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

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

#251

Post by regularfry »

ArnoVW wrote: post #173
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything else in their IT land outside this system runs off SAP (likely including the actual distribution of the output of crew scheduling) so if I had to gamble I'd say the failure happened somewhere in the integration between them. I have a reflex repulsion for off-the-shelf "enterprise" software. You pay millions of dollars to subscribe to a suite of (seemingly) bad, bloated software that takes more work to cu…

Have done consulting for 15 years, understand your feelings. But I'd like to offer some alternative viewpoints. Buying an off the shelve package also buys you an industry-standard business process. The idea is that part of value comes from the process that you have to shoe-horn into. Some integration is expected (and provided for) but if you have to modify heavily, You're Not Using It Correctly. Also, using an OTS pa…

Industry standards shouldn't be single-vendor though. That's what leads to expense and clunkiness.

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

#252

Post by KineticLensman »

pjmlp wrote: post #116
supernova87a wrote: post #108

While having algorithms and computers dictating every aspect of train movements, crew scheduling, resource allocation is efficient and in a sense optimal, I think there's something compelling to be said about having a system that can survive with human-rememberable patterns when such an optimizer fails. That it can fall back on (or have at the core) simple patterns that people can still operate without algorithmic in…

There is an Isac Asimov book about this. A crew is stranded in space, because of a computer malfunction and no one on board remembers how they used to be programmed.

In at least one Arthur C. Clarke short story the problem doesn’t arise because they still have sliderules

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

#253

Post by shapefrog »

shankr wrote: post #215
coolgoose wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the tone, I got tired of US style politically correctness just for the sake of saying it. How would "We are trully sorry for this incident" make it any better ? I do mind the fact that they don't pay the people their money back if they try to find alternatives to get to their destination. That's 100% unacceptable.

When is being apologetic became politically correctness? Are we soon going to call every decent human like behavior in public space as being politically correct?

> When is being apologetic became politically correctness?

When it became insincere or boarderline fradulent.

"We deeply regret this one incident" - you regret getting caught and it has happened many times before and will happen many times again.

"We are sorry, we have learnt the lessons and it will never happen again" - no you havent and yes it will.

"Thank you so much this is delicious" - umm try tasting the food before lavishing your praise.

5* uber ratings for everything - need I say anymore?

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

#254

Post by BlueTemplar »

wsc981 wrote: post #44
stuckindoors wrote: post #40

There was a massive southwest airlines IT failure compounded by weather issues over the weekend. This cancelled numerous flights but also snowballed into most of the southwest flights being delayed. We were lucky to return home. The news is only reporting weather delays yet for those at the airport this weekend...it was clearly larger. If it is true that Netherland's and Italy's transport infrastructure were also dow…

> If it is true that Netherland's and Italy's transport infrastructure were also down I wonder if Russian supported hackers are to blame. It's been Russian hackers so many times last few years (Hunter Biden's laptop, Trump elections, etc...), it's a sure bet this time it's the same. /s Nobody ever got fired for blaming Russians.

Their bad reputation is their own damn fault.

See also : assassinations - maybe the death of the top polish government & military and Total's CEO in plane crashes were just freak accidents, but a nagging suspicion that Russia was involved will always remain...

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

#256

Post by shapefrog »

mark-r wrote: post #210
wolverine876 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we did that all the time! An online ride board.

... which would stop working if the computer went down.

You could even install rails that go along regular routes, and put on scheduled carridges that people could all jump into at designated places along the route.

The computer could generate a schedule and post it publicly so people knew when they could hop on.

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

#257

Post by ngcc_hk »

valvar wrote: post #214
Saser wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolf Snedsböl? :-) Agreed that he was one of the best educators (if not _the_ best) I had

An absolute legend! My favourite of his jokes: "when I moved to Sweden from Norway, the average IQ went up in both countries".

Take a bit time to understand this joke. Crazy. Especially the new host would not be very appreciated of that la.

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

#258

Post by jokoon »

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…

> And there might be national security considerations

That especially. I wonder how expensive that thing is going to cost.

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

#259

Post by belter »

t0mas88 wrote: post #147
vages wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work within the train system of a European country (with ticketing, so I’m on the top and not the bottom of things). From my experience with station and onboard crew, I am very certain that the schedules and patterns are still very much human rememberable, at least collectively: People have to show up for work, drive the train and many other things. My guess is that the failure is related to signalling or some othe…

The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information scree…

There is no correlation between the schedule you see at Dutch train stations monitor screens, and the actual schedule of Dutch trains:-)

You might see this is an ironic comment, but it is as much that, and as much a technical statement of fact. Sometimes the trains arrive at the correct time ( +/- 10 min) so they correlate to what you are seeing on the screen.

But unless it's a delay of 1 hour or more, neither trains or tracks will be updated on the screens. It's just happen they sometimes coincide, so they might correlate, but only by coincidence. Trains schedule and train reporting on the train station are, I was told..."Run by different companies!"

-> Source: Conversation with platform manager at Amsterdam Central Station a few years ago. ( not that many years...)

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

#260

Post by tannhaeuser »

quartz wrote: post #62
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…

From the notice: > It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. ...boy oh boy did trying to look into what NS uses for crew scheduling ever send me down a rabbit hole. I don't know if the systems have changed but while poking around online I found this[1] doc about the Netherlands' timetable revamp around 2006 and it talks about the complexity of TURNI-- their on-the-fly crew sched…

I have zero knowledge of how the Dutch railway scheduling system works, nor of the nature of this failure, but SAP has been blogging recently about using Prolog for combinatorical optimization tasks such as the one that may be in use here or in SAP's Advanced Planning [1]. There are also well-known Prolog proponents from NL.

[1]: https://blogs.sap.com/2022/03/11/what-you-may-not-know-of-pr...

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