Railzone

NS Twitter party in Utrecht Centraal (photo: Daniel Sparing)

Doesn’t get much nerdier than this: a train operator celebrating a twitter account anniversary(!) in a Fatboy lounge. It is too much for even me

I have to say I am not a big twitterer, although I do acknowledge Twitter’s role in train delays, breakfast cereals or national revolutions, as I am in the stage of life when I should devote long uninterrupted hours to research (and grow out of addiction to RSS, email and a certain social network), something as realtime and hyperlinked as Twitter sounds fairly suicidal to me. But you guys @adolfochaves, @stevevance, @amsterdamized, @krisztab etc. keep on, I do try to read you.

Update: According to a marketing research agency, NS is the best twitterer among the top 100 Dutch advertisers.

I am kind of surprised that there exists a train simulator with suspension systems resembling airline pilot training simulators (Full Flight Simulators in aerospace lingo). Besides accidents and tilting trains (which do not exist in a flat country like Holland), and the eventual emergency brake, frankly there is not that much physical dynamism happening onboard a train, especially not ones the driver has to react to. Maybe it helps the driver practice comfortable braking.

According to my Swedish friend working with fighter jet simulators, even those are “down to Earth” static cockpits, although for another reason — because it really is impossible to simulate military jet movements on Earth, so they don’t even try.

NS SimulatorCentrum (click for the video)

Another simulator in the railway museum in Utrecht (photo: Daniel Sparing)

But such a simulator exists, since 2009, in Amersfoort, which is the railway centre of the Netherlands together with Utrecht. As you can see in the video above, although the graphics is far from the most realistic PC simulators (such as this Jubilee Line track), this simulator is indeed a suspended cab, used for training drivers the Dutch Railways. And it is housed in a spectacular building, have a look at the pictures on architectenweb.nl.

This second video shows a 18 min train ride in the same simulator — and yes, “shit, tien seconden te laat” does mean “shit, ten seconds too late”. Funny language.

If you are interested, you can actually win a training ride if you register to the Rail Carrière Dagen next week.

We are heading off to Rome for the 4th International Seminar on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (“RailRome”), so no long posts coming up this week.

If you are not attending but are nevertheless interested in railway optimization, you can for example have a look at the presentations of RailZurich two years ago.

A funny event took place today in Delft during the construction of the new four-track railway tunnel: the Bagijnetoren, a tower built around 1500, then part of the city wall, had to be temporarily replaced some 15 meters, while also lifted by 25 centimeters. Once the cut-and-cover tunnel is finished under the previous location, the tower will be moved back on the same rails, some time in the summer.

Apologies for the animated gif — but you get the point (photos: Daniel Sparing)

Quite some people were viewing the moving tower (photo: Daniel Sparing)

This morning, the tower was already on a concrete slab which was connected to the big blue rails — moving the tower seemed easy and you could even see it happening if you focused on the background. The hardest work must have been installing the concrete slab itself under the tower, step by very little step.

In the pictures, you can also see a huge windmill with some tiny houses attached to them: they will not move the windmill but actually cut the tunnel under it somehow. And the railway viaduct on the pictures will be demolished once the first two underground tracks are in operation.

You can also read my previous post on railway tunnels in general, or on the Malmö tunnel.

The windmill in the background will stay in place while the tunnel is constructed beneath (photo: Daniel Sparing)

This is an overlap of two images of a single tower, the left one already halfway moved. (photos: Daniel Sparing)

The Spoorzone in Delft (which means rail zone — hm, would be a great title for a blog on railways) is a construction project to replace two elevated railway tracks with four underground tracks, while moving the railway station itself underground too.

The scene around the current station and the viaduct mostly resembles a desert at the moment, except for the three listed buildings which will be preserved: the windmill, the tower and the station building itself.

You can also check out how the surroundings looked like before the start of the construction on Google Street View, more info on the moving and the history of the tower in Dutch on the Spoorzone site.

The rail viaduct has to go once the tunnel is finished (photo: Daniel Sparing)

The station building will also be preserved (photo: Daniel Sparing)