ICE DESTROYER!
Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#22Does anyone know what underlying technologies they are using? Anything opensource server or client side? What types of hardware do they use in the vehicles to send the GPS info?
Salt, rocks and lots of diesel.
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you get icy-freeze-thaw conditions? Here in DC, we don't get a ton of snow, but when we do get winter weather, it's always just at freezing, so everything immediately gets thawed and re-frozen into ice. Most of my trips to Scotland have been summer, so only had snow up Glen Shee. The one time I visited in winter, it snowed a bit as I drove between Laggan and Dunkeld, but nothing dangerous.
"Glen Shee" - Scotland's version of the French Three Valleys! :-) Not sure we get any kind of weather conditions (apart from wind and rain) with any predictability!
Ha! My parents are from Blairgowrie, so I've been through there often, but never to ski. Beautiful area any time of year. Apparently the Glen Shee road used to be a lot narrower, steeper, and twistier, and they sometimes had to reverse up one of the grades (reverse gear was lower than 1st in Dad's first car, a Hillman Imp, IIRC).
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#24Having never heard the terms "trunk road" or "gritter" it took me a little time to figure out what this was. Correct me if I'm wrong but "trunk road" appears to mean something like main road and "gritter" seems to mean plow and/or sanding truck.
That is correct - "trunk" as in body, so the main roads are trunk roads. The vans spread rock salt (which we call grit), hence called gritters! We Scots always get confused in the states when offered grits for breakfast .... Sadly it does mean you have to look after your car in winter, as that salt does wonders for chassis rust - you have to keep the car clean!
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#25I live in a warm place so I am out of touch, but isn't that like a lot of gritters for how small Scotland is?
Remember most of these "major" routes are single track A road at best, apart from our small motorway network. Once you are north of the central belt, where Glasgow and Edinburgh are, your main road can be anything but. This means they don't cover as much ground as you might expect, hence we do need quite a few of them. https://trafficscotland.org/livetrafficcameras/
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I note in another comment - the gritters on that map are a small subset of all the gritters - those are just the ones that appear to be centrally controlled on 'major' routes. We don't get huge amounts of snow (at least not very often) - but what we do get is a combination of snow and high winds - which can make it a nightmare to keep higher roads open.
Do you get icy-freeze-thaw conditions? Here in DC, we don't get a ton of snow, but when we do get winter weather, it's always just at freezing, so everything immediately gets thawed and re-frozen into ice. Most of my trips to Scotland have been summer, so only had snow up Glen Shee. The one time I visited in winter, it snowed a bit as I drove between Laggan and Dunkeld, but nothing dangerous.
icy-freeze-thaw is perfect for ski resorts, but sadly it's rare that it happens. It rarely happens in the lowlands where most of Scotland's population lives. We do get frosts in the morning, but it's quite rare for sub-zero C temperatures thanks to our lovely Atlantic-influenced maritime climate. Never that cold in winter, never that warm (sadly) in summer.
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#27Took reading the comments to figure out what a gritter is. (Here in the States.)
Here we'd call them sanders or salters.
It was an even bet for me between that and maintenance of oiled gravel roads. It's basically a lower cost version of asphalt. Every few years, they sprinkle some gravel, and spray with heavy oil. The odor is horrible, and vehicles get dirty.
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#28Am I missing something - how do you see the names? When I click on one of the vehicles I see "Vehicle Location (PN61DYG)" and the name field is blank.
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Glen Shee" - Scotland's version of the French Three Valleys! :-) Not sure we get any kind of weather conditions (apart from wind and rain) with any predictability!
Ha! My parents are from Blairgowrie, so I've been through there often, but never to ski. Beautiful area any time of year. Apparently the Glen Shee road used to be a lot narrower, steeper, and twistier, and they sometimes had to reverse up one of the grades (reverse gear was lower than 1st in Dad's first car, a Hillman Imp, IIRC).
The twisty bit was called the Devil's Elbow [1], I remember going over it as a child before the modern road bypassed it. My parent's first car was a Hillman Imp too, I used to sleep on the shelf over the rear engine for part of trips up to Aberdeen.
I have had to fit chains to my car to get over the Cairnwell Pass, nothing passed me while I was fitting them and I could see people turning around lower down the hill, didn't see any gritters.
Re: Trunk Road Gritter Tracker
#30Does anyone know what underlying technologies they are using? Anything opensource server or client side? What types of hardware do they use in the vehicles to send the GPS info?
ESRI's ArcGIS server. No, not open source.