 2015, 09:19:25 AM
Language

One time I had worked all night hooking up switches.  Morning came and we still weren't done, so we decided to get breakfast on the road before continuing.  Ken, a couple FeNoCo line engineers and I went to a roadside restaurant.  I gave my order in Spanish, the waitress rolled her eyes and looked at one of the FeNoCo engineers who served as our interpreter.  I shrugged and repeated my order to the FeNoCo engineer in Spanish, and the waitress wrote it down as I was saying it.

Language was the greatest challenge in my time in Colombia.  Many of our suppliers, contractors and drivers spoke only Spanish.  Communicating with them was always a problem.  Different people would handle this in different ways.  Bill, for instance, always took Sofia with him wherever he went.  This was a good idea, since Bill ordered "Mucho mas coffee" every morning for breakfast.  Our waitress knew enough English to know what he meant.

Since everyone couldn't take a bilingual Colombiana with them wherever they went, other solutions had to be found.  Many of my co-workers and the drivers made do with Google translate or a similar program.  I found those programs worthless; they had poor translations and usually failed to translate crucial words.  One quirk was that our driver's would write down "Don" as a form of address which the Google translated as "Lord."  It was strange to have Google address me as "Lord Savonarola."

Some people, like Glen, could pick up on body language and understand whole conversations without speaking a word of Spanish.  I cannot, so I used Duolingo to learn the language.  I had studied some Spanish at a community college, so it was in part a review.  The problem at first was that my Spanish would come out mostly as French.  I was convinced I was wasting my time trying to learn Spanish when I saw a poster that said "Jaime Serrano" and I was puzzled why anyone would feel the need to proclaim his love for Spanish ham (J'aime Serrano.)  It took me a while to realize that was the name of politician.

In time I could carry on a basic conversation in Spanish.  One time we were at the bank with my driver and he was speaking to me.  After he was done a woman who was in line behind us asked my driver "He speaks Spanish?"

"When I speak it," my driver replied.

"He's very intelligent," she said.

"I'm a married man, you whore!" I said.

(Not really; actually I didn't say anything; but in the version of this I show my wife I'm keeping that line in.)

The Spanish speakers had a great deal of difficulty conveying technical information even to one another.  Spanish is more verbose than English.  One of our supplier's engineers was a native English speaker.  He said that when he would translate manuals from Spanish to English often he would delete whole paragraphs; they didn't really say anything they just set the scene.  This caused extensive problems as our translators put the manual from English into Spanish they had to add information like that.

So I was still limited, even with a basic knowledge of Spanish.  I did pick up some technical terms that were odd to English ears.  The outer jacket on coaxial cable is called "Malla," like our word mail, as in chain-mail.  Another was the male connectors were "Macho," hence a male-male connector was "Macho-Macho."
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 24, 2015, 09:47:52 AM
Super Bowl Party

Kevin had rented out a conference room at Irotama so that we could watch the Super Bowl.  I was scheduled to go to Drummond that day with Jeff; but I figured we'd be back before kickoff, since Jeff was from Seattle.

That turned out to be a vain hope.  While Jeff had expressed some interest in seeing the Seahawks play we kept getting sucked into project after project.  Finally we agreed to work on one last train as it was moving.  We got our equipment installed and we waited on the train as it went through the dumper.  The dumper at the Durmmond yard is an amazing device.  It picks up four cars at once and turns them sideways so that all the coal tumbles out of them.  It's an enormous machine with an enormous counterweight.  We passed through the dumper and watched it unload the first four cars; for a moment Jeff and I were like young boys, watching in utter amazement.

Then the train stopped and we waited, and waited, and waited.  We were stuck there for an hour with nothing to do, until the station manager finally got out a golf cart to rescue us.  There had been some problem on the track and the train couldn't advance.

I got back late, and was only able to watch the second half of the game.  The meeting room had a large movie screen on which the game was projected.  We sat on banquet hall chairs.  Kevin had found a restaurant which had chicken wings; and he had put together a buffet of those.  He had cookies and chips as well; the Colombians don't just have potato chips.  Instead they'll have potato chips, plantain chips and Cheetos all in the same bag.  He also had numerous six packs of the local beer, Club Colombia.  It was strange to sit there so far from home trying to carry on American culture.  It didn't convince everyone, I had met Glen returning to his room as I was heading to the game.  He wanted to try to find American TV, since all the commercials were local and in Spanish.

A number of our local team and the Brazilians were there as well.  All of them were trying to figure out what was going on.  I met Diego that night.  Diego was Colombian, from Santa Marta.  He worked as our track manager; that is he coordinated issues between our team and the ports or FeNoCo.  He had managed to get on the bad side of FeNoCo, and he was constantly being cited for rules violations.  In turn he would constantly report FeNoCo's people for violating their own rules.  Eventually he was kicked off the project and we sent him to our project in Michigan.

Sofia told me that Diego spoke a very florid Spanish, so that anything he told our customers turned into a lengthy production.  This annoyed FeNoCo as well as the American team. When Bill was presenting a Power Point Presentation to them he would speak for two minutes, and then Diego would translate for twenty.  Bill would just stare, wondering what he could have been translating.

We got to talking, since I am from Michigan and I was familiar with the area where he would be living.  I asked him if he had ever seen snow before; he assured me he had.  He had a girlfriend that he wanted to bring to Michigan, but GE was lukewarm about doing that.  They were willing to give him a whole shipping container, but not airline tickets for his girlfriend.  Kevin suggested that he drill some holes in the shipping container and bring her up that way.  Jeff said he should call her his "Domestic partner," rather than his girlfriend.  She was at the party and, while she was definitely worth drilling a few holes in a shipping container for, I'm not sure what she would have done in Jackson, Michigan since she spoke no English.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 27, 2015, 09:06:39 AM
Gerard

For most of the early phase of the project Bill and Kevin had requested additional resources for help on the project.  It was becoming clear that we didn't have enough people to complete the project according to schedule.  This is how I became a field engineer despite never having worked in the field or how Mike became the lead on board engineer despite never having been on a locomotive.  At least Mike and I had worked in transportation; when we lost Diego we became so desperate for people we ended up with a track manager from GE Energy, Gerard.

Gerard was German.  He was an older man; and had come out of retirement to work on this project.  He had been the project manager on the GE project in Iraq after the Second Gulf War. That was a billion dollar project he had managed, he told us time and again.  He had other stories about the project that he told repeatedly: he had lost five engineers on the project, his office had been bombed, it was a large and important project.  It was tedious and self-important, but he always put the wine on his expense report.

Apart from telling war stories, Gerard never seemed to do much.  He couldn't speak Spanish, so he was unable to coordinate with the railroad or the ports.  Whenever he was out in the field, even as far south as Fundacion, he would come back and have lunch at Irotama then take a nap.

"What are you going to do when you're working down in Bosconia?"  Bill asked.

"It's very hot outside," Gerard answered.

It was, but like mad dogs and Englishmen the rest of us worked in the heat of the midday sun.  Both Bill and Kevin complained to their managers about Gerard.  They got the "We feel your pain/let's all work together speech," that our leadership always gave.

This ended one day when Gerard was out in the field.  He told his driver where he wanted to go; the driver went, but Gerard thought he was going the wrong way.  An argument ensued, entirely in gestures since neither spoke the others language then, according to the driver, Gerard put his hand on the wheel.  Gerard said he did not, but either way they ended up in the ditch.  It took them about an hour to get the car out of the ditch and Gerard had his driver sit in the passenger seat and drove back to Irotama.  When he got there he cursed out Bill and then Kevin and then called up Kevin's boss to curse him out.  Gerard complained that the team didn't know what it was doing.  We had no plan.  We had no support.  We had no chance of completing this project.  It turned into a long shouting match, but it got results; Gerard was kicked off the project.  We were told explicitly that we were to have any contact with him; so naturally everyone on the team tried to talk to him.

Gerard was given a one way ticket back to Paris.  He changed his tickets to Melbourne and showed up at our office Monday morning.  The head of operations wasn't in, so he camped out at Mike's office for three days, still seething.

Nothing came of Gerard's visit.  The only changes that were made on the project after Gerard left were that we no longer sub-contracted out drivers; all the drivers were SIMS employees.  Also we were no longer allowed to ride with anyone but SIMS drivers; we had been taking rides from our customers and suppliers before that.  This was an unfortunate result since our supplier had trucks with much better shocks, and they had all disabled the 80 KMPH regulators.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on July 27, 2015, 09:52:10 AM
QuoteIt was strange to have Google address me as "Lord Savonarola."   

Lol, I agree. "Your Grace" would have been more appropriate.   :D
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on July 28, 2015, 11:08:34 AM
Glen and the dogs

There are stray dogs everywhere in Colombia; almost all are mutts and skinny.  Packs of dogs wandered the beaches just past the hotels.  There were dogs in the ports; some guarded the locomotive shops, and would growl when strangers came in.  Huge gangs would gather outside of the cantinas after lunch hoping for scraps.  Strays would wander the streets of the cities.  Every station had at least a couple dogs.  They were everywhere.

One time when we were at CNR, as we were driving out our ride was delayed as he was being searched.  As the driver was sitting there a dog snuck under his car to lay in the shade.  The driver didn't realize that, and ran right over the dog as he started up again.  We took the dog to the animal hospital, and they set his leg.  We expensed that as needed for goodwill at the port.

Our northernmost station at Cienaga had the largest a number of strays of any station.  Most were smart enough to stay a long way from the tracks, but there was one who would go right up to the tracks as the train was passing and just stare at the train.  One of the security guys took a towel, wrapped it, and from six feet away smacked the dog on the head.  The dog yelped, snapped out of it and would wander off away from the train.

"Could you imagine being that guy's younger brother?" asked Glen.

Glen might not have had luck with the ladies of Colombia, but he joked that he still had plenty of bitches.  He loved dogs; he had adopted a puppy from Cienaga station.  If he had leftover lunch he would put it out for the dogs.  The mining companies packed huge lunches, so on days when we were registered as working for them we each had enough left over lunch to feed another person and a pack of dogs.  Glen would always make sure his puppy got fed first and then let the rest have at it.

The Colombians thought he was crazy for doing this.  One of them decided to mess with Glen one day while he was feeding the dogs.  He told him the most devastating insult he could think of, "Colombians are better than Americans at soccer."  That didn't seem to faze Glen.

Later he bought dog food.  We had a shipping container which we had converted into a make-shift office and supply room at Cienaga.  He kept paper plates and dog food in there.  Anytime anyone visited they went out and fed the dogs.  Then the Colombians thought we were all crazy.

Glen's dog got into a fight.  Glen found him in pretty rough shape one day.  Glen took him to the animal hospital.  Glen, Nick and Ken chipped in to have the dog stitched up, and he was as good as new, but Glen realized that would probably happen again.  So he looked into adopting the dog and bringing it to the United States.  It's possible to do that, but it's both expensive and time consuming.  Glen was unable to afford it, and had to leave the dog in Colombia.  He'd ask me about his dog after I came back (and he was no longer on the project.)  I didn't see him my last time there; but fewer GE people were coming to the Cienaga station at that time, so he might have wandered off.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 06, 2015, 02:29:26 PM
Santa Marta and the Bank

Colombia and the United States have a trade agreement, and almost everything can be imported without duty.  There's an issue with goods clearing customs; for instance US manufacturers will do quality control on a box of hexagonal nuts by weight.  A box of 100 nuts should weigh a certain amount within a threshold of tolerance.  In Colombian customs someone will count every nut in the box and if we're one over or under they'll reject the entire shipment.  The manifest will be altered and we'll start all over again.  Things like that were our most persistent problem, but there were other issues.  There are still some goods which do have import duty, as we found out.

One day Sofia got a notice that we had received a package which still had a duty on it via FedEx.  In a larger city you could simply go to the FedEx office, pay the duty and get your package.  In Santa Marta there is no FedEx office.  A private delivery company had brought it to Santa Marta on behalf of Fedex.  They held the package for us, but they were not authorized to receive a duty payment.  So, in true Colombian run-around fashion, we had to go to the bank, show our letter of duty, pay, get a stamp of authorization, and take the stamp of authorization to the delivery office to release the package.

I was drafted to go with Sofia to the bank, since at the time Sofia was still a contractor and there were only a handful of GE employees in Colombia.  For that reason I had been given the role of the bank (Bill usually filled this role).  The drivers would buy lunch and give me the bill; I reimbursed them and expensed their receipts.  Fortunately our expense reports were not too closely monitored.  At one point Bill ended up staying at some truck stop hotel on the road.  For a receipt they gave him a piece of paper with the amount he paid on it.  That expense report went through.

I had a company AMEX; the type I had was for Travel.  It wasn't supposed to be used for taxes, for that we were supposed to use the Purchase AMEX.  The problem with that was that fraud protection was all over the purchase card.  Whenever anyone tried to use one they would always be rejected.  Upon calling AMEX they'd learn that there was a block on the card for purchasing in Colombia.  AMEX would clear the block and the card would be rejected again.  Calling AMEX back they'd learn of another block on the card to be cleared, only to find the card would be rejected again.  Bill said he once got five blocks deep before giving up and using the Travel Card.  We'd put "Supplies for Meetings" on the expense reports for the travel cards.  That always worked.

We went to the Bank of Colombia in Santa Marta.  There were guards there with machineguns.  I waited in line for a half an hour only to discover that the Bank of Colombia does not accept foreign credit cards for purchases, so I had to go to the ATM and pay the tariff with cash.

This wasn't the last time I had trouble with credit cards in Colombia.  On what was supposed to be my last trip home I got stuck carrying an enormous antenna.  At the check in the agents told me they'd have to charge me extra to bring it on.  I said that was fine, and pulled out my AMEX.  They couldn't take that, they said, their internet was down and they couldn't process credit cards.  I couldn't pay for it in Bogota, where the internet would presumably work since they didn't have authorization.  Instead I had to go to the ATM again.  Bill was at the station next to me, and similarly had an additional bag.  They let him take his additional bag for free; maybe they thought he wouldn't be able to get cash, or maybe I didn't look like I'd punch the airline representative.

Sofia told me that, because FedEx and UPS don't have much of a presence in Colombia, you can contract with Avianca to ship supplies.  You go to the airport and buy space in the cargo hold.  You can also do the same thing with truckers or with bus companies.  "They inspect packages closely," she warned me, "So it isn't a good way to ship cocaine."

When I got home from Colombia during the two month break I had in June and July I met our field engineer, Chris in the lab.  The first thing he said to me is "I brought your dildo home."

"My what?"

He had brought back a Yagi antenna, which I guess could look like a sex toy for a giantess.  He also showed me another box he had brought back.  It was the box I had gone and paid the tariff on.  It had never been opened.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 07, 2015, 03:26:05 PM
Crossings

Currently all the crossings on the track are operated manually.  That is a security guard gets a notification that a train is approaching by radio.  He holds up a stop sign until traffic stops and then puts up plastic fencing and pylons.  He keeps them there until the train passes and then takes them down.

In order for this system to work the trains have to slow down considerably at crossings.  In the places where there's unrest FeNoCo wanted to have trains maintain speed, so they contracted three crossings from us.  It took quite a while to get these built, since Freddy Panda was our contractor on this one.  Once they did get the first one built we discovered that the gates reached down onto the train track; had we ever lowered them the train would have smashed through them.  Bill shouted at Jovega until he was hoarse and we were back to the drawing board.

These were supposed to have been completed in March; we were putting them together at the end of May.  At that point Bill was so determined to get done that he had taken to working 40 hour shifts.  By the end of the shift he was incoherent.  He ended these monstrous shifts with staff meetings.  Even under the best of circumstances, Bill's meetings were unfocused.  These meetings wandered off in rambling directions as Bill struggled to remain lucid.

Bill went out into the field to oversee the testing of the crossings.  The one he spent the most time at was the busiest crossing in Bosconia.  There are a number of different ways the crossing can operate; they can be set by the office computer if it knows the location and speed of the train, they can be set by radio if the driver sends out a code, or they can be set by completing the track circuit right by the crossing.  The tracks are all set up as circuits, so if a train passes over the circuit in the same section as the gate it completes the circuit, so the crossing will activate.  This caused us a problem; one night when Bill was in Bosconia there was a torrential downpour.  The drainage isn't the best in Colombia so the track flooded, causing a short, which set off the gates.  In other countries that wouldn't have been a problem, motorists would have stopped when they saw the signals flashing and waited.  In Colombia the people ignored the signals entirely, and kept going.  So a truck got stranded on the tracks as the got closed.  I wasn't there to see this, but I was with Ken, who was on the phone with Bill and I could hear him hollering, "He's not going to... he's going to run the gate!  Dog shit!  DOG SHIT!"

So we had to replace the gate arm.  I was called in to help with some problems with the radio.  We spent all day there.  Across the track there was a snack shop that played Cumbia all day long at top volume.  With the noise, the heat, the dust, and traffic it was miserable day.  We'd have to stop working about every fifteen minutes so a train could pass.  We had a test train to test the crossing with, but we could never get track time.  WD was working on board that day; he'd get on a train at the station and ride it past the crossing to the siding and then get off.  Then he'd go back the other way.  He did this all day.

The Colombians did not take the crossing warnings seriously.  The security guards would have to get out on either side with stop signs, and even then the first few cars would run the tracks.  They would then put up their plastic fence and pylons.  Then our gates would come down.  Motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians would still race over the tracks until the train was right about on them.  Everyone would line up to the gates as close as possible; so close that Bill had to rush out and move a pedestrian out of the way before he got smacked by the gate.  Once the train passed and the guards pulled down the gates it became like the start of a two way motocross rally.  Pedestrians, bicycles, cars, and motorcycles all rushed directly at one another.

We discovered a serious problem in our software; the crossing would disarm and the gate would go up right as the train was getting to the crossing.  For obvious reasons we couldn't let this go into production, so we set our software department to work on this.  It took two months to validate the software, and we were sent back out into the field to test it again.

This was the last item in the project; by completing this we had met all our project deliverables and could end engineering support.  We went to Prado Plaza first thing Monday morning after we arrived.  Bill always says that he wants to have a quick meeting where we knock things out right away.  Once we get there he'll talk about his kids, his flight, his house and the like so that what should be a thirty minute meeting turns into a two hour epic.  Even with that we still didn't manage to beat FenoCo into submission; we had asked for production locomotives from one of the mines, but what we got were FeNoCo's two ancient test locomotives.

Bill is ever the optimist, we were going to go down to Cienaga station (the station closest to the ports), fix up the locos so they could run in test mode, be done right after lunch and go home to rest before we went to work that evening.  In fact the locos we needed weren't even at Cienaga station.  Once they got there we found all sorts of problems on them.  WD wasn't done with the locos until 7 PM; somehow in all his work he acquired my needle-nosed pliers and never returned them.

The first night in Aracataca went very well.  Our biggest excitement came as we hiked over the tracks from the edge of town into the darkness of the Colombian night.  I had to walk over a bridge where open ties were laid across an open trestle; there was a full moon that night so I could clearly see the ties; and I could even make out the river below.  The humidity is so much in the fire lands Colombia that even without light pollution the stars are little more than a hazy mass.

The second night was in El Paso.  The tracks are far from the gasoline shanty town on the road.  There it feels like we're at the end of the earth.  Everything went perfectly there.  This is a crossing because it lies on a dirt road "Highway."  It's a route that goes between two swamps connecting El Paso with cities on the Magdalena River (this is the "Pass" that El Paso refers to."  From where we were it looked like the road went out into the heart of darkness.  The only traffic was an occasional late night bus.

Everything had gone so well on our first two nights that we thought we would have no issue at Bosconia.  Trouble started right away, though, we were supposed to start around nine PM.  At dinner we discovered that FeNoCo had not socialized the train work.  Bosconia is an area of unrest, so FeNoCo has issued a curfew in the area, trains do not run after 10 PM.  In order to do late night work in the area FeNoCo needs to socialize that work; that is they go from door to door telling the residents what they plan to do.  If no one has any objections we can start work.  If not then we have to hold off.  Bizarrely, no one ever objects; so long as FeNoCo asks, work can proceed without a problem.  So we waited.  Eventually they did get us permission and we could start work at midnight.  Then we found the next problem, one of the gates didn't go down.  None of us there had a good grasp on track signaling, so we kept going from the bungalow with the track circuitry to the circuitry at the gates.  It rained throughout the night, and we huddled in the bungalow trying to read circuit diagrams.  We could get the gate to go down, but it wouldn't go all the way up.  The bell was still sounding and the lights were flashing on all the gates as the one stood there not quite straight up.  Finally, at four in the morning, Bill found that he had connected one of the terminals too tightly, so he gave one nut one quarter turn and everything worked fine.

That proved to be a short lived victory, though, the next day the crossing was acting up again.  Bill said that we would replace the crossing arm; and WD's face fell.  Jovega had changed the crossing arms before, and it had taken them two weeks.  Our team did it in an hour and a half, the crossing was active before we even had permission to start work.  The crossing that was failing was the one that the guy had hit.  Bill speculated that had done damage to the motor, and the motor had simply burned out so it couldn't go all the way up.  While we were testing the crossings we had a guy drive out again and get caught between the crossings. 

I'm afraid there's going to be a long and lethal learning curve for the crossings.  Eventually they want to build 50 crossings like this; and get rid of all the track crossing guards.  As of today they're nowhere near ready to do that.  Even with the crossing guards people will still get hit by trains from time to time.  When I was there early in the year a family of four was killed because they tried to take the gate on their motorcycle while the train was approaching.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 08, 2015, 09:33:22 AM
Rick, Safety Issues and an Iguana

One day I was at lunch with some of my coworkers.  Glen was now onto other projects and he was describing how different the standards of safety were in the United States.  They needed to trim the top off of an antenna on top of a train in order to get it to exactly one quarter wavelength of their frequency.  So they sat around waiting two hours for the antenna cutter to show up, go to his safety meeting, inspect all his equipment, get fully suited in his safety harness, then get craned onto the top of the train, and then trim the antenna.  They discovered that they weren't getting quite the response they hoped for, so they had to get the antenna cutter again, after his lunch, another safety meeting, another equipment check and another suit up.

This contrasted with my coworker Brian's adventures in Brazil.  There he had a repeater in a tunnel that was not functioning properly; so the Brazilians drove a diesel train into the tunnel and kept it running while Brian and two technicians got on top of the loco without any safety harness and diagnosed the problem with the repeater.  There was no ventilation, so as they worked the tunnel slowly filled up with diesel fumes.

I never saw anything that went quite to that extreme in Colombia, but the safety standards were noticeably lax.  We'd climb up to the roof on locos without any safety gear and no one would care.  Sometimes there would be a FeNoCo safety engineer who would stare at us as we performed all sorts of safety violations; he didn't seem to care either.  They even let Jeff and WD drive trains in the yard in Colombia.

In such an environment accidents were inevitable.  Whenever they did we would call in our safety engineer, Rick.  Rick was a Peruvian man who immigrated to the United States when he was eighteen.  You could tell he was good safety engineer because the very first thing he did whenever he got a hotel room was try to yank the safe out of the wall.  If he could do that he would demand another room.  On his first visit Irotama sent him to three rooms before he found one where the safe was secure.  I think the staff grew tired of him quickly, because the fourth room they sent him to was infested by fire ants.

Rick took his job seriously and sent out a lot of memos.  Many times safety's dictates were trivial; like Rick's e-mail telling us not to get bitten by mosquitos.  Other times their dictates were counter-productive.  Rick once told our drivers that they were not allowed to talk on the phone and drive; so whenever the driver's received a phone call they would stop in the middle of the road, put on their blinkers and take the call.  We had one guy do that in downtown Santa Marta, and he talked on the phone oblivious to all the horn's blaring behind him.

Even so safety performed a vital task, figuring out who to blame.  One of the first times Rick was down a man fell off the tower.  It was from only a few meters above the ground, but he was still injured.  He had been strapped into the safety harness and he still fell.  After a lengthy investigation it was found that the harness was in bad condition; but he, his supervisor and the safety coordinator had all signed off on it.  All three were removed from the project; but in true Colombian fashion all were back within a couple weeks.

At least that one had his harness on.  We had three contractors fall off our towers within two weeks; each one wasn't wearing a safety harness.  None of them were seriously injured, but every time the entire team got a lecture from Rick on the importance of safety harnesses, and they'd be back up to climbing the tower without a harness the next day.

Most of the time things that went wrong were our fault; usually the fault of our contractors.  One time Jovega took a crane and put up poles by stretching across the track.  They didn't tell anyone they were doing this, so if a train had come along it would have run right into the crane.  Bill caught them doing this and told them to stop, but the crane operator told him to fuck off.  So we got Rick involved and that crane operator was fired from the project; once again he was back within a couple weeks.

The cranes were often a source of problems.  Any time a large obstruction like that is put within five meters of the track speed restrictions need to be put in place.  Since FeNoCo wasn't always willing to grant such a request, Jovega would sneak in the cranes and put up the poles without permission.  They got caught once doing this when their crane got stuck in the mud four meters from the track.  Speed restrictions then had to be put in place and an irate FeNoCo called us up.  Rick went down there, got a thorough account of what had happened and told them this could never happen again; so it was no surprise that the very next day another crane got stuck in the mud three meters from the track.  Then when they tried to tow the crane out the towing crane got stuck as well.  The two cranes just sat there for days on end, and the speed restrictions had to be set to fifteen KMPH through the stretch.  Once again everyone responsible was fired to be back within a couple weeks.

Not everything was our fault.  People would take their livestock across the track.  I saw a cow that had been hit by a train; the entire village had gathered around to watch the cow die.  It was a grisly scene, the cow was shaking and obviously in a great deal of pain.  Rick said he saw the same thing with a horse.  One of the farmers was taking his horse across the track right in front of a train.  The horse became skittish.  The farmer tried to drag the horse forward; but it was too late.  The farmer was livid, but Rick told him, "Sorry, it's your fault."

If there was ever a problem with a train and a track switch there was always a major issue.  One time the FeNoCo crew had set a switch wrong and our test locomotive ended up on a siding.  Our operations were shut down for a week as an investigation was launched.  They didn't give us a set time for shutdown, every day we were told to be at CNR at 8 AM in order to run the test; and every day by 10 we were told us we wouldn't be running today.  One of our engineers, Phil, had extended his stay in Colombia by a week in order to do the test runs; he was stymied until he went home.  He never came back.  At the end of the week FeNoCo told us something to the effect of "We realize this isn't your fault, but we're blaming you anyway."  That was their standard response whenever they had problems with track switches.  There was another time a train had run over a switch; it wasn't far enough that it caused problems, but a track switch moving by itself is a major issue.  They rounded up everyone who had worked in the office the night before and interrogated them.  They did it early in the morning, and then later in the afternoon leaving our third shift with almost no time to sleep.  In the end it turns out the train had caught the switch arm.  Again it wasn't our fault, but FeNoCo blamed us anyway.

Rick was the safety engineer for the project; and almost every issue that we had was handled by him.  The one issue that was not was the Gerhard incident; since Gerhard had cursed out a director we got Hector, the man in charge of safety for all of Latin America to investigate the issue.  That is why the dictates were so draconian, and so widely observed.

Fortunately there were not issues every day, so Rick was able to enjoy himself at the pool some.  Iguanas run about Irotama.  They climb up to the tops of trees to sun themselves, or scurry about the grounds.  Being a safety guy Rick stayed clear of them.  Other guests weren't so cautious.  I watched one guy pull down a branch holding an Iguana on to his girlfriend.  I heard a lot of words they don't teach you in Spanish class from her.  Rick saw a guy come up and try to pet an iguana who was in the pool area.  The iguana whipped around, cutting its tail deep into the man's leg.  With the slick surface near the pool he was knocked over and ended up bruised and bleeding.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 12, 2015, 02:19:32 PM
Holidays

Our supplier was supposed to deliver equipment in the early part of third quarter 2014.  It was late; since we did not yet have licenses for frequencies, our supplier had made this delivery a low priority.  Even if we had it in the country we couldn't have done anything with it.  This line of reasoning did not convince Bill.  We were on a conference call when they announced the date had slipped.  Bill became livid, and began making demands.  He told them when they needed to have the equipment delivered; and how many installations they would have to do per week.

"But we can't do that without working weekends," said Javier.

"You're working weekends, you're working every day," Bill said.

That was true for us.  There were no days off in Colombia.  We worked long hours every day of the week.  Kevin, when he was in town, liked to take Sundays off and take the team with him to see coffee plantations or to go hiking.  When Kevin wasn't in town, and he usually wasn't, we worked straight through the weekends.

This was very different than the Colombians.  There are twenty one official holidays in coastal Colombia, a seemingly equal number of unofficial holidays and, if the Colombians go more than two weeks without a holiday they throw a party.

That proved to be a nuisance for us.  The vacation group at Irotama would get a band and throw a party on the beach every so often.  We'd get a note in our room telling us that there would be a party, but the staff would be monitoring the noise.  They didn't, the music would be at ear splitting volumes even half a mile away at the hotel.  The music varied from traditional Caribbean music to Colombian disco.  Parties would start at nine PM and go on to four in the morning.  Our whole team looked haggard the next morning at breakfast.

When I first arrived it was Christmastime.  Santa Marta was all decked up in lights and they had a large crèche in the public square.  Everyone seemed to be in a holiday spirit; even at the railyards the atmosphere was festive.  Men would sing as they were washing up at the end of the day at work.  There were paper decorations in the cantinas.  All the lines shut down early for a holiday party on the Friday before Christmas.  We were invited to celebrate at the CNR cantina where we were treated to a surprisingly British Christmas dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes and pudding.  They had a folk band which played traditional Christmas songs in Spanish. 

In the country electricity was rarer, so they didn't have the extensive lighting of Santa Marta.  Instead they hung colored paper ornaments and tinsel in trees.  They would take two rubber tires and stick them one on top the other then paint both of them white.  Then they would take a cardboard cut into a circle and painted like a snowman's face or coal buttons and put them in the middle.  It was strange to see snowmen, reindeer and a bundled up Santa Clause as a holiday decoration in a land which never sees snow.

The Christmas season lasts until the Sunday after the Epiphany.  The season goes strong right up until the end.  We had a two week shutdown starting the week before Christmas.  I was in the United States for both Christmas and New Year's, but we did have people start returning to the market before New Year's Day.  WD couldn't understand why he couldn't find anyone to work late on New Year's Eve.  Glen was there, he complained that most of the team wasn't interested in celebrating the New Year.  The only person he could find to go out with him was Alejandra.  They went to one of the nicest restaurants in Santa Marta, Barakuka, to ring in the New Year.  Barakuka is located on a hill, so they could watch people shooting fireworks off all over; that were the way Colombians rang in the New Year.

The next major holiday is Carnival.  Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras are both holidays on Colombia's Caribbean Coast;  Barranquilla has the largest and best known Carnival celebration in Colombia.  I flew in to Colombia on the Sunday before Carnival; there were high winds on the coast as we were trying to land.  The pilot made two attempts to land, both times they had touched down but taken off again immediately.  The captain came on and said something to the effect that if we weren't able to land the next time he would have to fly to Barranquilla.  Rather than the collective rage I had anticipated, there was a quiet murmur of approval.  We did manage to make it down on the last attempt to the disappointment of some.

In Santa Marta the holiday is more subdued than Christmas; but the rail yards still had up paper decorations.  This time they were all of carnival masks.  The most popular was La Marimonda, which looks sort of like an elephant, but with exaggerated lips and circles around the eyes.  It's the favorite because it's the only carnival mask to originate in Colombia.  The others are of European or African design.  Most look like the carnival masks of Venice; some were more exotic like El Tigre.  Some came from a very different culture than our own in the United States; El Africano would most certainly not win the Al Sharpton seal of approval.

During the week before Carnival children will get in front of cars at traffic stops and dance.  When they're done they hold out their hands to ask for money.  Generally young children do this, but Nick saw older teenagers doing it as well.  He rolled his eyes and said "It's like high school seniors going trick-or-treating."

The next major series of holidays is Holy Week.  That is a primary vacation time for Colombians.  During that week Irotama was overflowing with guests; it was hard to find a table at a restaurant in the resort or even in the city.  Every night there were parties.  The parties peaked on Saturday, though, and Easter Sunday is a day of travel.  I had spent a night in Bosconia during the Holy Week.  Bosconia isn't a travel destination the way Santa Marta is.  It was still noisy and exciting; street parties and discos went on late into the night, and they shot off fireworks.

Irotama used the Italian Restaurant which overlooked a pool for church services.  The Easter Sunday services were among the most laid back church services I've ever attended.

Easter Sunday was the only day off I had in my entire stay in Colombia; and I had the day off because I couldn't find anyone else to work.  I was nearing the end of a three week stint at that point, and apparently I had turned into WD in my time there.  The drivers and the train engineers all complained that I was forcing them to work Holy Thursday and Good Friday.  The test train I had scheduled for Easter Sunday had "Maintenance Issues."  It's chair had been broken and it had to be taken back the entire length of track to be repaired. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 13, 2015, 03:07:08 AM
 :) enjoyed these new stories pleny. tnx
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 13, 2015, 12:07:06 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 13, 2015, 03:07:08 AM
:) enjoyed these new stories pleny. tnx

Thanks   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 13, 2015, 12:09:40 PM
I see that I had posted yesterday's story on an actual Colombian holiday.  Columbus Day (as you might expect) is a holiday there.

(Happy Thanksgiving, Canucks  :Canuck:)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 13, 2015, 12:12:53 PM
Chris versus Amex

In our time in Colombia everything was done expense report.  GE uses AMEX as its corporate card; for international travel this is a difficulty since it's not widely accepted outside the United States.  Only the most expensive restaurants, hotels and stores in Santa Marta accept it.  Even that can be a dubious proposition.  Ken and Glen were once out in Santa Marta looking for parts.  It was getting close to dinner so they went looking for a restaurant.  They came to one with a manager trying to get people to come in.  They asked him if he took AMEX; he said he wasn't sure.  They had in the past, but they had problems, and he couldn't tell them if they would take it or not until they paid their bill.  They passed.

Outside of Santa Marta it's difficult to find anyone who takes credit, much less AMEX.  We can get cash advances, but that can prove challenging.  Vinicius could never get an advance.  He had approvals from his manager, HR, his manager's manager and the director of the Sao Paulo office and it still didn't work.  No one knew why, but fraud prevention had stymied him.

Credit card fraud is prevalent in Colombia so fraud prevention was particularly vigilant.  Chris's AMEX expired when he was in Colombia and their fraud prevention wouldn't allow AMEX to Colombia.  He was in the middle of his 90 day stay, so he had it sent to the office and I brought it down for him.  He got it activated and it seemed to work at first; so we went out on Friday night.  The restaurant we were going to, the Bogota Beer Company, did not accept AMEX, but it was in a complex with a number of ATMs.  Chris went up to one while Alejandra and I waited outside, and waited, and waited.  Chris had gotten through three layers of fraud prevention by the time he came out, and still didn't have a working card.  He could make charges on it, but like Vinicius discovered, a cash advance was a separate animal, and one that the many Indians he had spoken to had no idea how to resolve.  Finally someone had sent him an e-mail with detailed instructions and new numbers to call.  He was in high dudgeon and wanted to go back to Irotama to get this resolved.

"I'll pay," I offered; I had cash on me.

"I'm planning on drinking a lot of beer," he insisted.

"If you drink 150,000 pesos worth of beer I'd be surprised," I said.  At the time that was about $75; today it's only about $50.  Even so a pint of beer was around 5000 pesos; we drank a lot that night, but nowhere near that much.  Chris calmed down a lot after that and was able to resolve his card issues the next day.

Even with the headaches, we were lucky to have a corporate card.  Sofia and Alejandra did not due to the unusual nature of their contract.  In the United States there are two classes of contractors, a contractor who is a person hired to do a job and a PSA, which is a company hired to provide a service.  A PSA would usually be used to contract a cleaning service, for example, where it doesn't matter who does the cleaning.  A contractor is a specific individual and, if they work for more than a year for one company they're entitled to benefits.  On longer scale projects we'll PSAs for engineering support; the way to get around the nature of the PSA is to write a very, very specific requirement for the experience and qualifications the people on the PSA will need.  Glen was brought on a PSA; Nick had known him from a previous job and asked Glen for his resume. He copied Glen's experience as the requirement for the PSA.  Our PSA contracting company, Riverside, called us almost immediately and told us they had a perfect fit for our PSA.  What luck!  They wanted Nick to meet Glen for lunch as the way of an interview, but Nick said he trusted them.  He didn't think he could pretend he didn't know Glen throughout an entire lunch lunch.

Sofia and Alejandra started as contractors with Adecco (our default contractor company.  I had started at GE as a contractor through Adecco.)  After a year they were supposed to leave; but finding two Spanish speaking engineers with a knowledge of rail was a challenge, so we had them brought to Riverside as a PSA.  Due to some HR policies, that I don't pretend to understand, they were still under contract to Adecco, contracted to Riverside who then had a PSA to GE.  Riverside does have their own corporate cards, Glen had one when he was in Colombia, but they wouldn't give them to a contractor.  Adecco doesn't have corporate cards for its contractors.  So when Sofia first stayed at Irotama she put her and Alejandra's rooms on her personal card, as well as paying for flights and meals.  This ended up costing nearly $7,000.  GE isn't the swiftest at reimbursing travel expenses, so Sofia had to wait several weeks for her money.  After that trip she refused to use her own card; so Bill ended up putting everything for them on his corporate card.  While my expense reports were large; Bill's were heroic in scale, routinely over $20,000 per month.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 11:06:12 AM
Night of La Loma

The southernmost station for our project was called La Loma.  This is where the rail entrance to the three mines is located.  The track line does continue further south; at one time a passenger train ran all the way to Bogota.  Sofia remembers when they did run passenger trains on these lines, but that ended forty years ago.  Today only coal trains use these tracks and everything south of La Loma is still abandoned.

There are a series of spurs that go out into the ports and into the mine.  Before a train goes from the side track onto the main track it has to run a departure test.  The test verifies that all the equipment on the train is good, and it downloads the track database.  In our system the database download is done over a WiFi network.  I went to La Loma many times in order to test this network; in order to verify we had sufficient coverage and capacity to do the departure test.  FeNoCo gave us a rail crew and an ancient train called the GR-12.  We had a crew of three crammed into the tiny cab.  The locomotive had been retrofitted with an air-conditioner; but that broke constantly.  Even when it was working it was insufficient for the cab.  Frigid air blew on you if you were standing directly under it, but the rest of the cab was blazing hot.  The difference was so great that when I was working near the air conditioner one arm would be frosty, and the other was roasting; I thought I was going to go into thermal shock.

This was the hottest and driest part of the track.  There was almost never a breeze.  Temperatures routinely soared above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  Throughout most of the year it was in a drought, so magnificent, tall palm trees stood dead along the sides of the track.

Because there were three rail entrance points near the same location it was difficult to get track time.  There are trains going in and out of the mines almost constantly so we would have to wait on the sidings as they passed.  Sometimes we'd do nothing all day but wait; one day we were stopped on the old main line immediately before the project track entrance.  For all day the track was either being worked on, or trains were coming out of the mine.  All four of us stared at the red signal flags for eight hours, as if that would change them to green and we could proceed.  Even when we did get out on the track it was only for brief snatches; we'd have to rush back to the sidings whenever a train was set to be released.  Even in these conditions I found problems.  Every time I found one I had to go back to Irotama and analyze it; apply a fix and then return to see if the problem was solved.  My stay in La Loma became an ongoing saga; a heroic waiting game.

