Life on the Rails

[Savonarola]

In order to plan the location of radio towers I use Radiofrequency Propagation software.  This takes into account things like antenna type, broadcast power, frequency, the environment that the receiver is at and a number of other factors.  With the advances in GIS, LIDAR and other mapping tools these tools have become more sophisticated over the years.  Yesterday I attended a demonstration of a company who had developed a propagation analyses software for the lunar surface.  So we're ready for cellphones on the moon. 

 

Presumably this is intended to be used for radio communication for the next generation of lunar landing and subsequent research stations.  They really did an impressive job with this, including factoring the electro-magnetic properties of regolith, lack of atmosphere, lunar dust and craters.  It's just a niche application of a broader tool, but that they actually developed that was kind of neat.

[mongers]

In order to plan the location of radio towers I use Radiofrequency Propagation software.  This takes into account things like antenna type, broadcast power, frequency, the environment that the receiver is at and a number of other factors.  With the advances in GIS, LIDAR and other mapping tools these tools have become more sophisticated over the years.  Yesterday I attended a demonstration of a company who had developed a propagation analyses software for the lunar surface.  So we're ready for cellphones on the moon. 

 

Presumably this is intended to be used for radio communication for the next generation of lunar landing and subsequent research stations.  They really did an impressive job with this, including factoring the electro-magnetic properties of regolith, lack of atmosphere, lunar dust and craters.  It's just a niche application of a broader tool, but that they actually developed that was kind of neat.

Railroads on the Moon. 

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Grand Central Station

TERMINAL!     

[Savonarola]

Grand Central Station

TERMINAL!     

Sorry 

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Sorry 

It's one of my wife's bugbears.

[Savonarola]

Business has been down at Knorr-Bremse; rail signaling industry has been down since the time of Covid.  For us the problem was compounded when we were spun off from Alstom.  Alstom's processes are designed for billion dollar rolling stock, or $500 million CBTC systems.  Conventional signaling projects are much smaller and, unless they supported one of Alstom's large systems, they wouldn't be bid on; so there has been little incoming business.

In February of this year we had offers of early retirement for employees over 65.  Bill, from my many stories, took the offer.  That hit me a little harder than I thought it would; he is 68 so I knew he wouldn't be sticking around for that much longer, but we had worked together on five continents, we've been through a lot.

Inevitably after early retirements there were layoffs announced.  Our management insisted that these had been in the works since Alstom, but couldn't be done since Alstom didn't have the cash on hand to pay the severance packages.  So the employees marked for layoffs were sent to Knorr-Bremse and we were told to deal with it.  What finally pushed Knorr-Bremse to enact the layoffs was that Alstom announced that they were only going to use European signaling products for the Metrolinx project in Toronto, where they had previously intended to use the North American signaling products that are now part of Knorr-Bremse.  Until December of last year Metrolinx had been Knorr-Bremse's largest project.  (We can take some cold comfort (or feast on sour grapes) in the fact that the current CEO of Metrolinx has never completed a project (despite ten years in the role) so it's likely we would never have supplied the signaling products anyway even if we had kept the contract. )

Between early retirement and layoffs we lost about 116 employees; roughly a tenth of our division's workforce.  I survived the layoffs; though I was not sure that I would.  Radio is not a core focus of the business and a number of the leadership have been questioning the need to have a Radio Frequency engineer.  I can't even get anyone to repair the Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) that I've mentioned in the previous stories; the primary tool I use for field work.

Things aren't going any better.  A few Amtrak projects have come in, but with their DOGE layoffs they're not able to respond as quickly as they used to.  A couple major projects that were expected to come in have been delayed (as is usual in rail.)  This week our management is meeting to right the ship and decide the direction that the company is going.  They're meeting at a Horse Retreat. 

While there's likely to be be restructuring and further layoffs ahead; I'm still having difficulty getting past "Horse Retreat."

(Maybe there's a market for an Iron Horse Retreat, spend your week shoveling coal and driving a train.)