Life on the Rails

[Savonarola]

Sav, what do you think of the SLJ900* machines?



*not sure that's the exact designation, I'll check.

This one?  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.

[Valmy]

Could John Henry have beaten that track machine in a steel driving race?

[KRonn]

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.

[Savonarola]

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!

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.

[Barrister]

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.

[Malthus]

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

[Duque de Bragança]

I prefer the not too common Swastika Trap, as seen in ninja movies such as Ninja the Final Duel:

[Savonarola]

I prefer the not too common Swastika Trap, as seen in ninja movies such as Ninja the Final Duel:

Ooh, looks like it's available in its entirety with subtitles on Youtube.  (Is it a film that improves with dubbing?  It looks like it's available in a dubbed version too.)

[Savonarola]

I continued my lab work in an Anechoic Chamber:



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.

[Jacob]

You look very different from the other pictures you've posted of yourself.

[Savonarola]

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.

[Duque de Bragança]

Ooh, looks like it's available in its entirety with subtitles on Youtube.  (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.

[Admiral Yi]

Sav, feel free to flash us your orange juice augmented boobs.

[Savonarola]

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?
Siemen's manager:  We will when the merger goes through.
Savonarola:   

[Savonarola]

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.