This was wild country.  Glen said that one time he found a rattlesnake living under our cases.  Fortunately there was a FeNoCo security guard with him; the guard picked up a stick lying near the case and killed the snake as it came out.  The guard left the stick there as a trophy, still covered in snake blood.  Another time Glen opened a case to discover an entire family of iguanas living there.  He said it made him jump, scared out of his wits, as they all rushed right at him.  One night when Bill and I were there we found a highway of ants carrying leaves far out into the jungle.  They had completely cleared their path of vegetation and marched straight up and down a path.  Every so often there were rest circles of ants milling about until they got back onto their highway.  This was the area that I found a hornet's nest in one of our cases.  Even in the parched land there were still cattle grazing along the tracks.  Colombian cowboys wearing the sombrero vueltiao would drive the cattle from time to time. 

This area couldn't be entered from the regular two track.  Instead you had to go onto the mine property and present you're your credentials to a security guard.  We had to pre-register in order to get authorization to enter; but they could never get our names right.  Consequently all of us were los gringos de GE.  Once we had gotten permission to enter the guard would walk us down to the entrance point, which was a chain stretched over the two track.  Sometimes the chain was locked, but usually it was just secured with a bolt that could be easily lifted.  As a security system it left something to be desired, but what there was down there to steal was also a mystery.

Every time I left La Loma I said I was never coming back.  I was hot; I was frustrated; I had had enough.  Of course I always ended up returning.  I thought I had reached my last time there the night we switched fiber.  That was one of the final tasks before we turned over the system to the customer.  Ken and I were assigned to the task; he volunteered me to start at the south end of the track.  I figured I had been there enough that I knew the location by that point.

The work had to be done at night.  La Loma is so far from anything but the mines that it's complete inky blackness there.  It was a hot night and heat lightning lit up the areas all around us; changing the area to as bright as day in brief flashes.  I arrived at the station to find an install crew sleeping on the floor.  They were there to install back up batteries.  That was supposed to be done earlier in the day; but this being Colombia, of course it wasn't.  I sat around and waited as they woke up and installed the batteries.  It was fortunate they installed the battery, for the drought finally ended, the rains fell and we immediately lost power.

For my task I swapped over the fiber and demonstrated the functionality to the FeNoCo representative; but the FeNoCo mostly just played on his phone and signed off on the document.  We were supposed to go from station to station; but we didn't make it very far the first night due to the rain.  The second station that I was supposed to go to, Canoas, was far off the highway, and meant going around on the two-track for a long distance.  Even during the day it's a rough ride; but at night in the storm it became frightening.  The parched ground became soaked; ponds formed over what had just been the road.  My driver had to keep getting out to find the trail.  Finally he got to a wide marsh and pulled over.  I went the rest of the distance in the FeNoCo witness's truck.  We got there to find that there was no power and the generator wasn't working.  No one at the station had any tools; they had to rely on my set of screwdrivers to get the generator running again.

The next night we got permission to work as long as we needed.  That night we got a nail in our tire on one of the two tracks.  The driver, this time, had a jack and a spare; but unfortunately the spare had a slow leak.  We had to find a late night "Service station," that is a little plywood shack by the side of the road where they had air and tires.  They didn't have the right tire for us, but they did have materials to patch the leak.  Somehow we were back up and running, a couple hours behind time.  We didn't get back to Irotama until noon.  I collapsed into a dreamless sleep; again vowing never to go back to La Loma.  Once again that turned out not to be the case; two days before I left Colombia at the end of the project I was still going to La Loma.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 11:53:50 AM
Am I the only one that follows Sav's stories on Google Maps? I have learned so much about Colombia thanks to these stories. :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Valmy on October 14, 2015, 11:55:05 AM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 11:53:50 AM
Am I the only one that follows Sav's stories on Google Maps? I have learned so much about Colombia thanks to these stories. :)

Huh. That is a good idea :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 12:16:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 14, 2015, 11:55:05 AM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 11:53:50 AM
Am I the only one that follows Sav's stories on Google Maps? I have learned so much about Colombia thanks to these stories. :)

Huh. That is a good idea :hmm:

Yeap, just follow 45 south to La Loma. BTW, I count more than three big holes in the ground, and you can zoom in and see the coal trains.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 12:57:04 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 12:16:40 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 14, 2015, 11:55:05 AM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 11:53:50 AM
Am I the only one that follows Sav's stories on Google Maps? I have learned so much about Colombia thanks to these stories. :)

Huh. That is a good idea :hmm:

Yeap, just follow 45 south to La Loma. BTW, I count more than three big holes in the ground, and you can zoom in and see the coal trains.

Some of the places I describe you're probably not going to be able to find.  Canoas, for instance, has nothing around it.  There's a station there; so there must have been something in that location in the 1940s when the line was built.

The easiest ones to locate are Bosconia (crossroads between highway 80 and highway 45) and El Paso (crossroads between highway 43 and highway 45).  Bosconia has a lot of truck traffic on both roads, but El Paso is on a dirt road.  We were working there late in the night and about once an hour a bus would come by.   I had to look up where that led (El Banco along the Magdalena river) since it looks like you're staring out into the heart of darkness that way.  The highway goes between two swamps, I think that's what "El Paso" refers to, since it's well out of the mountains.

Anyhow I'm glad you've been following along.   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:20:41 PM
Damn, my lunch break is over. Canoas, far from hwy, nothing around. :hmm: Can I just follow the line from La Loma? Somewhere after it turns north I guess?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 01:35:40 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:20:41 PM
Damn, my lunch break is over. Canoas, far from hwy, nothing around. :hmm: Can I just follow the line from La Loma? Somewhere after it turns north I guess?

If you follow the track about 10 clicks north from the final spur at La Loma you'll see what looks like a river.  It's actually (usually) a dry river bed.  Just north of that is Canoas.  Like I said, there's nothing there.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:54:57 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 01:35:40 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:20:41 PM
Damn, my lunch break is over. Canoas, far from hwy, nothing around. :hmm: Can I just follow the line from La Loma? Somewhere after it turns north I guess?

If you follow the track about 10 clicks north from the final spur at La Loma you'll see what looks like a river.  It's actually (usually) a dry river bed.  Just north of that is Canoas.  Like I said, there's nothing there.

Everything looks like a dry river bed with nothing around. LOL I think you and google are playing with me. Is it the nothingness just north of Rio Calenturitas? Or farther south just after the rail line turns north? How about I get back to work instead?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on October 14, 2015, 02:03:29 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:54:57 PM
How about I get back to work instead?

That's just crazy talk.  :mad:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 02:16:11 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:54:57 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 01:35:40 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:20:41 PM
Damn, my lunch break is over. Canoas, far from hwy, nothing around. :hmm: Can I just follow the line from La Loma? Somewhere after it turns north I guess?

If you follow the track about 10 clicks north from the final spur at La Loma you'll see what looks like a river.  It's actually (usually) a dry river bed.  Just north of that is Canoas.  Like I said, there's nothing there.

Everything looks like a dry river bed with nothing around. LOL I think you and google are playing with me. Is it the nothingness just north of Rio Calenturitas? Or farther south just after the rail line turns north? How about I get back to work instead?

Look up Puente Canoas, Cesar, Colombia.  Follow what Google is calling the "Rio Cesar" west until you reach the train tracks.  The "Rio Cesar" is the dry gulch that had turned into a pond in my last story.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Berkut on October 14, 2015, 02:17:58 PM
Sav, this is great stuff.

I wonder if there is a specific term for the ability to tell what is basically a mundane story well enough to make it interesting anyway?

I have an ability to tell an interesting story in such a way that it bores everyone listening anyway.

You really should be writing for a living.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 02:25:45 PM
Ah, just a few more clicks north of the other point of nothingness.
BTW, just south of The Rio Cesar, google maps has a satellite pic of a long coal train with two "white" engines, must have over 100 cars (I'm too lazy to count them).
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 02:26:32 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 14, 2015, 02:03:29 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 01:54:57 PM
How about I get back to work instead?

That's just crazy talk.  :mad:

I thought so too.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:04:00 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 14, 2015, 02:17:58 PM
Sav, this is great stuff.

I wonder if there is a specific term for the ability to tell what is basically a mundane story well enough to make it interesting anyway?

Blarney  ;)

QuoteI have an ability to tell an interesting story in such a way that it bores everyone listening anyway.

You really should be writing for a living.

Thanks, Berkut.   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:06:40 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 02:25:45 PM
Ah, just a few more clicks north of the other point of nothingness.
BTW, just south of The Rio Cesar, google maps has a satellite pic of a long coal train with two "white" engines, must have over 100 cars (I'm too lazy to count them).

It's probably a Prodecco train, but some of Drummond's older trains have white roofs as well.  About 100 cars (1800 m) used to be the maximum length of the trains.  Today they're up to around 130 cars (2400 m.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:12:50 PM
Do you feel guilty at about your contribution to global warming?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:27:55 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:12:50 PM
Do you feel guilty at about your contribution to global warming?  :hmm:

I was only following orders.   :bowler:

(The vast majority of this coal is shipped to Europe for steel manufacturing.  Only a small fraction is used for power generation in the Caribbean.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:31:04 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:27:55 PM
I was only following orders.   :bowler:

(The vast majority of this coal is shipped to Europe for steel manufacturing.  Only a small fraction is used for power generation in the Caribbean.)

Does the use of coal in steel making not emit CO2?  Honest question.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:39:42 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:31:04 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:27:55 PM
I was only following orders.   :bowler:

(The vast majority of this coal is shipped to Europe for steel manufacturing.  Only a small fraction is used for power generation in the Caribbean.)

Does the use of coal in steel making not emit CO2?  Honest question.

I really don't know; I'm not a metallurgist.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 03:40:39 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:12:50 PM
Do you feel guilty at about your contribution to global warming?  :hmm:

Do you? I don't.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:42:49 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on October 14, 2015, 03:40:39 PM
Do you? I don't.

A bit.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 10, 2015, 04:27:03 PM
Colombian Democracy

Prior to coming to Colombia I read a history of Latin America called "The Epic of Latin America" by John Crow.  His thesis was that the United States and Latin America have distinct world views based upon our "Protestant" and "Catholic" cultures respectively.  The United States's society is centered on the individual and Latin America's is on the community.  I was reminded of that one day when I was talking with Luis Fernando and one of my drivers.  It was right after the massacre at Umpqua Community College and they asked me why this had happened.  Not a lot was known at this point.  I told them that the young man was probably mentally ill and it's very easy to get firearms in the United States.  They both agreed, but said that the greater problem was the breakdown of our families.  It struck me that the difference in our perspective is what Crow had been getting at.  I thought the issue was that government had failed the individual; while they thought that the community had failed.

For this reason Colombian politics remained opaque to me.  The Colombians regarded their own politicians with disdain, and frequently complained about their lethargy and corruption.  Still they all agreed that they were worlds better than those across the border in Venezuela.

Politics did seem to be ever present, even if the politicians weren't held in high esteem.  There were politician names painted on walls or on signs all the time when I was in Colombia.  When we returned in August after a two month hiatus things had taken off significantly.  There was an election in October, and everything was in high gear.

There were billboards up.  The most prominent was the Radical Change candidate her slogan was "Rosa is your governor."  She was the incumbent, which is funny given her party's name.  The socialist was running on the slogan "We are more than them."  Go us!

In the country there were a couple candidates who used their nickname on their signs.  The one that amused me the most was a guy who called himself "El Negro."  He wasn't a black man as far as I could tell; but Colombia does have a racial caste system that's invisible to outsiders, he could have been black by their standards.

A number of people had their candidates named plastered over every inch of their car.  Usually these people were the worst drivers on the road (an accomplishment in Colombia.)  I thought maybe those were false flags planted by the named candidates' opponents.

In the city candidates would have cars with a PA system on it.  They'd deliver speeches as they walked, or sometimes they'd stop and deliver a speech at a crowded area.  Usually they weren't the best of speakers, rendering the candidates voice to the adult voices on the Charlie Brown cartoons.  They were still far better than in the country, where candidates were reduced to delivering their speeches while riding bitch on a motorcycle and holding a bullhorn.  I'm not sure that was an effective way to deliver a campaign message, as they seemed to spark almost no interest from the locals.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 10, 2015, 05:52:18 PM
I think it's pretty universal. The more bumper stickers on a car, the more likely the driver is terrible.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 10, 2015, 05:54:56 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 10, 2015, 05:52:18 PM
I think it's pretty universal. The more bumper stickers on a car, the more likely the driver is terrible.

In my experience bumper stickers correlate with slow and safe.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 10, 2015, 07:42:33 PM
A dude with his cones.


(https://static.panoramio.com.storage.googleapis.com/photos/1920x1280/26258560.jpg)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 11, 2015, 03:44:29 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 14, 2015, 03:31:04 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 14, 2015, 03:27:55 PM
I was only following orders.   :bowler:

(The vast majority of this coal is shipped to Europe for steel manufacturing.  Only a small fraction is used for power generation in the Caribbean.)

Does the use of coal in steel making not emit CO2?  Honest question.

about everything one does produces CO2. But isn't the purpose of using coal to have a certain amount of the carbon bind with the metal in order to make it less brittle?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 11, 2015, 10:26:14 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 10, 2015, 05:54:56 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 10, 2015, 05:52:18 PM
I think it's pretty universal. The more bumper stickers on a car, the more likely the driver is terrible.

In my experience bumper stickers correlate with slow and safe.

In these cases it wasn't just bumper stickers, they had full campaign signs like the type you'd put on your lawn pasted onto their cars.  Some even had the side windows covered.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 11, 2015, 10:32:25 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 10, 2015, 07:42:33 PM
A dude with his cones.


(https://static.panoramio.com.storage.googleapis.com/photos/1920x1280/26258560.jpg)

The locomotives in the picture are C18s, a model that was made by GE in the 1960s and 1970s.  Drummond is the only mine that runs those trains, most of their fleet, and all of Prodeco and CNRs trains are C21; which is a model still in production today (although most trains on the line are ten to twenty years old.)  So, (as a plug for my former employer) if you're in the market to buy a locomotive, you should consider GE, their trains run for fifty years.

;)

I don't recognize the crossing; but there are a total of about 55.  I only spent any length of time at the three I wrote about.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 11, 2015, 10:35:45 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 11, 2015, 03:44:29 AM
about everything one does produces CO2. But isn't the purpose of using coal to have a certain amount of the carbon bind with the metal in order to make it less brittle?

Yes, I believe that's correct.  I'm not familiar enough with the steel making process to know how much CO2 it produces relative to power generation.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on November 11, 2015, 02:46:12 PM
QuoteThe locomotives in the picture are C18s, a model that was made by GE in the 1960s and 1970s.  Drummond is the only mine that runs those trains, most of their fleet, and all of Prodeco and CNRs trains are C21; which is a model still in production today (although most trains on the line are ten to twenty years old.)  So, (as a plug for my former employer) if you're in the market to buy a locomotive, you should consider GE, their trains run for fifty years.

Cool stuff Sav, you know your trains!  :cool:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 11, 2015, 03:09:42 PM
Quote from: KRonn on November 11, 2015, 02:46:12 PM
QuoteThe locomotives in the picture are C18s, a model that was made by GE in the 1960s and 1970s.  Drummond is the only mine that runs those trains, most of their fleet, and all of Prodeco and CNRs trains are C21; which is a model still in production today (although most trains on the line are ten to twenty years old.)  So, (as a plug for my former employer) if you're in the market to buy a locomotive, you should consider GE, their trains run for fifty years.

Cool stuff Sav, you know your trains!  :cool:

Only the ones I've worked on.   ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 11, 2015, 03:10:35 PM
Hiking After Midnight

Railroad technology doesn't move forward quickly.  Even in Colombia there's a great need for safety; any product used in the field must go through rigorous testing.  Also the major railroad companies are simply slow to change and both suppliers and smaller railroads have to work at their pace.  Consequently our technology isn't the most advanced.  This became an issue for us on our last trip when we needed new software loaded in the switching units.  It would have been a long and difficult process to connect directly to the switching units; but at the same time it was impossible to simply remote into them from the back office.  The only way the back office could remote into the units was if they were given control at the local unit.  So we ended up going from case to case over the entire system over a two night period.

We had to do this at night for safety reasons.  Changing the software takes the switching device temporarily out of commission.  Fewer trains traveled at night, but we always had to radio in for permission to make the changes to verify no trains were coming.  The excitement came as we went from case to case in the dark.  All we did when we got to the cases was push a button and wait for WD to tell us that he was done.  Then we went on to the next case.

Problems arose because the cases weren't always in easily accessible areas.  Our northernmost case is on Drummond property.  We can't drive onto their property from the two track so, in order to reach that case, either we have to go through the port; which is a colossal hassle, or hike about a kilometer up the track.  We chose to hike; the path leads across a rail bridge which has no walking path, you must walk down the ties.  Fortunately it's not open trestle on one side of the bridge.  It's still a difficulty in the dark, for there we were far away from city.  There was a faint glow from the port, but nothing else.  Everything else was lit by the moon or our iPhone flashlights.

A lot of the countryside was dark.  We didn't expect any problems in Funcacion, even though our case lies down in a cut far from the road.  The towns like Fundacion are well lit but as we were coming into the neighborhood near the case we passed through a thick cloud of greasy smoke and the air was filled with the stench of burning plastic.  When we got to the trailhead to our case we found that all the houses were dark.  A transformer had exploded, and we had driven through its cloud.

It was a cloudy night, and there were no lights now, so we had to hike down into the dark along a path.  I made a misstep and ended up face first in a creek.  Fortunately it was a mostly dry; it was filled with debris.  I ended up in a pile of wet, dirty leaves.  I used to leap into those deliberately as a child; as an adult it wasn't so much fun.

We got to the case to find that FeNoCo had changed the locks.  Originally all the cases had a single lock type so a master key would open them all.  As time passed some of the local station managers had started changing locks on their own; but they didn't tell headquarters or us which ones they had changed and which ones still used the master key.  Unable to get into the case, we marched down to the station about half a mile away.  They gave us a key but because there was a train coming they told us to go back the way we had come in by car – past the blown transformer.  The entire neighborhood was now standing at the charred black spot where the transformer used to be.  As soon as they saw us they mobbed us and asked us when we were going to repair it.  They saw our hardhats and safety vests and assumed we were the power company.  Fortunately I was there with an ET Solutions guy who could tell the crowd we were with the railroad.  Power outages are serious business in Colombia, one of the cities had civil disturbance and blocked the highway when the power was out for 48 hours.

We got all the work completed in our two night window, but the new locks continued to plague us on that trip.  In Aracataca they didn't even have the key at the station.  We were forced to wait an hour as the security guards hunted down someone to bring us the key.  We stood there sweltering in the Colombian heat suffering the Colombian disco.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 12, 2015, 12:23:05 PM
Prado Plaza

Downtown Santa Marta is filled with one or two story buildings, mostly built in a row.  FeNoCo's headquarters are in a five story building called Prado Plaza.  It stands out by being so tall, but also by being set apart from other buildings.

FeNoCo occupies the top floor of the building.  Most of the office is cubicles.  They had a separated general office for the local management.  WD took over part of that office and set up the work station that I had smuggled in on my first trip.  He could monitor and update the system from there.

I went to Prado Plaza only for meetings.  Usually I was there because I needed something from Bill and I had to sit quietly until the meeting ended.  The meeting room was a fishbowl in the middle of the cubicles.  I spent my time watching people pass by as Bill drifted ever further off topic.

The office was well maintained.  In order to encourage bathroom cleanliness they have a passive-aggressive sign up in their bathroom which told everyone to be fair and to be human with regard to their use of the bathroom.  It seemed to have worked, the bathroom was always sparkling, but the building itself was run down.

"We wanted to leave," said Pat, the head of operations, "But the building is owned by a drug lord."

The building was one of his ways of laundering money.  The rent was low, but they had an elaborate way of paying it.  The landlord demanded to be paid in cash, put in a sealed envelope, delivered to a bagman at a set hour on a set day.

The conglomerate which ultimately owns FeNoCo is out of Canada, and Pat is Canadian.  He got wind of this payment policy and said "No."  Instead he had his accountants cut a check and send it by mail.  The landlord was, reportedly, furious.  Pat is hoping that the landlord will just kick them out.  The rest of us are hoping they'll at least find Pat's body so his widow will have some sort of closure.

I don't know how many other tenants were in the same situation as FeNoCo.  Some of them are fronts for the drug lord.  There's a good sized shoe store.  Pat said "Have you ever seen anyone buy shoes there?"

I hadn't, I'd never seen anyone in there but the clerks.  The shoe store is just another money laundering scheme.

Pat would talk about this because he was a foreigner.  Colombians themselves never mention the drug trade.  One time, when we had the conversation about Trump being America's Maduro, another Colombian mentioned that Trump was building a hotel in Medellín.  I said "So he's not the next Maduro, he's the next Pablo Escobar," and all the Colombians grew really quiet.

That was my faux pas.  The drug trade is the thing that the gringos find fascinating.  As part of our transition to Alstom we got a new human relations manager.  As she was introducing herself I told her that I was working on the Colombian project.  She said, "Oh, I want to go there, I want to see the zoo."  I had to tell her that Pablo Escobar's private zoo was long gone.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 12, 2015, 12:29:28 PM
I really should get into South American real estate.


I got guns.  :P
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 12, 2015, 01:25:56 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 12, 2015, 12:29:28 PM
I really should get into South American real estate.


I got guns.  :P

From what I learned, in Colombia in order to be successful you must either:

A.)  Constantly socialize everything you are going to do that will have an impact to the community and, if needed, be willing to offer token amounts to those impacted or
B.)  Kill people.  Frequently.

;)

If I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I might be tempted to do business in Colombia.  There were a lot of frustrations; but it also looked like there was a lot of opportunity as well.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on November 12, 2015, 02:38:03 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 12, 2015, 01:25:56 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 12, 2015, 12:29:28 PM
I really should get into South American real estate.


I got guns.  :P

From what I learned, in Colombia in order to be successful you must either:

A.)  Constantly socialize everything you are going to do that will have an impact to the community and, if needed, be willing to offer token amounts to those impacted or
B.)  Kill people.  Frequently.

;)

If I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I might be tempted to do business in Colombia.  There were a lot of frustrations; but it also looked like there was a lot of opportunity as well.

You don't say which strategy you would employ. :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 13, 2015, 09:25:06 AM
Quote from: Malthus on November 12, 2015, 02:38:03 PM
You don't say which strategy you would employ. :hmm:

:shifty:

Interestingly enough, despite the crime associated with the drug trade and the ongoing war between FARC and the government, the Colombians don't consider their country to be dangerous; unlike Brazil (and probably the United States, but they were to polite to say it to me) where street crime is random and violent.  They say that "In Colombia there has never been a bullet without someone's name on it."

In my opinion that's a little over generous to Colombia, the metro in Bogotá is notoriously dangerous for women.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 13, 2015, 12:10:51 PM
Muling Drugs

In the United States only doctors are allowed to write prescriptions, but in many other countries pharmacists can as well.  This came as something of a surprise when my wife and I were visiting China.  Her knees were hurting, so we went to a nearby drug store.  The pharmacists spoke no English, and we spoke no Mandarin but through gestures we managed to convey the issue.  I was expecting them to give us something like Advil, but instead we got a prescription for medication for rheumatoid arthritis.  That worked wonders for her.

Colombia has a similar setup where pharmacists can prescribe drugs; also drugs are considerably cheaper in Colombia than in the United States and many medicines that are available only by prescription in the US are available over the counter in Colombia.  Consequently a number of us were asked by our coworkers to bring pharmaceuticals back into the United States.

Gary had me bring him back some topical ointment.  On a slow work day I went to a pharmacy with a picture of what I was looking for.  The pharmacist didn't carry it, but knew where we could get it.  Rather than telling us where to go, she sent her delivery boy out on his motorcycle.  My driver and I hung out at the drug store for about half an hour.  The driver made small talk with the pharmacist and I looked at their merchandise.  I learned you can buy hard liquor at Colombian drug stores; for those self-medicating.   They carried aguardiente in rectangular paper cartons; some the size of juice boxes; others were a full liter.

On another trip Rick asked Bill to bring him back Viagra.  That requires a pharmacist's prescription in Colombia, but with the help of our drivers and a friendly pharmacist Rick was sure he could do it.  Throughout the trip he kept texting Bill pictures of Viagra, or things like "The little blue pill," "Cesar knows where you can find it," and "You got to get it for me."

With the money Rick gave him (I think it was about $200) Bill ended up with twenty boxes of Viagra.

"What are you going to say if you get searched by customs?" I asked.

"I'll tell them it's not mine.  I bought it for a friend," said Bill.

"Like they've never heard that before; how about, "My wife is very demanding?'"

Fortunately they didn't search Bill land he got his drugs into the country.

One of the stranger perks of going on this project was getting anti-malarial pills.  In the US health care system if you have insurance you pay a reduced rate for treatment and a medicine until a certain deductible is met.  Our shots and anti-malarial pill were both paid for by GE and counted against our overall deductible.  It seems strange to find delight in a perk like that; but everyone on the project did.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on November 13, 2015, 02:12:20 PM
Sav, you do get into some interesting things and info on your job.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 14, 2015, 06:24:34 PM
Luis Fernando

My baldness has become quite prominent; so prominent that on separate occasions both Jeff and Luis Fernando asked me if I was Jewish.  I am not, though my bald spot would be perfectly concealed by a Yarmulke.  Luis said that it was okay, if I was Jewish than he was a Muslim (since he shaves his head.)

Luis Fernando was one of the ET Solutions gang.  Originally they had all worked together all the time.  By the end of the project they had their individual areas; Luis Fernando handled the field work.  Originally he was from Medellin; when he was young he had studied engineering at the university there.  His grandmother died and with the financial strain her death put on the family he was forced to abandon his studies.  He went to work in a bank for 16 years; until the bank collapsed.  At that point he decided he had enough of banks and became a technician instead.  Technology was his vocation after all; he learned quickly and he was good at what he did.

We worked together on installing repeaters.  On a train there's a device on the locomotive and on the back end of the train (EOT or End of Train device) that delivers a handshake every so many seconds to another device in the locomotive (HOT or Head of Train device.)  This is to ensure that there hasn't been a break in the train, and that all the cars are still there.  (This system is why there are no longer cabooses.)  These devices can communicate directly by wire (in which case every car must be wired specially) or by radio.  Our devices worked by radio.

Felix told us that the first project he had worked on the customer insisted that these sorts of devices be installed on every train; even if it was a single locomotive.  He was unable to convince the customer that it was impossible for there to be a break on a single car; so every locomotive that was moving around the yard had its own EOT.

The devices we were using had issues.  We had designed them to be used on an 1800 m trains; they were marginal at that distance.  When our customer started making trains that were 2400 m our devices failed routinely.  In order have successful we needed repeaters to receive and rebroadcast the signal at a higher power.  Luis Fernando and I went to the field to install the repeaters.  We put the hardware in the shelters; FeNoCo had a team of tower climbers who went out in the field with us.  The first site we did was in Rio Frio.  There was an enormous tree which was growing next to the tower.  It must have been there since time immemorial, since a branch was used to support the cable tray.  It was now so large that its branches grew straight through the tower.  We lost sight of the climber as he got midway up the tower and didn't see him again until he made it to the top.

That wasn't the worst tower climbing adventure.  At Loma Colorada our tower climber made it about 30 feet up, stopped and rushed down.

"There's a giant bee's hive there," he said.

It was a hive filled with African killer bees.  We had to wait a couple days for the bee removing crew to arrive, fumigate and remove the hive before the climber could go back.

The worst adventure we had, though, was at Canoas.  There had been a heavy rain the night before and the two track going in had turned to a thick field of mud.  Luis Fernando drove his own truck, and I was riding with Cesar.  Every so often they'd get out and studiously observe the mud puddles before them.  They kept deciding to go; but they ran into one, Luis Fernando's car sank into it and got stuck.  We gathered all sorts of rocks, sticks, palm leaves and debris to wedge under the tires, but it wouldn't budge.  We had some coaxial cable remnants in the truck, Cesar lashed those to his bumper and to Luis Fernando's hitch eight times around.  It was a fine example of Colombian engineering.  The cable snapped almost as soon as Cesar put it in reverse.

Finally Cesar and I got at the hood and pushed Luis Fernando out, getting sprayed with mud in the process.  Cesar and Luis Fernando thought that me getting sprayed with mud was the funniest thing.  "You don't do this every day," said Cesar.

With Luis Fernando's car safely out, we decided not to take any more chances with the mud puddles.  We grabbed our radio equipment and hiked to the tower.  It was about a mile with heavy gear under the Colombian sun.

"Study, study, my Mother said," said Luis Fernando when we got there.

The FeNoCo people showed up a couple minutes later.  They had arrived without issue.  When we told them about our ordeal, they asked "Well, why didn't you just go on the other side of the track?"  It turns out the other side was perfectly dry and they had made it without a problem.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 14, 2015, 06:26:34 PM
Quote from: KRonn on November 13, 2015, 02:12:20 PM
Sav, you do get into some interesting things and info on your job.

Yeah, this project was a great experience.  I learned a lot, and got to do a lot of things I never had before.  My only regret is that we almost never had free time, so I never got to hike in the Sierra Madre de Sante Marta mountains or see Bolivar's house and his original tomb.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 15, 2015, 11:49:51 AM
Tallares and the EOTs

We had problems with the EOT Units as well as the repeaters.  While Luis Fernando and I were out in the field installing the repeaters; Bill and WD were at the FeNoCo locomotive shop ("Tallares" in Spanish.)  Tallares is an open warehouse with a number of side rooms separated from one another by cinder block walls and from the main room by metal bars.  It was hot in the little rooms, with no cross ventilation.  Even by Colombian standards it was sweltering.  "I sweated so much I looked like I had pissed my pants," said Bill after his first day there.

Bill had brought down a large chest of spare parts to repair the EOTs.  This was good, because there was an enormous EOT graveyard waiting for him when he got there.  He and WD had set up an in depth procedure to tell what was wrong.  There were multiple issues and multiple points of failure.  When we found one that couldn't be diagnosed he would call the manufacturer.  They must break all the time, because they could usually tell us what was wrong based on our over the phone description.  They had many detailed work arounds involving changing parts in the units or swapping components on the boards.  Bill finally had to tell the manufacturer, "Stop, I'm in the jungle here, not a lab."  We didn't have the equipment or the ability to do a number of the repairs they had recommended.

The EOTs are powered by a small turbine hooked to the trains brake line.  In order to simulate this in Tallares we had a cylinder of air under pressure.  We found one EOT that didn't have a plug on the outgoing air port.  WD had spent so much time in Colombia that he had gotten into the spirit of Colombian engineering.  He jammed a large metal pin in the outgoing port, hooked up the intake and turned on the air.  The pin shot out, fortunately not very far, because it was so heavy.

As they worked the FeNoCo employees would peek in to see what the gringos were up to; but they never stayed to learn anything.  Even when there were interpreters available they preferred to watch videos on their phones or hang about at the water cooler.  I had joined Bill and WD later to test out the EOTs radios.  I had a test device that I was charging; the workers unplugged me so they could charge their phones and continue watching videos.  That took precedence over our work.

Sometime all the FeNoCo employees would disappear.  The first day there they all left around lunch time, except the shop manager who came back in a soccer jersey.  This would be a problem soon, since our contract was ending and FeNoCo would have to take over.

Even if they weren't all that interested in working, the team did have a good deal of camaraderie.  It was someone's birthday when I was there, and they all got into the manager's office and sang "Happy birthday."  They had a congratulatory speech for the person whose birthday it was, and then they had cake and punch.  They even shared that with us, it was a chocolate cake with some sort of dried fruit I didn't recognize.

There were about 15 EOTs that couldn't be field repaired.  We sent them back to the manufacturer.  Bill asked what was wrong with them; and manufacturer told us they determined all of the problems were due to user abuse.  These units are supposed to be rugged enough to work out of doors on a train; they weren't being handled any rougher than their intended operation.

In order to be able to handle field repairs better we've made arrangements for the ET Solutions people to attend training at the manufacturer's facility.  None of them have ever been to the United States; and they assumed they'd be going to Melbourne, so they'd be able to spend some time in Miami.  The manufacturer is located in North Dakota.

"Oh, what's that like?" Luis Fernando asked me when he heard.

"Different from Miami," I replied.  He was from the mountains; at least, so he had experienced cold weather.  The other two were from the coast, depending when they go they might be in for a shock.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 16, 2015, 12:33:51 PM
Social Media

There were three restaurants that we would go to in Santa Marta when we were celebrating major occasions.  The first was The Great Wall, a Chinese restaurant.  They had very sweet sauces, many curries and a lot of seafood; but WD didn't think it was any worse than our American Chinese restaurants.  In my hometown of Detroit it's not uncommon to receive sweet rolls at the start of a meal.  This is because that many of the Detroit's original Chinese immigrants had first lived in Hawaii before settling in Detroit.  Here in Santa Marta we got garlic toast at the start of the meal.  I wondered if the Chinese had first lived in Spain or Italy before settling in Latin America.

The second was a seafood restaurant called Dondechucho.  It's well known in Colombia, at the height of tourist season the restaurant is overflowing with Colombian tourists.  At those times tables there can have a two or three hour wait.  We had the luxury of being able to go in the off season.  The seafood is delicious and very fresh.

The third was Barakuka, which was set up on a hill overlooking the bay of Santa Marta.  It's the only place we found in the entire region that served steaks.  I thought they tasted rather gamey, but Bill liked them; consequently we almost always went to Barakuka for celebrations.

Service there could be painfully slow.  One night Vinicius, Kumar, their wives and Jeff went there.  Jeff and Vinicius had gotten their meals before the rest of them had gotten their drinks.  Vinicius's wife was most unhappy with that, and she let Vinicius know that quite definitively.  They never went back.

Service is frequently slower in Colombia than it is in the United States wherever you go.  It's not an uncommon practice in Colombia to deliver the food as it arrives from the kitchen rather than all at once.  The Hotel Jorlin has a restaurant, which on our route is the only restaurant which has air conditioning south of Santa Marta.  The food is decent, but the service can be spotty.  One time Kevin and Sofia were there with a large party.  Everyone else had finished their meals before Kevin and Sofia got theirs.  Sofia was not going to take that.  She complained to the manager and, unlike everyone else on our project who ever did that, she got results.  The manager offered her and Kevin a plastic carrying case that said "Hotel Jorlin."   She told the restaurant manager that wasn't enough, the rest of the team needed one as well; and the manager got one for everyone.

As in most other countries you have to flag down the waiter when you're done for the check.  Flavio, who was Brazilian, marveled at how, in the United States, they would just bring him a check and tell him that there was "No rush."  So he would just linger as he would have at a Brazilian restaurant.  We had to tell him what they really meant was "Pay up and get out."

Sofia and I went to Barakuka a couple nights before the last time we left Colombia.  There was a young couple sitting next to us.'

"And here they are at the most expensive restaurant in the city, with a bottle of wine and they've both dressed up and all they are doing is texting on their cell phones," said Sofia.

So the next generation of the smart set in urban Colombia is not that different from our own.  I agreed with Sofia.  I don't claim to understand all the things that young people do, but if I had a date built like his was I wouldn't have been staring at my cell phone all night.

For my own part I had to give up following social media when I was in Colombia.  It was surreal.  One day I was in the field watching people bathe in the Rio Frio; the same river they got their drinking water from, and they washed their clothes in.  I returned home that evening and found that one of my Facebook Friends of Asian extraction had her day ruined because someone, on first meeting her, had spoken loudly and slowly.  Every day it would be something like that; the third world by day, white people's problems in the evening.  I found it difficult not to be "That guy" and respond to every whine with what I had seen in the field that day.  So instead I deactivated my account.  I've never looked back.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 17, 2015, 12:38:46 PM
Phones

GE has an official phone training that you must certify that you've taken before you can order a corporate phone.  If you actually do take the training (rather than just certify that you have) you'll find that GE strongly encourages you to get a free phone; however phones up to a $300 value don't require management approval.  Consequently everyone on the project had an iPhone 6.

Glen, after hiring on to GE, not only took the training, but actually read the phone policy.

"It's all about only using the phone for legitimate business reasons.  My question is, have you ever heard of anyone getting fired for misusing their phone?"

I said, "If they're going to fire you, they'll find a reason.  If it's not for watching Youtube videos on your phone it will be something else."

"Well, yeah, I know that, but have you ever heard of anyone getting disciplined for it?"

I told him I hadn't.  I also hadn't bothered to read the GE policy or take the training.

The problem with the corporate phones in Colombia is that, unless the caller had an international plan, they couldn't call you.  Sofia didn't get her company phone until after the project was over.  While we were in Colombia she would use her Colombian phone to call the drivers and then have them give their phone to me.

Glen got a pre-pay Colombian phone when he was a contractor.  He ran out of minutes, so he went to the Claro store get it charged.  He asked for a receipt, but they wouldn't give him one; they said their machine was down.  After he insisted they hand wrote out a receipt for him.  He thought this was fraud, so he had Sofia verify that minutes were charged.  He did have all the minutes he bought.  Dubious business practices are frequently not a red flag for fraud in Colombia.  That's just how the country works.

The Colombian phones were ancient and only allowed voice or text messages; but those ones lasted the longest.  Colombia was a rough environment about phones.  Bill went through 3 phones in his time on the project.  Being Bill, he actually ordered an iPhone 6s after his iPhone 6 broke.  That was something so expensive that it required his boss's approval.  He got it; and promptly dropped the phone on his first trip to Colombia.  He took it to a phone repair man who worked in an open booth in the city.

"He took it all apart with tweezers," Bill said.  "everything was so small it was like he was performing surgery."

Surgery exposed to the elements at that.  It seemed to work after Bill got it back; but he was always complaining about the performance afterwards.

My phone bill fluctuated quite a bit throughout the year.  I didn't think much of it; but Bill ran up a series of $2000 phone bills.  He got the nasty-gram from accounting.  They told him that he needed to get on an international plan.  Bill said he had one.  Accounting did some research and discovered our international plan doesn't cover Colombia.  Bill had been using his phone as a WiFi hot spot and everything, so his charges were huge.  Accounting apologized and Bill continued to rack up bills.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 18, 2015, 12:14:13 PM
Love

When the project began Gary had been living with his girlfriend for about four years.  She had a son from a previous relationship that he was helping raise.  They seemed to have a good relationship, though his girlfriend was not happy with the amount of overseas work that Gary had.  Gary not only had the FeNoCo project but also some legacy systems to work on in South Africa and Australia.  His girlfriend kept referring to his work as a "Vacation."  Gary tried time and again to explain that visiting an iron mine or a coal port hardly qualified as a vacation, but it she remained unconvinced.

On his first trip to Colombia Gary had gotten sick by eating cheese from a roadside vendor.  He left Colombia the next day, and was still feeling queasy as he got home.  When he got there he found one of his cars missing and his girlfriend and her son were gone.  Gary asked his neighbors if they had seen her, and they said "Yes, she packed up and left a couple days ago."

She had realized that Gary was never going to marry her, so she had gone back to her parents in Kentucky.  Gary had to threaten to call the police in order get his car back.  Even then she wouldn't bring it back, he had to get a buddy to help him and spend an entire weekend to get his car.

To me the biggest downside to the project was spending so much time away from my wife.  This project wore hard on relationships and on families as the project went on longer and longer; well past its expected completion date.  Most people had it worse than I did; Jose and Max both have autistic children; their spouses had to do all the work alone while they were in Colombia.  Other people's wives were not so understanding.  Vinicius's wife wasn't happy Irotama, but she wasn't happy being left alone in São Paulo either.  She chewed him out about spending so much time in Colombia the day before he came home.

"It's like a lion," Sofia said.  "Before you go into the cage you have to throw her some meat in order to distract her."

"I got her some jewelry," said Vinicius.

Apparently that worked, since they're still together.  Vinicius has even volunteered to be the lead engineer for warranty work in Colombia; a position that would require that he lives in Santa Marta.  The economic situation in Brazil has deteriorated to the point that being paid in Colombian Pesos is a step up.

