An Accurate Pocket Watch

As you would guess, an accurate timepiece is necessary for running the trains. I like to go beyond that. In the control room we have a large clock that is regularly set to the NIST standard. Our policy is that everyone's personal timepiece needs to be set to this clock, within a set tolerance. This is fine, as a few seconds is a tolerable variance.

There are a few ways to avoid having to set your watch every day.
One is to have a watch that sets itself to the radio synchronization signal in Boulder Colorado. There are many that will do this, the better ones are charged by light and you don't even have to change the battery.
Another is to have an accurate timepiece. Most quartz watches, both analog and digital face, are rated as accurate to +-30 seconds per month and I would guess that most fall into the +-10 seconds per month range. Setting these would be somewhere around the once a week range. Acceptable for most people.
I happen to like mechanical watches, and most of mine are in the +-5 seconds per day accuracy. This is considered to be extremely good for a mechanical timepiece, but I have to check it about twice a week to be sure that it is correct enough for work.
There is also the "Smart Watch" solution, however they are forbidden to be worn by people operating the trains. These watches can be as accurate as your phone is.

The solution I am using is a quartz driven pocket watch by Bulova.

I have last set it at the Daylight Savings Time change in March. 132 days later, it has gained 1.7 seconds. It has been in my pants pocket every work day and most others for all of that time. At this point it is not worth setting again until Daylight Savings time ends in 108 days. Atop this amazing accuracy, the second hand sweeps smoother than any other timepiece out there, including high end automatic watches. It is just a very pleasing aesthetic, the watch face is well done with large raised hour numerals and individual minutes enumerated. It also has a chronograph function that displays elapsed time up to 12 hours with resolution in 1/1000 seconds. Granted, this accuracy is just a gimmick as anything less than a photo trigger resolves no better than 1/100 second, but it is a neat feature. The watch weighs about a pound, most of which is the back case, but it gives it a very solid feel.

Since purchasing the watch for myself, I have gotten 3 co-workers interested enough to purchase them for themselves.

Finding Content, A Little Rail Talk

I'm striving to fill the month of July with daily posts here. It helps fill the void of not posting my opinions somewhere else. I know nobody is reading them, but that doesn't deter me, as I am doing this for myself, not you, the imaginary reader.

I am kind of at a loss for today though. I have some new stuff from Amazon, but I'm not at the point where I can review it yet. I am still striving to shed more pounds, but I don't have anything new on that front, as I am still eating less and trying to exercise more.

There is little of interest from the job front, except that we had to break a restroom door down due to a faulty door catch. I managed to put a decent sized dent in the door. The security guard who was stuck inside was eventually able to pull the hinge pins, but the door still required a couple of "mule kicks" to get it open. This is a fire door and would have been impossible to just break open without removing the pins or the fire department using breaching tools. Management didn't want the fire department to get a shot at it and we lucked out.

Another new development at work is the closure of the Convention Place Station to passenger traffic. This is part of removing the buses from the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel next year. As far as we at rail are concerned, it is making very little difference. But I am sure the bus operators are more than a little sore about it. They no longer get to take their breaks out of view of the public.

Interesting times.

Yesterday we had one of those "Interesting" days at rail. This weekend, the people for Seattle's Special Olympics are arriving for the week's activities, up to 500 per hour were forecast at mid day. Meanwhile, there was a protest going on at the federal detention center near our Angle Lake station, the southernmost end of our alignment, one station south of the airport station.
Before I came on shift, they had been running extra trains to accommodate overloads traveling to the protest and they were parking them for future use.
When the protest was winding down, the police called up informing us that they wanted extra trains for the crowds building at the Angle Lake station. I looked at the cameras for SeaTac Station and noted that all of the trains arriving from Angle Lake were unable to pick up anyone at the airport. Instead of running extras from Angle lake, I decided to turn the extras at the airport and start the extra trips from there. This turned out to be a good thing, as management was monitoring twitter and we were already running extras when they said we were going to.

We've got everything available in service, including a few empty trains to help clear the platform at the airport.

— Sound Transit - 🚆 🚈 🚍 (@SoundTransit) June 30, 2018

I feel good about it.

Here is a representative map of the system as it is now to help you understand the problem we encountered. Map courtesy of Sound Transit.

Dang how time flies

Ok, so I am not so good at actually keeping up with this blog thing. Yes, I could say that I have been busy, but that is a lame excuse for not taking a couple of minutes to at least post something.

People are funny critters. There is a video of a guy racing (on foot) to keep up with a train as it leaves the station. He ran full bore into a sign post. Watching him regain consciousness is interesting, one limb at a time moving slightly. After a bit, he stands up, and jumps a railing into auto traffic (nearly getting hit by a Caddy.)

Two weeks later, similar gig, but he fell towards the train. He was released from hospital the next day. Lucky guy.

I heard the sonic booms this afternoon, fighter jets scrambled for an airspace violation in Seattle. I didn't think they sounded quite like the Ft. Lewis shelling we get a lot of around here.