Re: Riding up front?

jt august wrote:
In article <63141f61-4d93-40ae-947c-3f429d28d545@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Chris Marino <chris.n.marino@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Regarding the practice of having an operator on an opposing end to drive the train from one beam to another:

If that was ever a practice after the Epcot beam was opened I would be
very surprised. It will be hard to explain without a picture, but in
order to move a train from the Epcot beam to the MK Exterior beam, you
have to go one direction, past the switch. Then you have to go the
other direction through the switch. You can pick which direction you
want to be "forward", but one of them must be reverse.

for the record, I drove these things for a couple years.

Back in 1992, I saw it happen. A supervisor was in one end, the operator in the other. The train I watched was switching from express to resort over by the MK. The supervisor took it over the beam, the operator took it back to the MK station, then in station, got out and went to the opposite end and took over to resume normal operations.

This was - as I wrote - 1992. Windows was still in the 3.1 state, years before Windows was far enough along to support the development of MAPO. Back then, things now automated mandated human oversight if not execution.

jt

In the overhead views of that area that I have seen since the accident there must be eight or more train lengths between the stations and the switch that should have diverted the train into the crossover to the MK loop. between the MK parking lot lights and lights spilling out the monorail train's windows I'm wondering why the operator didn't make sure the Epcot loop beam was visible to his right before backing through the entire length of the rather long curve into the platform area. I'm also wondering why his reverse clearance included the platform instead of JUST enough to be entirely on the crossover beam.

Either way, when they added the Epcot loop the signal blocks for the anti-collision system should have been divided up in a manner which would have allowed the crossovers without using the override. That needs to be changed ASAP! Until that's implimented, the crossover process should REQUIRE a supervisor equipped with an emergency stop button watching the reversing train from the east end of one of the stations.
.

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