While things were difficult between Vinicius and his wife due to the project; they were much worse between Nick and his fiancée.  Every day she'd send him passive-aggressive texts about the length of time he was spending there.  We would be out at dinner and he'd have to keep typing away apologies on his phone.  She kept texting him things like "This can't keep happening," and "What are you going to do when we have children?"  She even threatened to leave him a couple times.  This was one reason that I kept going back to Colombia; I didn't want a failed engagement on my conscience.  Nick went way out of his way to avoid going back; one of my co-workers, Brian, told about a staff meeting they held when I was in Colombia.  Nick kept saying things like, "I think they can handle that down there," or "I really don't need to be there for that," and our boss kept saying, "No, I think you should make reservations."

WD is nearly in the opposite position of Nick.  WD works the same incredibly long hours back in Melbourne that he does in the field.  Sometimes when I work late at the office I see him out shooting hoops as a break before going back to work.  He's got a young son and a wife; how he stays married is a mystery to all of us.  Until January of this year his wife was still living in China.  When her visa to the United States finally came through he had to leave Colombia for an emergency trip home.

"I have to unpack," he said, in full panic.  He had lived in Florida for almost a year but as if a bachelor.  His wife is an interior decorator, she would have been livid if she had seen nothing but boxes upon coming to her new home.

Sofia has an unusual situation.  Her husband is teaches at international schools.  That is how they met; he was the principal of the American school in Colombia that Alejandra was attending.  Today he's in Sao Paolo as a principal.  They would go long periods without seeing one another; but, to Sofia's delight, he was going to end his contract early and come home shortly after the end of our project.  Like Vinicius, the currency collapse in Brazil had impacted him.  By the end of our project he would have made more money working at a Home Depot in the US.

One night, well after several giraffes at the Bogota Beer Company, Sofia said "You must be happy to go back to see your wife."  I told her I was; we were going home the next day.  "She might not be the tallest, or the most handsome or the richest, but she's the special one to you."

My wife always picked me up at the Orlando Airport whenever I returned.  The greatest moment of happiness I experienced on the project was seeing her car; and knowing that, at least for a while we would be together.  My wife took my being in Colombia well, as compared to several others, but it was still a hardship.  The heat and the frustrations of Colombia weren't difficult; but being apart from the special one to me was.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2015, 01:52:12 PM
 :cry:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on November 18, 2015, 02:02:09 PM
 :hug:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 18, 2015, 03:01:11 PM

Gary should have ditched Miss Ungrateful and found a local girl in Colombia.

At least you and WD got lucky.  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 18, 2015, 03:07:32 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 18, 2015, 03:01:11 PM

Gary should have ditched Miss Ungrateful and found a local girl in Colombia.

At least you and WD got lucky.  :)

Gary did have an opportunity (I wrote about it in post # 56, "Ports.")  He ended up with a [Graham Parker]Local Girl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taXvBivGcMo)[/Graham Parker] here in Melbourne instead.

And yes, I realize that I'm quite lucky.   :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 19, 2015, 12:19:03 PM
Bill

Of all of us, Bill had the most difficult home situation.  He has adopted two of his grandchildren, both have special needs.  He adopted them after his daughter-in-law had the children taken away from her.  While Bill's son was deployed in Afghanistan his wife hooked up with a man who had a history of abusing children.  In the course of their relationship both the man and the daughter-in-law abused Bill's grandchildren.  Frequently they were ignored; they would leave the children in their car for hours on end as they went to the bar.  Bill said that when the authorities recovered the car the back seat was filthy, strewn with dirty diapers.  Other time the boy (the eldest) was subject to abuse.  After a couple trips to the hospital, child protective services started to get suspicious.  They had been living in California at the time; she fled to Texas and claimed to their child protective services Bill and his wife were the abusers and she was fearful of them.

Then Bill got a call one night; his grandson was in a hospital in Texas and wasn't expected to live.  Bill and his wife went their immediately.  The abuse he suffered was horrific.  He had cigarette burns and had received a severe beating.  He survived, but was beaten so badly that he has permanent brain damage.

An enormous legal mess ensued.  Bill's son was simply overwhelmed by what had happened and ceded his parental rights to his parents.  The now ex-daughter-in-law is currently serving 14 years in prison.  The boyfriend had escaped initially, but was caught doing the same thing to another child again.  He's serving 44 years in prison.  Bill was called in for both these trials.  In addition he had to fight the children's other grandmother for sole custody.  That was granted after Bill was able to present evidence that she would have been in the location when some of the abuse occurred.

Bill and his wife had enough pensions and savings that they were planning to retire at age 55.  Now their savings have been drained by legal fees and medical expenses.  Bill is still at work at age 58.  His wife quit her job to look after the children full time.  Bill took it philosophically; "What would I be doing now if I was retired?  Every day is an adventure here."

Even when Bill is in Melbourne the situation is difficult.  Both children require therapy, the son needs it every day, the daughter once a week.  Our public schools aren't well funded, and Bill has to constantly go meet with the principal in order to get them to provide the services for special needs students that they're required to by law.  When he's in Colombia the situation is much worse; but Bill did his best to raise his children from there.  He talked with them over the over the iPad every day in the morning and in the evening.  Even when we were working thirds, he'd set up a session at six in the morning as exhausted as he was; and as unreliable as Colombia's data network is in rural areas. 

His granddaughter's problems are largely emotional; she can't express emotion and doesn't seem to feel love or empathy.  The psychologists she's seen believe this is because of the neglect she suffered as an infant.  Everything that she does feel is based upon need.  She turned nine while we were on the project so sight now she needs an iPhone.  In order to get her to behave, Bill gives her a point every day she's good; but every day she's bad she loses all her points.  Once she reaches 100 she'll get her iPhone; the highest she ever got was 12.

Even with Bill's efforts, his wife was left with the bulk of the work.  Near Easter he went back to America after two months in Colombia.  He spent his first several days at home fixing the things that had broken in his absence.  His first day back in the office was a hot day in Florida; his wife had mowed the lawn that day and was in a bad mood that night.

"But dear," Bill objected, "I finished your 'Honey-do' list this week."

"Don't you dare call it that," she said, furious, "Those are things you should have been here to do."

"Yes dear," Bill said meekly.  He mowed the lawn the rest of the time he was home.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on November 19, 2015, 03:15:55 PM
My lord, that's horrific.  :(
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 20, 2015, 06:45:06 AM
Quote from: Malthus on November 19, 2015, 03:15:55 PM
My lord, that's horrific.  :(
:(
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 20, 2015, 08:48:05 AM
The son is really messed up; he has to take medication for seizures, he has a hard time retaining information and he has no fine motor skills.  Bill told me that his penmanship was terrible.  I told him not to worry about it, when I was in grade school my handwriting was so terrible that I had to go talk to the principal about it many times (I went to a Catholic school.)  In his grandson's case, though, it's hard for him even to get the letters of a consistent size.

The daughter, well she's hardly the only heartless woman in the world.   ;)  Unfortunately his wife has a really hard time dealing with her.  Bill has a positive relationship with her; he's about the only person she trusts.  Bill said that, unfortunately, that means one day he's going to have to tell her the whole sordid tale; that the man she thought was her uncle is really her father and her mother is in prison.

Bill's taken this all really well, given that all his life plans were changed and he was left to deal with a horrible situation.  I realize that I may have portrayed him a something of a grouch, I've been with him on some really frustrating days, but Bill is the eternal optimist.  It's a little like working with a smurf, to him everything that can go right, will go right.  Of course that's not how Latin America works, nor is it how families work; hence his frustration.  Still he always bounced back after every disappointment; and that's what made him the perfect project manager for this project.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on November 20, 2015, 10:00:25 AM
Wow, those kids have been through horror. I give Bill and his wife huge credit for trying to do what's best for their grand kids. It's such a tough task they've taken on and I give them credit for doing it. It's terrible what was done to those kids. The daughter in law and boyfriend are two real nasty SOBs.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 20, 2015, 12:17:58 PM
The End of the Project

We had a close out meeting for the project back in Melbourne in the middle of September.  I walked into the conference room, and thought "Who are you people?"  Until I saw WD I wasn't even sure I was in the right meeting.  Most of the work on the project was design, safety and software, people who were smart enough not to go to Colombia ever. 

By that point only five of us were going to Colombia regularly; Bill, Vinicius, WD, Sofia and I.  Early on I had thought of the project as "Lord of the Flies."  As the team thinned down to a small, loyal core, it became more like "The Heart of Darkness," with Bill as our Mr. Kurtz.  It was especially appropriate because we were essentially working for free at the end.  These unsound methods came about because FeNoCO refused to sign off on the project.  This was GE's final pay point.  They kept on finding petty issues to delay us, and we were there doing, what should have been warranty work, without FeNoCo paying GE.  At last we were held up because about a dozen rail ties were cracked; the new ones were on order and arrangements had been made to install them, and they still wouldn't sign.

We had held the meeting in Melbourne because we were given a hard date by GE to stop work.  They were going to close the project, with or without sign-off.  They were sending Kevin's boss's boss to announce this to FeNoCo.  There's only one reason that GE would send someone of that high rank (and that little familiarity with the project); he was going to tell FeNoCo we would be proceeding with legal action.

Before GE did that; upper management told Bill to tell the FeNoCo managers, "If you can't pay us; just tell us.  We can work with you, but telling us you can pay and not doing so messes up our financials."  When Bill said that, FeNoCo immediately fessed up that they couldn't pay us.  That was hardly a surprise; the price of coal had collapsed in the middle of the project.  GE switched flight schedules so that Kevin came down to close the project and the story went from GE not wanting to work projects in Colombia ever again to GE looking forward to a long partnership with FeNoCo.

Bill came down to Colombia on his final trip content and overflowing with optimism.  The 40 hour shifts he had worked in May had taken a serious toll on his health.  He had to take blood pressure medication twice a day and was under doctor's orders to get enough sleep.  Sofia would remind him every day at 7 AM and 7 PM to take his medication.  Bill would reminisce longingly for the days he could work forty hours straight and still be fine, the way WD does now.  Still he was in much better spirits than he had been throughout most of the project.

This slowly deteriorated over the two week period.  It started with me.  Bill had held a meeting to discuss issues we were having.  Meetings with Bill are never a short affair, and he and WD had gotten off on some tangent that wasn't related to the matter at hand, or even the current project.  I tried to steer them back, but Bill would have none of it and the thirty minute meeting lasted two hours anyway.  I thought nothing of it, but Sofia said that had started Bill into his bad mood.  He must have complained about me to her extensively.

Things went worse when Vinicius and Cesar both gave Bill a phone bill.  Vinicius still couldn't get a cash advance with his AMEX.  Cesar was a driver; they make so little that Bill had paid and then expensed their phone bills throughout the project.  They had both gotten 10,000 minutes, which Bill felt was too much considering we were only going to be on the project for a couple more days.  The bills were not for a lot, about 50,000 Pesos apiece (at the time about $15,) but Bill was running low on cash.  He had just bought a new phone screen and didn't want to have a fortune in phone expenses on his expense report.  He ranted about this a good deal and even refused to pay Cesar's bill.  (Sofia ended up paying it.)

Then we were having problems with the battery back up on power the crossings.  We had an insufficient number of batteries, so Bill had picked up a couple car batteries and had them delivered to Vinicius in the field.  The batteries didn't have the right connectors, so they had to be returned.  The plan was Bill was to go to Santa Marta, while Vinicius was to go to Bosconia, and Bill would exchange the batteries and have them sent down.  There wasn't anything Vinicius could do in Bosconia without the batteries, but Bill was already mad at him over the phone bill so he went to the crossing and waited.  Then, as usual, a meeting ran late and Bill didn't get the batteries.  At one in the afternoon he called Sofia and had her pick them up.

For some time Bill had been getting annoyed at Sofia because she had avoided going to work in the field.  Almost all her work could be done in either Prado Plaza or at Irotama, so there wasn't a reason for her to go to the field; but Bill wasn't happy about this.  Throughout most of the project Sofia had been his sidekick, so having her no longer around bothered him.  Sending her to get the batteries was his attempt to force her out of Irotama.  She only went to the battery shop and back to Irotama, and sent the driver down to Bosconia on his own.  There was no reason for Sofia to spend six hours in the car just to be an errand girl; but her not going annoyed Bill even further.  Vinicius didn't get his batteries until five o'clock, and had wasted his whole day.

On one of the last day there we were at Tallares repairing the EOTs.  Bill showed up and asked where lunch was.  We didn't know what he was talking about; they didn't serve lunch at the locomotive shop.  He had told Sofia to order lunch and have a driver bring it; we didn't know that and had no lunch.  He called Sofia and, when he found that lunch wasn't on order, started yelling at her over the phone.  Later he sent an e-mail detailing everything that she was doing wrong and for the rest of the project he complained about her.  They weren't speaking to each other by the end.  I had to deliver messages between them, like a child of a divorce.

Bill, WD and Vinicius went home on the first of October.  Sofia and I had agreed to stay a couple extra days in order to install repeaters.  We had ordered six more, and had them delivered with the help of expediters.  They had reached the port of Santa Marta on Monday and were supposed to be released on Wednesday; and then on Thursday; and then on Friday; and then we started getting questions.  We were asked by the expediters about the purpose of the equipment.  Then we were asked about its compliance to regulation.  Then we were asked about its value.  These were all things the expediter should have known beforehand.  By Saturday I called it, and let Luis Fernando know where everything was installed.  We returned home and the repeaters weren't released until a week and a half later.  While we were waiting for our repeaters to be released Drummond had gotten two full locomotives through customs in two days.  Bill vowed never to use expediters again.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on November 20, 2015, 02:03:17 PM
Heh, finally the project is over? Will you need to go back for maintenance or trouble shooting? I guess if you again need to ship in network equipment, stash it inside a locomotive and ship that.   ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 20, 2015, 02:20:58 PM
Quote from: KRonn on November 20, 2015, 02:03:17 PM
Heh, finally the project is over? Will you need to go back for maintenance or trouble shooting? I guess if you again need to ship in network equipment, stash it inside a locomotive and ship that.   ;)

Never say never but...

Unless FeNoCo signs a warranty contract, or hires us for additional work we're done with this project.  Given that coal isn't worth anything right now it seems unlikely that they'll be giving us a lot of additional work in the near term.  Bill and WD are in Colombia at the moment because Drummond hired us to set up some additional locomotives for them; but after that there's no plans for anyone to return to Colombia.  Sofia, Vinicius and I haven't been back since the beginning of October.

Alstom is set up in regions, where GE was set up by functions.  Our region is the United States and Canada; so my foreign adventures may be over (or limited to the wilds of Canada.)  We'll see how that actually plays out.  My wife will be much happier if I don't have to go overseas; but I'm already missing the jungle and my trains. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:24:54 PM
But we don't want this thread to be over. :(
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 20, 2015, 02:36:51 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:24:54 PM
But we don't want this thread to be over. :(

I've got a couple epilogues still to go.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:38:22 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 20, 2015, 02:36:51 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:24:54 PM
But we don't want this thread to be over. :(

I've got a couple epilogues still to go.

:thumbsup:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 20, 2015, 03:22:38 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:24:54 PM
But we don't want this thread to be over. :(

He manages to find interesting stories wherever he is though.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Archy on November 23, 2015, 01:47:13 AM
Isn't their wild enough in US and Canada?
:duelling banjos:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:24:05 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 20, 2015, 03:22:38 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 20, 2015, 02:24:54 PM
But we don't want this thread to be over. :(

He manages to find interesting stories wherever he is though.

It's a gift.  :)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:36:07 PM
Quote from: Archy on November 23, 2015, 01:47:13 AM
Isn't their wild enough in US and Canada?
:duelling banjos:

:lol:

Yes, of course, one time when I was in Colombia there was an incident back in Melbourne a few blocks from where I live.  There was a man who leapt through the plate glass window of a stranger's house, waking up the owner who was asleep on the couch.  The guy who went through the window said that he was Jesus Christ and started slapping the owner.  (I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I think there may have been drugs involved.) 

Even with all the weirdness that is Florida, it's hard to see your own country or your own culture as strange.  I've brought my own culture to Colombia and I view the country through the prism of the United States; from which it is very different.  Many things that I found odd about daily life in Colombia would be completely invisible to the natives.  Likewise a visitor to the United States would probably find many oddities that are invisible to me.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:36:38 PM
The Breaking of the Fellowship

On our last trip down to Colombia Bill was complaining about the frustrations and difficulties we experienced on the project.  He said he was happy to be leaving.  I told him that for the rest of his career he was going to tell everyone about what a great project this was and how well everyone worked together.

For successfully leading such a challenging project Bill should have been allowed to choose his next project.  He was initially tagged to be Project Manager for the next major project that's just starting; All Aboard Florida.  This is the rail system between Miami and Orlando; we're doing the signaling system for the crossings.  It would have been a prestigious position, and one well suited to Bill's abilities; but, due to office politics, that fell apart.  He was then given the role of writing product specs for Caltrain (San Francisco's passenger rail system) and All Aboard Florida; a role that he was both unqualified for and uninterested in.  Finally, with some pleading on his part, he ended up as the executive program leader for Caltrain.  I asked him the other day how the project was going.  He said, "The longer I'm on it the more the miss the jungle.  There's something to be said for no one being able to get a hold of you."

Jeff is on Caltrain back in his signaling role; Sofia thought that the bay area would be a good place for him to hide his undocumented girlfriend.  Kevin is also on Caltrain, he's ordering material for the project.  Nick, despite his unwillingness to travel, is also on Caltrain.  He spent a two month period San Francisco, and will return there after Thanksgiving for another three weeks until the Christmas break.  He had struck a deal with GE, they would bring his fiancée out there three times during his stay.  GE is so desperate for people that they agreed to his request.

Nick did get married at a small ceremony in the Keys.  He rented out a house for a week and had both the wedding and reception there.  Glen was supposed to be his best man but, GE being GE, he was sent to Port Hedland, Australia on the week of the wedding.  It might be for the best.  Glen told me that Nick's fiancée was constantly telling him things like, "You know you have responsibilities at this wedding you can't look like you've been drinking margaritas for three days straight," or "You can't get too drunk, you have responsibilities like seating my mother."  The evening after Glen told me that, I told my wife I loved her very, very much.  I find myself doing that almost every time Nick tells me something about his wife.

Sofia and Bill are once again on speaking terms.  She and Felix are both 50% time on Caltrain 50% on the Amtrak Wolverine line, between Detroit and Chicago.  WD is 50% Caltrain and 50% All Aboard Florida.  Felix has been working so much on Caltrain that he looks older than he did in Colombia; we were all relieved he got some help.

Ken is involved, at least to some degree, on every GE project.  He seems to pop up on nearly every conference call.

Vinicius is still in Sao Paolo.  He's working on a project for their largest national carrier ALL.  He's still desperate to get out of Brazil, but FeNoCo still hasn't signed a warranty contract, so there isn't work for him in Colombia.  Bill said he'd try to bring him into the United States on a North American project, but so far nothing has come of that.

Drummond hired us to put equipment on their locomotives, including the ones they got through customs so quickly while we were held up in customs.  Bill and WD went down for a week for that.  "He's happy," said Sofia, "He loves Colombia, no matter how much he complained, he really loves Colombia."

Gary, on the other hand still loathes the country.  He and Glen are staying on as GE, the rest of us are moving to Alstom.  To Gary's chagrin, GE is seeking to add their braking product to Drummond's locomotive.  Gary tried to make abundantly clear to the sales staff the difficulty of working in Colombia.

My next project is Amtrak back in Michigan along with Sofia, Felix, Max and Diego.  The project is mired in red tape, between Norfolk-Southern, Amtrak and the FCC.  Progress is unbelievably slow as compared to FeNoCo.  I was going to call my next set of stories "On the Amtrak to Hell," but "The Amtrak to Nowhere" seems more fitting.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 01:38:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:36:07 PM
The guy who went through the window said that he was Jesus Christ and started slapping the owner. 

Well, don't leave us in suspense - was he Jesus Christ or not?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: alfred russel on November 23, 2015, 01:40:48 PM
Sav, you have an awesome job.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on November 23, 2015, 01:53:36 PM
Good stuff Sav.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 02:20:11 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 01:38:48 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:36:07 PM
The guy who went through the window said that he was Jesus Christ and started slapping the owner. 

Well, don't leave us in suspense - was he Jesus Christ or not?  :hmm:

The authorities seemed to think not.  It's too bad he didn't claim to be Mohammed; he could have gotten himself a spot in a Donald Trump campaign ad.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 02:24:19 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 23, 2015, 01:40:48 PM
Sav, you have an awesome job.

Thanks

The field work is a lot of fun, if sometimes trying.  I like the lab as well, that's something I didn't do a lot of in cellular.  Unfortunately I've found myself stuck in the office a lot these days as we wait for our (radio broadcast) licenses to come in.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 02:24:33 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 23, 2015, 01:53:36 PM
Good stuff Sav.

Thanks, Lust
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 02:26:07 PM
What does Sofia do in Michigan?  Are there still bureaucrats to be hustled sweet-talked?
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 03:13:28 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 02:26:07 PM
What does Sofia do in Michigan?  Are there still bureaucrats to be hustled sweet-talked?

Her role, right now, is to run lab tests in Florida.  This may change as the project heats up.

GE is a products oriented company; but my teams role is projects.  We don't have a standard template for a project and we've never done two the same way.  When one project ends we have a number of people who don't necessarily have a role in any another project.  This is where I was at the start of this project, my background is in radio and traffic analysis.  It's also where Mike was, his background is in project management.  Right now Sofia has low level tasks on two projects, but that will probably change we get either new projects, or the projects she's on become more desperate for resources.

This will probably change under Alstom, since that's more of a projects oriented company.  I assume they have more standardized roles.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 03:26:47 PM
What in her background, apart from speaking Spanish and having been born in Colombia, fitted her for the Colombian fixer role? 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 03:45:47 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 03:26:47 PM
What in her background, apart from speaking Spanish and having been born in Colombia, fitted her for the Colombian fixer role?

Originally she was a teacher.  She still has a number of the habits of a teacher (the Italians call this deformazione professionale.)  One time we were at a meeting, she was talking and Glen interrupted her with an obviously ignorant question.  She just railed him out and then continued on with her lecture, it was like we were all back in third grade.

She had a second career as an engineer in the oil and gas industry; (among other things she worked in Venezuela during the Chavez years).  Her engineering background is in systems engineering which (as best I understand it) is determining the best way to structure the entire project.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM
Perspective

Barranquilla is a much larger city than Santa Marta.  It's about 100 Km from Santa Marta, but with the road conditions and traffic it takes two to three hours to get there.  One time, early in the project, Jeff and Bill needed parts to put together the signaling cases.  They struck out in Santa Marta and headed to Barranquilla to look. 

They found mostly what they were looking for and decided to have lunch in the city.  As they were eating they overheard four young women speaking English next to them.  Jeff started talking to them.  They were Canadian and had just recently graduated from college.  In celebration of graduating they were taking a trip through South America.  They had started in Colombia and were going to make their way to Chile.  Bill told them what they were doing was incredibly dangerous.  He was there with guards and there were all sorts of diseases and revolutionaries everywhere.  He tried to convince them of the danger in their trip, but they insisted they would be just fine.

In further talking to them Bill and Jeff learned that already two of them had their purses stolen and their passports with them.  They were planning to get new passports issued to them at the Canadian embassy in Santiago.  Bill tried to convince them that they couldn't cross international borders without a passport; they needed to head back to Bogota, but again they insisted they would be just fine.

Things have a way of working themselves out when you're twenty-three that they don't when you're older.  I think that the girls will actually be just fine; although there are many dangerous parts of South America especially for young women.  The public transportation in Bogota for one has a bad reputation in that regard.  There are other dangers for the traveler too.  Flavio, who was Brazilian, told us that in Sao Paolo you knew you were going to be robbed sooner or later.

It occurred to me that their account, even if we were to experience the same thing, would be different from mine.  There wouldn't be racism, dynamite fishing or elderly hippies annoying locals in their version.  Even Ken and I, who are from similar backgrounds had a very different take on the experience.  One day we were discussing the people of rural Colombia.  Ken said "They're always happy because they live such uncomplicated lives."  I replied, "They don't have clean water; air conditioning or even electricity.  There are tropical diseases everywhere.  I'll take our complicated lives."

So if we spirits have offended anywhere in this account; this is only my own personal narrative.  Everyone would find something different in such a strange land.  I found Colombia fascinating, frustrating, filled with adventure and far too hot.  It was a weird and wonderful experience; one that I'm glad to have even with all the difficulties.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 24, 2015, 03:49:23 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM
  I found Colombia ... far too hot. 

Good thing they let you go home to Florida every so often.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 24, 2015, 04:57:23 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM

Things have a way of working themselves out when you're twenty-three that they don't when you're older.  I think that the girls will actually be just fine; although there are many dangerous parts of South America especially for young women. 

At least they are the type of person that people in general are more disposed to helping out. It's probably a danger in life for them to develop the attitude that everything will be just fine because for them it usually does work itself out.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: alfred russel on November 24, 2015, 05:07:08 PM
I've met several people--usually europeans--wandering around Latin America. I did a guided 4 day hike in Peru once and there were 3 18 year old swedish girls along with us that were making their way through South America. They had been there a while, and were running out of money. At the end of the 4 days, it came time to tip our guides, and they decided a tip would be too much money, and with that tip money they could get bus fare to Chile and extend their trip.  :rolleyes:

That still pisses me off.

I'm also impressed that their parents let them go wander South America on their own like that. 
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 05:47:26 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on November 24, 2015, 03:49:23 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM
  I found Colombia ... far too hot. 

Good thing they let you go home to Florida every so often.

:lol:

One morning right after I got home after my last trip down in early October, I found myself thinking, "Wow it's cold."  I looked at the temperature and saw it was 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

I thought I knew hot after spending two summers in Florida; but Colombia was much worse.  The temperature wasn't much hotter than Florida (except in Bosconia and south) but the sun was just just brutal.  Every day I would drink a liter of water in the morning and every day in the field I would sweat so much I couldn't sweat anymore.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: MadImmortalMan on November 24, 2015, 05:49:30 PM
Surely it's not so bad up in the mountains. Like in Bogota.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 05:54:02 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 24, 2015, 04:57:23 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM

Things have a way of working themselves out when you're twenty-three that they don't when you're older.  I think that the girls will actually be just fine; although there are many dangerous parts of South America especially for young women. 

At least they are the type of person that people in general are more disposed to helping out. It's probably a danger in life for them to develop the attitude that everything will be just fine because for them it usually does work itself out.

Well, yes, but middle age is inconceivable to a young woman.  It's best not to shatter that illusion too soon.   ;)

I didn't meet them, but I assume this is a once in a lifetime trip.  They'll probably never have that much time again to go on such an adventure.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 05:57:39 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on November 24, 2015, 05:49:30 PM
Surely it's not so bad up in the mountains. Like in Bogota.

Not at all; Bogota was almost always chilly (around 50 degrees F) when we went through.  Medellin and Cali are supposed to be very nice, with almost always spring like weather.  My project was on the coast, though; where it is always summer.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 08:32:55 AM
Why?

As we were out one day one of the drivers asked me if I had a good marriage.  I replied that I did.  He asked, "So why do you keep coming down here?"

It was a good question.  There isn't additional pay for going to Colombia (except for our few hourly people.)  We did live on expense accounts down there, but a week's worth of meals is hardly a great benefit.  There isn't an advantage to your career by being down there.  Gary, who was bitter about the project and all his other travel, would say, "There's people who never leave the office; and their performance reviews are just as good as mine, and their raises are just as large as mine."  That's true, I could have taken a role and avoided going to Colombia, may people had.  If I didn't go someone else would have had to, though.  I would have felt guilty if Nick had to, given his situation with his fiancée.

Ken used to say, "A bad day in the field is better than a good day at the office."  There were many bad days in the field, but I found myself agreeing with him.  The office is a lot of shuffling papers and attending meetings.  In the field I could get things done; maybe not quickly, but it was easier to see the results of what I was doing.

There were advantages to being in the field; I learned a lot about our product and my Spanish improved remarkably.   I made good friends down there; Bill had built and incredible team.  It's a beautiful country; I think I'll always remember traveling the length of the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta Mountains.  I felt, for a moment, what Yeats called "The lonely impulse of delight."

My driver's question was the hard one, though.  I was always worried what I could do if something happened to my wife when I was two thousand miles away.  I worried that our long times apart would damage our marriage.  Being apart was the only real hardship from the project.  I love CB, I missed her very badly when I was there, and listening to her voice over the unreliable Colombian phone service was no substitute for being together.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: lustindarkness on November 25, 2015, 10:20:52 AM
Why? Because we are not afraid to sacrifice ourselves to do what needs to done. And yes,  the separation from family is the hardest part of been deployed.  Last few of your posts have resonated with me, I understand the feeling perfectly. :hug:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 10:38:29 AM
This new job in Buffalo means a lot of time away from my family.

I definitely miss my kids. :(
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on November 25, 2015, 10:49:54 AM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 25, 2015, 10:20:52 AM
Why? Because we are not afraid to sacrifice ourselves to do what needs to done.

"When you go home tell them of us and say: for the company's share value we gave our today"  ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 10:50:21 AM
When I met the future Mrs B I had a job that had me on the road about 3 days per week.  I'd always be home at night, but if I had to do a 2 hour drive, then a full day of court, then a two hour drive back, it could be late.

Then I had a job that took me out on the road for 3-4 days about every two months.  I thought that was pretty reasonable (even enjoyed it!) but that was before kids.

Now I've quite deliberately chosen a job that has me in the same town every day.  Part of me would like to head out on the road again, but I know that I would miss my kids, and that professionally it's probably better to be close to the Powers That Be, and not off unseen in rural areas.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 11:19:56 AM
It is also hard for us single guys to travel for work. Being stuck with a company laptop means no porn while on the road. Also, company filters block most sources of information on the local escort scene.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 11:30:47 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 11:19:56 AM
It is also hard for us single guys to travel for work. Being stuck with a company laptop means no porn while on the road. Also, company filters block most sources of information on the local escort scene.

:console:

Time to invest in a personal laptop.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 12:45:45 PM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 25, 2015, 10:20:52 AM
Why? Because we are not afraid to sacrifice ourselves to do what needs to done. And yes,  the separation from family is the hardest part of been deployed.  Last few of your posts have resonated with me, I understand the feeling perfectly. :hug:

I feel I have a great deal more appreciation for what people in the service go through from this project; just three weeks away from my wife was hard.  A year seems unimaginably difficult.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 12:51:10 PM
And, of course, there's dangers in military service that I didn't face.  Bill was in the Air Force before working at GE.  He stationed in the United Kingdom and one day they had all people assigned to aircraft have a footprint taken.  Bill asked them why they needed a footprint, and the person taking them said, "We've found hands don't often survive crashes, but your boots usually do."  The next day Bill's plane got struck by lightening.  All the controls systems went dead and they were losing altitude rapidly.  Bill thought to himself, "Well, at least they'll find my boots, so my family will know."

(He did survive, obviously, he said he got everything on line and the pilot managed to pull up right over the tops of the trees.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:16:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 10:38:29 AM
This new job in Buffalo means a lot of time away from my family.

I definitely miss my kids. :(

Yeah, that's rough; it was definitely much harder on people who had kids than it was for me. 

Of the people who stayed to the bitter end of the project; Vinicius and I don't have children, Sofia's daughter is an adult and got married this past March, Bill has the two grandchildren that he's raising and WD has an infant.  Bill and I kept trying to encourage WD to spend more time with his family.  One time we had a Thursday flight home.  We had all worked two 80 hour weeks.  Bill told WD not to show up to the office on Friday, I told WD not to show up to the office on Friday, he showed up to the office on Friday and worked his usual 12 hour day.  Bill tried to tell WD that his son wasn't going to be an infant forever and he'd regret not being there for this period of his son's life, but it made no impact on WD.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:19:45 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 25, 2015, 10:49:54 AM
Quote from: lustindarkness on November 25, 2015, 10:20:52 AM
Why? Because we are not afraid to sacrifice ourselves to do what needs to done.

"When you go home tell them of us and say: for the company's share value we gave our today"  ;)

:lol:

God for GE, Jeff Immelt and Saint Christopher
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 10:50:21 AM
When I met the future Mrs B I had a job that had me on the road about 3 days per week.  I'd always be home at night, but if I had to do a 2 hour drive, then a full day of court, then a two hour drive back, it could be late.

Then I had a job that took me out on the road for 3-4 days about every two months.  I thought that was pretty reasonable (even enjoyed it!) but that was before kids.

Now I've quite deliberately chosen a job that has me in the same town every day.  Part of me would like to head out on the road again, but I know that I would miss my kids, and that professionally it's probably better to be close to the Powers That Be, and not off unseen in rural areas.

I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear.  I may change my mind on that now that our headquarters are in Paris, rather than Erie Pennsylvania.   ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:24:05 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 11:19:56 AM
It is also hard for us single guys to travel for work. Being stuck with a company laptop means no porn while on the road. Also, company filters block most sources of information on the local escort scene.

:lol:

We can access the internet and avoid the corporate filters by connecting through a WiFi server but not logging in through the VPN.  This was crucial to us since GE, in its infinite wisdom, blocks all FTP servers.  <_<
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Malthus on November 25, 2015, 02:26:18 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM
I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear. 

Augustus, or Caligula? That is the question.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 02:38:55 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 10:50:21 AM
When I met the future Mrs B I had a job that had me on the road about 3 days per week.  I'd always be home at night, but if I had to do a 2 hour drive, then a full day of court, then a two hour drive back, it could be late.

Then I had a job that took me out on the road for 3-4 days about every two months.  I thought that was pretty reasonable (even enjoyed it!) but that was before kids.

Now I've quite deliberately chosen a job that has me in the same town every day.  Part of me would like to head out on the road again, but I know that I would miss my kids, and that professionally it's probably better to be close to the Powers That Be, and not off unseen in rural areas.

I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear.  I may change my mind on that now that our headquarters are in Paris, rather than Erie Pennsylvania.   ;)

If your goal is to not be bothered by anyone then yes, you want to be as far from head office as possible.  Working in Whitehorse when "head office" was Ottawa was ideal that way.  They couldn't care less what we were doing.

If, however, your goal is to be noticed and promoted you want to be near head office.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 06:38:19 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 11:30:47 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 11:19:56 AM
It is also hard for us single guys to travel for work. Being stuck with a company laptop means no porn while on the road. Also, company filters block most sources of information on the local escort scene.

:console:

Time to invest in a personal laptop.

I do have a personal laptop, but it is a pain to travel with two.

You know my workaround? I discovered that while actual porn sites are blocked, if you do an image search with safesearch turned off, you can get naughty pictures to pop up.  :Embarrass:

Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 06:41:36 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM

I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear.  I may change my mind on that now that our headquarters are in Paris, rather than Erie Pennsylvania.   ;)

Actually, I think this is the opposite of how things work in most companies--if we are talking layoffs or compensation. Execs don't want to layoff the people they work with or in the offices they frequent, the people in satellite offices are more likely to be dismissed. For similar reasons the bonuses tend to be outsized at corporate.

On the other hand, corporate policies have a tendency to actually be implemented at corporate while in the provinces they may get ignored.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 26, 2015, 09:19:21 AM
Quote from: Malthus on November 25, 2015, 02:26:18 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM
I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear. 

Augustus, or Caligula? That is the question.  :hmm:

Jeff Immelt kind of looks like Titus...
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 26, 2015, 09:20:39 AM
Quote from: Barrister on November 25, 2015, 02:38:55 PM
If your goal is to not be bothered by anyone then yes, you want to be as far from head office as possible.  Working in Whitehorse when "head office" was Ottawa was ideal that way.  They couldn't care less what we were doing.

If, however, your goal is to be noticed and promoted you want to be near head office.

Melbourne, Florida it is, then.   ;)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 26, 2015, 09:22:15 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 06:41:36 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 25, 2015, 02:22:06 PM

I've never wanted to be at corporate under the assumption that the closer to Caesar the greater to the fear.  I may change my mind on that now that our headquarters are in Paris, rather than Erie Pennsylvania.   ;)

Actually, I think this is the opposite of how things work in most companies--if we are talking layoffs or compensation. Execs don't want to layoff the people they work with or in the offices they frequent, the people in satellite offices are more likely to be dismissed. For similar reasons the bonuses tend to be outsized at corporate.

On the other hand, corporate policies have a tendency to actually be implemented at corporate while in the provinces they may get ignored.

I don't think that strategy would have worked at GE; we seemed to go through executives every week or so.  Alstom, so far, is different in that respect.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on November 26, 2015, 09:23:18 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 25, 2015, 06:38:19 PM

I do have a personal laptop, but it is a pain to travel with two.

You know my workaround? I discovered that while actual porn sites are blocked, if you do an image search with safesearch turned off, you can get naughty pictures to pop up.  :Embarrass:

I think they can still see what you're searching for; if your company monitors things like that.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on December 01, 2015, 08:54:12 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 23, 2015, 01:36:38 PM
Jeff is on Caltrain back in his signaling role; Sofia thought that the bay area would be a good place for him to hide his undocumented girlfriend.  Kevin is also on Caltrain, he's ordering material for the project.  Nick, despite his unwillingness to travel, is also on Caltrain.  He spent a two month period San Francisco, and will return there after Thanksgiving for another three weeks until the Christmas break.  He had struck a deal with GE, they would bring his fiancée out there three times during his stay.  GE is so desperate for people that they agreed to his request.

I had lunch today with Nick and Glen.  Nick had just come back from California.  He didn't see Jeff, but the rumor there is that he married his undocumented girlfriend from Crepes y Waffles.

QuoteNick did get married at a small ceremony in the Keys.  He rented out a house for a week and had both the wedding and reception there.  Glen was supposed to be his best man but, GE being GE, he was sent to Port Hedland, Australia on the week of the wedding.  It might be for the best.  Glen told me that Nick's fiancée was constantly telling him things like, "You know you have responsibilities at this wedding you can't look like you've been drinking margaritas for three days straight," or "You can't get too drunk, you have responsibilities like seating my mother."  The evening after Glen told me that, I told my wife I loved her very, very much.  I find myself doing that almost every time Nick tells me something about his wife.

Glen went to Australia with Gary.  The safety training is a little more vigorous there than in Colombia, you have to go through a health physical and drug screening.

Glen:  And they had this really bitchy woman do it.  She gets right there with you, shoulder to shoulder so she's looking right down at it; and if you don't start going right away she'll start to make sarcastic comments.  I waited until I really had to go, so I had no problem, but Gary went in when he only sort of had to go.  When the woman started talking to him he said "Look do you want to hold it?"  So they made him wait five hours for his results.  I got mine in an hour, and then I had time to drive our coworker half way across Perth, stop and get coffee, return to the office and wait half an hour before Gary got his results back.

Gary is rather short; Jeff had nicknamed him "Leprechaun" when we were in Colombia.  Glen, who is tall, had a rather different take.

