PTC reboot?

[pennyk]

I am currently on train 97. Last night we sat in Richmond for quite a while. My SCA told me that the conductor told her that they had to reboot our PTC. This morning we sat for about 40 minutes in Savannah. I made the assumption that it was for the same reason.

Does it take over a half hour to reboot the PTC?
Why does the PTC need to be rebooted? Is it an engine defect? Track defect? Other defect? Normal course?

I am curious.
Thanks.

 

[Amtrak706]

I am currently on train 97. Last night we sat in Richmond for quite a while. My SCA told me that the conductor told her that they had to reboot our PTC. This morning we sat for about 40 minutes in Savannah. I made the assumption that it was for the same reason.

Does it take over a half hour to reboot the PTC?
Why does the PTC need to be rebooted? Is it an engine defect? Track defect? Other defect? Normal course?

I am curious.
Thanks.

It shouldn’t take half an hour, but if the system was causing problems enough to require rebooting then it’s entirely possible that the rebooting did not go smoothly either. I-ETMS in particular is still incredibly buggy so there are a number of reasons it might need to be rebooted, but the most common one is usually an unprovoked penalty brake application that cannot be reset.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Penny,

There are a large number of reasons that may cause you to re-initialize including loss of identity, loss of location, loss of consist, penalties, the system turns itself off and it doesn't return to active status, etc.


You are basically initializing from the beginning, which means after the reboot, all pertinent information must be reentered. Then, any information from the hosts will be received. Depending on the length of the journey, this can take a considerable amount of time. If a software update pops up during the initialization, that adds to the time.

Depending on the particular reason, it can definitely take a half hour and even more. There is one particular fault that instructs you to wait 10 minutes before you even take your next step. If you have to reinitialize on top of that, you're already down 15 to 20 minutes.

Additionally, every PTC event has to be investigated by the various host PTC support desks. Even if you've picked yourself up, you may not move until their is resolution and you receive their permission. That adds to it.

It is time consuming...but safety often is.

PTC blues

 

[Steve4031]

This happened on the lsl when I was on it. The delay was in Rochester iirc or Syracuse. I’ve read posts of others that this was more of a problem on csx.

 

[pennyk]

Thanks for your responses. I was not sure what was involved in a PTC reboot and why it was time consuming. I have a better knowledge now. In the scheme of things, the delay was not that significant.

 

[west point]

3rd" Another reason for rebooting is loss of proper GPS. Trains threads have a post of Jamming of GPS signals by truckers, drone operators, and others. The potential problem as we see it is spoofing of signals gradually that might put trains into unknown territory of protection from PTC.

 

[me_little_me]

Simple. It took that long because it runs Microsoft Windows!

 

[Acela150]

The main problem right now with PTC is bugs. It’s just part of dealing with something new.

 

[JoeBas]

See Boeing for further details...

 

[jis]

There are bugs and then there are misfeatures, that is a poorly designed feature. Boeing MAX falls in the latter category.