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Unread 20-04-2006, 10:42   #29
Mark Gleeson
Technical Officer
 
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Coach C, Seat 33
Posts: 12,669
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Overshoots are categorised as follows

Lead passenger door of lead coach was beyond the yellow line on the end of the platform, many stations the locomotive will be stopped beyond platform (e.g. Thurles). At certain stations Templemore in particular Dublin bound it is permissable to overshoot the station such that the restaurant car is at the platform, typically to load/unload a wheelchair Templemore being fully accessible

The causes can be defined simply as

1 Adhesion Related
Leaves, water, oil, ice on rail leading to loss of braking performance or wheelslide

2 Driver Error
Driver misjudgement of braking distance required, can be caused by lack of attention, honest misjudgement or failure to understand gradients which impact heavily on distances. It takes several seconds on a locomotive hauled train to reach full braking up to 9 seconds in fact, modern railcar/dart units its within 3 seconds as they have electro pneumatic valves. 60mph is 27 meters/second

3 Failure of braking system
Incredibly rare as the systems legally are required to be failsafe, even under degraded conditions the braking system will still stop the train within the prescribed distances of the signalling system.

The chances of a overshoot happening under normal conditions are remote, I'd given you 1 in 50,000 upwards of an overshoot on approach to a platform there was a time not so long ago the odds of an accident on certain lines was well below that. I'll look up the audits to see what the acceptable level is

BTW cravens coaches do have a PA system, its just the guards van has no microphone!

Its hard to judge when to file a official complaint, if a PA is made explaining the situation, doors are not unlocked until after the PA and you don't need to resort to walking to the next coach I wouldn't be complaining unless the driver behaviour was abnormal

With regard to the situations described

Grand Canal Dock, yes complaint warranted
Rush and Lusk, no unless other factors such as unusual driving style
Howth Junction, yes without question very serious dangerous spot to dismount trackside if it came to that

If you do wish to complain to make it stick
Date, time and location (specific platform number)
Destination of the train you are on
Type of train (if known)
Number of either of the first two coaches if a (railcar/dart)
Weather conditions (wet/dry/fog/drizzle etc)
Opinion on approach to station, (fast/normal)
Aftermath of incident (pa/train set back etc)
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