itmaybeokay

This project isn't dead! In fact the sign works fine. I have two of them in my apartment that survived a move and work for a new station now. The issue is, I'd like this to be more of a "look what you can make!" than a "look what I made" so, I'd like this to be a standalone project that can be built by anyone. Right now, the sign relies upon an external server feeding it data by looking at the subway real time feed, parsing and interpreting the data and sending information through various MQTT topics to the sign itself which listens for them. The image is the node-red flow that does this. So, it's a little complex right now, though functional.

Hackaday posted a few days ago a little article on the subway signalling systems, it's a pretty cursory rundown but interesting nonetheless. revelatory part for me is the view of the parts that physically interlock in a mechanical interlocking. https://hackaday.com/2019/01/11/low-tech-high-safety-and-the-nyc-subway-system/

As I understand it, the concept was that this platform would be used for unloading passengers from the express trains, with the standard island platforms used only for the locals and boarding the expresses. In some respects, that does make sense - as passengers can board and disembark at the same time without mashing into each other - but in practice, significant numbers of express passengers want to transfer to the local, and it's a substantial pain to open doors on both sides of the train (and close doors on both sides of the train). Edit: Brennan says similarly - but notes it was actually used until 1981. http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/59st.html It does make a very tiny bit of sense in terms of transfers, if, say, you were on an uptown 6th ave express and you wanted a downtown 8th ave express - but like - those seem like outlier trips. anyway check that link he has fun photos of when the platform was half-heartedly closed with a plastic chain, before they built that little fenced in underpass for the 1 riders.

Indeed - fully agree, education is the long term solution. I'm not even sure protectionist trade practices are a short term solution. Even assuming they have the intended effect of bringing production onshore, until new lines spool up, Tarrifs are passed on to sticker price, the consumer price index goes up, spending goes down, as do profits, hiring, investment and the economy. Don't argue with me, just watch it happen - if it doesn't i'll be the first to admit that I was wrong. But that's really besides the point. Manufacturing jobs aren't the answer, but it's true - lose them and there's little to replace them with besides service industry unless you increase the overall education level of the population. Add a 13th grade where kids spend the year becoming proficient in Python (or whatever) and watch over decades as the workforce changes and everything is good even as we wave bye bye to the assembly lines. Maybe that scenario is all kinds of impractical - but the answer, the long term sustainable answer is education, and that's what steers my votes - not low-skill dead-end manufacturing jobs.

I have to try and get a recording of an equally jovial C/R I sometimes have on the He always sounds upbeat and goes above and beyond with the I/C. Notes the museum of natural history and planetarium at 79 st for instance. My personal favorite is he'll say at Columbus circle, in the kindest tone of voice "Good morning everyone, please try and move all the way into the car so everyone can ride the choo-choo" it's goofy, but it makes me crack a smile.

I don't understand the question. Could you define the use of "accountable"? Never heard it used in the context of NYC Transit.

One of the things I've noticed creating my sign - for instance this weekend when everything N/B on QBL was express - the errant "local" train would show up in the subwaytime data. The time would count down until it got to 6 min - which is queens plaza from the station I had it set to - and then change to "Delay". I wasn't timing it, but anecdotally I'd say that the "Delay" wouldn't clear until the time had passed that the train was originally scheduled to arrive. The GTFS data doesn't have minute-countdowns, it has arrival times. I believe the countdown clocks and the subwaytime app are fed by the same server that provides a RESTful API from the GTFS, and that's what's creating the countdowns. I believe it's that server which is could have better handling of rerouted trains. In essence, the server is looking at the current time, and the arrival time at a given station, and getting the difference for the countdown clock. I think that if a given train no longer has an arrival time at that station, it falls back to generating "Delay" until the original arrival time has passed. Note I've been polling the subwaytime API directly (their fault for not using tokens) so I have no idea how this is showing up in the GTFS-realtime. I'm eventually going to modify and spool up a copy of this one, and maybe I can even improve on the MTA contractor's reroute handling. 🤓

I think that what was meant - and correct me if im wrong - is a moving dot along the line on the existing subway map showing the position of the train. If the subway maps are indeed digital, not hard to implement. Looking at the mockup of the car, that's a lot of LCDs. Bet they'll run all that data wirelessly too rather than trying to jam an gig-e connection into the coupler pins. Should make it fun and straightforward to hijack. Messing with the rollsigns is about to enter the 21st century. I haven't had a heck of a lot of luck using the APIs to prorgamatically generate vehicle position without extrapolating it from arrival time. I seek to, because I want to make a DIY "model board" like they have in older towers but fed by real time info.