Glen:  He's got all sorts of small man's diseases.  Did you ever see him walk?  He like throws out his shoulders and struts around as if that makes him look bigger.  He's like a puffer fish trying to make himself look large.  I'm like a bear, I kept feeling like I was going to swat him out of the way.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on March 14, 2016, 12:52:09 PM
Gary is a pilot, as a hobby, and has a hanger at the Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville.  The airport shares space with the Warbird Museum, which has a collection of restored war planes.  Last week they had their airshow with everything from a MiG to a B-29, to a Huey, to dozens of other aircraft I couldn't name.  Gary invited us to his hanger to watch the show; and we had front line seats at the runway.  When I arrived I was greeted by none other than Señor Jeff.  He managed to get himself kicked off of the Caltrain project as well (I found this out from Sofia, but neither of us know what he did) and now he's heading up to Waterloo Ontario to work on a project; so be careful Canadians.  :Canuck:

Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on January 25, 2018, 05:12:28 PM
I had a course in Jacksonville last week on Rail Dynamics.  The course description was vaguely written so everyone who went to it assumed that the course was on the subject of general rail operations (dynamic assumed to refer to the movement of the train.)  As it turns out the "Dynamic" being referred to was the engineering mechanic term referring to the summation of forces on a moving body; and rail was not "Railroad" but track.  We spent two full days learning about the summation of forces between the track and the wheels and the truck on which the wheels are attached (called the bogie.)

It was a week for misunderstandings.  Our professors thought people were coming all the way from Australia to attend their course; they were a little disappointed when we told them we were from Melbourne, Florida.  They had come from Europe and, as is Alstom policy, made their travel reservations through our travel agency.  The agency made hotel reservations in Jacksonville, Florida and flight reservations to Jackson Mississippi.  They didn't realize their error until they gave their hotel address to their taxi cab driver and he said "You sure you want to take a cab to Florida."  They contacted the travel agency again and finally got to the right place.  Fortunately they had given themselves an extra day; why? I'm not sure.  Maybe they thought Jacksonville was like Miami, if so they were disappointed since it was below freezing when they were there.

"Dynamics" is from a branch of engineering called Engineering Mechanics which focuses on the interaction of forces on objects.  I hadn't studied this since undergraduate, and wasn't at all good at it (which is why I'm an electrical engineer rather than a mechanical engineer.)  The one thing I remember from the courses I took was one adjunct professor had come up with the "Fundamental theory of geometry:" if two angles look the same, they are.  I've found that to be accurate in my professional career; your high school geometry class was a waste of time.

The reason this is an important to rail deals with derailment. There are three methods (other than a collision) which can cause a derailment; wind, degraded or curved track (which will cause the wheels to slip off if the train goes too fast) and climb (in which the inner flange rides up the rail until it climbs over and causes the train to spill.)  All three of these are computed using dynamics which in turn determines the safe speed trains can run at.  The reason that European trains can travel on standard track quicker than their North American counterparts is that they use a different amount of friction (called a coefficient of friction) to calculate the likelihood of climb.

Our teachers had a video that showed climb; since it's metal against metal it makes a truly hideous grating sound.  Since both were professors with advanced degrees in engineering, neither could figure out the projector.  They could play the video without sound or sound without video; but not both.  So we listened to metal on metal grating again and again until they finally got the projector to work at which point they played it another five times for good measure.

That turned out to be a good thing for me, since my boss (Jeremy) was with me in the sessions and one of my co-workers (John) as well.  Jeremy had taken us on a "Team building" event at Dave and Busters which lasted well past midnight.  We had to keep nudging one another throughout the next day to stay awake until the grating started and then we were all wide awake.

They had a set of man sized Rock-em Sock-em Robots at D&B; I thought of Yi when I saw that.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Brain on January 25, 2018, 05:31:03 PM
Lovely. :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 26, 2018, 01:18:47 PM
We're supposed to request training courses for the upcoming year.  Alstom is a production company as well as a signaling, so a number of the courses were related to very specific features of the locomotive including, not just one, but two courses on the toilet:

Toilet Product Description
Toilet Product Integration

So you can sign up for toilet training at Alstom.   :)

;)

(On board sewage treatment is an area where Alstom is an industry leader.  As railroads go more green this will probably become even more important.  So the courses really are important, it was just amusing to see them written as such.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on January 27, 2018, 04:44:06 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 25, 2018, 05:12:28 PM

The reason this is an important to rail deals with derailment. There are three methods (other than a collision) which can cause a derailment; wind, degraded or curved track (which will cause the wheels to slip off if the train goes too fast) and climb (in which the inner flange rides up the rail until it climbs over and causes the train to spill.)  All three of these are computed using dynamics which in turn determines the safe speed trains can run at.  The reason that European trains can travel on standard track quicker than their North American counterparts is that they use a different amount of friction (called a coefficient of friction) to calculate the likelihood of climb.

This is good stuff,  in depth engineering knowledge and training to figure out the forces at play. Your job sounds pretty interesting. :) 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Eddie Teach on January 27, 2018, 07:01:27 PM
Mongers, don't you need your coat?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on January 29, 2018, 10:33:45 AM
Heh, it would be a good idea to collect these stories in one place - they're a great read.  :D
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Iormlund on January 29, 2018, 01:30:08 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 25, 2018, 05:12:28 PM...Since both were professors with advanced degrees in engineering, neither could figure out the projector...
:lol:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Larch on January 29, 2018, 05:22:32 PM
For some reason this thread had eluded me, after seeing it brought back I've read it for the last week or so, google maps and Spanish wiki at hand and everything, and it has been a most interesting read. Thanks Sav! :cheers:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 31, 2018, 05:25:36 PM
The coefficient of friction that I mentioned in my previous post determines the frictional force.  Frictional force is the amount of force that needs to be overcome to get an object to move (static friction) or is lost as an object is kept in motion (kinetic friction.)  The frictional force is proportional to the weight of the object (or "Normal force" in engineering terms) that proportional value is the coefficient friction.

As an example on a low friction surface (like an ice skater on ice) it takes less force to move an object than on a high friction surface (say a cardboard box on pavement) with the same weight.  A lighter box takes less force to move than a heavier box or a lighter skater takes less force to move than a heavier skater; the force it takes to move is directly proportional to the weight.  That proportional value is the coefficient of friction.  In almost all cases it takes more force to get an object to move in the first place than it does to keep in motion; this is because the coefficient of static friction is almost always greater than the coefficient of kinetic friction.

On the other hand the means of propulsion often needs friction to give it something to push against.  Your car wheels are made of rubber, which as a high coefficient of friction on pavement, because it makes it easy to accelerate and brake.  Locomotive wheels, on the other hand, are steel on steel rails; this has a much lower coefficient of friction.  This allows locomotives to continue moving at speed with much less energy than it would take a truck proportional to weight; but requires more force to accelerate or decelerate.  Locomotives carry sand and dump it on the track in order to increase the coefficient of friction in order to start moving.  Braking, on the other hand, braking is a problem.

For this reason we use two coefficients of kinetic friction in rail; a higher one to determine climb mentioned before and a lower one for braking.  This is for safety concerns, more friction means that the train is more likely to climb; less means that it needs more room to stop.  Friction can be further decreased by the condition of the tracks.  Water makes the track more slipper; ice even more so and wet even more so.  Every conductor fears wet leaves on the track.  In the case of climb that's no issue; dry track is the worst case scenario.  For braking, though, different braking distances are needed for the varying conditions (which can cause speed restrictions.)

All testing, whether for speed or for braking, is done in dry track conditions.  One of the professors told us that when he was testing (a speed test for climb) in Spain there was dew on the grass so they made him stop the test.  The tracks were still dry, but just the possibility of some moisture developing would have made the test invalid.

On the other hand one of my co-workers, Tim was once part of a braking test on ice.  Amtrak had wanted to see how accurate their braking calculations were for icy conditions.  They had installed our product so they could get the test train up to 110 Miles per Hour (175 KMPH); the maximum speed for standard track in North America.  They waited until they had icy conditions.  They got the train going at full speed and then applied full brake.  The train slid and slid and slid until it came to a complete stop; about where the calculations said it should.  The braking had so much heat over such a sustained period of time that the wheels had developed flat spots on them.  That's bad; really bad.  As I had mentioned before derailments can occur when a train is going over degraded track over a certain speed.  In this case the train itself was degraded so all track needed a speed restriction.  They needed to call the Federal Rail Authority (FRA) in order to get a proper speed, and since they had run the test in the middle of the night, they had to wait until someone with authority had showed up to work.  Morning came, the FRA heard what they did and told them that they were restricted to 5 MPH (8 KMPH.)  Their nearest yard was in Chicago 100 miles (160 Km) away.  That was a long 20 hours.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on January 31, 2018, 05:27:54 PM
Quote from: KRonn on January 27, 2018, 04:44:06 PM
This is good stuff,  in depth engineering knowledge and training to figure out the forces at play. Your job sounds pretty interesting. :)

Thanks Kronn, my job is only a small part of the operations (radio).  There's a huge body of knowledge about rail; much that I'm only just becoming aware of.  A lot of what they taught in that class was about things I had never even considered.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 31, 2018, 05:29:27 PM
Quote from: Malthus on January 29, 2018, 10:33:45 AM
Heh, it would be a good idea to collect these stories in one place - they're a great read.  :D

Thanks, Malthus, I took tons of notes about Amtrak and never wrote anything.  I was going to try to get those out first and then maybe I'll try to hunt down the rest of my stories.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 31, 2018, 05:29:57 PM
Quote from: The Larch on January 29, 2018, 05:22:32 PM
For some reason this thread had eluded me, after seeing it brought back I've read it for the last week or so, google maps and Spanish wiki at hand and everything, and it has been a most interesting read. Thanks Sav! :cheers:

Glad you liked it.   :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on January 31, 2018, 06:49:12 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2018, 05:29:57 PM
Quote from: The Larch on January 29, 2018, 05:22:32 PM
For some reason this thread had eluded me, after seeing it brought back I've read it for the last week or so, google maps and Spanish wiki at hand and everything, and it has been a most interesting read. Thanks Sav! :cheers:

Glad you liked it.   :)

Sav good to see your thread hasn't been derailed by a truckload of sugar water.  :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 01, 2018, 03:28:12 PM
Rail is a "Fail safe" system; for a train that means that if it loses a system it will drop down in speed until it reaches a safe speed that it can run without that system.  If it loses what is designated as a "Vital" system the train will stop entirely; a stopped train is considered the safest condition for the train to be in.

In terms of a crossing the safest state is an active crossing; that is with gate down and lights flashing.  If you've ever been stuck at a crossing where the gates are down but no train is coming it's because the crossing has gone into an error state; it's received a bad signal, or something has gone wrong with the power, or there's a short on the track, or something else has set it off.

This causes problems; if people see a gate down and they don't believe a train is coming they'll run the gate.  This is incredibly dangerous.  Passenger trains can travel at 180 KMPH in North America and even quicker in Europe and Asia; they can be on you in a matter of seconds, and the train always wins.

One way to stop people from crossing tracks is to use the four post crossing; that is two crossing gates on each side.  The problem with that is if someone does find themselves caught when the gate goes down they aren't able to get out.  For this reason in North America we almost always you the two post crossing; that is one long gate at each side of the road.  This allows someone to simply go around the gate.  (There's also a psychological factor to this; if someone is trapped in between train gates, they tend to panic and usually ram the gate a full speed.  Gates are actually quite flimsy and can be gone through at a slow speed; going through at high speed is likely to cause an accident.)

Yesterday's accident between the Amtrak train and the truck in Virginia is something that can be avoided.  We can put radar at the crossing shelter and detect if there's something on the track.  The problem is that a passenger train is going so quickly at full speed that it requires a full two minutes to stop.  So, once again, psychology comes into play, if people know they have two minutes before the train comes when the gate comes down they're more likely to run the gate then if they only have 30 seconds.  In turn they're more likely to get into an accident by running the gate.  That's considered more likely than having a car stuck on the tracks; so the system isn't implemented anywhere.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Iormlund on February 01, 2018, 04:31:58 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 01, 2018, 03:28:12 PM
Rail is a "Fail safe" system; for a train that means that if it loses a system it will drop down in speed until it reaches a safe speed that it can run without that system.  If it loses what is designated as a "Vital" system the train will stop entirely; a stopped train is considered the safest condition for the train to be in.

In terms of a crossing the safest state is an active crossing; that is with gate down and lights flashing.  If you've ever been stuck at a crossing where the gates are down but no train is coming it's because the crossing has gone into an error state; it's received a bad signal, or something has gone wrong with the power, or there's a short on the track, or something else has set it off.

This is how most safety systems work. You've got redundancies for every safety-critical input or output. For example, those big red emergency buttons have two sets of wires running through them, and they are normally closed (so a cut wire will trigger the circuit because the CPU will cease to see the signal). Two different CPUs compute every instruction of the program and then compare the results. If any error is detected the outputs default to a safe state.

This means the most likely cause of accidents is human error/negligence.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 01, 2018, 10:43:22 PM
We have train crashes in the US, usually trains going to fast for a turn, on trains that don't have the automated systems to check/alter the speed, or however it works. Some trains do have these systems and trains are being updated but it's taking time.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 08:53:50 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on February 01, 2018, 04:31:58 PM
This is how most safety systems work. You've got redundancies for every safety-critical input or output. For example, those big red emergency buttons have two sets of wires running through them, and they are normally closed (so a cut wire will trigger the circuit because the CPU will cease to see the signal). Two different CPUs compute every instruction of the program and then compare the results. If any error is detected the outputs default to a safe state.

This means the most likely cause of accidents is human error/negligence.

That's interesting.  I didn't know anything about safety systems before coming to rail.  The only occupational hazard I had to deal with in cellular was radio hazard.  In the United States the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) sets the safety standards for just about everything.  For radio frequency it's set at 2% of the power needed to cause a burn for non-occupational and 5% for occupational (that is people who are trained to work on radio systems.)  Since radio frequency is poorly understood by the general public the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has halved those numbers.  Since radio frequency is non-cumulative (for thermal effects; I'll leave it up to the internet to tell you if it causes cancer) I spent a lot of time putting up radio hazard signs and cordoning off areas that were completely safe for people to be in.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 09:07:09 AM
Quote from: KRonn on February 01, 2018, 10:43:22 PM
We have train crashes in the US, usually trains going to fast for a turn, on trains that don't have the automated systems to check/alter the speed, or however it works. Some trains do have these systems and trains are being updated but it's taking time.

Positive Train Control System (PTC); that's what I work on.  All Class I freight carriers are required to have a PTC system installed by the end of this year.  (2020 is probably more realistic; it was originally supposed to be 2015, but Congress extended it to 2018 and since no one is close to being ready they'll probably extend it again.)

A PTC system will apply a penalty brake if the train is traveling too fast in its zone; and will stop a train if its gone outside a block which it has authority to be in.  Alstom's ITCS (Incrementeal Train Control System) will also activate the gates which is why our system allows trains to operate at 110 MPH.  Gates usually operate by a track circuit (the train bridges the track, creates a short and the gates come down.)  With radio a train can alert crossings that it's coming from further away.  Radio (as an example of what I was talking about before) is a non-vital system.  If a train loses radio connection it's slowed to 79 MPH; the maximum speed for track circuitry.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2018, 09:10:55 AM
So what's the right thing to do if you're stuck at a crossing for half an hour with no train in sight?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 09:20:06 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2018, 09:10:55 AM
So what's the right thing to do if you're stuck at a crossing for half an hour with no train in sight?

I would find another crossing.

If you're in an area where you know there's only freight then running the gate isn't such a big deal; you can see a freight train coming from a long way away.  Passenger, though, comes up on you a lot quicker than most people realize.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on February 02, 2018, 09:54:12 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 09:20:06 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2018, 09:10:55 AM
So what's the right thing to do if you're stuck at a crossing for half an hour with no train in sight?

I would find another crossing.

If you're in an area where you know there's only freight then running the gate isn't such a big deal; you can see a freight train coming from a long way away.  Passenger, though, comes up on you a lot quicker than most people realize.

Yeah, that is something that needs to be emphasised.

You can see it at one of my local stations, Southampton; quite a few slow v.long container freight trains out of the docks vs fast non-stopping cross country trains that are through the station footprint in a handful of seconds.   

And there you've the advantage of buildings/objects to gauge a trains speed by, unlike in a flat rural environment.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Iormlund on February 02, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 08:53:50 AMI didn't know anything about safety systems before coming to rail.  The only occupational hazard I had to deal with in cellular was radio hazard.

Safety is a big deal in the automotive industry. On the one hand you've got worker safety. Lots of forklifts, logistic trains, sharp metal bits, presses, hydro and pneumatic actuators, heat sources, fumes, robots and (my specialty) high-powered lasers.
We had a fatal accident recently in one of our US plants. Someone apparently decided that it was a good idea to open a window to a machine without adding it to the safety circuit. A guy crawled through it to do some maintenance and they found him crushed inside.

Product safety is also paramount, of course, and we spend quite a bit of money in it. To make cars is complicated enough. To make safe enough cars is even more complicated. To ensure the cars are safe enough is a daily challenge and all of my processes are safety-critical.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 05:05:32 PM
Not Half the Fun

There really is a line on the Australian Visa Application which asks: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime."  It's a yes-no checkbox, you really can't write down "I didn't know that was still a requirement to get in."  (There's also a question about where you are applying from, one of the possible answers is "USSR."  News must travel a little slow to Oz.)

I had started working at GE on a project for Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) in the Pilbara region of Australia.  Since I was a contractor when the project was going on I didn't travel to Australia during the build phase; instead I had done the radio coverage analysis from the office.  The system got built; but it has had problems on and off.  We recently figured out one of them; right after we installed our data radio FMG had installed a Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) system on their train at a close frequency right next to our radio.  The result was that our radios were being blown out by the TETRA radios, causing us to drop data messages.

The solution to this sort of problem is to install a filter.  A filter, in radio engineering, is a device which passes the desired signal and attenuates (or filters out) the undesired signal.  I had got a couple filters and verified this worked in the lab.  The next step was to verify it in the field.  Our home office for this project is in Perth; there are only six engineers there and the one communication engineer is part time.  Harish; who is a signaling engineer, but low man on the totem pole, so he gets sent to the field most often, asked me if I was willing to go with him to the field to test out this solution.  I'm always up for field work, so I started making travel arrangements.

In order to work in rail in Australia you must have a "Rail card."  A lot of education in Australia is vocational and a lot of industries have these sorts of certifications.  We have no equivalent in the United States and no means to get Australian vocational training here; so FMG was willing to bend that requirement for me.  Harish got me put into their system, but in order to be able to be registered for inductions I had to be declared "Fit for duty."

No one seemed quite sure what fit for duty meant.  Harish finally managed to chase down an Australian rail medical guide.  It was 210 pages long.  I sent it to our company nurse.  She immediately called me back and asked "Isn't there someone there who could go?"

Well there wasn't so I got sent to the occupational medical center, got strapped down, poked, prodded, analyzed, blood analyzed, and urine analyzed.  Of course that day I had a terrible chest cold and was coughing so hard the EKG showed that I was having a stroke.  I had to come back the next day and be retested for that.

All the Australian documentation was in metric.  Neither the medical technician nor the doctor could figure out how to convert imperial to metric or vice versa.  They weren't even sure what they were looking at first; they saw the vision was listed as 6/6 and just pondered over it.  I figured out then that was our equivalent to 20/20 vision (6 m is 20 ft.)

In any event I was declared "Fit for duty" and was on my way.  Perth is so far from Melbourne, Florida that it's almost exactly the same time whether you fly east (Melbourne-Atlanta-Johannesburg-Perth) or west (Melbourne-Atlanta-Los Angeles-Sydney-Perth.)  The Australians told me there had been problems with theft through Johannesburg, so I went west.

I had to bring my own test equipment on the flight.  Since it is delicate and expensive to repair I have to hand carry it.  That always leads to the fear that I'll have to explain to a TSA agent what a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) is.  I didn't have to do that, but I did have it checked for explosives in both Melbourne and Los Angeles.

I had to go through security twice because I had missed my flight through Los Angeles.  There had been a problem with the flight in Atlanta, and we had to wait on the tarmac for over an hour.  We landed just as the flight to Sydney was taking off.  So I got in line to have my flight changed.  There was a Qantas flight that was just about to leave when we landed.  One irate customer ahead of me was trying to get on the flight.  The Delta reps explained to him that federal law prevented any airline from issuing a ticket for international less than one hour before the flight.  He was upset that they couldn't change federal law for him at a moment's notice; and let them know that.

Delta had a deal with a local Quality Inn.  It was well after midnight in LA by the time I got there.  I didn't have luggage, but they gave me a flimsy toothbrush and cheap razor for toiletries.  I got e-mails off to the Australian team and called the hotel in Perth before I crashed out to the sounds of jets taking off and landing.

Things looked brighter in the morning; but I still had all day in Los Angeles.  I still had my test equipment with me.  I didn't want to leave it at the hotel or lug it all over Los Angeles; so I spent the entire day at the Delta terminal of LAX.  It's tiny and I knew every detail of every shop by the end of the day.

I did get searched after landing in Sydney.  They were training a new drug sniffing dog and they put the training case next to my suitcases.  The dog kept sniffing my suitcase rather than the training one.  They went through it; fortunately it was a suitcase with clothes, not my carry on with electronics.  I was able to go through without having to explain what a VNA was to the Australian customs officer.

The Australian security agent complimented me at how well I had put all my electronics into bins to be x-rayed before I got on the plane to Perth.  I told her I had done it a few times already.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 03, 2018, 07:56:27 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 09:07:09 AM
Quote from: KRonn on February 01, 2018, 10:43:22 PM
We have train crashes in the US, usually trains going to fast for a turn, on trains that don't have the automated systems to check/alter the speed, or however it works. Some trains do have these systems and trains are being updated but it's taking time.

Positive Train Control System (PTC); that's what I work on.  All Class I freight carriers are required to have a PTC system installed by the end of this year.  (2020 is probably more realistic; it was originally supposed to be 2015, but Congress extended it to 2018 and since no one is close to being ready they'll probably extend it again.)

A PTC system will apply a penalty brake if the train is traveling too fast in its zone; and will stop a train if its gone outside a block which it has authority to be in.  Alstom's ITCS (Incrementeal Train Control System) will also activate the gates which is why our system allows trains to operate at 110 MPH.  Gates usually operate by a track circuit (the train bridges the track, creates a short and the gates come down.)  With radio a train can alert crossings that it's coming from further away.  Radio (as an example of what I was talking about before) is a non-vital system.  If a train loses radio connection it's slowed to 79 MPH; the maximum speed for track circuitry.

Good info and you're working on some interesting engineering items.  When we had some bad train accidents a few years ago I was really surprised that some kinds of systems weren't already in place. It seemed crazy that if a train approached an area way over the track speed limit that there was little or nothing to slow it down. As you say, it takes time and money to install the systems.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: grumbler on February 03, 2018, 08:49:13 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 05:05:32 PM
Not Half the Fun

There really is a line on the Australian Visa Application which asks: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime."  It's a yes-no checkbox, you really can't write down "I didn't know that was still a requirement to get in."  (There's also a question about where you are applying from, one of the possible answers is "USSR."  News must travel a little slow to Oz.)

I had started working at GE on a project for Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) in the Pilbara region of Australia.  Since I was a contractor when the project was going on I didn't travel to Australia during the build phase; instead I had done the radio coverage analysis from the office.  The system got built; but it has had problems on and off.  We recently figured out one of them; right after we installed our data radio FMG had installed a Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) system on their train at a close frequency right next to our radio.  The result was that our radios were being blown out by the TETRA radios, causing us to drop data messages.

The solution to this sort of problem is to install a filter.  A filter, in radio engineering, is a device which passes the desired signal and attenuates (or filters out) the undesired signal.  I had got a couple filters and verified this worked in the lab.  The next step was to verify it in the field.  Our home office for this project is in Perth; there are only six engineers there and the one communication engineer is part time.  Harish; who is a signaling engineer, but low man on the totem pole, so he gets sent to the field most often, asked me if I was willing to go with him to the field to test out this solution.  I'm always up for field work, so I started making travel arrangements.

In order to work in rail in Australia you must have a "Rail card."  A lot of education in Australia is vocational and a lot of industries have these sorts of certifications.  We have no equivalent in the United States and no means to get Australian vocational training here; so FMG was willing to bend that requirement for me.  Harish got me put into their system, but in order to be able to be registered for inductions I had to be declared "Fit for duty."

No one seemed quite sure what fit for duty meant.  Harish finally managed to chase down an Australian rail medical guide.  It was 210 pages long.  I sent it to our company nurse.  She immediately called me back and asked "Isn't there someone there who could go?"

Well there wasn't so I got sent to the occupational medical center, got strapped down, poked, prodded, analyzed, blood analyzed, and urine analyzed.  Of course that day I had a terrible chest cold and was coughing so hard the EKG showed that I was having a stroke.  I had to come back the next day and be retested for that.

All the Australian documentation was in metric.  Neither the medical technician nor the doctor could figure out how to convert imperial to metric or vice versa.  They weren't even sure what they were looking at first; they saw the vision was listed as 6/6 and just pondered over it.  I figured out then that was our equivalent to 20/20 vision (6 m is 20 ft.)

In any event I was declared "Fit for duty" and was on my way.  Perth is so far from Melbourne, Florida that it's almost exactly the same time whether you fly east (Melbourne-Atlanta-Johannesburg-Perth) or west (Melbourne-Atlanta-Los Angeles-Sydney-Perth.)  The Australians told me there had been problems with theft through Johannesburg, so I went west.

I had to bring my own test equipment on the flight.  Since it is delicate and expensive to repair I have to hand carry it.  That always leads to the fear that I'll have to explain to a TSA agent what a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) is.  I didn't have to do that, but I did have it checked for explosives in both Melbourne and Los Angeles.

I had to go through security twice because I had missed my flight through Los Angeles.  There had been a problem with the flight in Atlanta, and we had to wait on the tarmac for over an hour.  We landed just as the flight to Sydney was taking off.  So I got in line to have my flight changed.  There was a Qantas flight that was just about to leave when we landed.  One irate customer ahead of me was trying to get on the flight.  The Delta reps explained to him that federal law prevented any airline from issuing a ticket for international less than one hour before the flight.  He was upset that they couldn't change federal law for him at a moment's notice; and let them know that.

Delta had a deal with a local Quality Inn.  It was well after midnight in LA by the time I got there.  I didn't have luggage, but they gave me a flimsy toothbrush and cheap razor for toiletries.  I got e-mails off to the Australian team and called the hotel in Perth before I crashed out to the sounds of jets taking off and landing.

Things looked brighter in the morning; but I still had all day in Los Angeles.  I still had my test equipment with me.  I didn't want to leave it at the hotel or lug it all over Los Angeles; so I spent the entire day at the Delta terminal of LAX.  It's tiny and I knew every detail of every shop by the end of the day.

I did get searched after landing in Sydney.  They were training a new drug sniffing dog and they put the training case next to my suitcases.  The dog kept sniffing my suitcase rather than the training one.  They went through it; fortunately it was a suitcase with clothes, not my carry on with electronics.  I was able to go through without having to explain what a VNA was to the Australian customs officer.

The Australian security agent complimented me at how well I had put all my electronics into bins to be x-rayed before I got on the plane to Perth.  I told her I had done it a few times already.

I really enjoy these stories.  Your writing is excellent.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Iormlund on February 03, 2018, 04:55:50 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 02, 2018, 05:05:32 PM
No one seemed quite sure what fit for duty meant.  Harish finally managed to chase down an Australian rail medical guide.  It was 210 pages long.  I sent it to our company nurse.  She immediately called me back and asked "Isn't there someone there who could go?"

It's the same in Spain. Every worker gets a check up once a year to make sure you are fit for duty (the company only receives a yes/no answer, you get the full report). Without these papers (and more) you won't be able to enter most plants.

I oversee contractors working on my project. Most of these come from Germany and the Netherlands, where this is not mandatory. It's a pain in the ass. So we made a deal with our insurer to offer those to our contractors. We have similar problems with risk assessment paperwork. To make matters worse nobody in our Health & Safety staff speak English fluently.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 05:43:59 PM
The mysterious Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) from yesterday's post is a device which measures loss and reflection in cable over various frequencies.  You probably learned in physics at some point that Voltage (in Volts) is equal to the Resistance (in Ohms) times the Current  (in Amps) run through the circuit; that is: V=IR.  This is true for DC circuits, for AC circuits it's slightly difference.  The resistance factor is now called impedance (but still measured in Ohms.)  Impedance changes as frequency changes; so that a circuit can have a very low impedance at one frequency and a high impedance at a different one.  Low impedance means that most of the power passes; high impedance means that most of the power put in is changed to heat and absorbed by the circuit.  In communications theory we call this "Insertion Loss."

Radio frequency is a type of alternating current; rather than the 50 or 60 Hertz (cycles per second) used in your home it's at a much higher range from several hundred thousand Hertz used in AM radio to several hundred million Hertz used in your cellular phone to a few billion used by your WiFi (Hertz is an SI unit so these become KHz, MHz and GHz respectively.)  One function of the VNA is that it can measure the insertion loss over a range of frequencies; the one that I had with me can go from DC (that is 0 Hz) to 6 GHz.

A second type of loss that's found in all communication circuitry is reflection loss.  That is every device in line will reflect a small amount of power back.  So if you plug your stereo cable from your console into a graphic equalizer and another from the equalizer to a speaker some of the signal will be reflected back by the first cable, some by the graphic equalizer, some by the second cable and some by the speaker.  This loss is called "Mismatch loss;" and, once again it is frequency dependent.  In the old days (and even today in certain applications like Ham radio) the concern was in the amount of power being reflected back in damaging the radio; so we measure the amount of power coming back in.  In the old, old days the only way to measure this was with a Voltmeter at two different points, so the most commonly measurement of this is called Voltage Standing Wave Ratio or VSWR (pronounced Vis-War.)  (Today it's possible to measure the power directly at the source; that's called Return Loss or RL.)

VSWR is best visualized as a window with a Venetian blind.  At near perfect match the blind is horizontal and almost all sunlight can come through.  At complete mismatch all the sunlight is reflected out and none of it enters the room.  Complete mismatch, in communications engineering, means that there is either a short circuit or a break in the line (open circuit.)  So a high VSWR indicates a problem.

The third function of the VNA is that it can measure the time of each individual reflection point used in VSWR and use that to calculate the distance.  It can only do this at a single frequency and measures out the distance.  We call this "Distance to Fault" or DTF.  If there is a fault (a short or open) we will see that as the most prominent reflection point.  Usually the antenna is the most reflective element, so we use this as a safety check (and to measure the length of the cable run.)  Electricity moves slower than the speed of light through copper; the actual speed depends on the size and composition of the cable.  Each manufacturer rates their cable at a certain "Propagation velocity" which needs to be put into the VNA to get the right(ish) result.

So you can see my concern at having to explain this TSA agents; I have trouble explaining this to other Electrical Engineers.  I think I've been over this half a dozen times with WD by now (to be fair what he does is a mystery to me as well.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 06:03:39 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on February 02, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
and (my specialty) high-powered lasers.

I would just like to point out to the rest of Languish that I am not the poster most likely to become a super villain.

;)

Safety is a big issue in rail too.  We have yearly inductions and daily briefings on all days we're out on the tracks (in North America and Australia, I mean.  They have a different understanding of safety in Colombia.)  The concern that is unusual in rail is that people without an occupational background can get right up next to trains.  It's sometimes hard to convince people how dangerous those really are.  We're working on a high speed rail from Miami to Orlando right now.  One of my co-workers was installing switches down by West Palm Beach1..  When he was there a woman was stopped at a light when the gates came down.

John:  Ma'am you have to move your car.
Woman:  What?  Where?
John:  Just go around the gate.
Woman:  That's stupid, I'm not moving.
John:  There's a train coming, why are we arguing about this?

Fortunately she did get out of the way.  The train has been in operation since the beginning of the year and there have already been four deaths from people either trying to beat the train or pedestrians crossing the tracks away from a crossing.

1.)  Right across the estuary from Mar-a-Lago; which probably explains this as well as anything.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 06:07:34 PM
Quote from: KRonn on February 03, 2018, 07:56:27 AM
Good info and you're working on some interesting engineering items.  When we had some bad train accidents a few years ago I was really surprised that some kinds of systems weren't already in place. It seemed crazy that if a train approached an area way over the track speed limit that there was little or nothing to slow it down. As you say, it takes time and money to install the systems.

Nothing in rail ever happens quickly.  The accident which touched off the legislation mandating PTC (Chatsworth train collision) happened a decade ago.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 06:08:13 PM
Quote from: grumbler on February 03, 2018, 08:49:13 AM
I really enjoy these stories.  Your writing is excellent.

Thank you, Grumbler
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Iormlund on February 03, 2018, 07:50:04 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 06:03:39 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on February 02, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
and (my specialty) high-powered lasers.

I would just like to point out to the rest of Languish that I am not the poster most likely to become a super villain.

;)


I lack an advanced degree though. I'd probably make a good henchman. Or perhaps the villain's love interest. :lol:

Quote from: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 06:03:39 PM
Safety is a big issue in rail too.  We have yearly inductions and daily briefings on all days we're out on the tracks (in North America and Australia, I mean.  They have a different understanding of safety in Colombia.)  The concern that is unusual in rail is that people without an occupational background can get right up next to trains.  It's sometimes hard to convince people how dangerous those really are.  We're working on a high speed rail from Miami to Orlando right now.  One of my co-workers was installing switches down by West Palm Beach1..  When he was there a woman was stopped at a light when the gates came down.

John:  Ma'am you have to move your car.
Woman:  What?  Where?
John:  Just go around the gate.
Woman:  That's stupid, I'm not moving.
John:  There's a train coming, why are we arguing about this?

Fortunately she did get out of the way.  The train has been in operation since the beginning of the year and there have already been four deaths from people either trying to beat the train or pedestrians crossing the tracks away from a crossing.


Having crossings with trains that do 200 mph doesn't sound very safe. Over here bridges are built over (or under) high-speed tracks. Which is another reason why they are so expensive to build.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 03, 2018, 08:27:07 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2018, 07:50:04 PM

I lack an advanced degree though. I'd probably make a good henchman. Or perhaps the villain's love interest. :lol:

Damn

QuoteHaving crossings with trains that do 200 mph doesn't sound very safe. Over here bridges are built over (or under) high-speed tracks. Which is another reason why they are so expensive to build.

We don't go anywhere near 200 MPH anywhere in the United States ( :().  To the best of my knowledge the fastest is 110 MPH; the max speed on standard track.  In this case, since there's no radio system between West Palm Beach and Miami, the maximum speed is 79 MPH.  In areas where there are multiple gates, such as a city, the speed is restricted even further.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 04, 2018, 03:03:46 PM
At first blush the Amtrak train collision in South Carolina this morning looks similar to the Chatsworth train collision I mentioned yesterday.  A train track is divided into a series of sections we call "Blocks".  Usually a train is given absolute right to the block which it occupies; which means no other train can enter the block.  The blocks are separated by a series of signals; if you don't have authority to enter the block then you're not allowed to go past the signal.

In the case of the Chatsworth train collision the conductor blew past a signal and right into a freight train coming the other way.  In this case the freight train was stopped on the tracks; so it could have been a mistake by the Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) rather than the locomotive operators.  In any event this is the problem PTC was created to solve.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 04, 2018, 03:37:44 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 04, 2018, 03:03:46 PM
At first blush the Amtrak train collision in South Carolina this morning looks similar to the Chatsworth train collision I mentioned yesterday.  A train track is divided into a series of sections we call "Blocks".  Usually a train is given absolute right to the block which it occupies; which means no other train can enter the block.  The blocks are separated by a series of signals; if you don't have authority to enter the block then you're not allowed to go past the signal.

In the case of the Chatsworth train collision the conductor blew past a signal and right into a freight train coming the other way.  In this case the freight train was stopped on the tracks; so it could have been a mistake by the Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) rather than the locomotive operators.  In any event this is the problem PTC was created to solve.

Thanks for that insight because I was really wondering how the two trains collided. As far as I know, usually a freight train has priority while passenger trains move to sidings to allow freights to pass. Given that being accurate, it sounds like you're saying the passenger train missed the signal, or the signal was wrong, to move to a siding? The freight train being stopped on the tracks - why would it be stopped? Could it be that it was signaled the other train on the tracks as to why it was told to stop?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 04, 2018, 04:16:05 PM
I just saw a news update on the crash. They're saying the Amtrak train was diverted to a siding where the freight train was stopped.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 06, 2018, 04:20:15 PM
Quote from: KRonn on February 04, 2018, 04:16:05 PM
I just saw a news update on the crash. They're saying the Amtrak train was diverted to a siding where the freight train was stopped.

Yes, from the reports whatever train control system CSX was using was down.  Usually you change switch position from your CTC; in this case the switch was thrown manually on site and either the person who threw it didn't report this to their dispatch or the dispatch didn't report this to the Amtrak crew.

This is the fourth fatal incident Amtrak trains have been involved in during the past four months.  Only Tacoma was Amtrak's fault; the North Carolina and West Virginia incidents were caused when people tried to run the gates.  This one is almost certainly CSX's fault.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 06, 2018, 04:31:14 PM
Here's some rail lingo for you guys.  A rail switch is set to "Forward" when you continue on the track you're currently on; and "Reverse" when you switch tracks.  The CSX crew had left the switch in reverse; which moved the Amtrak train onto a siding.

Rail operation is done by signals as well as dispatch.  (That is there are electric signals which tell the train operator is occupied or empty.)  Areas where there is no signalling system are called "Dark Territory;" and all train control is done entirely by radio.  Because the signalling system was down; this crash occurred in dark territory.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 07, 2018, 05:20:26 PM
We have some senior engineers in from France.  One worked on the Paris Metro.  He said that the Metro cannot leave trains parked on the track overnight, since they will be defaced by graffiti.  Instead they are kept behind locked doors in a depot with men and dogs to guard the trains.  There have been instances where roving gangs of artists have broken into the depot and fought off the guards in order to paint the trains.  That's dedication.  Anyone can suffer for his art; but it takes a real artist to make other people suffer for his art1..

He later went to work on the Tram system in Geneva.  The workers there thought the story was... well, not hilarious, but whatever the Swiss equivalent of hilarious is.  Unbelievable, maybe?

1.)  John Cage did for over sixty years.  Now that's real dedication.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on February 07, 2018, 06:45:25 PM
I enjoy "roving gangs of artists" as a turn of phrase :cheers:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 07, 2018, 07:47:55 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 06, 2018, 04:20:15 PM
Quote from: KRonn on February 04, 2018, 04:16:05 PM
I just saw a news update on the crash. They're saying the Amtrak train was diverted to a siding where the freight train was stopped.

Yes, from the reports whatever train control system CSX was using was down.  Usually you change switch position from your CTC; in this case the switch was thrown manually on site and either the person who threw it didn't report this to their dispatch or the dispatch didn't report this to the Amtrak crew.

This is the fourth fatal incident Amtrak trains have been involved in during the past four months.  Only Tacoma was Amtrak's fault; the North Carolina and West Virginia incidents were caused when people tried to run the gates.  This one is almost certainly CSX's fault.

This explains it nicely.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 08, 2018, 12:51:03 PM
Thanks, Jacob and KRonn

I also learned from the senior engineers that in the 1950s and 1960s there were about 100 different proposals for Maglev trains; today there are only four in existence (two in Japan, one in Korea and one in China.)  The reason that so many were proposed is that it was believed that steel wheel trains couldn't exceed 200 KMPH.  (Which, amusingly, is about as fast as anything goes in North America today.)

Maglev can go quicker than conventional wheeled trains; but construction and repair costs are considerably more expensive.  The senior engineers said it was all the problems of airplane design combined with all the problems of rail.

Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 08, 2018, 01:31:44 PM
200 kph max? Conventional lines reached that cruise speed long ago in France, e.g Paris-Bordeaux line (560 km or so), or formerly Paris-Toulouse in the '70s, now much older and slower so people go through Bordeaux, quite a detour but faster, as long as there is no rail crossing, if so 160 kph. Eliminating them is very expensive but it is done sometimes.
A hovertrain, ™Aérotrain™ almost made in France in the '60-'70s but was cancelled very late in the process. SNCF was pushing for TGV at the same time so maybe lobbying paid its part.  :tinfoil:
Did these senior engineers mention Aérotrain btw?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aérotrain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9rotrain)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 08, 2018, 05:15:29 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 08, 2018, 01:31:44 PM
200 kph max? Conventional lines reached that cruise speed long ago in France, e.g Paris-Bordeaux line (560 km or so), or formerly Paris-Toulouse in the '70s, now much older and slower so people go through Bordeaux, quite a detour but faster, as long as there is no rail crossing, if so 160 kph. Eliminating them is very expensive but it is done sometimes.

