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After some searching, I found that Metro Valencia is fitted with Siemens Switzerland's ZSI-27 train control system, which is prety modern and fit for vehicles with high acceleration, though it is a point-form system (e.g. sents permitted speed signals at fixed points). But according to one anonymous note in a Swiss rail forum, apparently the system was sometimes shut down on the Valencia metros, because in great heat, there felse false signals leading to brakings. I see if I can find something definite on how the system fared during the big accident.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Jul 4th, 2007 at 01:24:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Found something. Migeru or another Spanish reader, could you decrypt and translate the third paragraph of this Google-cached article? It sounds like something even for my professional interest.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Jul 4th, 2007 at 01:28:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Forget it. I could Babelfish this. Apparently, the system's precision was questioned for working before the speed limit tolerance was reached, but the real problem seems to have been the lack of a speed-limiting signal point before the critical curve. Now that's really stupid.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Jul 4th, 2007 at 01:36:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That's a really tendentious and angry article in Valencian [Catalan] with a quoted paragraph in Spanish:
According to the scientific police [forensics] in the automatic train control system of the Siemens ZSI-27 unit involved in the accident, from June 20 to July 3 of 2004 "one can repeatedly read the activation of the emergency braking because of excess speed". Most often this happens for "exceeding the established speed by 9 to 10 Km/h", but in others this happens "without reaching this limit". Therefore, the General Directorate of the POlice concludes that "this emergency braking has been activated on occasion without exceeding the limiting speed, which might lead to questioning the system's precision". The report continues by explaining that "it will be possible to discard the fainting of the driver", because the automatic mechanism of the train, denominated "dead man", hasn't been activated as can be gleaned from the data obtained from the Event Recording Box Teloc 2200, also known as black box.


Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jul 4th, 2007 at 02:05:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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