Stopping position at Baldock

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Stopping position at Baldock 26/09/2020 at 16:07 #132700
Albert
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Using default stopping position, 8- and 12-car class 700 trains (160m / 240m) overhang the points at the south end of the platform. Is this happening because the platform is too short in the simulated era, or is there a mistake in the stopping position?
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Stopping position at Baldock 26/09/2020 at 17:25 #132706
GeoffM
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Albert in post 132700 said:
Using default stopping position, 8- and 12-car class 700 trains (160m / 240m) overhang the points at the south end of the platform. Is this happening because the platform is too short in the simulated era, or is there a mistake in the stopping position?
Baldock will only fit 8 car units according to the August 2020 Sectional Appendix. For that, the stopping position is 140m in, hence the overhang (Mantis 0031602). But 12-car (240m) trains will still overhang even with this correction. Are you sure 12-car trains are stopping here?

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Last edited: 26/09/2020 at 17:25 by GeoffM
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Stopping position at Baldock 26/09/2020 at 18:08 #132717
Albert
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I believe to have seen one in a multiplayer game today, around 06:00 sim time, but I don't know which TT we were running (one which contained 700s and 717s, so something recent.)

The points are about 100m away from the platform in OpenStreetMap (though this might be incorrect), in that case slightly longer trains should probably not overhang the points either unless the TC break is right at the platform.

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Last edited: 26/09/2020 at 18:10 by Albert
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Stopping position at Baldock 26/09/2020 at 19:08 #132720
GeoffM
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Albert in post 132717 said:
I believe to have seen one in a multiplayer game today, around 06:00 sim time, but I don't know which TT we were running (one which contained 700s and 717s, so something recent.)

The points are about 100m away from the platform in OpenStreetMap (though this might be incorrect), in that case slightly longer trains should probably not overhang the points either unless the TC break is right at the platform.
The signal has a longer than normal overlap so it's quite possible a long train will sit in the overlap. I have some scheme plans... somewhere.

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Stopping position at Baldock 26/09/2020 at 19:45 #132722
markt
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GeoffM in post 132706 said:
Albert in post 132700 said:
Using default stopping position, 8- and 12-car class 700 trains (160m / 240m) overhang the points at the south end of the platform. Is this happening because the platform is too short in the simulated era, or is there a mistake in the stopping position?
Baldock will only fit 8 car units according to the August 2020 Sectional Appendix. For that, the stopping position is 140m in, hence the overhang (Mantis 0031602). But 12-car (240m) trains will still overhang even with this correction. Are you sure 12-car trains are stopping here?
Class 700 FLUs stop here half hourly on the 9Sxx Brighton - Cambridge circuits, using Selective Door Opening.

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Stopping position at Baldock 27/09/2020 at 08:25 #132733
Peter Bennet
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Do they stop with the front off the platform or the rear? I'd guess for safety the driver would need to be able to access the platform.

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Stopping position at Baldock 27/09/2020 at 08:50 #132735
JamesN
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Peter Bennet in post 132733 said:
Do they stop with the front off the platform or the rear? I'd guess for safety the driver would need to be able to access the platform.

Peter
Rear, the vast majority of SDO systems just cut out doors at the rear of the train.

In practice the only trains I've seen do otherwise is the 80x series Hitachi units - they are capable of cutting out doors at front and rear simultaneously, and certainly they are used as such by GWR at a few stations, albeit not many.

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Stopping position at Baldock 27/09/2020 at 09:26 #132738
metcontrol
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My home town, so can confirm the front 8 of a 12-car stops in the platform in both directions - so yes for down trains the rear of the train is still over the points.

The general rule of thumb at least as far as stations on the Great Northern/Thameslink route north of London is that all trains (Class 700 FLU & RLU) stop with the cab at the headwall of the platform, and the rear cars are cut out (in multiples of 4). So for the likes of Baldock and Ashwell with a 12-car train, the rear 4 are cut out, and for somewhere like Meldreth (north of Royston) the rear 8 are cut out.

One thing of interest which I didn't know until around a year ago, the Class 387s also have SDO and I have been on a 12-car (3x387) formation covering for disruption/cancellations, which stopped at several 8-car platforms. The process to release the doors on these seems to take much longer - presumably the driver has to set it all up as opposed to the Class 700s which seem to have a pre-programmed setup as the door release is generally alot faster.

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Stopping position at Baldock 27/09/2020 at 10:47 #132742
JamesN
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metcontrol in post 132738 said:
One thing of interest which I didn't know until around a year ago, the Class 387s also have SDO and I have been on a 12-car (3x387) formation covering for disruption/cancellations, which stopped at several 8-car platforms. The process to release the doors on these seems to take much longer - presumably the driver has to set it all up as opposed to the Class 700s which seem to have a pre-programmed setup as the door release is generally alot faster.
SDO on the 387s (and 379s on Anglia) is set up with a database - there's a list of locations with GPS coordinates for "box" the train has to be in to count as "at xyz" - you won't get door release if you're not in the box.

In its most basic setup, there's just a number of coaches against each location. Zero means all doors regardless of formation - for each instance of a proper SDO value you have to go out and test/validate it with a longer train than the entry in the database, to prove that it really does only open 7, 8, 10 or whatever. It's entirely plausible - as we did it at GW in the early days of running 387s - that if a route is only planned to be 8 car, and the platforms are 8 car, those stations just have "0" in the SDO database to save on validation work before entry into service, which is time consuming. There'd then likely either be a control instruction to never stop 12 cars at those stations, or a traincrew brief to instruct crews to do manual SDO entry on the onboard computer for short platforms at xyz if running as 12 car. We (GWR) went with the former, and to this day we have stations we cannot stop 12 car trains at - if we do need to run a 12 car on those services we either skip the stop or have the driver go back and manually lock the rear set out of use before departure, or before door release if the decision to stop is done once the train is enroute. I suspect GN did the latter, and the delay was the driver remotely locking the non-platformed doors OOU on the onboard computer.

With a bit more £££ to Bombardier, you can use beacons to setup sub-locations - which tell the train exactly which platform/direction it's arriving into. That gives you per-platform/direction SDO values, and CSDE (correct side door enable) - we've now done that almost everywhere we operate 387s, just a few rare call platforms/stations where it defaults to location values nowadays.

Last edited: 27/09/2020 at 10:48 by JamesN
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