I see from Wikipedia that the current record for steel wheels on steel track is about 575 KMPH.  Presumably they didn't foresee the improvement in steel and welding technology when people were first thinking Maglev.

QuoteA hovertrain, ™Aérotrain™ almost made in France in the '60-'70s but was cancelled very late in the process. SNCF was pushing for TGV at the same time so maybe lobbying paid its part.  :tinfoil:
Did these senior engineers mention Aérotrain btw?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aérotrain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9rotrain)

No, but he did make it sound like most decisions about rail in France were political in nature.  All the Americans were amazed that so little freight travels on French lines (America has the largest freight capacity in the world.)  The instructor made it sound like the decision to carry the bulk of freight by truck was a purely political decision.  (Admittedly, as an Alstom employee, he might have been a little biased.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 08, 2018, 05:18:04 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 06, 2018, 04:31:14 PM
Rail operation is done by signals as well as dispatch.  (That is there are electric signals which tell the train operator is occupied or empty.)  Areas where there is no signalling system are called "Dark Territory;" and all train control is done entirely by radio.  Because the signalling system was down; this crash occurred in dark territory.

I learned today that 30 miles of Metrolinx track (in the greater Toronto area) is dark territory.  That seemed dangerous in such a heavily populated area.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 08, 2018, 05:25:21 PM
Well, passenger trains have priority over freight trains (opposite of the US I believe) and businesses have less tolerance for strikes than people who have less of a choice.  :P However, with the liberalisation of freight, this should no longer be the case, yet all operators still lose money.  :hmm: Most investments go for passenger lines as well.
Politics certainly played a part though, no question about that. SNCF is a state within the state, very unionised. Rail is indeed very political, but lorries just seem more practical or cheaper, with cheap, non-unionised labor, sometimes from Eastern Europe.

Even the biggest European wholesale food, Rungis, is still mostly operated with lorries, despite recently improved rail facilities
http://www.leparisien.fr/rungis-94150/l-avenir-incertain-du-terminal-ferroviaire-du-marche-de-rungis-28-09-2015-5134807.php (http://www.leparisien.fr/rungis-94150/l-avenir-incertain-du-terminal-ferroviaire-du-marche-de-rungis-28-09-2015-5134807.php)
Cheaper by lorry, again, and more flexible labour force.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 08, 2018, 07:53:46 PM
Yeah, I do remember when Maglev rail trains were all the rage, very much talked about as the future of fast rail travel.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 09, 2018, 04:41:13 PM
Inductions

In order to work on a rail system, you first have to go through safety training; called "Inductions."  The inductions are usually brief in passenger or freight, but much more in depth for mining.  This is because mining operations usually involve the mine, the transport and a port; all three have heavy machinery.  While you probably won't work all three areas, they try to make a generic introductory training to cover all three and then provide additional courses that focus on your area.

FMG is the most in depth inductions that I've gone through.  They provided three different types: first a series of online courses; then in office inductions and then field inductions.  The first I could do in the United States at my leisure.  There are over fifty courses offered online, but I only had to take the general safety, sensitivity training, environmental awareness and a couple courses specific to rail.

The online trainings each have little quizzes along the way.  A lot of people who work in the mines have never completed high school.  Instead they entered an apprenticeship program as teenagers, so the quizzes aren't very hard.  If "All of the above" is ever a choice; it's the right answer.

For me it was fortunate that the quizzes are multiple choice; things are sometimes different in Australia than in the United States.  One question was "One of your fellow workers reports spotting a bilby near the area where you working, what should you do?"  My initial response, "Son, drinking on the job is never a good idea," wasn't one of the option.  (A bilby, as it turns out, is a marsupial related to the bandicoot, if that helps.)

I also learned from the online training that FMG has a zero tolerance policy for slavery.  Sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe in no matter what anyone else says.

The second part of the inductions happened at FMG's offices in downtown Perth.  I was there the day of the Christmas party; so they rushed us through the training as quickly as they could.  Even so they did emphasize the seriousness of the training; anyone caught on their phone would be taken out of class for a talking to.  This wore heavily on some of the younger participants, at the breaks their phones would appear as if by sleight of hand.

While the on line inductions gave numerous warnings about the dangers of excessive drinking; the company itself seemed to have a somewhat more realistic view of who was working at the mines.  Their vending machines all had enormous cans of Red Bull; not the wimpy eight ounce cans sold in the United States, these looked like full imperial pints of Red Bull.  I doubt even Jeeves's pick-me-up would work as well as that.

We were warned against using "The mining language" at the beginning of training, as that upset the owners and the office staff.  (Now hark at that, do.)  That seemed to be becoming a thing of the past anyway.  Cussing over radio channels was now grounds for dismissal.  This proved to be a great strain on bulldozer operators, as, I learned, they are always angry about something. 

The instructor told us, and most of the class seemed to agree, that many people on the mine site behaved like "Drongos" or "Absolute rock apes," that also seemed to be becoming a thing of the past.  Our contact at FMG lamented that the time where "The boys" could just take things out back and settle them was over; now you have to get HR involved in every little things

A lot of the training dealt with lock-out tag-out; that is how to shut off the power supply to a machine under repair or service.  Power supplies have to be locked off in such circumstances, and they have to be tagged as to the reason they were off.  Sometimes you knew a story was coming when we were told not to do something.  The first was not to tag washing machines Out of Service (OOS) unless they really were.  Some people at the mining camps will do that in order to reserve a machine.  The second was not to tag dead animals OOS.  Someone had done that to a dead kangaroo, and the mining operators had to conduct a full investigation, find the person who did that, and kick him off the mining property.

Anyhow the office secretaries were starting to put on headbands with reindeer antlers and workers were wheeling in pinball machines so we were given our mine cards and off we went.

The final part of the training was held in Port Hedland.  Port Hedland is about a 90 minute flight from Perth.  Port Hedland is the deepest port in the southern hemisphere so all mining operations in the Pilbara deliver their ore there.  Mining is such a big business in Western Australia that several flights every day head to Port Hedland.  (There are a couple more that go to the inland mine camps as well.)  Nearly two thirds of traffic in the Perth airport wears steel toed boots and the blue and yellow safety shirts that the mining companies mandate.

I got picked up at the airport by Chris, a radio tech covered in tattoos.  We went to the port to find out when and where the rail inductions would be and found no one knew anything about it.  I wasn't too perturbed by that; my entire time in Colombia was some variation on that theme.  After a series of phone calls I discovered that the training wouldn't be held until the afternoon (I had arrived at 8 in the morning) and was only for 90 minutes.  So I hung out in the comms shack all morning.

The training was pretty basic.  It was held in the temporary headquarters from when the rail operations were being built.  Today the headquarters are in the port; but the training hadn't been updated, so we learned the location and function of empty buildings.

There are some complexities with Australian law concerning the aborigines, which I do not fully understand.  The land the mine on is owned by the mining companies, but the underlying owners are the local aborigine skin groups ("Tribe" is considered an offensive term, as is "Chief."  "Skin group" is used instead of tribe; I don't know what the equivalent to chief is.)  Captain Cook declared Australia "Terra Nullius," that is land not owned by anyone.  So most of the aborigines ended up in the most undesirable parts of Australia; such as the Pilbara.  The mining companies therefore pay rent to the aborigines on this land.  FMG provides jobs, contracts and training in lieu of the rent they pay.  Most of the other mining companies simply pay in cash.

Most Australians wouldn't come out and say "Aborigines" when talking about them; instead they were "The locals."  None of the stories about "The locals" were very nice; but one that they mentioned in training did give me a certain amount of admiration.  We were told to never leave keys in a vehicle; not even for a minute.  One time when a trucker was relieving himself by the side of the track, when some of "The locals" jumped in and took off.  It was some sort of fuel truck.  They took it joy riding nearly a thousand miles to Thornlie in the south.  The authorities found the truck six weeks later, undamaged, but with all the tires painted vibrant colors.  That sounded like a wonderfully roguish adventure.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: grumbler on February 09, 2018, 05:46:27 PM
I wonder how much of the infrastructure in Port Hedland today was originally built for servicing Allied submarines in WW2.  My understanding is that it was pretty much scrubland when the RAN took it over in 1942 and started to build a base there.  The US based a fair number of subs out of there (it was well-placed for attacking the Japanese shipping in the vital DEI) and so, I would imagine, built a lot of facilities.  I seem to recall reading that one of the first US floating dry docks was sent there to service submarines; when they measured its possible transits from (IIRC) New Orleans, it was exactly the same distance whether sent via the Atlantic or Pacific!

Anyway, i am still enjoying this very much.  Keep up the story. please.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2018, 05:58:38 PM
They didn't invite you to the party?  :(
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 09, 2018, 09:26:41 PM
More good stuff Sav. The heavy equipment and mining especially are so very different from what my working world was (retired now, working part time at my old company). That goes for rail operations and engineering also. I'm learning a lot.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 01:53:43 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 08, 2018, 05:25:21 PM
Well, passenger trains have priority over freight trains (opposite of the US I believe) and businesses have less tolerance for strikes than people who have less of a choice.  :P However, with the liberalisation of freight, this should no longer be the case, yet all operators still lose money.  :hmm: Most investments go for passenger lines as well.
Politics certainly played a part though, no question about that. SNCF is a state within the state, very unionised. Rail is indeed very political, but lorries just seem more practical or cheaper, with cheap, non-unionised labor, sometimes from Eastern Europe.

Even the biggest European wholesale food, Rungis, is still mostly operated with lorries, despite recently improved rail facilities
http://www.leparisien.fr/rungis-94150/l-avenir-incertain-du-terminal-ferroviaire-du-marche-de-rungis-28-09-2015-5134807.php (http://www.leparisien.fr/rungis-94150/l-avenir-incertain-du-terminal-ferroviaire-du-marche-de-rungis-28-09-2015-5134807.php)
Cheaper by lorry, again, and more flexible labour force.

The situation is almost the complete opposite in the United States; the Class I (freight rail) carriers are politically important as are their unions (by US standards; which I realize pales in comparison to French standards.)  Amtrak, on the other hand, is underfunded and politically negligible.  Freight always has priority (to the best of my knowledge) even on tracks that Amtrak maintains.

We do have a truck drivers union in the United States (the Teamsters Union); they have a reputation for thuggishness and close ties to organized crime.  I'm not sure if that's fair or just a holdover from the Jimmy Hoffa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa) era.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 02:45:43 PM
Quote from: KRonn on February 08, 2018, 07:53:46 PM
Yeah, I do remember when Maglev rail trains were all the rage, very much talked about as the future of fast rail travel.

It would be easier to do today, with "High Temperature" superconductors; (and it sounds so cool and science fiction-y.)  The thing is that conventional trains are so energy efficient, low friction and (potentially) fast that they Maglev trains aren't economically feasible.  Something like a hyper-loop might be worth it (especially when you factor in environmental costs); but that would be a competitor to air travel rather than conventional rail travel.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 03:29:14 PM
Quote from: grumbler on February 09, 2018, 05:46:27 PM
I wonder how much of the infrastructure in Port Hedland today was originally built for servicing Allied submarines in WW2.  My understanding is that it was pretty much scrubland when the RAN took it over in 1942 and started to build a base there.  The US based a fair number of subs out of there (it was well-placed for attacking the Japanese shipping in the vital DEI) and so, I would imagine, built a lot of facilities.  I seem to recall reading that one of the first US floating dry docks was sent there to service submarines; when they measured its possible transits from (IIRC) New Orleans, it was exactly the same distance whether sent via the Atlantic or Pacific!

Anyway, i am still enjoying this very much.  Keep up the story. please.

That's interesting; I didn't know about Port Hedland's role in the Second World War.

Prior to the start of the mining industry in the 1960s, I don't think there was much of anything in Port Hedland.  It does have a deep harbor; but it's adjacent to the Pilbara.  The Pilbara is one of the hottest places on earth and it gets cyclones; not a lot of people want to live there.  They did (and still do) raise cattle there, but there isn't much else in terms of agriculture.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 03:33:03 PM
The trains go over range land and the mining companies pay ranchers an indemnity if they run over a cow.  Allegedly ranchers put dead cattle on the tracks at night in order to claim that indemnity. :outback:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 05:37:26 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2018, 05:58:38 PM
They didn't invite you to the party?  :(

I don't think they even invited their own mining employees to the party.  Too many absolute rock apes.   :(

In addition to "Drongo" and "Rock ape" some other aussieisms I learned:

Pineapple:  A metaphorical kick-in-the-ass
Hoon:  To speed; it's a complete verb with particle (hooning) and all
Too easy:  a stock phrase akin to "By George, you've got it."
Toasties:  Toasted sandwiches, similar to panini but on regular bread.
Rattle gun:  Impact wrench
Way Out:  Exit
Chrissy:  Abbreviated form of "Christmas."  Usually used for Chrissy trees, Chrissy tea towels and the like.  One of the FMG mines is located in a place called "Christmas Creek" it took me a while to figure out what "Chrissy Creek" was. (Australia: keeping the Chris in Christmas :outback:.) 

I was relieved that they didn't use "Hooter" for car horn the way they do in South Africa.  Apparently that was too silly for even the Australians.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 10, 2018, 06:34:59 PM
I know that a case of beer is called a slab in Oz.  :smarty:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 27, 2018, 09:50:40 PM
:)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on March 02, 2018, 04:12:08 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 16, 2015, 08:43:38 AM
Un Amour de Jeff Swaan

Derrick was from Cuba's northernmost province, Miami.  His grandparents had fled during the revolution; but he still identified with his Cuban heritage and talked it up all the time.  He did things a certain way because Cubans did it that way.  He made snap judgements, because Cubans made snap judgements.  He didn't take measurements because Cubans were good at eyeballing measurements.  He got reassigned to another project because the measurements he didn't take were wrong.

Even before that final incident Derrick's Cubanness annoyed Jeff to no end.  In those days the team would regularly get dinner at a restaurant called "Crepes y Waffles."  It was an Americanized restaurant, clean and air conditioned.  The only person who ever got sick there was Javier, but he seemed to get sick everywhere.  Every breakfast for him was toast and coffee as he was trying to get his stomach to settle.  He's a Spaniard, so we assumed this was the curse of Bolivar upon him.

While they were at Crepes y Waffles one night Derrick started talking about how he loved women with big asses, because Cubans loved women with big asses.  In fact all Hispanic men loved women with big asses.  There was a skinny waitress there named Laura whom Jeff and Bill started talking up.

"You guys are crazy," said Derrick, "She's got no ass.  No Hispanic man would like her."

They started going to Crepes y Waffles all the time.  Bill and Jeff would flirt constantly with Laura at first mostly to get Derrick's goat.  It moved into more serious territory and Laura started sending Jeff pictures of herself.  She was fully dressed in the pictures; just not in her Crepes y Waffles uniform.

We stopped going to Crepes y Waffles one night after having some extraordinarily bad service.  Jeff and Fabio had ordered a chicken stuffed crepe.  Two hours after they ordered it our waitress came by the table and told us they were out of chicken.  Jeff was livid.  He wouldn't order anything else.  He wouldn't consider ordering anything else.  He complained to the waitress (with Max translating.)  He had her bring over her manager and he repeated the complaints (again with Max translating) about the horrid service.  The manager listened very politely, and when Jeff finished asked, "Is that it?" She didn't care in the slightest.

The rest of us got our food shortly thereafter, but it was quite late by the time we left.  Jeff and Fabio went over to the frozen yogurt stand in the same mini-mall.  The server said they were closed.  As they were walking away, three young ladies came up and ordered frozen yogurt, and he promptly served them.  Jeff went back and said "You wouldn't serve us."

"Yes, but they're girls," the waiter said; but begrudgingly agreed to serve Jeff and Fabio.

We didn't hear anything else about Laura for a long time; then one night I saw Jeff sneaking a woman past the lobby (so far as a 250 pound man can sneak a woman half his age and weight without attracting attention.)  It was Laura.

The word spread like wildfire through our team.  Gary, naturally, took this as a great source of fun and would wait for about an hour after he saw Jeff slip in to Irotama with Laura, then he'd start texting him.

"You texted us in the middle of the act," said Jeff.

"I thought I might be," replied Gary

"Every time my phone would ding she'd open her eyes and look around."

"It's a good sign when they open their eyes.  It means they're still conscious."

Jeff got kicked off the project and Laura was left in Santa Marta.  Jeff had asked her to get a passport and visit him in the United States, but she didn't seem all that eager.  It was probably for the best as Jeff also has a stewardess girlfriend.  He told me not to date stewardesses as they keep odd hours and constantly have computer problems.  I told him I didn't think my wife would let me anyway.

Jeff was in the office this week.  I hadn't seen him for about two years.  He's married to Laura now, and they have twin girls (13 months).  Jeff is 53, so I don't blame him for being on the road.  They live in Bogota; he said that our experiences in Santa Marta is just as alien to the middle class of Bogota as they are to Americans.

He hasn't changed, I listened to him spend an hour try to wheedle first class and a reduced rate out of Delta.

He's headed to Michigan for Amtrak.  I thought that was funny since he worked on the project before, several year before I got there; but everyone remembers him.  I was at a meeting with Amtrak one day and everyone started razzing our construction manager about "That guy Jeff."  Even our current program manager for FeNoCO, Marcello, has never met Jeff but heard all about him from FerroMex.  (He was working with Bill, so he told FerroMex that he was bringing down a gringo engineer.  The FerroMex guys all immediately made sure that he didn't mean Señor Jeff.)
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: KRonn on March 04, 2018, 04:17:55 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 24, 2015, 01:09:42 PM
Perspective

Barranquilla is a much larger city than Santa Marta.  It's about 100 Km from Santa Marta, but with the road conditions and traffic it takes two to three hours to get there.  One time, early in the project, Jeff and Bill needed parts to put together the signaling cases.  They struck out in Santa Marta and headed to Barranquilla to look. 

They found mostly what they were looking for and decided to have lunch in the city.  As they were eating they overheard four young women speaking English next to them.  Jeff started talking to them.  They were Canadian and had just recently graduated from college.  In celebration of graduating they were taking a trip through South America.  They had started in Colombia and were going to make their way to Chile.  Bill told them what they were doing was incredibly dangerous.  He was there with guards and there were all sorts of diseases and revolutionaries everywhere.  He tried to convince them of the danger in their trip, but they insisted they would be just fine.

In further talking to them Bill and Jeff learned that already two of them had their purses stolen and their passports with them.  They were planning to get new passports issued to them at the Canadian embassy in Santiago.  Bill tried to convince them that they couldn't cross international borders without a passport; they needed to head back to Bogota, but again they insisted they would be just fine.

Things have a way of working themselves out when you're twenty-three that they don't when you're older.  I think that the girls will actually be just fine; although there are many dangerous parts of South America especially for young women.  The public transportation in Bogota for one has a bad reputation in that regard.  There are other dangers for the traveler too.  Flavio, who was Brazilian, told us that in Sao Paolo you knew you were going to be robbed sooner or later.

It occurred to me that their account, even if we were to experience the same thing, would be different from mine.  There wouldn't be racism, dynamite fishing or elderly hippies annoying locals in their version.  Even Ken and I, who are from similar backgrounds had a very different take on the experience.  One day we were discussing the people of rural Colombia.  Ken said "They're always happy because they live such uncomplicated lives."  I replied, "They don't have clean water; air conditioning or even electricity.  There are tropical diseases everywhere.  I'll take our complicated lives."

So if we spirits have offended anywhere in this account; this is only my own personal narrative.  Everyone would find something different in such a strange land.  I found Colombia fascinating, frustrating, filled with adventure and far too hot.  It was a weird and wonderful experience; one that I'm glad to have even with all the difficulties.

When you mentioned Santa Marta I searched back to find a reference to it. I wonder if those female travelers ever made it ok? The ones your friends told how dangerous it was to travel the way they were going.

Also interesting are your comments on the heat and uncomplicated lives of rural folks. I think I'll also take the complicated but there's a lot to be said for uncomplicated. It's funny - I often think and realize how much things have changed in my life with today's tech, internet especially. We didn't have that when I was a kid. For instance, just shopping and researching anything from appliances to clothes to autos had to be done via magazines and newspapers.
Title: Re: Love in the Time of Chikungunya
Post by: Savonarola on March 05, 2018, 05:07:04 PM
Quote from: KRonn on March 04, 2018, 04:17:55 PM
When you mentioned Santa Marta I searched back to find a reference to it. I wonder if those female travelers ever made it ok? The ones your friends told how dangerous it was to travel the way they were going.

Coincidentally Bill and Jeff were just reminiscing about that last week.  As always the stories become much better the further we get away from the events (;)).  From what they were saying this time one of the young ladies was planning to stay down there for four weeks, two for two months and one for six months.  That last one might have given over to Latin America; she's probably wearing flounced skirts and living in a hacienda somewhere.

;)

Seriously, if they stuck together they'd probably be alright.  I hope the one who was planning to travel by herself for four months had second thoughts.

QuoteAlso interesting are your comments on the heat and uncomplicated lives of rural folks. I think I'll also take the complicated but there's a lot to be said for uncomplicated. It's funny - I often think and realize how much things have changed in my life with today's tech, internet especially. We didn't have that when I was a kid. For instance, just shopping and researching anything from appliances to clothes to autos had to be done via magazines and newspapers.

If you can't afford glass, you'd never have to worry about a broken window. 

There's a lot I admire about the parts of Colombia I saw; their sense of community, their camaraderie, their ability to improvise and their ability to roll with whatever misfortune they encountered.  That being said, I'd still take our bourgeois alienation if it means having pesticides, sunscreen and antibiotics.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 01, 2018, 02:48:31 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 10, 2018, 02:45:43 PM
Quote from: KRonn on February 08, 2018, 07:53:46 PM
Yeah, I do remember when Maglev rail trains were all the rage, very much talked about as the future of fast rail travel.

It would be easier to do today, with "High Temperature" superconductors; (and it sounds so cool and science fiction-y.)  The thing is that conventional trains are so energy efficient, low friction and (potentially) fast that they Maglev trains aren't economically feasible.  Something like a hyper-loop might be worth it (especially when you factor in environmental costs); but that would be a competitor to air travel rather than conventional rail travel.

I was out at the place where the US Department of Transportation did tests on hovertrains this week; today it's the Federal Rail Administration's Transportation Technology Center (FRA TTC), but administered by the American Association of Rail (AAR) under their subsidiary the Transportation Technology Center Incorporated (TTCI).

Today this is the test center for all the major manufacturer's.  It's located near Pueblo, Colorado.  Near by western standards :alberta:, that is, it's 21 miles from the city, and you have to go over dirt roads to get there.  I had forgotten how vast and how empty the west is.  Pueblo isn't by anything as it is; and the TTCI is really the middle of nowhere.

I've become a prop at this point in my career.  When the customer is having issues with their radio equipment; I get sent in order to prove that we take their problem seriously.  In this case Siemens was installing locomotives for Amtrak and they were failing a radio test, but only by an amount so small it wouldn't have impacted the customer.  There was a couple things that they could have done wrong in the installation or test procedure, so I asked some questions about how they had troubleshot the problem and I got back a bunch of  :huh: :huh: :huh:.  So I made flight arrangements.

I flew into Colorado Springs, there's no easy route from Melbourne, Florida to Colorado Springs, and I didn't get there until late in the evening.  My first thought, exiting the airport was "Woah, mountains," coming from Florida that's a majestic change.  I drove south and watched an enormous red moon rise up over the plains.

My hotel was south of the city; near the speedway and just south of the steel mill.  It was just like being in a Bruce Springsteen song.  Pueblo looked like a hard luck town, at least the south end of it.  It was kind of like Detroit, with neighborhoods made of dilapidated small houses; remnants of a more prosperous age.  The biggest difference is that there were taquerias rather than soul food restaurants.

I made it to TTCI the next day.  I got to the gate to discover that no one had informed the TTCI that I was coming; it took them half an hour to figure out who I was, and who I was supposed to be meeting.  That was a lot like being back in Colombia.

I met up with the Siemens' crew and we went through safety training.  Our trainer looked like he had stepped out of a John Ford film; a cast extra for "Withered ranch hand."  He even had the accent Ken Curtis was trying to do in "The Searchers."  The training was mostly the same as anywhere else: look both ways and watch out for snakes.  He did tell us in the drug and alcohol section, "I know this is Colorado, but you can't come to work stoned, boys."  The trainer was an Federal Rail Administration employee; you could tell because he knew exactly how many days he had until retirement.

I was in training with a couple contractors.  The rail industry is staffed mostly by people from rural areas or small towns.  Rail contractors tend to be difters.  The Siemens manager was pressing the contractors about their backgrounds; and they fit that exactly.  One was from Muncie, Indiana the other was from somewhere by Texarkana.  Both had worked more places and more places than they had years of experience in rail.

I figured out the problem Siemens was having immediately.  My network analyzer is made by Keysight, theirs was made by Fisher-Price.  I showed their radio tech how to use my network analyzer; and then I showed him how to use his.  We did analyze every train and did find some genuine issues; so it wasn't a wasted trip.  The land the TTCI is on is vast; every manufacturer has their own space and there are dozens of test tracks.  All different sorts of tracks too; standard gauge, narrow gauge, third rail electrified, catenary electrified and so on.

The downtown Pueblo is nice; they have a river walk along the banks of the Arkansas River.  There are a bunch of micro-breweries; Colorado's other favorite licit vice.  I did get a chance to sample the famed green chili; I liked it.

I returned home the next day; American Airlines ran the trifecta on me, a solid three delays on three flights.  There was a copy of "American Way" magazine in my seat, which I first thought was an alt-right publication with the name and the fact that they had this six foot tall Celtic warrior-princess on their covers.  I discovered it was the in-flight magazine; and the white power model was actually Karen Gillan, Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: frunk on June 01, 2018, 02:53:45 PM
Fisher Price Network Analyzer (https://www.google.com/search?q=fisher+price+network+analyzer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA88TOnrPbAhUEzFMKHdXEBJkQ_AUICygC&biw=1910&bih=987)  :(

I was hoping for something I could give my kid.

Oh, there we go (https://www.google.com/search?q=fisher+price+network+analyzer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA88TOnrPbAhUEzFMKHdXEBJkQ_AUICygC&biw=1910&bih=987#imgrc=gsxJ0xPcXBWF1M:)!
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 01, 2018, 03:01:29 PM
Quote from: frunk on June 01, 2018, 02:53:45 PM
Fisher Price Network Analyzer (https://www.google.com/search?q=fisher+price+network+analyzer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA88TOnrPbAhUEzFMKHdXEBJkQ_AUICygC&biw=1910&bih=987)  :(

I was hoping for something I could give my kid.

Oh, there we go (https://www.google.com/search?q=fisher+price+network+analyzer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA88TOnrPbAhUEzFMKHdXEBJkQ_AUICygC&biw=1910&bih=987#imgrc=gsxJ0xPcXBWF1M:)!

I've heard good things about RF Explorer. (http://j3.rf-explorer.com/)

Edit:  If you do get him one make sure you have "The Talk" with him first; the "No pirate radio talk," that is.  You don't want those fines.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 05, 2018, 12:33:49 PM
I needed a compass and inclinometer for an upcoming radio site survey.  We're putting the antenna fairly low to the ground, and the customer wants to know the incline of the surrounding clutter relative to the antenna.  I didn't have an inclinometer, and with our... fantastic... internal processes it's no small task to simply go to a camping store and getting one.  Instead we ordered one from our usual hardware supplier for rail and radio equipment.  So now I have a Burton Geo Pocket Transit Compass (https://www.brunton.com/products/geo-pocket-transit-0-90) at my desk.  (We did get it for much less than the manufacturer's list price.)  It's quite a bit more compass than I need; the instruction manual explains not only how to use the compass and inclinometer but also how to stake a claim :alberta: and how to survey land.  In any event if you have a lot more money than you know what to do with; you need one of these.  The sapphire bearing alone will make you the envy of the neighborhood.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on June 06, 2018, 05:25:45 PM
I assume the gadget will measure the amount of interference might affect the antenna? Curious though, why would an antenna be placed somewhat low to the ground?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 07, 2018, 11:54:07 AM
Quote from: KRonn on June 06, 2018, 05:25:45 PM
I assume the gadget will measure the amount of interference might affect the antenna? Curious though, why would an antenna be placed somewhat low to the ground?

No, it just points to magnetic north (although it does have an adjustment for declination and the instruction manual has a chart for declination for all of North America so you can get true north.)  It really is just a compass with an inclinometer built in.  (I do have a spectrum analyzer that I'll use to evaluate potential interferes.)  It is a compass for people who are seriously old school; not only does it have the declination chart (something that is simple to look up online now); it also has a section on how to read topographic maps.  Maybe that's still used in surveying, but it has been twenty years since I've even seen a physical topo map.

The antenna we're putting in, in this case, is only meant to cover a rail yard.  Putting it lower to the ground means that we won't cover much past the yard (in this case clutter helps); which will probably help our customer when they apply for a license.  It's also important to know when using a GPS.  In that case higher clutter (relative to the horizon) means that your cutting off the number of satellites you can see; which, in turn, means that your precision goes down.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on June 08, 2018, 08:19:35 PM
Ok, that makes sense. Interesting to know.  :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 10, 2018, 04:28:16 PM
I was out in Pueblo again a couple weeks ago.  We finished work early and I had the day off so I went to Bishop Castle. (http://www.bishopcastle.org/)

Bishop Castle is a medieval inspired building in construction by Jim Bishop in a largely single-man endeavor.  It's in the middle of nowhere; you have to drive through the San Isabel National Forest to get there.  It's a pretty drives that takes you up into the hills.  There isn't a parking lot or anything, you just park along the road and head in.  There's a sign in sheet which Jim Bishop says if you sign you release him of all liability, and if you don't you're a trespasser and he'll treat you as such.  (I don't know what that means, but in rural Colorado, I doubt that's anything good.)  All along the lower levels of the building there are signs which have hand painted on them some... extreme... views.  Such as:

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8f/dd/37/8fdd37eacd686b76aebaff164737a96b--determination-castles.jpg)

or

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b7/07/64/b7076470684db03712b46c254c172f34--pueblo-colorado-palaces.jpg)

or

(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/82/8b/42/828b42b80ebc926653197329ee71280a--rye-colorado.jpg)

Another dealt with there being an inalienable right to travel, so driver's licenses are an unconstitutional restriction on your freedom.  Another was about how law enforcement officials were welcome only if they were going to uphold the constitution; otherwise get the hell off his property.

So, as you may have gathered, Jim Bishop isn't one to follow the rules; including building codes.  This becomes obvious as you start wandering around the site.  There's no guard railings; no ADA wheelchair ramps, no effort made to keep the construction equipment away from the visitors and no guard rails around the parapets.  You're free to wander around the castle, it's a riot of stained glass, towers, iron bridges and even a dragon shaped chimney.  The concrete is crumbling at the higher levels.  The iron spiral staircases, at points, are attached by wire.  The wood at places is warped, or has fallen away.  You can feel the bridges sway in the wind.

There were a number of families there when I was.  A number of the children and adolescents would scream as they climbed the wobbly stairs; it was a bigger thrill than any roller coaster.

The castle has a pretty overview of the San Isabel forest.  It's really is an amazing site; the triumph of one man's hard work and quirky vision over society, government and common sense.  I'm sure he's going to kill somebody; there's already been a fire due to shoddy electrical work, but it is still a wonder.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on July 10, 2018, 08:03:06 PM
Seems this place and its people would fit in well with those in your other thread who have founded their own nation states.  :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on July 11, 2018, 07:30:13 AM
How on earth did this guy get the cash to make this place?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Razgovory on July 11, 2018, 08:15:43 AM
I looked at a picture of that thing.  I'm not sure those towers are straight.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on July 11, 2018, 03:39:03 PM
Why no drunk tax payers in particular?
Drunk kids are fine?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 11, 2018, 03:46:44 PM
Quote from: KRonn on July 10, 2018, 08:03:06 PM
Seems this place and its people would fit in well with those in your other thread who have founded their own nation states.  :)

Heh, true
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 11, 2018, 03:53:21 PM
Quote from: Malthus on July 11, 2018, 07:30:13 AM
How on earth did this guy get the cash to make this place?

I'm not entirely sure, but he had a gift shop (that was a casualty of the fire) and takes donations now.  He got a lot of his building material from illegally taking rocks from the National Forest.  He does most of the work himself. 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 11, 2018, 03:56:09 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2018, 08:15:43 AM
I looked at a picture of that thing.  I'm not sure those towers are straight.

They might not be; some of the foot bridges weren't level.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 11, 2018, 03:59:09 PM
Quote from: Tyr on July 11, 2018, 03:39:03 PM
Why no drunk tax payers in particular?
Drunk kids are fine?

Who knows, (although you can ask him if you ever go there; he's more than happy to share his opinions with anyone.)  It would be a really bad idea to come to that property drunk, like I said safety wasn't a major consideration on the project.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Razgovory on July 11, 2018, 04:00:13 PM
Looks like Sovereign Citizens BS to me.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 11, 2018, 04:05:42 PM
When I was there I kept thinking "This is just like being in a Werner Herzog movie."  You've got the utterly mad protagonist on his outsized quest which he pursues obsessively.  All that it was missing was Klaus Kinski.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 12, 2018, 10:30:28 AM
I also got a chance to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park while I was out there.  The park has the tallest sand dunes in North America.  Pueblo is the nearest "City" to them, but it's about a two hour drive.

In Michigan we have a large set of dunes at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore.  We used to go there almost every summer when I was young.  By the time I was an adolescent I thought "This is a just a lot of sand, and it's a pain to climb them."  The Great Sand Dunes are even more sand and even more of a pain to climb; but I'm no longer a bored teenager.  They really are spectacular; they're right at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  To the south is a vast, empty plain.

The tallest dune is right by the entrance drive.  You need to walk along an empty stretch of sand.  In the spring months this is the Medano Creek, but when I was there it didn't look like it could ever have been even a wadi; it was just a bone dry stretch of sand.  The first part of the climb is the worst; the sand is loose on the hill and it requires a lot of effort to climb.  There are some smaller hills or ravines that people sand-sled or sand-board down, but it's such a pain to climb back up that everyone seems to hand out rather than going up or down the hills.

Once you get to the first ridge the climb gets much easier.  There the wind has compacted the sand, so you don't sink as far as you walk.  I made it to the summit of the highest sand dune; there's always a little crowd there.  I walked beyond that and there was no one.  It's a vast sea of sand with nothing but solitude.  I was trying to navigate my way to the second highest peak, but I kept running into dead ends on the ridge line.  I had no desire to trek through loose sand again, so I turned back.  It was good that I did, as the sand had started to heat.  The sand can get as hot as 150 F (66 C).  I didn't have proper hiking boots, but my steel toed Red Wings.  In the winter those are never warm, and on the sand the toes had started to turn red hot just as I got back.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 13, 2018, 12:55:33 PM
Also I had more of a chance to sample some of the local food this time in Pueblo.  Their cuisine is based around the Pueblo chili; which is somewhat milder than the Hatch chili used in New Mexican cooking.  They turn this into a sauce which they put over everything; eggs, macaroni and cheese, burgers, it's the catsup of Colorado.  I even had chiles rellenos with a Colorado chili sauce.  (A similarly recursive cuisine is found in Flint, Michigan they make hot dogs with a meat sauce made from ground up hot dogs.)  The true Pueblo dish is "The Slopper," which is an open faced hamburger smothered in Colorado green chili and covered with cheese, onions and french fries.  It lives up to its name.

I had a slopper at Gray's Coors Tavern.  At the end of Prohibition Coors franchised with a few taverns throughout the state of Colorado.  This is one of the only ones remaining.  They say a Guinness tastes better in Ireland; a Coors doesn't taste any worse in Colorado.  My brother has a theory that the cooler the beer's sign, the worse the beer; Coors has some really cool bar signs (especially at Gray's where they had signs dating back to the end of Prohibition.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 17, 2018, 12:58:30 PM
The BBC has an article about The Hejaz Railroad (http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20180716-the-railway-that-united-islam) (the one that Lawrence of Arabia blew up sections of.)  There are two sections of it that operate in Jordan with good old fashioned steam powered trains.  The one that the article focuses on goes from Amman to the suburbs; but there is a section that goes through Wadi Rum, where parts of Lawrence of Arabia were shot

I thought it was interesting that the entire Hejaz line is considered a Waqf (a property dedicated to a charitable group.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Syt on July 17, 2018, 01:17:11 PM
Nice. :)

Much of the Ottoman railways were built with German help or by Germans, so you still get random train stations in Turkey that could just as well be somewhere in Germany:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Ere%C4%9Fli_Gar_-_View_from_South.JPG/600px-Ere%C4%9Fli_Gar_-_View_from_South.JPG)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 24, 2018, 02:54:23 PM
Like most electrical engineers I had to take chemistry in college; and like most of them I forgot it all.  Well not entirely all of it; I remember our prof tried to demonstrate the "Fun" side of chemistry by writing the following equation on the board:

NaCl (aq) NaCl (aq) / 7 C

NaCl is the chemical compound for table salt (sodium chloride), aq means that it is aqueous solution; in the case of a salt that is known as a saline solution.  So that is saline, saline over the seven Cs.  (C is the chemical symbol for Carbon.)

So, yes, I forgot mostly about chemistry; (which in turn proved to be a huge pain since I had to learn it all over again fifteen years later when I took the Fundamentals of Engineering test, and they don't test you on dumb chem puns.)  One of the other things I do remember is learning the PV = nRT formula.  P is pressure, V volume, n is the number of moles of gas, R is the ideal gas constant and T is temperature.  To make class "Challenging" profs would switch up the units they used; not into English units, fortunately, but metric has plenty of room for slip up.  Pressure, for instance, can be measured in Pascals, atmospheres, N/cm^2 or mmHg.  In the ideal gas law formula pressure is measured in Pascals, but under most circumstances it's much easier to measure barometric pressure (mmHg.)

I'm in the lab again today and I'm measuring the response of an RF filter over various environmental conditions.  One is pressure, and I have the filter in a pressure chamber.  Their pressure gauges are set to mmHg; since we're almost at sea level our atmospheric pressure is at standard (764 mmHg).  We need to test 200 feet below surface (769 mmHG) and then 12,000 feet AMSL (360 mmHg.)  It's a funny test; the trains are going to be running at most 300 m AMSL, and we're verifying that it will work at the peaks of the Rockies.  Still, it's interesting to see once again something I learned in undergraduate pop up later in my career.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on July 24, 2018, 03:10:32 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 24, 2018, 02:54:23 PM
Like most electrical engineers I had to take chemistry in college; and like most of them I forgot it all.  Well not entirely all of it; I remember our prof tried to demonstrate the "Fun" side of chemistry by writing the following equation on the board:

NaCl (aq) NaCl (aq) / 7 C

NaCl is the chemical compound for table salt (sodium chloride), aq means that it is aqueous solution; in the case of a salt that is known as a saline solution.  So that is saline, saline over the seven Cs.  (C is the chemical symbol for Carbon.)

