Random Photo Thread

[Izret101]

do do do

[captain_nintendo]

Somebody has Halo on the brain

[Izret101]

Needed a place to post that one. And since it was a half way decent image i "made"  in paint i decided to post it here.(made = just cropped and rotated images)

[Zimbacca]

I'm totally buying this shirt with my first paycheck.

[Tynstar]

I'm totally buying this shirt with my first paycheck.

Very cool and you will be an ubergeek!

[Zimbacca]

[Lord Nepenthean]

That's a funny site.  I enjoyed this one:


http://www.churchsigngene...es/churchsigns/easter.jpg

[Tynstar]

That site is the greatest......well second greatest!!!!!

[Izret101]

.I thought this was funny to turn up on my seach

[Izret101]

http://www.deviantart.com/view/18751311/

[TraderJake]

And that is why you should be weary of busy intersections that have a train line bisecting it.

[Lord Nepenthean]

I didn't hear the story behind that, but I'd bet money that the person who was in that van was doing something incredibly stupid to get hit by a train.

[TraderJake]

Well, no one was dumb at all. When train horns aren't blasted at the intersection and the "train" is actually a derailed boxcar you are destined for some major accidents. The picture above is of the collision that occurred at the intersection of US 42 and Tylersville Rd in Mason. The other, more major accident occured at the same intersection, where a truck was flat out obliterated by the runaway train. This is extremely tragic, not only for the injuries, but also for the setup of the intersection. The intersection, combined with the tracks, forms a six way intersection. In addition, the intersection is exempt from all railroad crossing laws. In order for the intersection to be exempt from the crossing laws there has to be a train preemption system in place. The preemption system is a set of traffic lights on the tracks. A train travelling at 5mph is given plenty of time to see the lights, and is able to stop the train before reaching the intersection if he is under a red light. Once the intersection is cleared, the train is allowed to progress. This actually works. Unfortunately a runaway boxcar is in no way able to stop under the power of a train engineer, so it went barreling through the intersection, nailing the truck in the location I have marked on the schematic drawing. To intensify the severity of this accident the emergency preemption system that gives green lights to approaching emergency vehicles malfunctioned and gave red to all directions in the entire network. It was pretty bad, and it was in no fault to the unfortunate drivers.

[Lord Nepenthean]

Always stop and look both ways at railroad crossings.  Problem solved.

[TraderJake]

Not that simple....

An EXEMPT crossing is an EXEMPT crossing for a reason. Flat out it should have never happened, and the railroad company will be making some huge payments to someone. It'll be interesting to see why the boxcar became disengaged.

To force people to look both ways at this intersection would change the LOS (Level of Service) from mediocre to a big fat F, and to make trench the railroad would be extremely costly given the terraforming needed to do so. The tracks are already at between 1&2% grade, which is huge in Railroad standards. This system works, but when you throw it a curve ball of course it is going to screw up.


This friendly message brought to you by the future traffic engineer in me.... only 3 more years.