Re: Traction (was Re: OT: Debian Mailinglist server slow?)
Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca> writes:
> If you have a Windows box laying around, Microsoft Train Sim has
> several scenarios running with power set up like this as well if you
> wanted to try your hand at it. Controls are synched between all
> power units automatically (iRL and in the game).
ObDebian: I don't suppose anybody knows of anyone having put effort
into writing a free MSTS engine? On principle, it doesn't sound very
hard, and there are lots of free-beer data files available online, but
3D game programming isn't entirely my thing. I also know there's a
Magic Microsoft Image Format that's used for surface textures on things.
> Electrified trolley lines (you know, a bus with a pole going to an
> overhead line) used to have a pretty good ROI as well, though I don't
> think they do any more with the advent of fuel cell and
> diesel-electric busses, which are starting to be adopted in cities
> whose planners aren't retarded.
Around Boston, electric busses ("trackless trolleys") have a fairly
limited exposure; there's one garage, and a half-dozen lines that run
out of Harvard Square in Cambridge. The new thing in transit seems to
be Bus Rapid Transit, which from what I can tell is "if we dress a bus
up pretty and market it a lot we can pretend it has the same capacity
and performance as a train". The one place it's been used so far has
had political problems actually getting light rail installed, but
they're also talking about building a line around Boston's core as BRT
rather than rail.
I'm actually curious about how various bus technologies do in San
Francisco, where there's a lot of wired-electric busses but also a lot
of steep hills. But I haven't spent that much time exploring the MUNI
system, and most of what I have has been on their light rail.
(It shocked Boston people a lot when I explained that I had ridden a
Boeing-Vertol United States Standard Light Rail Vehicle through the
Forest Hill station, behind an Ansaldo-Breda car; Boston still has 60
or so Boeing LRVs, and at that time Boston's Breda cars were in
storage since they didn't stay on the tracks when moving. In Boston,
the LRV system has a "temporarily suspended" line to Arborway, which
is colocated with Forest Hills on the Orange Line. So, I plausibly
could have been following a car that wasn't running on a line that
didn't exist, except that I was in San Francisco.)
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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