So, yes, I forgot mostly about chemistry; (which in turn proved to be a huge pain since I had to learn it all over again fifteen years later when I took the Fundamentals of Engineering test, and they don't test you on dumb chem puns.)  One of the other things I do remember is learning the PV = nRT formula.  P is pressure, V volume, n is the number of moles of gas, R is the ideal gas constant and T is temperature.  To make class "Challenging" profs would switch up the units they used; not into English units, fortunately, but metric has plenty of room for slip up.  Pressure, for instance, can be measured in Pascals, atmospheres, N/cm^2 or mmHg.  In the ideal gas law formula pressure is measured in Pascals, but under most circumstances it's much easier to measure barometric pressure (mmHg.)

I'm in the lab again today and I'm measuring the response of an RF filter over various environmental conditions.  One is pressure, and I have the filter in a pressure chamber.  Their pressure gauges are set to mmHg; since we're almost at sea level our atmospheric pressure is at standard (764 mmHg).  We need to test 200 feet below surface (769 mmHG) and then 12,000 feet AMSL (360 mmHg.)  It's a funny test; the trains are going to be running at most 300 m AMSL, and we're verifying that it will work at the peaks of the Rockies.  Still, it's interesting to see once again something I learned in undergraduate pop up later in my career.

Practically the only time I've had something I learned as an undergraduate pop up in my career happened many years ago. I may have told this anecdote before ...

Anyway, I was working at the time for a lawyer who did a lot of municipal law, and one day he got a client in who was a very upset and puzzled Hindu gentleman, recently immigrated from India.

Hos complaint was this: he was organizing a major Hindu community effort to build a religious meeting hall and associated community center in a suburb outside of Toronto. At first, the bureaucrats he was dealing over the phone about municipal planning issues with were very supportive - but he wrote them some innocuous letter on the community organization's letterhead, and all of a sudden they turned inexplicably hostile, throwing all sorts of "bullshit" obstructions in the way of building the project, and refused any offers of meetings to resolve whatever differences or objections they may have had.

The client wondered: were they bigoted against Indians? Why all of a sudden were they basically making the project impossible?

One look at the letter indicated what the likely problem was.

The letterhead proudly proclaimed the community was to be one of "Vedic Aryans". The decorative border on the letterhead consisted of swastikas. It was pretty obvious that someone among the bureaucrats thought these guys were building an "Aryan Nation" community center or something. 

My task was to write out an explanation to the relevant bureaucrats, taken largely from my undergraduate text from an anthropology of religions course, as to what "Vedic Aryans" were (and that they were not neo-Nazis or white supremacists).

The irony is that this particular community were Dravidian, and Dravidians are quite dark skinned as a rule ... but of course, because the bureaucrats had refused all meetings, they had never actually seen these folks! 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on July 24, 2018, 04:54:21 PM
Sav, what do you think of the SLJ900* machines?



*not sure that's the exact designation, I'll check.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 24, 2018, 05:29:14 PM
Quote from: mongers on July 24, 2018, 04:54:21 PM
Sav, what do you think of the SLJ900* machines?



*not sure that's the exact designation, I'll check.

This one? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHY7iKWuBlU)  I've never seen one; but that's amazing.  The most impressive track machine I've seen is the one that replaces rail ties; it picks up the track, slides the old track out and the new one in.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Valmy on July 24, 2018, 08:24:39 PM
Could John Henry have beaten that track machine in a steel driving race?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on July 24, 2018, 08:27:16 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 24, 2018, 02:54:23 PM
Like most electrical engineers I had to take chemistry in college; and like most of them I forgot it all.  Well not entirely all of it; I remember our prof tried to demonstrate the "Fun" side of chemistry by writing the following equation on the board:

NaCl (aq) NaCl (aq) / 7 C

NaCl is the chemical compound for table salt (sodium chloride), aq means that it is aqueous solution; in the case of a salt that is known as a saline solution.  So that is saline, saline over the seven Cs.  (C is the chemical symbol for Carbon.)

So, yes, I forgot mostly about chemistry; (which in turn proved to be a huge pain since I had to learn it all over again fifteen years later when I took the Fundamentals of Engineering test, and they don't test you on dumb chem puns.)  One of the other things I do remember is learning the PV = nRT formula.  P is pressure, V volume, n is the number of moles of gas, R is the ideal gas constant and T is temperature.  To make class "Challenging" profs would switch up the units they used; not into English units, fortunately, but metric has plenty of room for slip up.  Pressure, for instance, can be measured in Pascals, atmospheres, N/cm^2 or mmHg.  In the ideal gas law formula pressure is measured in Pascals, but under most circumstances it's much easier to measure barometric pressure (mmHg.)

I'm in the lab again today and I'm measuring the response of an RF filter over various environmental conditions.  One is pressure, and I have the filter in a pressure chamber.  Their pressure gauges are set to mmHg; since we're almost at sea level our atmospheric pressure is at standard (764 mmHg).  We need to test 200 feet below surface (769 mmHG) and then 12,000 feet AMSL (360 mmHg.)  It's a funny test; the trains are going to be running at most 300 m AMSL, and we're verifying that it will work at the peaks of the Rockies.  Still, it's interesting to see once again something I learned in undergraduate pop up later in my career.

I also never liked chemistry, took it only in high school. Just didn't have an aptitude for it. But it seems that it can be very useful and important. I saw something on a TV show where they created a crude battery to start a vehicle with a dead battery. I assume that's doable in real like.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 25, 2018, 08:15:42 AM
Quote from: Malthus on July 24, 2018, 03:10:32 PM
Practically the only time I've had something I learned as an undergraduate pop up in my career happened many years ago. I may have told this anecdote before ...

Anyway, I was working at the time for a lawyer who did a lot of municipal law, and one day he got a client in who was a very upset and puzzled Hindu gentleman, recently immigrated from India.

Hos complaint was this: he was organizing a major Hindu community effort to build a religious meeting hall and associated community center in a suburb outside of Toronto. At first, the bureaucrats he was dealing over the phone about municipal planning issues with were very supportive - but he wrote them some innocuous letter on the community organization's letterhead, and all of a sudden they turned inexplicably hostile, throwing all sorts of "bullshit" obstructions in the way of building the project, and refused any offers of meetings to resolve whatever differences or objections they may have had.

The client wondered: were they bigoted against Indians? Why all of a sudden were they basically making the project impossible?

One look at the letter indicated what the likely problem was.

The letterhead proudly proclaimed the community was to be one of "Vedic Aryans". The decorative border on the letterhead consisted of swastikas. It was pretty obvious that someone among the bureaucrats thought these guys were building an "Aryan Nation" community center or something. 

My task was to write out an explanation to the relevant bureaucrats, taken largely from my undergraduate text from an anthropology of religions course, as to what "Vedic Aryans" were (and that they were not neo-Nazis or white supremacists).

The irony is that this particular community were Dravidian, and Dravidians are quite dark skinned as a rule ... but of course, because the bureaucrats had refused all meetings, they had never actually seen these folks!

:lol:

I know I've mentioned that one of my (many) Indian classmates in graduate school had floormats with swastika on them.  Since we went to school in the city of Detroit I'm surprised nothing bad ever happened to him or his car.

Even though I do have a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, it's unusual that I'll see anything I learned in undergraduate at my job.  For one thing I ended up in a completely different field than what I specialized in (communications rather than control).  For another most of the problems we were given were done under highly idealized circumstances.  In most problems we could ignore friction, interference and noise; in real life you can't usually do that.  Of course I thought I knew everything about electrical engineering when I got my degree; but I only knew the basics.

Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Barrister on July 25, 2018, 09:58:27 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 25, 2018, 08:15:42 AM
I know I've mentioned that one of my (many) Indian classmates in graduate school had floormats with swastika on them.  Since we went to school in the city of Detroit I'm surprised nothing bad ever happened to him or his car.

One of the residences at U of Manitoba, which dated back to the 1920s, had an intricate tile floor in one of the entrances with a series of repeating swastikas (albeit in the reverse direction to the Nazi one).  Even in the 1990s I was surprised how that had still lasted.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on July 25, 2018, 10:02:00 AM
Quote from: Barrister on July 25, 2018, 09:58:27 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 25, 2018, 08:15:42 AM
I know I've mentioned that one of my (many) Indian classmates in graduate school had floormats with swastika on them.  Since we went to school in the city of Detroit I'm surprised nothing bad ever happened to him or his car.

One of the residences at U of Manitoba, which dated back to the 1920s, had an intricate tile floor in one of the entrances with a series of repeating swastikas (albeit in the reverse direction to the Nazi one).  Even in the 1990s I was surprised how that had still lasted.

There is also this unfortunately named town in Ontario:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 25, 2018, 10:50:03 AM
I prefer the not too common Swastika Trap, as seen in ninja movies such as Ninja the Final Duel:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sogoodreviews.com%2Freviews%2Fnfd2.jpg&hash=0b45d1a8879a3e022ae8ceaa4428bae4e28a04c6)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 25, 2018, 05:20:40 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on July 25, 2018, 10:50:03 AM
I prefer the not too common Swastika Trap, as seen in ninja movies such as Ninja the Final Duel:

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sogoodreviews.com%2Freviews%2Fnfd2.jpg&hash=0b45d1a8879a3e022ae8ceaa4428bae4e28a04c6)

Ooh, looks like it's available in its entirety with subtitles on Youtube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIL_-qpLOlY)  (Is it a film that improves with dubbing?  It looks like it's available in a dubbed version too.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 31, 2018, 01:21:34 PM
I continued my lab work in an Anechoic Chamber:

(https://antennatestlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Kris-In-Anechoic-Chamber-Quad-Ridge-Horn-Antenna.jpg)

While it looks like a trap from an Indiana Jones movie, the pyramids are there to prevent multi-path.  Radio waves behave just like light waves, they can directly travel from the source of generation to the receiver (hence you can see the sun or a flame, or a light) or they bounce off a surface and travel to the receiver (which is how you see everything else.)  This is how your cellular phone works; you don't usually have line of site to the tower, instead you get a signal that has bounced off the ground or another surface.

An anechoic chamber is designed to prevent this bounce; the pyramids cause the radio waves to bounce in oblique directions until it is absorbed by the material.  We use this when we need a measured amount of radio frequency going from a transmitter to a receiver; in my case we were bombarding a radio filter with radio frequency.  The one I was using (and all the ones I've ever seen) are built inside Faraday Cages; in order to minimize outside radiation as well.  So being in one is a little like being sealed in a tomb.

The concept (as you might expect from the name) comes originally from sound recording.  The pyramids were originally designed to prevent sound echo.  I've never tried it; but they're so quiet that you're supposed to be able to hear your pulse if you spend a few minutes in one.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on July 31, 2018, 01:35:40 PM
You look very different from the other pictures you've posted of yourself.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 31, 2018, 02:07:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 31, 2018, 01:35:40 PM
You look very different from the other pictures you've posted of yourself.

You'd be amazed by the health benefits of sunshine and unpasteurized orange juice.


Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 31, 2018, 02:41:03 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 25, 2018, 05:20:40 PM
Ooh, looks like it's available in its entirety with subtitles on Youtube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIL_-qpLOlY)  (Is it a film that improves with dubbing?  It looks like it's available in a dubbed version too.)

It's not like there is an original version, since all was post-sync'ed, so I would go for the dubbed version.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 31, 2018, 03:32:53 PM
Sav, feel free to flash us your orange juice augmented boobs.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on August 17, 2018, 04:29:42 PM
I was, yet again, out in Pueblo at the Siemen's manufacturing facility to check a couple duplexers on a locomotive.  It was cheaper and quicker to fly me to Colorado then to tear apart a locomotive and ship one back to Florida; or to buy a new one from a manufacturer.

Siemen's Manager:  You came an awful long way for this.
Savonarola:  I can show you how check the duplexers.
Siemen's Manger:  That's outside our scope, and really outside our area of expertise.
Savonarola:  Don't you have any radio engineers? :unsure:
Siemen's manager:  We will when the merger goes through.
Savonarola:   :glare:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 25, 2018, 03:16:58 PM
When we divorced, GE kept their "CAB Signaling" products.  The most significant one of these is called Distributed Power System (DPS).  When the system is installed locomotives can be installed throughout the train and different parts of the train can accelerate or brake at different rates.  This is beneficial when, say, one part of the train is going uphill and the other part is going down.  Now that the price of coal has recovered, somewhat, Drummond has ordered this system for their new locomotives.

Since both our train control product and DPS have to work together we had to check out the locomotives with GE.  Originally our plan was to check this out at the locomotive manufacturing plant in Brazil.  I could check out most of the radio system at the plant, so I got prepared to go to Brazil.  We got started on getting a work visa to Brazil; and then they changed the laws so that anyone doing technical work had to apply for year long residency.  So we filled out paperwork for year long residency; I had to supply a passport, birth certificate, marriage license, proof of employment, bank statements and a whole host of papers filled out in triplicate.  I got my visa, and then got paperwork to import test equipment into the country; only to discover that, in Brazil you have to have professional equipment shipped two weeks in advance and it has to remain in country for two weeks after.  That was a non-starter for me; my tools are fragile, valuable and needed in my day-to-day job.

Our project manager, Bill, cancelled the entire trip shortly thereafter.  Throughout the build process he had constantly gotten on the ordering department about the long lead items for the locomotives.  That's what he told them every week, long lead items, need to be ordered right away.  To his amazement every long lead item got ordered on time and for once it looked like the locomotives would be ready for him to test when he was in Brazil.  Then he asked the ordering department about the regular lead time items.

"The what?" asked our ordering department.

So we would all be testing the products in Colombia.  Bill, in the meantime, had gotten a promotion, he's now in charge of Alstom's strategy for Positive Train Control for North America.  This job takes him up to our Rochester office frequently.

Bill:  And their office is like the United Nations; no one there is from America.
Savonarola:  Bill, did you notice a quarter of our Melbourne office is from Brazil?

Bill is a dyed-in-the-wool-Fox-news-watching-Trump-man; seeing so many immigrants at once was a shock to him; but about half our office is foreign-born.  I guess he just didn't notice it here since it's something he sees every day.

In any event Bill will no longer be the project manager for Colombia.  (He kept saying this would be his last trip, but I've heard that song before.)  So this time he brought the usual stand-bys; me for radio, Chris as our technician and Max for onboard; but also a couple additional on-board engineers, Edwin, who despite speaking fluent Spanish was never part of the FeNoCo project and Patrick, a recent college graduate on his first trip to the field.

Edwin is from Puerto Rico, so some of his Spanish is different than what they spoke in Colombia.  One night a waitress listed out the deserts including "mousse de maracuyá", and he looked puzzled; but with a little bit of talk between him, the waitress and the gringos we were able to translate "maracuyá" for him as "Passionfruit."  In Puerto Rico passionfruit is "Plancha."

Everyone was going into war-stories with Patrick; trying to impress upon him the hardships we had faced in Colombia (or the projects Edwin had worked on.)  I think he saw through us; if it was really that terrible in Colombia we wouldn't keep going back.

Bill said a few times that he would be sending Edwin or Patrick down on their own.  I thought at first, "Isn't Patrick a little young for that," but I realized when I was his age our lawyers were putting me in front of zoning boards as an expert on radio.

The government has invested heavily in tourism in Santa Marta over the years, today it's almost unrecognizable from when we first came.  The roadways are wide, and the traffic moves around much better.  There aren't enormous piles of garbage anymore.  The slums near the roadways are gone.  A number of the hotels that had been halfway built for years are now starting to be completed.  Alas, the government has been cracking down on soft drugs a bit more and there is no more "Canibus".  The airport has expanded and has a facility for passport control now; but it isn't operational yet.  We're expecting flights from Miami in the near future.

We now stay at the Hilton Garden in downtown Santa Marta; since we were working in the ports it's a less convenient location than Irotama, but we get reward points.  It's a recent build with spacious rooms and a view of the bay of Santa Marta.  Bill still wanted more; I'm not sure what since running hot water is a luxury good in Santa Marta.  He said that, despite insisting he was never coming back, next time he wanted to stay at the nearby Marriott.

We got to work at Drummond the first thing Monday morning; and naturally we were delayed at the gate.  It was my turn to not be entered into the system; but, to my amazement it took only about ten minutes to get me in and through the gates.  Safety training took only about half an hour (Watch out for trains and don't step on the iguanas) and we got on the trains right away.  This was much faster than I had anticipated; I hadn't even brought my radios.  Most of the work we do is verifying that the wires we have in the cab go to the correct wire in the engine compartment.  To communicate between the two systems that first day we had to use the Colombian PA, where the cab guy shouts out the wire he's testing, then an intermediate or two have to repeat the engine to the guy in the engine compartment.  The radio work takes lower priority, and I have to wait until people get out of the way so I can test the antennas.  So I spent most of the day relaying shouts between the testers.

We got our system up.  GE had a couple engineers there from Brazil; but their system wasn't coming up.  We blamed them, they blamed us; there is another interface on the locomotive from New York Brake, so we ended up agreeing that it was their fault.

Max also expects that he won't be coming back to Colombia, now that Bill won't be.  So we had to do a "Greatest hits" tour of the restaurants.  Every one turned out to be a disappointment for him.  They didn't have Tanqueray at the Bogota Beer Company, so the Gin and Tonics weren't as good as he remembered.  The seafood at Donde Chucho wasn't as fresh as he remembered.  The steaks at Barakuka weren't as tender as he remembered.  Everywhere we went the limonada de yerbabuena was too minty and the limonada de coco too tart.  I hope Edwin and Patrick didn't take him too seriously.

It's the rainy season in coastal Colombia and there was a bad storm in Santa Marta the day we left.  It delayed the flight coming in for an hour.  We finally got up to board, but then were turned back at the door of the plane, the pilot said we couldn't leave since the runway was wet.  So we waited and waited, and new storms were approaching.  So they risked the wet runway and we made it to Bogota without incident, three hours late.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on October 25, 2018, 03:23:01 PM
I've missed this thread ...
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Tonitrus on October 25, 2018, 04:16:46 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 25, 2018, 03:16:58 PM
Now that the price of coal has recovered, somewhat, Drummond has ordered this system for their new locomotives.

With the small-scale hype about electric semi-trucks, I would think that long-haul freight trains would be thought of as even more conducive to being run off electric.  Simple traffic management, much more centrally managed, interchangeable cars (and you could just fill one or two with batteries and swap those out as needed)...I'd think they'd be further ahead of the curve.

But then...I imagine train management is run pretty old-school, and of course, upgrade costs.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 25, 2018, 04:49:20 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 25, 2018, 04:16:46 PM
With the small-scale hype about electric semi-trucks, I would think that long-haul freight trains would be thought of as even more conducive to being run off electric.  Simple traffic management, much more centrally managed, interchangeable cars (and you could just fill one or two with batteries and swap those out as needed)...I'd think they'd be further ahead of the curve.

But then...I imagine train management is run pretty old-school, and of course, upgrade costs.

Locomotives are actually run by electricity; the diesel engines are there to charge the batteries.

Alstom (plug!) is developing a locomotive that uses hydrogen in place of diesel.  I haven't heard anything about going battery only; I'm really not sure about the feasibility of that.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 26, 2018, 02:28:29 PM
Alstom has two passenger train projects in Toronto; the Toronto Transit Commission or TTC and Metrolinx.  Most of the work on the lines is done out of our Toronto offices; but network and communication is handled out of Rochester, New York office.  They don't have radio engineers, so when need for radio surveys came up on both projects I got assigned.

The first project I went up for was TTC.  In this case we're providing a 5 GHz WiFi train to wayside communication system.  They have the prototype built right now, but TTC wants to expand; so we were going to do a measurement of the existing coverage and then look at new antenna locations.

The first step was to get a work permit for Canada.  In the past Alstom had played fast and loose with the visa rules, and the border guards were getting tired of us.  It didn't help that our invitation letters were obviously lies; no one would believe that we were coming up on Friday afternoons for weekend meetings; especially not with a government agency.  Our people at the border had to wait longer and longer.  No one had gotten sent back yet, but it looked like we were getting to that point, so every American on the project applied for a work permit.

The process is nowhere near as onerous as Brazil; at least not for "Exceptional people."  In the eyes of NAFTA degreed engineers are "Exceptional people," so all I needed was some work and educational documents and I was on my way.  The catch, though, is that you don't get your work permit until you are at the port of entry; so I arrived at Pearson Airport with just an application and I walked upon an enormous line for immigration.

I arrived in August, so most everyone in line was a student, or a guardian of a student.  Almost everyone was Chinese as well.  I stood behind a Chinese girl's conservatory; every one of them had hand carried their instruments.  As the time wore on I began feeling sorry for the brass section as the weight of their horns started taking its toll.

The woman guiding the line spoke both English and Mandarin.  Sometimes the immigration officers needed a translator to Hindi or Arabic, but mostly she supplied the translation.  The interview processes were lengthy, as the officers detailed what sort of work the students could or could not do, how long they could stay, how many hours the guardian could work and the like.  I was surprised when I presented my paperwork to the immigration officer, he thumbed through it, never even looking at the back sides of the pages and then told me it would be one hundred fifty-five Canadian dollars.

My next task was to find the lead communication engineer for the project; Troy.  Troy is out of our Rochester office; he doesn't have a company phone for fear that it will become an electronic tether.  For international travel Alstom supplies a number of project phones.  Troy arrived in Canada only to discover that international project phones didn't have an international plan activated.  Only by borrowing a stranger's phone was he able to get in touch.  Fortunately he's about 6'6", and towered over everyone else at the airport; so I was able to locate him even though we had never met.

We stay at a Holiday Inn just a block or so north of the heart of Toronto, the Eaton Centre.  The hotel is pleasant enough; though aging.  My pass key didn't open my door properly.  After about twenty minutes of elevator trips and dealing with maintenance and security they just gave me another room.  I did get free breakfast for the week out of the deal; but we started so early every day that I didn't get a chance to use it.

Troy had driven in from Rochester with a rented car.  There was a parking garage under the hotel and you put your parking ticket into a reader every time you come or go; except Troy could never remember his parking ticket, so he would have to contact parking maintenance.  Since we were usually leaving around five in the morning there would be no one there.  So he or I would have to chase someone down so we could leave the parking garage every single morning.

My first day there I went through inductions.  Canada does a great deal more in terms of safety training than Colombia; but really there's only a couple hours' worth of things to go over.  The trainer, though, had been told that he had to make the class last for six hours.  So we took field trips to the yard to learn how to safely walk over train tracks.  We took breaks where he showed us the TTC logo and how it had changed over the years.  We learned that staring at arc flashes is a bad idea.  Then we played a full game of TTC Safety Jeopardy.

He did have a Jeopardy style program all about TTC safety.  Since all of us were contractors, no one cared and we just answered the questions.  The instructor told us that everyone in the company has to take the training twice a year; and the Jeopardy game gets heated.  There's no reward or anything for scoring the most points, but that doesn't stop tempers from running high.  He once had to call security on a group; which he found funny since half the group he was training was security.

The instructor referred to the area between a double track as "The devil's strip", so that was the cool Canadian slang I picked up.

One thing I did learn is that Canada, for the most part, uses the US standard gauge for track 4' 8 ½", or 1435 mm.  TTC has a gauge all their own; 4' 10 7/8" or 1495 mm.  This comes from the tram era; TTC didn't want anyone but their own trams running on the tram line; so they created a gauge that no one else uses, and kept it to the present day.

(This isn't as much of a hardship as it sounds.  The wheel base of a train, called "The bogie" can be swapped out.  You can have any cars you want, you just need to put the correct bogie.)

The other weird thing was how they measured track distance.  In rail this is called "Chainage" because it's derived from the surveyor's chains.  Every eighty chains would be a mile, which would be marked by a mile post.  Your milepost, measured from some origin point, gives you your location on the track.  In most countries this is now done in terms of kilometers and distance is referred to as Kpost which is then followed by three decimal digits for meters.  In the United States we use mile posts with three digits for thousandth of a mile.  At TTC they use feet as their standard; there's no decimal, it's just the number of feet you've traveled.  I don't know how widespread that is in Canada, but it seemed like a strange system.

I passed the certification test and was ready to go.  The next day we were back in the yard to set up our plan for the walk.  Then we went to the Alstom project office to pick up the equipment we needed.  Troy has been working on this project for nearly a decade, so he knew everyone in the office.  We had to stop at every last office in order to say hi to every person on the project and have a gossip.  It was like he was running for mayor of the Alstom office.

The next day we did the walk.  I had to go through a site specific training for the safety walk, and was joined by two interns who had been working with TTC.  They had spent all summer in the office, but the instructor promised them they could go out to the yard on their last day.  One of the interns was a young lady, originally from the Philippines, but had lived in Canada since high school.  She was asking me about working for Alstom:

"Do you travel a lot for work?"

I told her I did and some of the places I had been.

"So when you travel like this, does Alstom pay for your hotel?"

"Well, yes, hotel and meals."

"That is so cool!"

Was I really that young once?  In any event we had a track supervisor and Troy's nemesis, the TTC communication supervisor with us.  Troy insists that the comm supervisor is a genuine ogre who is forever plaguing him.  He just seemed grouchy to me; but anyhow we had five people watching Troy and I walk around a train yard; Troy said that was a small number of observers by TTC standards.

Our main test was taking this six meter pole with an antenna on it (to simulate the height of a train) and walk back and forth to see where we saw coverage from the existing system.  I showed Troy how to use the spectrum analyzer; but that meant I was the one carrying the pole.

Our test was successful, and we had budgeted an additional day in case there had been problems.  Troy had planned to work; but I decided to see the Royal Ontario Museum.

"You can take the car, I'll work from the hotel," Troy said.

"That's okay, I'll take the train."

"Are you sure?"

In all his time in Canada he had never ridden on the TTC trains; other than the test trains in the yard.  This, I have found, is common among rail engineers; they always want to drive.

The Royal Ontario Museum is great, by the way, sort of Canada's answer to the British Museum.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on October 26, 2018, 02:34:01 PM
So I can blame you when im late now?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Berkut on October 26, 2018, 02:37:30 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 26, 2018, 02:28:29 PM
Alstom has two passenger train projects in Toronto; the Toronto Transit Commission or TTC and Metrolinx.  Most of the work on the lines is done out of our Toronto offices; but network and communication is handled out of Rochester, New York office.  They don't have radio engineers, so when need for radio surveys came up on both projects I got assigned.

The first project I went up for was TTC.  In this case we're providing a 5 GHz WiFi train to wayside communication system.  They have the prototype built right now, but TTC wants to expand; so we were going to do a measurement of the existing coverage and then look at new antenna locations.

The first step was to get a work permit for Canada.  In the past Alstom had played fast and loose with the visa rules, and the border guards were getting tired of us.  It didn't help that our invitation letters were obviously lies; no one would believe that we were coming up on Friday afternoons for weekend meetings; especially not with a government agency.  Our people at the border had to wait longer and longer.  No one had gotten sent back yet, but it looked like we were getting to that point, so every American on the project applied for a work permit.

The process is nowhere near as onerous as Brazil; at least not for "Exceptional people."  In the eyes of NAFTA degreed engineers are "Exceptional people," so all I needed was some work and educational documents and I was on my way.  The catch, though, is that you don't get your work permit until you are at the port of entry; so I arrived at Pearson Airport with just an application and I walked upon an enormous line for immigration.

I arrived in August, so most everyone in line was a student, or a guardian of a student.  Almost everyone was Chinese as well.  I stood behind a Chinese girl's conservatory; every one of them had hand carried their instruments.  As the time wore on I began feeling sorry for the brass section as the weight of their horns started taking its toll.

The woman guiding the line spoke both English and Mandarin.  Sometimes the immigration officers needed a translator to Hindi or Arabic, but mostly she supplied the translation.  The interview processes were lengthy, as the officers detailed what sort of work the students could or could not do, how long they could stay, how many hours the guardian could work and the like.  I was surprised when I presented my paperwork to the immigration officer, he thumbed through it, never even looking at the back sides of the pages and then told me it would be one hundred fifty-five Canadian dollars.

My next task was to find the lead communication engineer for the project; Troy.  Troy is out of our Rochester office; he doesn't have a company phone for fear that it will become an electronic tether.  For international travel Alstom supplies a number of project phones.  Troy arrived in Canada only to discover that international project phones didn't have an international plan activated.  Only by borrowing a stranger's phone was he able to get in touch.  Fortunately he's about 6'6", and towered over everyone else at the airport; so I was able to locate him even though we had never met.

We stay at a Holiday Inn just a block or so north of the heart of Toronto, the Eaton Centre.  The hotel is pleasant enough; though aging.  My pass key didn't open my door properly.  After about twenty minutes of elevator trips and dealing with maintenance and security they just gave me another room.  I did get free breakfast for the week out of the deal; but we started so early every day that I didn't get a chance to use it.

Troy had driven in from Rochester with a rented car.  There was a parking garage under the hotel and you put your parking ticket into a reader every time you come or go; except Troy could never remember his parking ticket, so he would have to contact parking maintenance.  Since we were usually leaving around five in the morning there would be no one there.  So he or I would have to chase someone down so we could leave the parking garage every single morning.

My first day there I went through inductions.  Canada does a great deal more in terms of safety training than Colombia; but really there's only a couple hours' worth of things to go over.  The trainer, though, had been told that he had to make the class last for six hours.  So we took field trips to the yard to learn how to safely walk over train tracks.  We took breaks where he showed us the TTC logo and how it had changed over the years.  We learned that staring at arc flashes is a bad idea.  Then we played a full game of TTC Safety Jeopardy.

He did have a Jeopardy style program all about TTC safety.  Since all of us were contractors, no one cared and we just answered the questions.  The instructor told us that everyone in the company has to take the training twice a year; and the Jeopardy game gets heated.  There's no reward or anything for scoring the most points, but that doesn't stop tempers from running high.  He once had to call security on a group; which he found funny since half the group he was training was security.

The instructor referred to the area between a double track as "The devil's strip", so that was the cool Canadian slang I picked up.

One thing I did learn is that Canada, for the most part, uses the US standard gauge for track 4' 8 ½", or 1435 mm.  TTC has a gauge all their own; 4' 10 7/8" or 1495 mm.  This comes from the tram era; TTC didn't want anyone but their own trams running on the tram line; so they created a gauge that no one else uses, and kept it to the present day.

(This isn't as much of a hardship as it sounds.  The wheel base of a train, called "The bogie" can be swapped out.  You can have any cars you want, you just need to put the correct bogie.)

The other weird thing was how they measured track distance.  In rail this is called "Chainage" because it's derived from the surveyor's chains.  Every eighty chains would be a mile, which would be marked by a mile post.  Your milepost, measured from some origin point, gives you your location on the track.  In most countries this is now done in terms of kilometers and distance is referred to as Kpost which is then followed by three decimal digits for meters.  In the United States we use mile posts with three digits for thousandth of a mile.  At TTC they use feet as their standard; there's no decimal, it's just the number of feet you've traveled.  I don't know how widespread that is in Canada, but it seemed like a strange system.

I passed the certification test and was ready to go.  The next day we were back in the yard to set up our plan for the walk.  Then we went to the Alstom project office to pick up the equipment we needed.  Troy has been working on this project for nearly a decade, so he knew everyone in the office.  We had to stop at every last office in order to say hi to every person on the project and have a gossip.  It was like he was running for mayor of the Alstom office.

The next day we did the walk.  I had to go through a site specific training for the safety walk, and was joined by two interns who had been working with TTC.  They had spent all summer in the office, but the instructor promised them they could go out to the yard on their last day.  One of the interns was a young lady, originally from the Philippines, but had lived in Canada since high school.  She was asking me about working for Alstom:

"Do you travel a lot for work?"

I told her I did and some of the places I had been.

"So when you travel like this, does Alstom pay for your hotel?"

"Well, yes, hotel and meals."

"That is so cool!"

Was I really that young once?  In any event we had a track supervisor and Troy's nemesis, the TTC communication supervisor with us.  Troy insists that the comm supervisor is a genuine ogre who is forever plaguing him.  He just seemed grouchy to me; but anyhow we had five people watching Troy and I walk around a train yard; Troy said that was a small number of observers by TTC standards.

Our main test was taking this six meter pole with an antenna on it (to simulate the height of a train) and walk back and forth to see where we saw coverage from the existing system.  I showed Troy how to use the spectrum analyzer; but that meant I was the one carrying the pole.

Our test was successful, and we had budgeted an additional day in case there had been problems.  Troy had planned to work; but I decided to see the Royal Ontario Museum.

"You can take the car, I'll work from the hotel," Troy said.

"That's okay, I'll take the train."

"Are you sure?"

In all his time in Canada he had never ridden on the TTC trains; other than the test trains in the yard.  This, I have found, is common among rail engineers; they always want to drive.

The Royal Ontario Museum is great, by the way, sort of Canada's answer to the British Museum.

If someone described this post to me I would assume it must be terribly boring.

How is it so interesting instead?

Sav, you missed your calling somehow. You need to write more. A lot more.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on October 26, 2018, 02:43:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on October 26, 2018, 02:37:30 PM


If someone described this post to me I would assume it must be terribly boring.

How is it so interesting instead?

Sav, you missed your calling somehow. You need to write more. A lot more.

Heartily agreed.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on October 26, 2018, 02:44:44 PM
Anyway, Sav, if you are ever in Toronto at loose ends, let us know and we can do a Toronto Languish meet-up.  :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Berkut on October 26, 2018, 03:25:46 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 26, 2018, 02:44:44 PM
Anyway, Sav, if you are ever in Toronto at loose ends, let us know and we can do a Toronto Languish meet-up.  :)

:yeah:

Give me some notice and I could come up.

Or Sav, if you are in the Rochester office...
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 26, 2018, 03:51:52 PM
And I can't even get the Torontonians to bite on the line about the mall being the heart of Toronto.   :(

;)

Thanks Malthus and Berkut.  I'll let you know if I'll be heading back.  It's going to depend on the type of work that I have if I'll be able to meet up.

At least wait until our system is operational before you start blaming me, HVC.   :P
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on October 26, 2018, 04:13:16 PM
I'm efficient, i'll blame you before since past experience has shown my i'll be needing to blame someone :D

And you liked our museum, so you got a pass on the mall thing :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on November 09, 2018, 05:06:59 PM
A GPS broadcasts an ID and a time message.  Your GPS receiver takes its time and the difference between the once received to determine the distance from the satellite.  Then it takes the ID of the satellite and calculates its position relative to the satelite.  Once it can view four satellites it can determine its location.  With more than four satellites it can calculate the time error from its own internal clock.  This is significant in telecommunications in that we can get the accuracy of the cesium clocks on the satellites for the price of the quartz clock located in a GPS receiver.  Digital communication systems all require some sort of timing synchronization in order to keep multiple broadcasters from interfering with one another.

GPS obviously requires the view of the sky; if there's too many obstructions you won't have enough satellites for timing.  At Union Station in Chicago, for instance, we've had to rig up a repeater system to get GPS in the subterranean loading docks.  Even with some sky view we might not have enough satellites.  In order to verify that we can get GPS signal at a location we do a GPS survey.  This is how my second trip to Toronto started.

Alstom has a project with Metrolinx; the transport service for the greater Toronto area.  Our current project with them is to help update their infrastructure at Union Station.  They're installing two new bungalows along the tracks which will have GPS.  A bungalow is a shelter which has rail equipment in it; you've probably passed by thousands of them and never paid attention to them.  If you go past a railroad crossing you'll almost always see a little hut on one side of the track, that's the bungalow.  In that case the rail signaling that operates the gates is located there.

Alstom is a subcontractor to the rail construction company PNR Railworks.  As with all other rail companies you have to go through inductions in order to be able to go on site.  Inexplicably PNR only offers training on Wednesday evenings.  So I got the Wednesday morning Air Canada flight out of Orlando.  The flight was absolutely deserted; usually flights into and out of Orlando are filled to the brim with screaming kids, but there was only six people on this flight.

Unfortunately the PNR office is in the Port Lands area where public transportation never goes; so I had to rent a car.  In the 1930s the city of Detroit widened all its boulevards; then the city declined so that today it's a city of 500,000 with roads designed for a city of 2,000,000.  Toronto is about the opposite, a city of 3,000,000 with roads that look like they were designed for a city or 500,000.  Once you get off the highway it's a slow go through downtown.  There's no roadside parking either, so the right lane inevitably turns into the temporary parking lane.

The Port Lands are a different world.  I was traveling through the Distillery district with its lovely old buildings, crossed over the bridge onto the island and there was nothing but open fields and warehouses.  In Detroit this is where we'd dump the bodies, stash the weapons and hide the getaway car.

The PNR field office was a series of temporary shelters.  The training, this time, was definitely more blue collar than the TTC training.  The instructor explained where we could smoke (everywhere), but to make sure that we waited for the Metrolinx safety inspector to fire one up before we did.

Most of the people in the training were new hires, and most came from a highway construction background.  The instructor explained the difference between highway and rail construction.  On the highways you start off fresh and at the last hour or two you slow down as you fade.  On rail you dick around for two hours as you deal with the safety and the inevitable changes to the plan; and then have to rush at the end as they get ready to activate the track.

The other thing that was unique to the project is that Metrolinx's end customer is the general public.  Highway construction is too; but there you can just come out and admit you don't care.  Passenger rail isn't like that any issues with the public can result in a public relations disaster; so when the homeless hop the fence and ask you for smokes you have to treat them with courtesy.

I also learned that the rail corridor comes under federal jurisdiction in Canada.  The instructor explained that one night, after bar time, they had a belligerent drunk jump the fence.  He tried to pick fights, but they all went into their trucks, locked the door and called the federal police.  The police came beat the drunk into unconsciousness and dumped him over the fence so the provincial police could deal with him.  The class seemed impressed by that, like I said it was very blue collar.

The next day I made it to our project office.  There isn't a single Alstom office in Toronto; the TTC project office is somewhere in the Chasidic ghetto; the Metrolinx project office is in the financial district; at the top of the CIBC tower.  There must be quite a bit of money in this project as PNR has the rest of the floor.

I was met at the ground floor by the signaling engineers for the project, Wayne and Steve.  They decided I didn't need to get a badge to get into the office, I could just tail gate behind them.  We tried that and shut down an entire bank of elevators.  So we went to the reception desk and fessed up and I got a badge.  The offices are opulent, all granite, marble and tall ceilings; exactly what you'd expect from the top floor of something that calls itself the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.  We were all in jeans and hardhats, so we got some strange looks from the bankers as we got on the elevator.

I saw our old Amtrak project manager at the office, Pete.  My co-worker Glen has joked that the only way off the Amtrak project was to quit, die or move to another country; Pete chose the least painful route.  He asked me how Amtrak was going.  "About the same as when you left," I replied.

PNR sent a van to take us to the job site.  The driver introduced himself by saying "You can call me Chris, or you can call me one-eye, I answer to either one."  On the night of his high school graduation he got jumped outside a bar by some of his former classmates, and they beat him so bad he lost an eye.  They all got probation, but he got over it.

The firs site was fairly close to downtown and in a ditch, so I had some concern that it wouldn't pass.  It turned out okay; because we were on the north side of the tracks.  GPS satellites are almost always between 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south latitude.  So, in most of the northern hemisphere if you have a fairly clear view of the southern sky you will have GPS coverage.

I set up the GPS receiver and showed everyone the satellites on the world map.  They were impressed for about five minutes, and then just sat around and bullshitted the rest of the day.  Hot topics: Who owns Canada's immortal soul, Tim's or McCafe?  (McCafe was the clear winner.)  Would you want your children to go into construction?  (The answer was a resounding "No;" one of the team members noted, "Well, that's why we have to keep getting immigrants.")  And political correctness is tearing Canada apart; there's a type of trackside rail signal called a "Dwarf signal" because it is low to the ground – only they can't call them "Dwarf signals" anymore since that's insensitive to dwarfs, (or perhaps dwarves.)

