[inferiorhuman]

  Why do I have to do this research instead of the "journalist"?

Ratchet the snark back. The journalist was referring to the train control system not home computers in someone's basement. And, yes, twenty five years ago SelTrac was cutting edge. Moving block systems were basically unheard of back then.

[mschuster91]

> And, yes, twenty five years ago SelTrac was cutting edge. Moving block systems were basically unheard of back then.

Meanwhile in Germany, we have had moving blocks from the late 80s, based on a technology developed from the mid-60's and production-ready by the 70s [1]. Incredibly, the LZB technology never had an actual accident happen in all the time, only three "bare misses" (one of which was pretty spectacular in that it caused a train to pass over a switch rated for 80 km/h with around 185 km/h without derailing).

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienf%C3%B6rmige_Zugbeeinflu...

[rexpress]

SelTrac has been around since the mid 80s, and was originally a German developed product (Standard Elektrik Lorenz) based on LZB technology.

My understanding of LZB is limited, but it appears to be a fixed block system with wayside detection of trains, albeit with shorter blocks than lineside signals would usually have. This is different to SelTrac which is moving block.

[mschuster91]

Yeah, LZB internally is based on fixed blocks - but on a system with block lengths down to 50 meters (as in the Stammstrecke München [1]), the difference is negligible.

Crazy to see that SelTrac was actually developed in Berlin, failed there, but is still in widespread use across the world.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stammstrecke_(S-Bahn_M%C3%BCnc...

[JoyousAbandon]

The only snark here is yours. What are you talking about with "computers in someone's basement?"

He pointed out glaring factual errors in the story, which should not have made it through any kind of editorial review. For example: 25 years ago pretty much every computer had a hard drive. And the disk depicted in the article is obviously a 3.5", not a "five-inch floppy."

[inferiorhuman]

Whether the computer in your basement had a hard drive or not has no bearing on whether or not SelTrac was cutting edge at the time (it was). That there were even computers with microprocessors put SelTrac decades ahead of what was in use elsewhere at the time.

[jcgrillo]

> glaring factual errors

You keep parroting this maxim without showing any convincing evidence of an error... what's the point of that? You obviously have some affinity for factual correctness, yet your style of argument and evidentiary rigor appears to boil down to "repeating the maxim many times in many different places makes it more factually true" which is obviously nonsense. Maybe some food for thought?