Oh yeah, huh. http://travel.mtanyct.info/serviceadvisory/routeStatusResult.aspx?tag=F&date=05/13/2018&time=&method=getstatus4 There's nothing about the R being extended during this time, and Trip Planner doesn't know anything about it...

Inspired by the overpriced and underdelivered NYCTrainSign, I set out to build my own home made arrival board. I'm going to document the process, hopefully eventually sharing my code and providing instructions so that anyone can make their own!

I'd presume they only fix them if they're completely broken. I have been looking for schematics on what the tone generator actually is because i'd LOVE to know what is causing that fault. Still - from 1976 it's got to be a small analog synth, and therefore, any kind of short or corrosion - the synth is going to be dependent on specific resistance and voltages, so any corrosion even minor that increases resistance, or a low-grade short that changes a voltage - thats going to change the output sometimes hilariously. Now, the ones that are random and from somewhere else - I bet the R44 chime generators are pretty plug-and-play with the R46 so - since I assure you there are no replacement originals, they probably use what they can get their hands on. Which is silly because if I know the input voltage, the control signal, and the output level and impedance I can make one that plays MP3 or wav or whatever for like, $20. hm bet I could charge the MTA $200...

Trains were going through. I took one to Ditmars from 577 around 6:20 pm. We held for a minute at QBP and then proceeded, which leads me to believe they perhaps had an absolute block set up between QBP and 39? That would limit capacity enough to divert some trains. I didn't feel the train stop to perform a key-by move, though the issue could have been on the southbound tracks, which would still limit capacity. (For those who may not know, Absolute block is a very-low-tech method of train control that can be used in the event of automatic signal failure. If you put TSS with walkie talkies on the platforms at 39 and QBP - you can have them communicate like "Okay, operating motor 1234 is headed from QBP to 39" and then the other guy, when he sees it leave 39 says "Operating motor 1234 clear of 39". Now the TSS at QBP knows he can send the next train, because he's confirmed that the last train he sent is clear of the next station and thus the tracks between them are clear After Sandy some of these were set up for a while - on the G line you had one in the newton creek tubes. There were TSS's at 21 and Greenpoint and phones installed. There was one in the south ferry loop, where being a loop, they used a baton. Stick a baton on the side of the column in the middle, T/O grabs the baton, goes around the loop, puts it back. No baton, sit and wait. Keeps one train in the loop at a time. )

That was a response to the other post I quoted which suggested the M be sole route on QBL local.

Just for starters: You can't increase frequency on the M without seriously messing with the F, and 6tph is insufficient for QBL local by a country mile. +1 for sigh. rearranging the tunnels you speak of would be an unbelievable undertaking. I'm assuming in this scenario the F and M are both going up 63? So the only two services at queens plaza are the G and the E? I dunno about all that. Contrarian opinion alert: I don't think interlining itself is the problem. While the installation of system-wide CBTC is a whole thing on its own, it will be completed long before - and with less disruption, than even the "rearrange the tunnels" portion of that proposal. With system-wide CBTC, a well-designed system can intelligently modulate the speed of the trains so that there are no merging delays. They go together seamlessly, like a zipper. If you wanted to throw some construction into the mix, swap out the really slow interlocking to 20mph switches. 90% of the remaining interlining delays are gone. Some day I'll plug all this into agent based modeling software and just demonstrate it.