While this was going on I took the incline of the surrounding clutter.  This is the project I had gotten the surveyors compass for.  I'd position myself at ten degree intervals, and use the inclinometer to gauge the angle of the tallest obstruction in my path.  That determines how much of the sky is being cut off; but since we already had several hours of GPS reading this was mostly just something to make the report to the customer longer.

We did the same thing the next day, but we were in an open field so there wasn't any issues.  We were done by lunch time; so the Patrick took us to St. Lawrence Market, Toronto's historic farmer's market.  It's kind of rickety looking, but has all sorts of vendors with all sorts of goods and produce.   Steve had a favorite pulled pork sandwich vendor there.  If I was really from Florida I'd probably tell you that it was nowhere near as good as real barbecue; but being from Michigan I thought it was surprisingly good.

With my afternoon off I went and saw the Art Gallery of Ontario; which has an excellent collection of the old Dutch Masters, a decent collection of post Impressionists and then there's the world's largest collection of Canadian Art.  The curators seem to want to display all of the latter, so it's room after room after room of Canadian art.  The art is... well... maybe Canada's greatest artistic triumphs lie ahead of her.

I had another early flight out of Toronto.  I left so early that the streets were filled with prostitutes in glittery body-suits and drunken men trying to haggle with them.  The flight home was nowhere near as nice as the one to Toronto; it was over spilling with cranky teenagers, wound up children and frazzled parents.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on November 09, 2018, 06:15:33 PM
You want truly Canadian art, don't go to the Art Gallery of Ontario ... most of the Canadian stuff there is mediocre at best.

Better to travel slightly out of town to the McMichael Art Gallery, which has a big collection of the Group of Seven and lots of native art (if that's your thing).

The best part of the Art Gallery of Ontario is its collection of ship models in the basement, and its one gallery of medieval stuff.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on November 09, 2018, 08:05:45 PM
Quote from: Malthus on November 09, 2018, 06:15:33 PM
You want truly Canadian art, don't go to the Art Gallery of Ontario ... most of the Canadian stuff there is mediocre at best.

Better to travel slightly out of town to the McMichael Art Gallery, which has a big collection of the Group of Seven and lots of native art (if that's your thing).

The best part of the Art Gallery of Ontario is its collection of ship models in the basement, and its one gallery of medieval stuff.

Yeah the Medieval Canada displays have been an inspiration to Timmay for years.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on November 11, 2018, 10:00:01 AM
Quote from: mongers on November 09, 2018, 08:05:45 PM

Yeah the Medieval Canada displays have been an inspiration to Timmay for years.

:P

They have some amazing carved rosary beads. They even did a show on those, importing others from around the world. Just great works.

These are the size of beads, but the carving is absolutely perfect!

(https://i.imgur.com/76PPifc.jpg)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on November 11, 2018, 01:23:25 PM
 :cool:

That's pretty damn impressive, nice to see.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on November 18, 2018, 05:12:18 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on October 25, 2018, 04:49:20 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 25, 2018, 04:16:46 PM
With the small-scale hype about electric semi-trucks, I would think that long-haul freight trains would be thought of as even more conducive to being run off electric.  Simple traffic management, much more centrally managed, interchangeable cars (and you could just fill one or two with batteries and swap those out as needed)...I'd think they'd be further ahead of the curve.

But then...I imagine train management is run pretty old-school, and of course, upgrade costs.

Locomotives are actually run by electricity; the diesel engines are there to charge the batteries.

Alstom (plug!) is developing a locomotive that uses hydrogen in place of diesel.  I haven't heard anything about going battery only; I'm really not sure about the feasibility of that.

We had our semi-annual sales meeting; and while it was mostly blather, our leadership mentioned a couple things related to this.  One concept that Alstom is developing is to put a locomotive with just batteries in consyst with 3 other locomotives.  That is supposed to reduce fuel use by 10%.  (That would be for freight, since three locomotives is a lot of pulling power.)'

The other is that the hydrogen train is already running in (where else?) Germany: Oh the humanity! (https://www.alstom.com/coradia-ilint-worlds-1st-hydrogen-powered-train)


Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Liep on November 23, 2018, 08:54:38 AM
I'm now qualified to perform test runs in our Alstom/Siemens trains on safety systems that Siemens installed. It's only 3 years delayed but next spring it'll surely work, I imagine I'll be talking to a lot of Germans in the next few months.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Brain on November 23, 2018, 09:43:21 AM
You don't simply talk into Mordor.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on November 23, 2018, 08:18:08 PM
Quote from: Liep on November 23, 2018, 08:54:38 AM
I'm now qualified to perform test runs in our Alstom/Siemens trains on safety systems that Siemens installed. It's only 3 years delayed but next spring it'll surely work, I imagine I'll be talking to a lot of Germans in the next few months.

Nice, this sounds interesting and quite involved to be qualified. Congrats!
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on December 07, 2018, 02:15:36 PM
Quote from: Liep on November 23, 2018, 08:54:38 AM
I'm now qualified to perform test runs in our Alstom/Siemens trains on safety systems that Siemens installed. It's only 3 years delayed but next spring it'll surely work, I imagine I'll be talking to a lot of Germans in the next few months.

Congratulations, Liep

Three years delayed is early for us; Siemens must have been doing the bulk of the work.   ;)

Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Barrister on December 07, 2018, 03:30:08 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on December 07, 2018, 02:15:36 PM
Quote from: Liep on November 23, 2018, 08:54:38 AM
I'm now qualified to perform test runs in our Alstom/Siemens trains on safety systems that Siemens installed. It's only 3 years delayed but next spring it'll surely work, I imagine I'll be talking to a lot of Germans in the next few months.

Congratulations, Liep

Three years delayed is early for us; Siemens must have been doing the bulk of the work.   ;)

Edmonton had extended our LRT system to the Northwest.  System was supposed to be ready by 2013, but finally opened December 2014 but only on a limited basis.  The signalling system didn't mesh with the existing network.  Now in December 2018 Thales is finally saying they have all the bugs worked out, but the city still isn't sure and trains continue to run on reduced capacity (3 car trains instead of 5, running every 15 minutes).
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Larch on December 07, 2018, 03:38:36 PM
My brother has been involved recently in a Siemens contract to deliver new trains for Bangkok's mass transit system. They were ordered in 2016, were built in Turkey under supervision from Siemens' Munich and Vienna offices (my brother had to travel to Ankara every couple of months for the last year and a half or so), they started delivering them this summer, and they started running this month.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on December 11, 2018, 05:25:56 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 07, 2018, 03:30:08 PM
Edmonton had extended our LRT system to the Northwest.  System was supposed to be ready by 2013, but finally opened December 2014 but only on a limited basis.  The signalling system didn't mesh with the existing network.  Now in December 2018 Thales is finally saying they have all the bugs worked out, but the city still isn't sure and trains continue to run on reduced capacity (3 car trains instead of 5, running every 15 minutes).

On open track we have to put together an enormous report called a "Safety case" which demonstrates that our system meets safety standards.  This has to be approved by the government (Federal Rail Administration in the United States, Agencia Nacional de Infraestructura in Colombia.)  I've never worked LRT, but I'm surprised they don't have a similar qualifying system.

Usually in passenger rail we experience schedule delays since the existing service takes precedence over our work, so we have difficulty getting resources when issues arise on the existing service.  In mining we're more prone to cost overruns.  So what happens is that both the client and we put together enormous lists of liquidated damages; then our lawyers meet and agree to forget the whole thing. 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 04, 2019, 04:13:29 PM
Since 2013 Bill has spent at least part of every December in Colombia; for him Christmastime in Colombia has become expected.  This past year the reason he had to go was that the locomotives we installed in October still aren't working correctly.  We got a lot of different stories from Drummond, but the most consistent one seemed to be that the radios were not able to pass a departure test, which means the radios were not registering on the network or the WiFi system wasn't correctly downloading the database.  So I made travel arrangements.

The plan was we'd fly from Melbourne to Bogota (through Atlanta) on Monday, spend the night in Bogota, go to Santa Marta on Tuesday morning; work all day Tuesday and Wednesday, leave Wednesday evening, spend another night in Bogota and then fly from Bogota to Melbourne again through Atlanta.  We took this circuitous route; rather than taking a direct flight from Orlando to Bogota because Bill was a few hundred miles shy of being Gold Status on Delta.

There's a ritual we have to go through whenever making travel arrangements at Alstom.  We contract all travel through Carson Wagonlit Travel (CWT.)  Their website is of limited sophistication; so whenever we have something even slightly complicated we have to call a travel specialist.  They, in turn, are of limited help; this time one hung up on me.  Once this is done then the itinerary has to go through Alstom Security.  No matter how many times I've been to Colombia, I still need to be told that there's a civil war going on and tropical diseases are bad.  Once that hurdle is passed then we get the nasty-gram from finance telling us always to make travel arrangements at least three weeks in advance.  I've had days when I was told I had to travel that evening; three weeks is an absurdly long time in our line of work.

Bill tries to cut trips like this close because he's found that if you give the Colombians any extra time they'll simply delay to the last minute anyway.  That came back to bite us this time; we arrived in Santa Marta and my luggage (with almost all my tools) remained in Bogota.  Fortunately I was able to borrow some personal protection equipment, and we could at least meet with our Colombian counterparts and do some basic examinations of the locomotive.  In fine Colombian fashion neither of us were in the entry database to the port and both of us had to wait until someone with authority could be located.

My luggage arrived that evening.  Our plan for the next day was to take the locomotive out to the presentation point (that is where it goes from the yard to the open track.  This is where the WiFi server, which the locomotive uses to download its database, is located.)  We planned to do this first thing in the morning; so naturally we didn't get started until 1 PM.

The problem turned out to be not with radio reception, but the radio itself.  Somehow their IP addresses weren't entered properly into the database.  We got some radios from locomotives that were in the shop, and could clone those locos.  When we left the locomotives were operational and the radio manufacturer and FeNoCo were trying to figure out how to fix the database issues.

Bill had thought we'd be done around three o'clock so he had kept his room at the hotel.  We stay in Santa Marta now, far past the ports.  Bill insists on doing this so he can collect points from Hilton; but it does add an extra half hour to the drive time.  So when we left the port at five we knew we were cutting it close; we barely made the airport at boarding time, only to find our flight had been delayed by an hour.

They still are having problems with these locos in Santa Marta.  Bill was in a lather about this yesterday; they work when we're there and fail when we're gone.  I've contacted the radio manufacturer but I don't think I've made my last trip to Colombia.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 04, 2019, 04:17:19 PM
As I've mentioned, Santa Marta is much nicer than when I started going there four years ago.  The shanty towns are mostly gone; you don't see as many people tapping into power lines as before and there's regular garbage pick up now.  It is still coastal Colombia, though.  You still see plastic tanks of water on top of the houses and apartments, this is the source of hot water in all but the most expensive buildings.  There's also little signs up with notices for things for sale throughout the city.  I saw one for a chicken but, as our driver assured us, it wasn't a chicken for eating.  It was a fighting cock.

Our driver this time came from a local company.  When Bill tried to pay him, he told Bill that his card reader was broken, but he'd get his boss.  We hung around the airport until his boss showed up and told us that his card reader was also broken.  Bill told him he'd be coming back in January and he could pay them then; they were delighted with that.

Bill is much more charismatic than I am.  Over dinner in Santa Marta we had this exchange after our waitress poured him a beer:

Bill: She's very nice
Waitress: ¿Qué?
Savonarola:  Señor Bill dice que eres muy simpatica.
Waitress:  Gracias  :blush:

So even with me as a translator he managed to charm the waitress.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Brain on January 04, 2019, 11:05:01 PM
I haven't been to Santa Marta since Pirates! :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 07, 2019, 08:55:59 AM
Merger fell through; time to start learning Chinese:

Europe kills Siemens' plan to create the Airbus of trains (https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/business/siemens-alstom-merger/index.html)

Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 07, 2019, 02:06:26 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 07, 2019, 08:55:59 AM
Merger fell through; time to start learning Chinese:

Europe kills Siemens' plan to create the Airbus of trains (https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/business/siemens-alstom-merger/index.html)

This is hotly debated right now in France, and Germany I suppose.
Given how crappy Siemen's ICEs after Bombardier left them alone, this does not bode well for the future, except for China as you imply.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:

California high-speed rail and the American infrastructure tragedy, explained (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/california-high-speed-rail-canceled)

They make some reference to the Obama Stimulus era "High speed" rail.  That's different than the sort of high speed rail that California was planning to run; it runs on standard track and can go around 110 MPH / 180 KmPH.  What California was trying to build is a bullet train which can go much faster but requires completely new track.

Another take away is that we're just about to launch the high speed rail from Detroit to Chicago, a mere 10 years after the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was signed into law (and half of it was already built at the time.)  The Green Dream or Whatever calls for building a network of bullet trains throughout the United States in ten years; that is preposterous, nothing in rail happens quickly.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 19, 2019, 04:12:13 PM
The article is pretty damning, and not just for high-speed rail. 200 million euros per km is already far too much for Paris, but a realistic figure once everything is factored in.

Quotef New York were able to build subways at the kind of per mile prices achieved in Paris — about $230 million per kilometer on recent projects rather than more than $2 billion per kilometer for the Second Avenue subway — then New York's current mass transit spending plans would be sufficient to expand and transform the system. But under the current dynamic transit planners can't get much done.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Tonitrus on February 19, 2019, 07:05:23 PM
Should have been mag-lev.  :(
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 20, 2019, 09:13:40 AM
I was wrong yesterday, as I see from this article (https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-high-speed-rail-20190219-story.html) the California High Speed Rail project was part of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.  I thought it was from a later voter initiative.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 20, 2019, 02:35:50 PM
Quote from: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:

Victorian-era with 350-400 kph?! Wow!  :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 20, 2019, 02:43:56 PM
Quote from: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:

Not enough money spent, according to the wiki, since the connection between HS1 and HS2, a London bypass actually, costing a mere £700 milion, was, guess what bypassed, or cut to save money.  :lol:

QuoteHigh Speed 1

Map showing the proposed HS1–HS2 link across Camden, as proposed in 2010
The Department for Transport initially outlined plans to build a two-kilometre-long (1.2 mi) link between HS2 and the existing High Speed 1 line that connects London to the Channel Tunnel. At their closest points, the two high-speed lines will be only 640 m (0.4 mi) apart. This connection would have enabled rail services running from Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham to bypass London Euston and to run directly to Paris, Brussels and other continental European destinations, realising the aims of the Regional Eurostar scheme that was first proposed in the 1980s.[58][59] Several schemes were considered, and the route finally put forward was a tunnel between Old Oak Common and Chalk Farm, linked to existing "classic speed" lines along the North London Line which would connect to HS1 north of St Pancras.[60][61][62][63]

Concerns were raised by Camden London Borough Council about the impact on housing, Camden Market and other local businesses from construction work and bridge widening along the proposed railway link.[64][65] Alternative schemes were considered, including boring a tunnel under Camden,[66] but the HS1-HS2 link was removed from the parliamentary bill at the second reading stage in order to save £700 million from the budget.[67]
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on February 20, 2019, 08:33:32 PM
Quote from: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:

In the 90s Massachusetts did similar with a huge project, the Big Dig, to put a main highway underground beneath Boston. Initial price tag was around 3 billion using State and Federal funds. By the time it was "finished" it was costing around 16 billion with issues needing billions more to fix. Still needs lots of maintenance and fixes, was leaking badly when first built and it took a while to fix that or get it under some kind of control. US Congress held hearings on why it cost so much and the corruption over it, but I don't think they really got to the bottom of things. The Feds may have cut assistance though, probably did but I forget the details. 

Now for the last two years Boston has been rated the worst traffic in the country. So much for the Big Pig. They did do some good things though, like the Ted Williams tunnel right to Logan Airport which gave a faster, easier route to the airport from south of Boston. And straightening out some highway interchanges into the city.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 21, 2019, 12:10:12 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 19, 2019, 04:12:13 PM
The article is pretty damning, and not just for high-speed rail. 200 million euros per km is already far too much for Paris, but a realistic figure once everything is factored in.

Quotef New York were able to build subways at the kind of per mile prices achieved in Paris — about $230 million per kilometer on recent projects rather than more than $2 billion per kilometer for the Second Avenue subway — then New York's current mass transit spending plans would be sufficient to expand and transform the system. But under the current dynamic transit planners can't get much done.

"Cut and cover" isn't realistic for 21st century Manhattan - it would have rendered some of the most expensive real estate in the country effectively non-functional during construction, massively disrupted road traffic on the east side, and caused huge losses and closures to business (and thus RE and income tax revenue to the city).

One very significant contributor to subway construction costs in NYC that articles like this rarely mention is the nature of the underground environment in NYC.  Precisely because Manhattan is so dense and has been so for a long time, building underground requires dealing with a huge complex of pipes, conduits and wiring that has been built up over centuries now.  It's not like 1900 when you could just take a giant shovel and start digging without worrying much what you might be hitting.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Syt on February 21, 2019, 12:26:29 PM
FWIW the avg. costs for the rails in Vienna is ca. €200M per km underground and €100M per km above ground.

Inner areas are all underground, and with Vienna's history, extra time/effort needs to be made for the chance of finding archaeological artifacts. A few places can have the ground opened for constructions, but in the dense "single digit" districts, esp. 6th-8th it's not feasible. In fact, a major expansion in the city is currently being delayed because the suppliers were well over the expected price mark (which is good, because I can use my station for a year longer - it will be closed for two years during construction/expansion).
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 28, 2019, 06:50:32 PM
My co-worker Glen is in Chicago as part of a project where we're making Amtrak compatible with the PTC initiative in the Chicagoland area.  He went into Union Station this morning and was programming some of the network switches.  While he was there one of the Amtrak employees ran a line out from where he was into another room.  Suddenly there was a ZOT and some enormous sparks.  The Amtrak employee had created a short, and tripped a circuit breaker.  There was some momentary concern that he had caused some harm, but it looked like everything was still okay.  So he went back and, rather than unplug the line, he reset the circuit breaker.  This time he did manage to fry Amtrak's CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch (I think :unsure: that's way outside my area of expertise); it's the box that let's them move the rail switches remotely.)  They tried to launch the backup CAD, but that hasn't been used in a long time, and they couldn't get it to run; so:

More than 60,000 Chicago Metra commuters may be stranded by Union Station signal problems (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-metra-delays-computer-amtrak-20190228-story.html)

Our project manager was on the phone most of today making sure Amtrak agreed that this was not our fault. 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on March 01, 2019, 02:26:45 AM
Quote from: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:


There's no vanity project about it.
It's a highly necessary capacity expansion.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on March 01, 2019, 09:57:16 AM
The CAD was brought back online at 8 PM last night.  This is the CAD for Amtrak territory between Detroit and Saint Louis; which is the main route for both freight and passenger between three large cities.  This was such a major outage that it's likely Amtrak is going to have to testify before Congress.

Glen thinks the problem is that Amtrak cannibalized their Disaster Recovery CAD whenever parts of the main CAD broke and never replaced the DR CAD.  So when the main CAD went down there was no disaster recovery plan.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Tonitrus on March 01, 2019, 10:42:01 AM
The story of Amtrak is such a sad one, made sadder still in that it didn't have to be that way.

And likely far too late to correct easily...much like our healthcare.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 14, 2019, 03:40:57 PM
It's a long flight to Tel-Aviv; made even longer because we had to stop twice first in Atlanta and then in New York.  Fortunately Bill, the (sort of) project manager, has membership to the Delta Sky Club so we could relax a bit at JFK before heading to Tel Aviv.  Security is strict on flights into Israel, we had to go through security again and couldn't take bottled water on the plane unless we had a receipt showing that we had purchased it in the airport.  Then you're not allowed to stand up on the plane when you're over Israeli territory.

In true Alstom fashion we were contacted by our security advisor after we had arrived in Israel.  We gave him our hotel information and he told us "Good luck."  We didn't realize it at the time; but we had arrived at one of the more contentious weeks of the year.  The week began with Jerusalem Day and ended with Shavuot all while Ramadan was going on.

Bill thought it would be a great idea to rent a car.  It wasn't.  Tel Aviv is filled with a number of twisty one way streets which the driver's approach with the typical Mediterranean aggressiveness.  I can't drive in circumstances like that; where I'm from in Detroit you need to give cars space since you don't know who's armed and you don't know who's a homicidal maniac.   That approach doesn't work in Israel, you need to tailgate and cut people off or else you'll never get anywhere.

Our meeting was near the airport; but there aren't many hotels by there.  Alstom has two types of approved hotels, ones on the beach and ones near the West Bank.  We chose a beach one, and got the stern reprimand from the registration system: "Why would you choose such an expensive hotel when there are so many cheaper options conveniently located within rocket distance of the West Bank?"

Our hotel was nice; the beach is a long park and we could watch people playing volleyball and doing chin-ups from the lobby.  It was very Jewish; there was a mezuzah on every door, the heating and cooling had a "Sabbath" setting on it and there was a warning against taking snacks from the mini-bar on the Sabbath.  We qualified for the "Executive lounge" both having spent way too much time in hotels over the past year.  They served Israeli beer and Mezes for dinner, and they served coffee and Mezes for breakfast.

Bill requested "Valet parking" at the hotel.  They parked his car but it was up to us to get it out.  It was wedged between two other cars and I had to guide Bill as he rocked it back and forth until we got out.  This was made much worse as Bill had kept the parking break on while he was getting out.  He would stall, stall then lurch forward.  Somehow we got out.  Then the drive to Motorola headquarters was an adventure.  IPhone maps wasn't quite up to date and we ended up going through the old port of Jaffa before finding the highway.

Motorola has a large headquarters in an office park near the airport (called, appropriately enough, Airport City.)  Motorola just had a worldwide dictum for their offices to move to cities; most of the workers weren't happy about this as Tel-Aviv has very little parking.  Most of the workers work yarmulkes and the breakroom was stuffed with engineering books.  We spent most of the day in the meeting room; which was dimly lit and overly warm.  I struggled to stay awake through much of the meeting.  We did hash out the issues concerning radio; so the meeting was a success. 

Michael, Motorola's lead for this project made it his personal mission to show us Israel.  That evening he took us to Tel-Aviv's hottest grill joint; called Meatos.  I think he was disappointed in our crazy American tastes when Bill and I both ordered sheep kofta rather than a steak.  We had left the car back at Motorola HQ and we're in some sort of step challenge for work, so Bill insisted on walking back a mile and a half to our hotel.  We saw the back streets; Tel-Aviv is a modern city (founded in 1909, although Jaffa has been occupied since pre-historic times.)  Almost all of it was new construction, and some of the architecture is quite funky; so funky in fact that the city reminded me of Miami Beach, though somehow not quite as Jewish.

The next day we took a taxi to Motorola.  Our taxi driver was a maniac, slicing into long lines of cars without a moment's hesitation.  Throughout the drive he kept complaining about tourists not knowing how to drive in Israel.  Bill and I just kept quiet.

We had a few meetings in the morning with the Motorola brass and then we were off to Jerusalem.  Michael was born in France and had immigrated to Israel as an adult.  He said that a lot of people had difficulty believing anyone would do that; but to him Israel felt like home and everyone here was his brother.  He also described how his education was different than his children; in France academics are everything.  In Israel it's more about establishing a sense of people and place (his children go on a lot of field trips) and of independence (in high school they do a number of camping trips so that they'll be prepared for the army when they're eighteen.)

Israel is a tiny country; it's only about 70 Km from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.  Michael took us to some vista points around the city.  Almost the entire city has a beige color, the same color as the stones of the ancient city.  Michael and Bill got talking politics and religion, and they had surprisingly similar views.  So we had to go see the new US embassy in Jerusalem.  Bill got his picture taken out front of it.  I think their only significant difference in theological outlook was concerning if the messiah was going to arrive at Armageddon or going to return at Armageddon.

We went to the old city next.  I had been listening to a podcast about European views of the Muslim world.  I learned that some of the earliest translations of the Koran had come from then Muslim Spain, where the Dominican Friars who had put it together could discuss the work with Muslim scholars.  The next translations occurred about a century later out of Paris, and while there was a broader corpus of scholarly works on the Koran available, it was removed from the Muslim world.  The lecturer thought the former was superior.  Jerusalem, and the old city especially, would be the place for a religious scholar as every sect of Judaism, Islam and Christianity was represented there.

The old city is tiny; and, though higher in elevation than Tel-Aviv, much hotter.  As everything is made of stone there you get warmed by the sun and baked by the rocks.  The city is divided in four quarters; the Jewish quarter, the Christian quarter, the Muslim quarter and (to my surprise) the Armenian quarter.  I could tell we had entered the Christian quarter when I saw whole hogs hanging up at the butcher shops.  Michael took us to the church of the Holy Sepulcher and let us wander as he took some calls.  The Catholics and every major division of Orthodoxy maintains a chapel there.  I was expecting the Russian Orthodox chapel to be the most gaudy; but it was surprisingly tasteful with just a few icons.  The Greek Orthodox, on the other hand, took the prize with everything covered in silver leaf.  We didn't go through the tomb as Bill kept bitching about idolatry.

We couldn't enter the Muslim quarter due to tensions running high.  Michael explained that, under the most favorable of circumstances, Bill and I might be able to enter the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque; but he could not ever.  He was steamed about this.  We did see the Wailing Wall; I learned that the Wailing Wall is segregated by gender.

The next stop on our journey was Paris.  I was expecting scrutiny leaving the country; but what they do is segregate you into lines based on how Arab you look.  Bill and I sailed though that pre-check without issue.

There were a number of events going on in Paris the week we were there; so we couldn't stay at the usual hotels by our headquarters in Saint-Ouen.  Instead we had to stay in the Montmartre, near the Moulin Rouge.  Our hotel was one in a chain named after writers, this one was Marcel Aymé.  They even had a green horse head in the breakfast room.

Even though we were right by a Metro station and our headquarters are as well; Bill refused to take the Metro (or "The Tube" as he kept calling it.  He had been stationed in the UK while in the Air Force, so he kept referring to Euros as "Quid" as well.)  This is the strangest thing I've encountered in rail; no one ever wants to take the train.  We had to take Ubers to HQ.

Our headquarters are all glass and steel.  You could tell who the foreigners were as every one had a flag of his home country at his desk.  Our big buzzword now is "Inclusivity"; it sort of makes sense now.

We went through a series of meetings with the general contractor for our upcoming project there.  The GC is a Romanian firm and the project is in Africa.  No one seems to know how large this company is or if they are at all capable of doing a project of this scope in Africa.  We've hired some of their former employees and even they weren't sure.

I had adjusted to the time change by this point.  Bill had no problems in Israel, but by this point broke down.  He had stayed up until the wee small hours perfecting the project schedule every night and struggled to make it through the meetings.  This was all theater of the absurd.  This isn't really Bill's project, he's been promoted to management but hasn't been willing to let go of his former projects.  (He talks about handing it off to the real project manager, but keeps adding caveats as to when.)  The schedule is meaningless, we're working in the third world where things are going to happen at their own pace, Insha'Allah.  Ruining your health for a meaningless task that's someone else's responsibility seemed ridiculous to me; which is why I'll never be a manager.

I couldn't talk Bill into going to see Notre Dame; so I took the Metro down after dinner one night.  You can't get too close, but it made a beautiful ruin in the setting sun.  As I was coming back to the hotel I saw a number of young men transporting a refrigerator.  Two of them were carrying the fridge and one other was slapping one of the carriers.  The slapper was wearing a jacket which read "Obergruppenführer."

We were then in Chicago earlier this week for a different project (again, not his project, but one that he's having a hard time letting go of).  I think our time there can be best summarized by the following exchange:

Bill:  I wasn't that impressed by the food in Chicago.
Savonarola:  Well, what did you expect from Texas Road House?

I think he's listened to a bit too much Fox News and thinks all of Chicago really is a war zone.  So instead of Gino's or Superdawg we ended up at the finest dining establishments in Lagrange, Illinois.  Amusingly we were there to meet with an Australian team.  The Australians asked the locals what there was to do in Chicago.

"Well... there's Millennium Park... oh and they have boat tours on the river."
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Malthus on June 14, 2019, 04:17:41 PM
What impressed me most about the old city of Jerusalem, when I was there years ago, was the vast variety of weird religious groups I'd never heard of that were represented there - often wearing outlandish ceremonial garb.

I remember walking through a dense throng when suddenly it parted as people hastily got out of the way of a marching line of hawk-faced old bearded gentlemen, each carrying a large black staff which they brought down with a shattering crash on the flagstones in unison at each other step as they grimly marched forward.

I asked a girl who these guys were. She said "oh, those are the People of the Stick" as if I ought to know what that was. To this day, I have no idea who the "People of the Stick" were. I suppose, by the reaction of the crowd, that if you got in the way of their march, they would quickly hit you with their sticks.

Allegedly, there is a mental hospital in Jerusalem that specializes in would-be saviours who show up as tourists - the so-called "Jerusalem Syndrome". I heard at the time that one form of treatment was group therapy (after all, if someone thinks they are Jesus, introduce them to a whole room filled with other people who think they are Jesus!) - now that would be interesting. What if the real one showed up?  :hmm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Shaul_Mental_Health_Center

QuoteThe hospital is known in particular for its association with Jerusalem Syndrome, a condition in which the sufferer is gripped by religious delusions. The hospital sees some 50 patients a year who are diagnosed with the condition.[9] Israel psychologist Gregory Katz has said many of the patients are Pentecostals from rural parts of the United States and Scandinavia.[10] The syndrome was first diagnosed in 1993 by Yair Bar-El, a former director of the hospital.[9]
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2019, 05:08:06 PM
If they installed one way mirrors in that hospital and charged admission, they could make a mint.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on June 14, 2019, 06:03:58 PM
Well,  Montmartre instead of banlieue like Saint-Ouen is definitively better, unless you hate bobos, hipsters and tourist traps.  :P
Saint-Ouen is not great, but not exactly the worst. One of Paris flea markets is there.

Interesting, as always, Sav.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on June 15, 2019, 03:40:02 AM
 
QuoteAllegedly, there is a mental hospital in Jerusalem that specializes in would-be saviours who show up as tourists - the so-called "Jerusalem Syndrome". I heard at the time that one form of treatment was group therapy (after all, if someone thinks they are Jesus, introduce them to a whole room filled with other people who think they are Jesus!) - now that would be interesting. What if the real one showed up?  :hmm:

So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?


Quote from: mongers on February 19, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 19, 2019, 03:16:24 PM
I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era.  :bowler:


Come on mongers. You're a smart guy, you shouldn't fall into that trap.
HS2 is a desperately needed project to relieve overcrowding on British railways. The speed increases are just an added bonus.

It is however being ran under the shitty British system of privatising everything and beset by nimbys and a misinformation campaign
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 15, 2019, 04:09:39 AM
Quote from: Tyr on June 15, 2019, 03:40:02 AM
So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?

It's one of those oddball ones- jedi.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on June 15, 2019, 08:40:03 AM
Quote from: Tyr on June 15, 2019, 03:40:02 AM


So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?


Easy, defective, has no plural.  :smarty:
Besides, the singular latin cases are irregular, being a transcription anyways:

   Latin   Greek
nominative   Jēsūs   Iēsūs (Iēsus)   Ἰησοῦς
accusative   Jēsūm   Iēsūm (Iēsum)   Ἰησοῦν
dative   Jēsū   Iēsū   Ἰησοῦ
genitive
vocative
ablative   –
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 15, 2019, 10:32:00 AM
Quote from: Malthus on June 14, 2019, 04:17:41 PM
What impressed me most about the old city of Jerusalem, when I was there years ago, was the vast variety of weird religious groups I'd never heard of that were represented there - often wearing outlandish ceremonial garb.

I remember walking through a dense throng when suddenly it parted as people hastily got out of the way of a marching line of hawk-faced old bearded gentlemen, each carrying a large black staff which they brought down with a shattering crash on the flagstones in unison at each other step as they grimly marched forward.

I asked a girl who these guys were. She said "oh, those are the People of the Stick" as if I ought to know what that was. To this day, I have no idea who the "People of the Stick" were. I suppose, by the reaction of the crowd, that if you got in the way of their march, they would quickly hit you with their sticks.

That impressed me as well; though I didn't see anything as amazing as the People of the Stick.  (I see they're even too obscure for Duck Duck Go.)

QuoteAllegedly, there is a mental hospital in Jerusalem that specializes in would-be saviours who show up as tourists - the so-called "Jerusalem Syndrome". I heard at the time that one form of treatment was group therapy (after all, if someone thinks they are Jesus, introduce them to a whole room filled with other people who think they are Jesus!) - now that would be interesting. What if the real one showed up?  :hmm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Shaul_Mental_Health_Center

QuoteThe hospital is known in particular for its association with Jerusalem Syndrome, a condition in which the sufferer is gripped by religious delusions. The hospital sees some 50 patients a year who are diagnosed with the condition.[9] Israel psychologist Gregory Katz has said many of the patients are Pentecostals from rural parts of the United States and Scandinavia.[10] The syndrome was first diagnosed in 1993 by Yair Bar-El, a former director of the hospital.[9]

I read somewhere once that they do group therapy for people who think that they're Jesus since each one is (usually) so benevolent that they're willing to let the others suffer their delusions.  (Perhaps it says something that only a madman would let other people suffer their delusions.)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 15, 2019, 10:37:34 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on June 14, 2019, 06:03:58 PM
Well,  Montmartre instead of banlieue like Saint-Ouen is definitively better, unless you hate bobos, hipsters and tourist traps.  :P
Saint-Ouen is not great, but not exactly the worst. One of Paris flea markets is there.

Interesting, as always, Sav.

Thanks,

I certainly would much rather stay in Montmartre rather than Saint-Ouen; I was just surprised that it was so busy that we couldn't find a hotel.  Bill is going back there this week; he said it's even worse.  The cheapest approved hotel he could find was some one star one for 300 Euros a night; I'm not sure where, but he said it was even further from Saint-Ouen.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on June 27, 2019, 02:12:41 PM
I have to go boot shopping.  The Canada Safety Association (CSA) mandates a certain standards for boots; compliant boot manufacturers put a green triangle on their boot.  My boots do meet the CSA standards, but since I bought them in the United States (and didn't specifically request a Canadian compliant boot) mine don't have a green triangle.  In the Toronto projects no one cared (probably because a lot of their own workers had gotten their boots in the United States); but for Edmonton no such luck. 

I'm going to get a pair of green triangle Doc Martens and tell everyone that I'm totally into The Tragically Hip.   ;)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on January 07, 2020, 03:19:01 PM
Late last year I was in Muncie, Indiana to install antennas on the roof or a locomotive.  The facility we were at (Progress Rail, a division of Caterpillar), had warning signs up for all potential hazards in the area.  This is common in all rail facilities, but even so I was surprised when I walked into the break room and saw:

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41pr1AmGX5L.jpg)

The warning symbol for ionizing radiation, usually signifying a radioactive hazard.  I took me a moment to realize that a.) the facility manager had gone overboard in the signage and b.) had put up a nuclear hazard warning above all the microwave ovens.  It made it look like they were cooking their food with gamma rays and plutonium.

Non-ionizing radiation (such as what's used in your microwave oven) uses this warning when the levels are high enough to constitute a hazard:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Radio_waves_hazard_symbol.svg/600px-Radio_waves_hazard_symbol.svg.png)

There wasn't really a need for that symbol either, since microwaves are shielded so that they don't exceed the FCC defined limits for human exposure.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 07, 2020, 03:24:29 PM
Facility manager has to chug a beer for false accusation.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on March 21, 2020, 06:00:16 PM
Florida's Space Coast's primary industries are technical in nature, with both a number of defense contractors and the space industry having a large presence here.  Consequently there are a number of professional societies for engineers.  One of them, the Society of Women Engineers puts on a "Girls in engineering" type event twice a year.  A few weeks ago we got a panic call for volunteers for one of them at work.  CB and I volunteered, I'm not a woman and she's not an engineer, so I figured we had all our bases covered.

We were given the task of assistants for the Egg Bungie Drop; shown here:

(https://i.imgur.com/eRuWPr5.jpg)

(You could tell this was an engineer run event.  All the attendees had science officer blue shirts; and all the volunteers had expendable red shirts.  In fact the organizers referred to us as "Red shirts.")

That is there's an egg placed in a plastic bag and attached to the plastic frame by a chain of rubber bands.  The young ladies build the chain with a variety of rubber bands which differ in size and ability to stretch.  The challenge is to get the egg as close to the floor without breaking.

This is supposed to demonstrate potential and kinetic energy.  An object at a height has a potential energy of mgh where m is the mass of the object, g is gravitational acceleration and h is the height above ground.  An unstretched "Spring" (such as a rubber band) has a potential energy of ½ kx2 where k is the spring.  As the egg is dropped, and the spring is stretched the energy is converted from potential to kinetic acting in opposite directions. 

(This is actually much easier to solve if you look at it in terms of forces.  The egg has a downward force of mg and the spring has a force of kx as it is stretched; so when those forces are equal to one another the egg stops falling.)

The gals were between third and sixth grade (and it was our job to interest them in engineering; not send them away screaming in terror), so all but the basic physics was dispensed with.  Instead they had to design their bungees by experimentation.  Some did approach it like an engineer; they measured out the length and stretchiness and then did their drops.  Others were more interested in braiding rubber bands.  Still others were more interested in breaking eggs, repeatedly; (they might not have a future in STEM, but politics and banking look like definite career matches.)   This being an all girl event the sessions never devolved into a rubber band fight; our group leader was a bit disappointed by that.

Each one of these workshops had a leader and a number of assistants.  We knew the leader of our session by reputation.  Every year NASA holds a "Mars Mining Simulation" competition for universities.  The Florida Institute of Technology enters a team every year.  She had been on the team when they had taken second in 2013 and, more importantly, developed a revolutionary wheel design which NASA plans to use on its real mining probes on Mars.  Her graduate degree is in soils; and she helped make the artificial regolith that they're team practiced on (made from slag left over from construction sites.)  This team became notorious for reserving a conference room for the duration of spring break, moving out the furniture, and covering the floor with artificial regolith so they could practice.  The campus building supervisor was none too pleased.  We heard all about this when their adviser gave a Community Lecture talk.

In addition to the leader there were three assistants per group; CB, myself and a high school senior named Joyce.  Joyce needed a certain amount of Community Service hours to qualify for the Florida Bright Futures scholarship; and since she had participated in this program when she was young it was a good fit.  There were five sessions throughout the day; at the beginning we were all supposed to introduce ourselves.  Our group leader had worked on a zero G simulation at one time and she tried to impress the girls with that, but they were unenthusiastic.  Train engineer was similarly poorly received.  Even my wife's stint on a horse farm didn't get a rise; but they were all impressed when Joyce told them she worked at Culver's and made Frozen Custard.

The girls were instructed to give their eggs names.  Most of them had sensible everyday names like Bob or Julie.  Some went a little more fanciful, like Eggbert or Sir Eggs-a-lot.  Hermoine was still a favorite.  One girl called her egg "The Cube" and planned to start a religion around it.  Joyce told her she couldn't; "Cubism" was already taken.  At the end we had them discard the eggs.  Joyce would say a few words and sing "It's so Hard" at the egg funerals.

At the end of the day we all gossiped about the girls.  Everyone thought that grade school was too young for a cell phone, dyed hair (except the girl who dyed her hair blue with Kool-Aid) and especially for acrylic nails.  I thought it was funny that, in terms of race, the girls were a reflection of the Space Coast's middle class (about 80% white, 20% black, a quarter Hispanic between the groups and a handful of non-Hispanic Afro-Carribeans) ; except there were no Asians.  Most of the middle class professions here are technical in nature ; so there are a number of Asians here.  Apparently the Tiger Moms felt this was a waste of time for their daughters.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on March 30, 2020, 03:57:38 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 20, 2019, 09:13:40 AM
I was wrong yesterday, as I see from this article (https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-high-speed-rail-20190219-story.html) the California High Speed Rail project was part of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.  I thought it was from a later voter initiative.

