Driving a train vs flying a plane

[pushthebutton]

Cool. I'm glad that you gave it a go.

I think that there are a huge amount of similarities between how you describe operating a steam engine and flying. Any flight wouldn't go smoothly without all the background processes as well. When they're all complete and things are going well it's a hugely enjoyable experience.

[dilbert]

Simpo Two said:

dilbert said:

No, not at all. We had to do some balanced turns. We started off just doing small turns on the column, to demonstrate the way that you put a turn in, and then take it out again. It also showed how the height washes off, as the plane slides. Then balanced turns to help stop it sliding with the rudder.

You need a bit of string taped to the cockpit



Not something that train drivers have to worry about of course, they just sit there.

Electrics and diesels.... They'd drive me insane!

A steam engine is different.

Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 12th October 22:22

[IforB]

Sorry dilbert, but that's rubbish. All you've done is the minor thing of controlling the aircraft under someone's supervision. I've taught people who's intellect is more suited to being in a zoo to control an aircraft, be it climbing, descending, turning, straight and level (one of the more complex things oddly enough for a beginner) and even successfully take off and land in just a few hours.

However, the other 35 or so hours of just the bum-basic PPL training are taken up in teaching people how to operate the aircraft. Handling the controls is a tiny part of flying and that's just in a spam can flying in an area you know well.
Flying a commercial airliner is a completely different ball game and unless you've done it, you have no concept of just how difficult and how much training it takes to be able to do it properly.

So I'm afraid your few hours in a Cessna with an FI doing everything for you, in no way qualifies you to judge what is or isn't more difficult.

Go up on a crap night and even without problems, you'll soon learn just how much skill it takes to fly a commercial airlner. Don't forget that your forward thinking mental picture is not only 3 dimensional, but has the infite variable of other aircraft around you to build in and the fact that you aren't moving at 50-100mph, but at many times that. There are many, many people who just can't do it. They're not thicko's either. Some people can just think like that and others can't, but if you can't be a few minutes ahead of the machine at all times, then you are going to be in a lot of trouble.

Edited by IforB on Tuesday 12th October 23:51

[eharding]

IforB said:

So I'm afraid your few hours in a Cessna with an FI doing everything for you, in no way qualifies you to judge what is or isn't more difficult.

Not only that, he's comparing apples with cobblers...or bks with pears...or bks with....ah...anyway, you know what I mean.

In the first instance, the comparison should be between the last steam locomotives - the late 1950's - and the airliners of the era. In the airliner, you'd probably be dealing with 4 huge (and hugely tempramental) radial piston engines, or four very basic (and hugely tempramental) jet engines....precious little automation, and...er...steam powered gauges...hundreds of them. Engine management either for the pistons or the jets would be a dark art, navigation would be a combination of dead reckoning and rudimentary radio navaids (and maybe some astro-nav) and simply getting the whole shebang from A to B would occupy the whole attention of the crew - they had balls of magnesium in those days - solid metal, but made with aviation efficiency in mind, and God help you if they caught fire.

Fifty years on, the driving positions in airliners and trains are drenched with automation, but all that really means from the aviation perspective is that you can have 2 people doing what it took 5 to do fifty years ago, and those two have to depend on that automation to operate in airspace and traffic environments that are 30 times more complex and crowded, at twice the speed, working twice the hours, for half the pay.

However..and this is the real difference...is when it all goes horribly Pete Tong. Ultimately, in the airliner, everything reverts back to the 1950s, you're left with a few pseudo-steam powered gauges, and pure rudder and stick skills. The air, like the sea, can be a viciously brutal medium, in which we have no natural right to exist, and when our un-natural mechanisms for travelling in either medium don't work as advertised, then ultimately responsibility for keeping your member-of-the-travelling-public-arse out of a smoking hole in ground or a...um...watery hole in the sea reside with one individual, the Captain. In a modern train, if the bloke at the front falls asleep, dies, or passes out from an over-enthusiastic bout of bk-juggling at the prospect of going on strike, the whole thing simply stops, allowing you to get your member-of-the-travelling-public-arse out of the nearest exit: No reversion to the 1950s, no sudden appearance of a firebox or an over-pressurised boiler ready to blow, no requirement to exercise those basic skills.

That, Dilbert, my old mucker, is why you're talking apple-tinted-pear-shaped cobblers.

Edited by eharding on Wednesday 13th October 00:40

[28V6]

Two good examples of train driving techniques. One with an old English Electic 2000 HP diesel locomotive pulling a passenger train near Manchester. Note how the driver is gently applying power away from the station stops in order to prevent wheel slip in the wet conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/user/aureol40012?blend=1&am...

And here a GEC class 87 5000 HP electric locomotive working a postal train in Scotland.

Note how the driver has to 'notch' up when accelerating and reduce power as he runs through the neutral sections. The driver can also be seen acknowledging his AWS on the approach to restrictive signals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2s0pRnoD5E

[maffski]

Steam trains, jet planes.

Surely a steam plane will be harder: http://youtu.be/nw6NFmcnW-8

Or a jet train? http://youtu.be/MN_dbzlBw4w