Amazon, $26 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079JSKF21/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I 3d printed a thing to hold them together. They're driven with raspberry pi 3 and the adafruit PWM matrix hat: https://www.amazon.com/2327-Raspberry-Servo-Development-Board/dp/B00SI1SPHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525046656&sr=8-1&keywords=Adafruit+PWM+hat I did do a mod on that hat to use hardware pwm, I forget what the trick was but i think hzeller talks about it on github. The software I'm using to drive it is https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix https://github.com/partofthething/infopanel And I'm accessing the MTA api using a seperate node-red instance and pushing arrival times over MQTT. If anyone is actually interested in spooling one of these up I can offer more insight, but it's not for the feint of heart.

Finally got my own countdown clock working. I know the look is not authentic yet - I'm a novice at python. Still - better than paying those nyctrainsign buffoons $300.

I've seen that guy at 50th street. I have no idea how he trained those cats not to go after the birds. Seriously? You want the police to arrest this guy? Those are impressively trained animals, and I've seen this guy, he doesn't harass anyone or bother anyone, just nicely asks for donations if you want to take a picture. Technically he's breaking rule 1050.9(h)(1) but - other than you, who cares?

I stayed with a friend who was house-sitting on Park Place for a few weeks last winter... there's plenty of night life, plenty of residential. Yes, you walked down a corridor that is almost entirely commercial. But if you looked at the area in total, you'd be surprised. I know I was. Also, we're talking about the BMT broadway line south of Canal here - the two stations at the bottom tip of manhattan we're talking about are only a portion of the area served. In any event - the astoria end of the line could use more service on the weekends. Try it and see. Mid day trains can get weekday rush-hour crowded.

The whole station is closed. I think it's an ESI job. That's stations on both ends of my commute closed for ESI :-|

Neither the clocks nor SubwayTime were in-house work - also the clocks are the same thing as subwaytime. Literally, the b-div clocks are just displaying a webpage. I've seen them stalled at a chrome error. There's a central server that parses the GTFS-realtime feed from the MTA to JSON and then the clocks have a javascript client side solution that renders the JSON "nicely". I was trying to dig into it and see if I could get a URL that would display the station-clock in your own browser but I couldn't figure that one out. Figured out some other stuff though. For instance, why the damn subway-time app on the phone is so bad about dynamically updating.

Does everyone feel this way? I feel like the B-div countdown clocks are a little more accurate, it's just that there's only one screen usually on a given platform that's not great - but you can always get the data on your phone so, eh. Even in places with light-centralization - e.g. master towers - I've seen problems where two master towers aren't talking to each other properly or RCC is saying one thing QB master is saying another thing. If done right, there can be huge improvements from centralized tower operations, especially in the case or reroutes. Conversely, well, "central point of failure" if not done right.

I have a feeling that, mob mentality and the stampede were the only really dangerous parts of this but uh - anybody know what this was all about?

The cars are the same width - actually the 142 is like an inch wider - but, Your question made me curious how the staggered doors on the R142s affected platform gap. Did a little crappy scale drawing. This is based on the tech drawings of the R62 and R142A. Car scale, Door position, size, and truck location should all be dead on. I got a little sloppy and didn't bother depicting truck rotation but truck center is centered between rails here - it's fine. The middle door is always bad when the track is curved away from the platform. On the R142 though, the car end doors can have larger gaps, both due to staggering of the doors, and the fact that they are larger. I should have done this in autodesk that would have looked way better X-X

Yes. At a stub terminal, unless the train is headed to the yard, the conductor changes cabs, then opens the doors. With rare exception, the conductor operates from the cab in the back half of the train. So motor #5 in an 8-car consist and motor #6 in a 10 car consist. At a stub terminal, they'll move and open the doors from the front half of the train, (motor #4 or 5 depending on consist). This is because the doors can only be closed from the cab they were opened from - and on the reverse trip, what was front is now back! Once the train departs, the new operating motor was the last car in the consist inbound, and the new C/R position switches accordingly. There's an exception to this for some older trains. To quote snowblock Also damn that thread 5 years ago devolved into 6 pages of IDEK what considering the answer is fairly simple and logical, so - lets not do that again?