Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

ns.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 365 posts

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#21

Post by makeitdouble »

blibble wrote: post #16
spullara wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that trains can travel in both directions on the same track and the schedule keeps them from hitting each other head-on.

scheduling hasn't been used for preventing conflicting movements since the 1830s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signalling#History_of_...

Isn’t way too late if the conflict is detected at signal level ?

The worst will have been avoided, but at least one of the train will have to back down to the nearest junction, and depending on how packed it is they might have to back down a few more train as well. I’d assume in reality it would deadlock from there.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#22

Post by makeitdouble »

amelius wrote: post #5
gridspy wrote: post #4

tl;dr : Restarting train schedule mid-day is too hard and unsafe. So we're sending them back to depot instead.

Why "unsafe"? Isn't safety supposed to be handled at a different abstraction level (in hardware)?

Might not be your point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if having people stuck in wagons in the middle of a section for half an hour because of conflicting schedules would be seen as safety risks for the travellers.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#23

Post by orblivion »

xiphias2 wrote: post #12

That software bug made a lot of Hungarians miss elections today in Netherlands :(

For those outside of Europe, could you explain how this works? Are these Hungarian citizens living abroad who are able to somehow vote from polling places accessible by train within the Netherlands? Is this an EU organized thing?

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#24

Post by xiphias2 »

csomar wrote: post #18
xiphias2 wrote: post #12

That software bug made a lot of Hungarians miss elections today in Netherlands :(

So you are saying it's a plot to change the election's outcome? edit: It was a joke. :/

I don't think so. Anyways the same dictatorship (Viktor Orban) got full control again of the country.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#25

Post by denkmoon »

spullara wrote: post #7
amelius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "unsafe"? Isn't safety supposed to be handled at a different abstraction level (in hardware)?

I think that trains can travel in both directions on the same track and the schedule keeps them from hitting each other head-on.

What if they are late?

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#26

Post by denkmoon »

makeitdouble wrote: post #21
blibble wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

scheduling hasn't been used for preventing conflicting movements since the 1830s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signalling#History_of_...

Isn’t way too late if the conflict is detected at signal level ? The worst will have been avoided, but at least one of the train will have to back down to the nearest junction, and depending on how packed it is they might have to back down a few more train as well. I’d assume in reality it would deadlock from there.

That's why they have fancy software to route incoming trains around delayed ones.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#27

Post by xiphias2 »

orblivion wrote: post #23
xiphias2 wrote: post #12

That software bug made a lot of Hungarians miss elections today in Netherlands :(

For those outside of Europe, could you explain how this works? Are these Hungarian citizens living abroad who are able to somehow vote from polling places accessible by train within the Netherlands? Is this an EU organized thing?

Only in Amsterdam inside Netherlands after waiting a long line. At the same time Hungarians in Romania could vote by mail and the government was using Fidesz to collect the votes and threw out votes of the opposition.

The soft dictatorship works very well, Hungary will go even more down in the future. I'll probably leave Hungary before Hungary leaves EU/NATO and gets into a war.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#28

Post by tjr225 »

miggol wrote: post #14

My curiosity is killing me as to what exactly went wrong. And as someone living in The Netherlands I'm also kind of mad at the apparent fragility of this huge chunk of our infrastructure. If this had happened on a work day, it would have been a real national emergency, rather than just a huge national inconvenience. I would appreciate one of those post-outage "what happened" reports like with the AWS and Facebook out…

Physical infrastructure can be fragile/fail catastrophically, as well. I recall starting a job near Seattle, 40 miles from my home in Olympia, WA and a passenger train derailed onto the highway killing a few people and backing up traffic for days. That was not a pleasant first day!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derailme...

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#29

Post by detaro »

orblivion wrote: post #23
xiphias2 wrote: post #12

That software bug made a lot of Hungarians miss elections today in Netherlands :(

For those outside of Europe, could you explain how this works? Are these Hungarian citizens living abroad who are able to somehow vote from polling places accessible by train within the Netherlands? Is this an EU organized thing?

They need to travel to the embassy to vote.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#30

Post by XorNot »

qiskit wrote: post #3
samspenc wrote: post #2

I do hope they have a more detailed RCA at some point, right now this is the only helpful paragraph in the article about what happened: > The IT failure occurred at the end of the morning. It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. This system is important for safe and scheduled operations: if there is an incident somewhere, the system adjusts itself accordingly. This was not pos…

I was expecting more as well. Not much information to glean from a barebones press release. If I had to guess, it probably was an issue with scheduling/timetable software rather than anything to do with the trains, rails, etc. Nothing exceedingly seriously or difficult to correct.

Keep in mind that train schedules control what trains are on what tracks when, so while their are literally fail-safes in the system, this is not exactly far removed from being "safety critical".
Post reply on HN