Is 256 the upper limit, or is it just a magic number to be avoided? Is a train with 258 axles OK?
The law says "equal to 256", so the higher numbers should be fine.
Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
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Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#12TIL: Per the article, this 256 limitation also applies to number of users in WhatsApp conversations and the maximum block height of a Minecraft world.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#13Is 256 the upper limit, or is it just a magic number to be avoided? Is a train with 258 axles OK?
A train with 258 would appear to be a train with 258 mod 256 = 2 axles. The purpose of the counters isn't really to count how big the trains are, just to keep track of them. So it at least knows there is a train on the tracks.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#14This section is not present in the 2015 or 2016 edition of the rulebook: https://www.bav.admin.ch/bav/de/home/rechtliches/rechtsgrund...
Seems like overflow detection (or more bits) were added to the counters at some point.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#15I'm waiting for the freak accident when a 200-axle train enters a given segment, and then later a 56-axle train accidentally ignores a red light, and plop the segment is now marked as all-clear again.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#16In similar news, popular athletic app Strava has announced that they will be dropping Bluetooth support because of an issue with their code. https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032979131-Re...
Strava aren't fixing the bugs, just dropping the feature altogether. They even admit that other athletic apps implement Bluetooth without bugs, so it's not a platform limitation.
So sometimes people decide that an easy fix is a better choice than a "correct" fix, which would be either adding bits to the train axle counter, or implementing a way that didn't care how many axles there were- such as having a head and tail indicator for a train, and not counting the axles in between.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#17Is 256 the upper limit, or is it just a magic number to be avoided? Is a train with 258 axles OK?
A train with 258 axles counts as a handcar:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handcar
:D
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#18Looks like this leaves the issue of 256 multiples unresolved.
In theory we could still have a 512 axle ghost train.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#19You can carry a maximum of 255 rupees in the original Legend of Zelda, and back in the day magazines commented on the "oddly specific" number.
Re: Trains in Switzerland are not allowed to have 256 axles
#20I'm waiting for the freak accident when a 200-axle train enters a given segment, and then later a 56-axle train accidentally ignores a red light, and plop the segment is now marked as all-clear again.
Or a 200 axle one breaks somewhere and 56 axles roll back over the sensor.