We got a bid for this a couple weeks ago.  It's obvious this has become a spite project intended as a middle finger to Trump.  (For one thing they couldn't have possibly consulted with a signalling firm before they sent out the bid - they requested that the train be able to go 220 MPH (350 Kmph) in areas where there are crossings; about twice the current permissible limit in the United States.) 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 30, 2020, 03:59:43 PM
Not quite shovel ready.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on March 30, 2020, 04:08:17 PM
I like your rail stories Sav, but every other night I have dreams about rail journeys, something in the current climate I'm unable to do.

So reading this thread today, means the inevitable disappointment of more railway dreams tonight.  :(
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on April 20, 2020, 01:38:04 PM
I had a conference call with a general telecom and supplier company this morning.  The company had been in business since the very early days of cellular and had started as a fairly small shop.  It had grown substantially by the original owner left in the 90s the remaining executives decided they needed a more sophisticated name than "Carl's Telecom", so they merged the two names together and called themselves Cartel (http://www.cartelsys.com/).  Their rep said he was amazed at how many times he had been asked if the company has Colombian connections.

(The company has its headquarters in Langley; they should have called themselves "The British Columbian Cartel.")
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on April 20, 2020, 04:44:51 PM
Damn I miss using trains during this crisis.  :(
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on April 20, 2020, 04:54:54 PM
I'm hoping corona doesn't screw trains for years to come and lead to society taking a step backwards towards cars.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 09, 2020, 04:06:13 PM
My next project after Colombia was for Amtrak on the Wolverine line which runs from Detroit, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois.  The lead comms engineer had left GE just ahead of the GE/Alstom divorce; and in true GE fashion, IT wiped out his computer memory before I could download it.  So I was left with only documents that we had officially released to the customer to work with.  The project was already six years in progress when I had joined in 2015.  It had begun with the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2009; the stimulus bill in response to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent great recession.  Some of the stimulus funds were targeted to build high speed rail.  Initially funds were offered to Florida to build high speed rail from Orlando to Tampa.  Florida's governor (Chris Christie) turned down the funds and Michigan's governor (Jennifer Granholm) volunteered to take them.

It made more sense for Michigan to receive the funds as part of the Wolverine line (Gary, Indiana to Kalamazoo, Michigan) already had a high-speed system; also, the state of Michigan owns the line from Dearborn, Michigan to Kalamazoo (Amtrak maintained the line on behalf of Michigan's Department of Transportation).  As part of the acquisition deal Michigan was required to build a Positive Train Control system for the previous incumbent (Canadian National Railway or CN.)

The project was completed in April of 2019.  For rail ten years isn't a particularly slow project.  A number of the projects partially funded by the stimulus are still in bid phase; notably the Sacramento to San Diego line and the Los Angeles to Las Vegas "Gambling train."

The Wolverine Line uses standard rail and has crossing; so the maximum speed possible (by Federal Rail Administration standards) is 119 Miles Per Hour (190 KmPH.)  In order to go at those speeds under those circumstances the train system requires a Positive Train Control (PTC) system.

Positive Train Control means that the train has to receive a signal to move.  There are Negative Control Systems (though they're not called that) in which a train stops upon receiving a signal.  A stopped train is considered the safest train, so PTC is considered the safer system, and one that all Class One freight carriers in the United States are required to supply.

Sections of track are divided into sections called "Blocks."  Like a city block there's a signal at the beginning of the block, similar to a traffic light or stop sign.  In the case of trains the signal will say if the train can enter the block and if it needs to change speed.  There are places in the United States where the territory is not signaled; this is called "Dark Territory."  In Dark Territory the train is controlled by radio dispatch from a central office; and even in signaled territory a similar system is used as an added level of safety.

In 2008 there was a train collision between a Union Pacific train and a Metrolink Commuter train in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles.  The Metrolink train engineer had been texting and the train through a red signal.  In the wake of this congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 which mandated a Positive Train Control (PTC) system on all Class 1 rail carrier territory.

One of the most basic PTC systems is the Harmon (now owned by Alstom) UltraCab system.  It works by sending coded signal down the tracks.  Most tracks are electrified with an AC signal; when a train approaches it completes the circuit which released the gate mechanism causing them to drop.  In an UltraCab system the entire block is electrified.  When a train enters a block the neighboring blocks are notified and broadcast a quicker pulse code so that when a train enters a neighboring block it automatically slows down.  If a train entered the same block as one with another train it would receive no signal since the first train would have already shorted the circuit.  No signal means that the train stops, which is why it's a Positive Train Control System.  This setup has some limitations; block sizes are limited to the distance the electrical signal can travel and speeds have to be limited to such that will give gates enough time to close before the train approaches.

The next advance is to use a radio system so that the train can report its location and a back office system can send speed restrictions and release the gates.  This allows for more flexible blocks (in fact blocks can be virtual and change in size if needed) and gates can be shut further in advance allowing for much greater speeds.  There are a number of different standards used in the United States: the Harmon standard (today owned by Alstom) is Incremental Train Control Services (ITCS); the Alstom standard is the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) and the Class One railroads developed their own standards called Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS.)  I-ETMS is the most commonly used system in the United States, but any of the standards meet the congressional mandate.

In the case of the Wolverine Line that I worked on the system required both an ITCS system as well as a I-ETMS system.  CN as a class one carrier uses I-ETMS; but I-ETMS doesn't permit for high speed.  Amtrak used ITCS between Gary and Kalamazoo, so ITCS was the only choice for them.  While these systems do mostly the same thing, they require completely different infrastructure and (to my consternation) different radio systems.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 10, 2020, 07:38:02 AM
Sorry Savonarola, I only heard tangentially about ETCS deployment issues in Europe, with some countries having already advanced standards of their own, e.g France and Germany, but still to be deployed for pan-European corridors (mixed systems) and newly-built high-speed lines (ETCS level 2 needed for +300 kph cruise speeds). Part of ERTMS efforts to provide interoperability. It's most likely clearer to you than nearly all people on the forum anyways.  :P
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Liep on July 10, 2020, 08:58:58 AM
The deployment of ERTMS is off the rails here, delayed at least ten years and won't be finished before 2030, why are signals so hard?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: KRonn on July 10, 2020, 09:47:20 PM
Sav, you do some interesting work. And also, I find trains pretty cool and fascinating.  :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 12, 2020, 04:35:46 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on July 10, 2020, 07:38:02 AM
Sorry Savonarola, I only heard tangentially about ETCS deployment issues in Europe, with some countries having already advanced standards of their own, e.g France and Germany, but still to be deployed for pan-European corridors (mixed systems) and newly-built high-speed lines (ETCS level 2 needed for +300 kph cruise speeds). Part of ERTMS efforts to provide interoperability. It's most likely clearer to you than nearly all people on the forum anyways.  :P

Heh, only insofar as I can recognize the extent of what I don't know.  ;)

We're trying to bid an ETCS system in Canada; but we have to make modifications because (among other things) it's impossible to get GSM-R channels in the Americas.  Any modifications aren't sitting well with our European colleagues.  One particularly sore spot has been our equipment is designed and tested to European rail specifications (for things like shock and vibration); but our client has told us we need to test to Canadian rail standards (which are more stringent.)  It's no big deal to test to a different standard; but the fear of doing so little as to make our equipment more durable is causing them to freak out.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 12, 2020, 04:40:18 PM
Quote from: Liep on July 10, 2020, 08:58:58 AM
The deployment of ERTMS is off the rails here, delayed at least ten years and won't be finished before 2030, why are signals so hard?

Yeah, that's rail. 

One induction that I took had mostly track workers who mostly had a background in highway construction.  The course leader explained the difference in that highway construction you hit the ground running and your last couple hours you start to fade away.  In rail there's never a solid plan, you dick around the first couple hours while the management figures out what to do and have to hurry up at the end in order to get off the tracks before the morning trains start running.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 12, 2020, 04:43:27 PM
Quote from: KRonn on July 10, 2020, 09:47:20 PM
Sav, you do some interesting work. And also, I find trains pretty cool and fascinating.  :)

Yeah, I think trains are really neat too. 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: grumbler on July 18, 2020, 09:51:26 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 12, 2020, 04:43:27 PM
Quote from: KRonn on July 10, 2020, 09:47:20 PM
Sav, you do some interesting work. And also, I find trains pretty cool and fascinating.  :)

Yeah, I think trains are really neat too.

But the age of the neatest ones, the art deco streamliners, will never come back.  Bullets trains are no substitute.

(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e9/21/ee/e921ee023ecd4f2f7b655428345a08e0.jpg)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 04, 2021, 05:04:05 PM
The Alstom-Bombardier Transport merger was completed Monday.  On Tuesday we got notification that we needed to merge business processes... between Alstom and legacy GE Transport; a merger that happened five years ago. 

Two big developments (from my perspective) are that North America headquarters are moving from Rochester to Montreal and that we will be rebranding Bombardier rolling stock as Alstom rolling stock.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 05, 2021, 01:23:45 PM
Alstom-Bombardier › Siemens-Alstom?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 05, 2021, 04:06:20 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on February 05, 2021, 01:23:45 PM
Alstom-Bombardier › Siemens-Alstom?

Alstom-Siemens would have been a larger company and better able to compete with the Chinese worldwide.  Bombardier has had some problems for some time, and Alstom was able to buy the transport division rather than merge (as would have been the case with Siemens.) 

This does improve Alstom's position in North America, and it gives Alstom a large manufacturing capacity in Canada (both Montreal and Toronto are undergoing large expansions of their rail systems.)  I was a little surprised we're not keeping the Bombardier name, since there rolling stock is well regarded in the industry.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on February 06, 2021, 05:17:52 AM
There is already trouble in Paris/Île-de-France region with Alstom wanting to renegotiate a previous Bombardier contract.

https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/alstom-calls-for-e2-56bn-rer-line-b-fleet-contract-to-be-renegotiated/ (https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/alstom-calls-for-e2-56bn-rer-line-b-fleet-contract-to-be-renegotiated/)

Line B is a major rapid transit line.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: DGuller on February 06, 2021, 12:03:05 PM
My understanding is that Bombardier is not a good brand name in NYC subway system.  I think they were even banned from bidding on the latest contract because of their prior performance.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 06, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 06, 2021, 12:03:05 PM
My understanding is that Bombardier is not a good brand name in NYC subway system.  I think they were even banned from bidding on the latest contract because of their prior performance.

Their rolling stock (that is locomotives and rail cars) are highly regarded; their projects (things like installing track or signaling systems) have had problems for some time.  One of the Toronto projects that I'm working on was awarded to Alstom after Bombardier was kicked off the project.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on February 06, 2021, 03:08:08 PM
I worked for a company that made parts for bombardier rolling stock. Their purchasing department sucked and was a pain.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: DGuller on February 06, 2021, 06:43:59 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 06, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 06, 2021, 12:03:05 PM
My understanding is that Bombardier is not a good brand name in NYC subway system.  I think they were even banned from bidding on the latest contract because of their prior performance.

Their rolling stock (that is locomotives and rail cars) are highly regarded; their projects (things like installing track or signaling systems) have had problems for some time.  One of the Toronto projects that I'm working on was awarded to Alstom after Bombardier was kicked off the project.
It's their subway cars that are notorious.  Their mean distance between failure is usually a fraction compared to the cars made by Kawasaki or Alstom.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on February 18, 2021, 10:12:32 AM
Alstom is positioning itself as a Green corporation, so this morning I got my carbon footprint report for 2020.  I had made a trip to Toronto in February that year; and they suggested next time I look at train options... which is actually possible if I started in Orlando (Orlando-New York City; New York City-Niagara Falls and then one of the commuter trains into Toronto); but it would take nearly two days.

Amtrak requires their employees to take the train whenever possible.  One time I met with an Amtrak rep from their Philadelphia Headquarters when we were in Jackson, Michigan (roughly 100 miles/160 Km west of Detroit.)  Since there is no service from Toledo, Ohio to Detroit he had to go Philadelphia to Chicago and Chicago to Jackson.  That took him about 36 hours.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on March 05, 2021, 02:37:23 PM
Rail is a safety conscious industry and its a common industry practice to begin each meeting with a "Safety moment," where people bring up a safety concern.  Sometimes these are official company announcements, other times there just things that people have seen recently.  Usually they're banal, like "Make sure you're getting enough sleep," or "Beware of dehydration."  Sometimes the Australian ones can be entertaining, like "Make sure you always check your boots for scorpions."  In any event, last week I was on a conference call with a Canadian company where one of the managers said:

"You see a lot of people snowboarding without hats these days.  When you snowboard you got to wear a hat, eh?"

He did say "Hat" rather than "Toque," so it was only almost as Canadian as possible given the circumstances.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on March 08, 2021, 05:35:19 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on February 18, 2021, 10:12:32 AM
Alstom is positioning itself as a Green corporation, so this morning I got my carbon footprint report for 2020.  I had made a trip to Toronto in February that year; and they suggested next time I look at train options... which is actually possible if I started in Orlando (Orlando-New York City; New York City-Niagara Falls and then one of the commuter trains into Toronto); but it would take nearly two days.

Amtrak requires their employees to take the train whenever possible.  One time I met with an Amtrak rep from their Philadelphia Headquarters when we were in Jackson, Michigan (roughly 100 miles/160 Km west of Detroit.)  Since there is no service from Toledo, Ohio to Detroit he had to go Philadelphia to Chicago and Chicago to Jackson.  That took him about 36 hours.
Eat your own dog food.
Even environmental issues aside it does seem logical PR for train company workers to take the train :p
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on March 08, 2021, 02:28:16 PM
Quote from: Tyr on March 08, 2021, 05:35:19 AM
Eat your own dog food.
Even environmental issues aside it does seem logical PR for train company workers to take the train :p

Though I like to take the train; they would never really give me two travel days in each direction just to go to Toronto.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Eddie Teach on March 08, 2021, 05:10:55 PM
Yeah, trains are slow and distances are long. It's not like a jaunt from Zurich to Paris.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: viper37 on March 27, 2021, 06:22:17 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 06, 2021, 03:08:08 PM
I worked for a company that made parts for bombardier rolling stock. Their purchasing department sucked and was a pain.
you should have tried dealing with their accounts payable department  :yuk:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on April 14, 2021, 03:00:25 PM
I was recently contacted by T-Mobile (Cellular Provider) about opportunities to use their service on trains.  T-Mobile doesn't have a separate division for rail; so they've put me on their mailing list for government fleets.  This morning I got an e-mail from "T-Mobile for Government"; which I first thought was an electioneering slogan from the dark future.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on September 28, 2021, 01:01:17 PM
We've had a number of retirements at work of late.  Today I went to a retirement luncheon and Bill was there.  One of our co-workers, Hector, is from Mexico.

Hector:  Bill, you had a really good time in Colombia, right?
Bill:  I wouldn't say that I had a good time, but...

...and he proceeded to launch into a dozen or so stories; many even more fabulous then the ones I've written. 

Bill is still in contact with some of the people we worked with in Colombia.  Colombia has been hit hard by Covid and the US/European vaccines aren't widely available.  One of the mines flew their port manager to Florida so he could get the vaccine; it was cheaper and easier (and more reliable) than trying to find a vaccine for him in Colombia.

Bill's son (really his grandson) is just about to turn 18, so he and his wife have to re-establish guardianship of him.  (I think, I'm not really sure how that works.  His son suffered traumatic brain damage as a very young child and will always be dependent.)

His daughter (really granddaughter) is now 15.  She found a boyfriend (not an Italian) who was 18.  Bill and his wife monitor her social media (she suffered severe neglect as an infant has a lot of issues that social media could exacerbate) and found that he was sending her dick pics and asking for nude pics.  Bill called him up and told him to cease contact with his daughter or he'd tell his parents what was going on.  That evening a Brevard County Deputy  (:alberta:) showed up at his house with a complaint that he had been beating his daughter.  While Bill could tell them who called and why; in this day and age they still have to do a thorough investigation.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on September 28, 2021, 01:04:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 27, 2021, 06:22:17 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 06, 2021, 03:08:08 PM
I worked for a company that made parts for bombardier rolling stock. Their purchasing department sucked and was a pain.
you should have tried dealing with their accounts payable department  :yuk:

My colleague did that :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on September 28, 2021, 01:08:03 PM
Hopefully the (ex-) boyfriend gets a bit of a wakeup call and learns not to be a shit.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on November 10, 2021, 04:03:32 PM
The Salisbury train crash between two trains into the entrance of a key tunnel has buggered up rail transport in central Southern England for a couple of weeks now.

They've been working night and day to replace the tracks, repair signalling etc and are on schedule to finish within 15 days.

But at the same time they've dropped the level of the tracks in the tunnel by a few feet, so that the tunnel will now be upgraded to the one of the largest freight container size specifications*
How about that for joined up thinking and working.  :bowler:



* I forget the names of these international size templates for rail transport, no doubt there are usual wiki pages describing them.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on December 01, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
Travelled on a newly restored railway , the Okehampton (Dartmoor) to Exeter line which hasn't seen mainline trains in 50 years.

It's been  open now for two weeks and had lots of locals and visitors using it.

And Okehampton station itself has been nicely restored to something out of the 1930s.  :bowler:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on December 06, 2021, 11:40:21 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 01, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
And Okehampton station itself has been nicely restored to something out of the 1930s.  :bowler:

That sounds really cool; could you get some pictures next time you're there?
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on December 06, 2021, 05:06:06 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on December 06, 2021, 11:40:21 AM
Quote from: mongers on December 01, 2021, 08:19:41 PM
And Okehampton station itself has been nicely restored to something out of the 1930s.  :bowler:

That sounds really cool; could you get some pictures next time you're there?

Will do, also a bloody smooth ride on new track and it's mainly downhill from Dartmoor.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Syt on January 02, 2022, 02:56:47 AM
Is this where we post rail related stuff? Saw this on Twitter (aboard a German train):

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FH_HGNnX0AUiExD?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 06, 2022, 02:46:38 PM
Toronto is in an unusual situation in terms of rail; all passenger trains terminate into one central station (Union Station.)  This central area is an enormous interlocking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking) called the Union Station Rail Corridor (USRC) which is 3 miles long and about 400 ft wide at its widest (5 Km and 120 m) most of which is below grade.  The signaling system is incredibly complex:

(https://i.imgur.com/Rh6w0jH.png)

This rail map covers the area is entering into the station from the west.  (As you can see it's right in the shadow of the CN Tower with its revolving restaurant.  Throughout the night you're treated to a stunning views of Lake Ontario, Downtown Toronto and this enormous rail ditch.)  While this is an incredibly complicated system, it's all the more amazing because the entire signaling system is analog.  Today most switching systems are remotely controlled, usually by computer at remote locations.  At USRC there are three towers (John Street Tower at the top of the map is one of them) staffed with people who spot the trains and give commands to hand throw switches.  Here's one of the switching facility shortly after Union Station was opened in 1927:

(https://i.imgur.com/smCnfe1.png)

And here it is today:

(https://i.imgur.com/cf0f2E0.png)

Say what you like about rail; we build things to last.  Our bid sales lead is a huge fan of this era of technology; and told me that this is the same mechanism they use to controlled the cells in Alcatraz.  He also told me they plan to turn one of these facilities into a museum once our work is completed.

In rail you always have to go through a series of inductions before they let you go on the tracks.  I went through one today for Metrolinx (the overall regional rail system in the Greater Toronto Area.)  USRC is so complicated that it requires its own unit and has rules that only apply within the area.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on October 06, 2022, 03:25:27 PM
That's pretty cool Sav.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on October 07, 2022, 02:58:29 PM
Thanks, Jacob

One of the take-aways from any safety training is the sort of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) that you'll need.  Usually they're standard (safety glasses, hard hat, work boots and a reflective vests), but always with some quirks.  At the Prodeco yard in Colombia we always had to have a long sleeve shirt; although the sleeves could be rolled up.  The Fortescue Mining Group requires everyone where a yellow and blue reflective shirt and pants, while the neighboring Roy Hill Mining company requires orange and blue.  At Amtrak only safety inspectors are allowed to wear yellow vests, everyone else must where orange.

Metrolinx had two rules that were unusual.  The first is that contact lenses are forbidden; the reason they gave us is that hot works are prevalent in the railroad industry and a spark from an arc-welder could go behind your safety glasses and fuse a contact lens to your eye.  While that sounds like an urban legend to me, I don't wear contact lenses.  The other is that you must wear both a reflective vest and reflective pants (this is new, in the past only the vest was needed.)  They must be either chartreuse or orange, and they're not allowed to have blue in them.  That was unfortunate, because I do have yellow and blue reflective pants and a shirt, but not just yellow.  So I told my wife I had to get chartreuse or orange pants.

CB:  Do you have to go to Miami to get those?  :unsure:

She was disappointed to learn that they were safety pants, and I didn't have to start dressing like Bruno Mars.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on October 30, 2022, 08:59:36 PM
That nearly 2km long Swiss train was something else:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-63442530 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-63442530)

 :cool:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on October 31, 2022, 09:41:43 AM
Now that's some real train snaking its way through the mountains.  ;)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on October 31, 2022, 12:03:46 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on October 31, 2022, 09:41:43 AMNow that's some real train snaking its way through the mountains.  ;)

Yep, makes me won't to go there for the scenary and trains; pretty much my only two criteria for judging a visit to a country on. :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on March 16, 2023, 03:25:30 PM
Something for rail enthusiasts and especially for Shelf:

QuoteWhy sleeper trains are being revived across Europe

There's no doubt that Julia Senninger is a train aficionado.

Living in the Swedish capital Stockholm, the 33-year-old regularly travels by rail, not only to visit her family in Luxembourg, but also to her holiday destinations.

She favours train travel over flying mainly for environmental reasons. Yet she adds that trains are simply more enjoyable, especially sleeper services.

"It's so much more fun," says Ms Senninger. "You meet more people, and you more have interesting conversations."

She is in luck, as sleeper trains are continuing to make a comeback in mainland Europe, with a number of new services being launched since last summer, or due to start later this year, or in 2024.

Back in October, Ms Senninger and her husband travelled on the then newly-launched sleeper service from Stockholm to Hamburg, Germany's second-largest city. This is run by Swedish railway company SJ.

The service departs Stockholm every day at 5.30pm and arrives into Hamburg at 6.30am.

.....

Rest of article here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64950747
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on March 16, 2023, 04:55:57 PM
Sleeper cars are great. I've always enjoyed traveling on them :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on March 16, 2023, 05:03:50 PM
Interesting mention of a Paris to edinburgh sleeper there. That would be a first.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on April 04, 2023, 04:06:32 PM
Another one for rail works at its own speed: the big project prior to our current one for the Union Station Rail Corridor was to automate train authorization.  This was going to be done by using a Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) signal through the trains analog radios.  DTMF is a 60s era technology, its biggest application was for push button landline phones.  Since this project is still in the books (and might be completed) I had to explain to the junior engineers what DTMF was.  I'm not sure either of them have ever used a landline phone.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on May 15, 2023, 12:09:00 PM
Austrian train plays Hitler speech over loudspeaker (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65599302)

:wacko:

I can't imagine anyone thinking that they'd get away with this; there's only so many people who have access to public address messaging.  Furthermore, even if it was something much more banal ("Issue order 66") you'd still be fired (at least in North America,) since the PA system is critical for passenger safety in emergency.

Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on May 15, 2023, 12:11:08 PM
You link doesn't lead to the article, Sav, but rather to this thread...
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on May 15, 2023, 12:16:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 15, 2023, 12:11:08 PMYou link doesn't lead to the article, Sav, but rather to this thread...

Does Hitler lead to Languish, or does Languish lead to Hitler?   :(

Thanks, I've fixed the link.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Duque de Bragança on May 15, 2023, 12:19:11 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on May 15, 2023, 12:09:00 PMAustrian train plays Hitler speech over loudspeaker (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65599302)

:wacko:

I can't imagine anyone thinking that they'd get away with this; there's only so many people who have access to public address messaging.  Furthermore, even if it was something much more banal ("Issue order 66") you'd still be fired (at least in North America,) since the PA system is critical for passenger safety in emergency.



Reminds me of this incident:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/nazi-no-no-vienna-tram-driver-sacked-for-sieg-heil-greeting-a-586966.html (https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/nazi-no-no-vienna-tram-driver-sacked-for-sieg-heil-greeting-a-586966.html)

Reported by Syt, 15 years ago. Tempus fugit!

QuoteVienna Tram Driver Sacked For 'Sieg Heil' Greeting

A tram driver in Vienna who welcomed passengers with the Nazi greeting "Sieg Heil" has been sacked. He said he was only joking, but passengers and the Vienna transport company didn't see the joke.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on May 15, 2023, 02:04:22 PM
Significant trackside fire at Newport,Wales means my travel to Cardiff and beyond over the next week or so may be scuppered.  <_<
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 26, 2023, 04:07:22 PM
My current project has headquarters on three continents and in five countries (Canada, The United States, Belgium, France and India.)  In addition most of the core team in Toronto are immigrants.  Our project manager is big into cross-cultural cooperation and differences; at our bid to project transition meeting he shared this graphic:

(https://spencerwolfe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Problem-Solving.jpeg)

(He also gave us a more informative/less stereotypical book on cross-cultural business relations to read.)

The ongoing unrest in France made me think of this; although the Belgians seemed to enjoy the graphic the most.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 12:23:20 AM
I am really interested in this stuff. I was at an interesting talk about it the other month.

One thing that stood out to me was the approach to conflict - north Europeans have something in common with Japanese in prizing relations and harmony whilst Latin folk will think nothing of a big argument. I think this informed me on  my personal relationship more than business.

The stuff on perception of time and how it leaks into business was good too.

https://ibb.co/yQs7hDt
https://ibb.co/g7zB8gg
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: crazy canuck on July 27, 2023, 11:23:47 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on May 15, 2023, 12:16:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 15, 2023, 12:11:08 PMYou link doesn't lead to the article, Sav, but rather to this thread...

Does Hitler lead to Languish, or does Languish lead to Hitler?   :(


Languish has reached the maximal point of self reference.  We can all go home now.  :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on July 28, 2023, 02:55:16 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 12:23:20 AMI am really interested in this stuff. I was at an interesting talk about it the other month.

One thing that stood out to me was the approach to conflict - north Europeans have something in common with Japanese in prizing relations and harmony whilst Latin folk will think nothing of a big argument. I think this informed me on  my personal relationship more than business.

The stuff on perception of time and how it leaks into business was good too.

https://ibb.co/yQs7hDt
https://ibb.co/g7zB8gg

The book that our project manager gave us ("When Cultures Collide" by Richard Lewis) goes into that.  His thesis is that cultures can be divided into three categories:

(https://www.goodada.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Lewis-Model-of-Culture.png)

and then he breaks down these traits further into things like perception of time or planning or hierarchy.  The book is a little dated (I think we have the 2001 revision), but it's interesting.  I like that he doesn't push his thesis too far and allows differences between two cultures of almost identical flavor (and even some for differences within a culture, though not too much  ;) .)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Tonitrus on July 28, 2023, 03:47:07 PM
Everyone always sucks up to Canada.  :glare:
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2023, 06:07:08 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 28, 2023, 03:47:07 PMEveryone always sucks up to Canada.  :glare:

I just figured we had a lot of asians :P
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: crazy canuck on August 01, 2023, 01:03:44 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 28, 2023, 03:47:07 PMEveryone always sucks up to Canada.  :glare:

I'm sorry
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Gups on August 02, 2023, 05:29:16 AM
I spent some time at the International Rights of Way conference in Denver last month - speaking on UK projects and listening to presentations (I specialise in compulsory purchase in the UK - eminent domain/condemnation/rights of way in US terminology). I susbsequently wrote an article about the cultural differences between the UK and American systems with the help of a Californian attorney.

Very surprisingly, the Americans are far less adverserial and litigous when it comes to eminent domain than the Brits.

The Lewis model definately isn't accurate for the UK. We are not cool, factual, decisive planners. The HS2 fiasco demonstrates this all too clearly.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 02, 2023, 07:06:39 AM
Quote from: Gups on August 02, 2023, 05:29:16 AMI spent some time at the International Rights of Way conference in Denver last month - speaking on UK projects and listening to presentations (I specialise in compulsory purchase in the UK - eminent domain/condemnation/rights of way in US terminology). I susbsequently wrote an article about the cultural differences between the UK and American systems with the help of a Californian attorney.

Very surprisingly, the Americans are far less adverserial and litigous when it comes to eminent domain than the Brits.

The Lewis model definately isn't accurate for the UK. We are not cool, factual, decisive planners. The HS2 fiasco demonstrates this all too clearly.

Published?  Would be interested to read it.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Gups on August 02, 2023, 09:13:45 AM
PMed you a link. Hope its not too dull...
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: viper37 on August 02, 2023, 10:20:45 AM
Montreal's new automated train's system, the REM has begun transporting it's first passengers over the weekend.

It went well.  Up 'til Monday.

When passengers arrived for their regular runs, the trains started having problems with shifting rails.  Twice in the same day the train stopped working for over an hour, and once more yesterday when it was sent into maintenance instead of another direction.

These trains spent two years in testing and the last 6 months making dry runs to evaluate the problems.

I don't understand the problem they're facing now. It's as if they didn't check the automatic lane change properly?

And they canceled the parallel bus lines on day 1 of they train coming into function, so people had no alternatives.

Not a good publicity.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Barrister on August 02, 2023, 11:38:48 AM
Edmonton started planning an expansion of the LRT to south-east Edmonton in 2011.  It was supposed to commence operations in 2020.

In 2023 it's still not operating.  No announced opening date yet.


They've also announced an extension of an existing line which will bring the lRT right past my neighbourhood.  They've started construction (well, relocating utilities in preparation of construction) this summer.  It has an announced opening date of 2028.  I remain doubtful.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Syt on August 02, 2023, 12:22:01 PM
Well, it's the REM, so I won't be Losing My Religion. After all, Everybody Hurts sometimes. It's still easier than putting a Man On the Moon, and once it recovers its Drive, the commuters will again be Shiny Happy People. :)
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on August 02, 2023, 12:57:34 PM
We're extending our local train system as well in Vancouver. So far there are no reports of massive delays or cost overruns that I'm aware of.

Knock on wood.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: crazy canuck on August 02, 2023, 05:11:17 PM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2023, 12:22:01 PMWell, it's the REM, so I won't be Losing My Religion. After all, Everybody Hurts sometimes. It's still easier than putting a Man On the Moon, and once it recovers its Drive, the commuters will again be Shiny Happy People. :)

 :lol:


Quote from: Jacob on August 02, 2023, 12:57:34 PMWe're extending our local train system as well in Vancouver. So far there are no reports of massive delays or cost overruns that I'm aware of.

Knock on wood.


I was counsel for a stakeholder making submissions on said expansion in the late 90s and initial regulatory approval was granted in 2000ish.

Not too sure we can claim there has not been a delay. :D
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Jacob on August 03, 2023, 10:33:52 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 02, 2023, 05:11:17 PMI was counsel for a stakeholder making submissions on said expansion in the late 90s and initial regulatory approval was granted in 2000ish.

Not too sure we can claim there has not been a delay. :D

 :lol:

I was speaking strictly about after construction started on the current expansion. I make no claims about what went on before the start of construction.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Grey Fox on August 03, 2023, 03:56:53 PM
Montreal's light train will get there, it's fully automated so it's going to take a while ironing out the bugs.

That said, it's really annoying that every-time the GMA gets a new way of traveling, we have to lose a previous one. They really like playing it has a zero-sum game.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on August 12, 2023, 05:10:12 PM
I've mentioned how much I like trains, haven't I?  :D

Anyway I'm thinking of having a I.K.Brunel themed day out by month's end. Start at the Steam museum in Brunel's Swindon, travel down his Great Western line to Bristol Temple Meads station (designed by him) and finish up onboard his SS Great Britain Iron-hulled steamship in Bristol docks.

Would also like to include an upline journey to London Paddington station, still mainly his work, but I think that'll make it too long a day, plus a bit silly to travel there, just to turn around and head straight back.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: mongers on August 17, 2023, 09:54:10 AM
World's longest train tunnel partially closed for months to come:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66530480

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A520/production/_130827224_entgleisunggterzuggbt-1.jpg)

QuoteSBB said that in total, around 8km (4.9 miles) of track and 20,000 concrete sleepers needed to be replaced.

That's one hell of a job.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Iormlund on August 17, 2023, 10:29:33 AM
Having Left4Dead flashbacks seeing that.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on August 17, 2023, 11:02:53 AM
I wonder how it happened and whether it was another company's train
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on August 17, 2023, 04:25:27 PM
I interviewed an engineer today from Ukraine.  He's been living in Toronto since November.

Interviewee:  And when I came here I took the train to Niagara and I was shocked that they were all diesel trains.  Even in Ukraine trains have been electric for 50 years.
Savonarola:  Wait until you see the hand thrown switches.

 ;)

I didn't really tell him that, there's no sense in discouraging him already. 
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on November 16, 2023, 05:34:32 PM
So we have a new radio project that we're a sub-contractor on; we're just responsible for designing the radio cabinet.  Since it's just installation my colleague Brandon is doing the design and I'm just providing some insight.  The customer has specified an external amplifier immediately after the radio. 

Savonarola:  Why do we have external amplifier, are we downlink1. limited?

Brandon:  I don't know.

Savonarola:  Usually we're uplink1. limited so we would put the amplifier near the antenna.  The signal attenuates as it goes through the line putting it closer to the noise floor and the amplifier amplifies both the noise as well as the signal.  It's like your stereo, you have the pre-amp near the broadcasters... well I guess that shows my age.

 :Embarrass:  :lol:

1.)  Downlink is communication from the base station to the train, uplink is communication from the train to the base station.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Syt on December 14, 2023, 05:41:39 AM
I hope sav doesn't mind that I use this thread for a train related news article. :)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/manufacturer-deliberately-bricked-trains-repaired-by-competitors-hackers-find/

QuoteTrains were designed to break down after third-party repairs, hackers find

The train manufacturer accused the hackers of slander.

An unusual right-to-repair drama is disrupting railroad travel in Poland despite efforts by hackers who helped repair trains that allegedly were designed to stop functioning when serviced by anyone but Newag, the train manufacturer.

Members of an ethical hacking group called Dragon Sector, including Sergiusz Bazański and Michał Kowalczyk, were called upon by a train repair shop, Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych (SPS), to analyze train software in June 2022. SPS was desperate to figure out what was causing "mysterious failures" that shut down several vehicles owned by Polish train operator the Lower Silesian Railway, Polish infrastructure trade publication Rynek Kolejowy reported. At that point, the shortage of trains had already become "a serious problem" for carriers and passengers, as fewer available cars meant shorter trains and reduced rider capacity, Rynek Kolejowy reported.

Dragon Sector spent two months analyzing the software, finding that "the manufacturer's interference" led to "forced failures and to the fact that the trains did not start," and concluding that bricking the trains "was a deliberate action on Newag's part."

According to Dragon Sector, Newag entered code into the control systems of Impuls trains to stop them from operating if a GPS tracker indicated that the train was parked for several days at an independent repair shop.

The trains "were given the logic that they would not move if they were parked in a specific location in Poland, and these locations were the service hall of SPS and the halls of other similar companies in the industry," Dragon Sector's team alleged. "Even one of the SPS halls, which was still under construction, was included."


The code also allegedly bricked the train if "certain components had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number," 404 Media reported.

In a statement, Newag denied developing any so-called "workshop-detection" software that caused "intentional failures" and threatened to sue Dragon Sector for slander and for violating hacking laws.

"Hacking IT systems is a violation of many legal provisions and a threat to railway traffic safety," Newag said, insisting that the hacked trains be removed from use because they now pose alleged safety risks. Newag's safety claims are still unsubstantiated, 404 Media reported.


"We categorically deny and negate Newag's uploading of any functionality in vehicle control systems that limits or prevents the proper operation of vehicles, as well as limiting the group of entities that can provide maintenance or repair services," Newag's statement said. According to Newag, Dragon Sector's report shouldn't be trusted because it was commissioned by one of Newag's biggest competitors.

Dragon Sector maintains that the evidence supports its conclusions. Bazański posted on Mastodon that "these trains were locking up for arbitrary reasons after being serviced at third-party workshops. The manufacturer argued that this was because of malpractice by these workshops, and that they should be serviced by them instead of third parties." In some cases, Bazański wrote, Newag "appeared to be able to lock the train remotely."

Newag has said that "any remote intervention" is "virtually impossible."

Dragon Sector got the trains running after discovering "an undocumented 'unlock code' which you could enter from the train driver's panel which magically fixed the issue," Dragon Sector's team told 404 Media.

Newag has maintained that it has never and will never "introduce into the software of our trains any solutions that lead to intentional failures."

"We do not know who interfered with the train control software, using what methods and what qualifications," Newag said. "We also notified the Office of Rail Transport about this so that it could decide to withdraw from service the sets subjected to the activities of unknown hackers."


Dragon Sector and SPS have denied interfering with the train's control systems.

While Newag has contacted authorities to investigate the hacking, Janusz Cieszyński, Poland's former minister of digital affairs, posted on X that the evidence appears to weigh against Newag.

"The president of Newag contacted me," Cieszyński wrote. "He claims that Newag fell victim to cybercriminals and it was not an intentional action by the company. The analysis I saw indicated something else, but for the sake of clarity, I will write about everything.

Newag president Zbigniew Konieczek said that "no evidence was provided that our company intentionally installed the faulty software. In our opinion, the truth may be completely different—that, for example, the competition interfered with the software."

Konieczek also accused Cieszyński of disseminating "false and highly harmful information about Newag."

404 Media noted that Newag appeared to be following a common playbook in the right-to-repair world where manufacturers intimidate competitor repair shops with threatened lawsuits and unsubstantiated claims about safety risks of third-party repairs. So far, Dragon Sector does not appear intimidated, posting its success on YouTube and discussing its findings at Poland's Oh My H@ck conference in Warsaw. The group is also planning "a more detailed presentation" for the 37th Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, at the end of December, The Register reported.

Because of the evidence gathered during their analysis, the Dragon Sector team has doubts about whether Newag will actually follow through with the lawsuit.

"Their defense line is really poor, and they would have no chance defending it," Kowalczk told 404 Media. "They probably just want to sound scary in the media."


Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on December 14, 2023, 05:45:13 AM
Weird defence. The competition interfered and changed the code so only we could repair the trains. Truly nefarious competition.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2023, 06:05:43 AM
Man. The base story sounds bad enough, sabotaging them if someone else fixes them, but how they did it...

QuoteAccording to Dragon Sector, Newag entered code into the control systems of Impuls trains to stop them from operating if a GPS tracker indicated that the train was parked for several days at an independent repair shop.

The trains "were given the logic that they would not move if they were parked in a specific location in Poland, and these locations were the service hall of SPS and the halls of other similar companies in the industry," Dragon Sector's team alleged. "Even one of the SPS halls, which was still under construction, was included."
So inelegant. Specifically targeted at certain competitors...wow.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: Savonarola on December 14, 2023, 05:59:28 PM
I got a list of Alstom job postings today.  Since they're supposed to be tailored to your skill set I was surprised when there was one for "Deputy Project Manager."  Then I saw it was for Green Line in Tel Aviv and I thought - I bet you're not getting a lot of applicants for that.
Title: Re: Life on the Rails
Post by: HVC on December 14, 2023, 07:31:31 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on December 14, 2023, 05:59:28 PMI got a list of Alstom job postings today.  Since they're supposed to be tailored to your skill set I was surprised when there was one for "Deputy Project Manager."  Then I saw it was for Green Line in Tel Aviv and I thought - I bet you're not getting a lot of applicants for that.

At least you won't have to deal with the snow.