Driverless Train

Which just goes to show what a stupid idea driverless Trains are. "Lost Control" just about sums it all up.
 
I agree with Clam, they are a very stupid idea and put us in more danger than driver ones do. If your going to experiment with them, make a testing facility secluded from everything.
 
Remote control trains are used a lot worldwide: https://www.google.com/search?rls=c...mHb9g#imgrc=ZwlrXKMtFYK7-M:&spf=1537546950096

Real life size Trainz AI would be really cool ... stopping at green signals (for no apparent reason), then backing up several miles ... etc ... etc :hehe:

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Remote control trains are used a lot worldwide: https://www.google.com/search?rls=c...mHb9g#imgrc=ZwlrXKMtFYK7-M:&spf=1537546950096

Real life size Trainz AI would be really cool ... stopping at green signals (for no apparent reason), then backing up several miles ... etc ... etc :hehe:

What happened to that track?

Yeah real AI trundling off randomly down a spur and getting stuck, or just sitting there tying up traffic.

This is just as bad as the driverless cars. There was an accident with a Google car a few weeks ago that was caused by the AI driven car to move at 1 mph while pulling on to a freeway. It was rear-ended by a human driver who most likely couldn't tell the overly, overly, cautious AI driver as going so slow.

I think there's still a lot of work to be done in this area.
 
A ROCO loco was left slipping until the rail melted (railburn)

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Caution ...............................HOTTT ---V
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This train has been operating for 15 years without problems.
It operates the same way trains in yards in America work.
Cheers,
Mike
 



I don't believe that the train was "driverless" in the sense of having a driver seated in an office hundreds (or thousands) of kilometers away, like the remotely piloted Predator drones now used by air forces around the world. TASRail does not have that capability.

More likely it was a case of:-

  • a runaway, like in the movie "Unstoppable", or
  • a train under remote control from a portable control unit operated by a shunter or yardman where the control is intended for shunting only
 
I know a lot about this train and have posted forums about this particular train before.

The train was loading at the Railton Cement loading facility off to the main line with the remote with the driver who would've been standing in the Railton silos and once he would've finished loading two wagons he would've released the brakes and powered the train up so it would start moving and then normally put the brakes on and cut the throttle off and line the train up to the correct positioning for loading the next two wagons. Obviously whilst the driver has been trying to do this something has gone wrong with the remote once he's started applying the throttle to move the train up. The remote system doesn't have a very far range and I believe it's not much further then what the length of the train is, so in essence once the train has kept going there's nothing the driver would've been able to do but to watch the train just keep moving until it became out of sight.

The remote mustn't have any type of vigilance system on it which the TR locomotive is fitted with but must be disabled when the train is being controlled via the remote. The marker lights on the front of the TR become red when the unit is being controlled by another unit or the remote.

Watch these videos and you'll be able to get a glimpse of what I assume has happened but then again I can't confirm this.

https://youtu.be/8mai0oqLkg4
You can see the remote control action here loading the train and unloading the train.

https://youtu.be/irzSX4MbITo
This shows the remote set up unloading at Devonport, notice the red marker lights and when they load/unload they usually drag the brakes to help line the train up correctly.

https://youtu.be/VHU4YmLyFaQ
This video shows that even if the points are set incorrectly at Railton the train pushes them over so even if the points at Railton were set incorrectly the train would've just pushed them over.

I hope this helps explain the situation!
 
The remote system is only for the loading and unloading facilities and the train only goes at a couple of km/h when it's used. The train was not meant to be driverless but took off whilst loading.
 
That's what you get when Mr Smarty pants decides to cut jobs, and replace the operator with a robot

While I agree with the point you are making, technically the remote is not a "robot" or any form of AI and the train, while under control of the remote, is still not driverless.

A better idea would probably involve a system that when the loco loses the signal from the remote it would automatically cut the throttle and apply the brakes. Better to have the driver walk the length of the train and lose some time to reset the system than to have a runaway and the resulting mess.
 
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