What is even more ridiculous is the back to back issues Caltrain has had.  The constant breakdowns of trains conjures an image of maintenance workers whose voices sound like they have gravel in their throats chewing a stub of a unlit cigar covered in grease.  I can imagine them looking at each other as a new repair is pushed into the depot and they dig into what is nothing short of a junk pile of miscellaneous parts and combined with some chewing gum and duct tape mend the poor dilapidated train into a condition where it can leave on its own power only later to gasp its last burst of power.

This can’t possibly be the case, right?  I say this because Caltrain spent $140 million dollars on “repair and maintenance buildings, a state-of-the-art control center to direct and monitor train traffic, and storage yards for Caltrain’s fleet of locomotives and passenger cars.”

Actually the same page (which now returns a 404) also says “Caltrain will have on-site fuel storage, which will reduce fuel expenses” yet with the last fare increases they cite rising gas prices.  And of a personal annoyance is the announcement of a “new train washer that will allow trains to get a thorough cleaning every day. Currently, crews are only able to give trains a thorough washing and scrubbing twice a year.”  This would be great if they utilized this new ability, but just about every train I am on has windows so filthy I can barely see out the window.  I even wrote feedback to Caltrain about it and they couldn’t bother to send a reply that they even got the feedback let alone what, if anything, they would do to address my issue.

Well, I’ve gotten to the point of rant fueled by rage and to make matters worse I’m on a conference call I want nothing to do with.  And SB332 will end up about 45m behind schedule when all things are done.

What is the lesson learned here?  Stop going into the office.

I had a few small outages with my server in the past few months.  Some were self inflicted and others are still unknown.  It was because of this that I realized I need to establish a backup system that will process email updates if the primary goes down.  I’m not really sure how to do this per se other than some Postfix and MySQL magic.  I have the infrastructure just not the time.

Edit: And no sooner did I post did was there another fatality.

I apologize if this jammed up aynone.

I’m fired.

KCRA reported at 5:59PDT a incident with a truck and 12m later the @caltrain feed warmed up to a steady stream of updates about track status, train routing, and departures.  While at first I regretted enabling SMS updates for @caltrain because of it waking me up early and keeping me up, I was able to make alternative plans and ended up carpooling with a friend.

I thought it was amusing to read on a list I am on at 7:52PDT

At 4th/King and there are a hundred or so people waiting for multiple
trains. No info on what’s up.

Only to be followed up 8 minutes later with

The CalTrain Twitter feed says there’s a train v. truck in San Mateo,
initially at 9th, finally stopped at 5th.  http://twitter.com/caltrain

I don’t know about you but does anyone else think it is strange that at a Caltrain terminal this person didn’t know what was going on?  It would be one thing if it were a unstaffed station, but it is unfortunate it was not clear to what was going on at 4th/King.

I would like to thank everyone again who updaes to make the feed useful to many.

For those of you playing at home (or on the train as it were) it appears there was a broken rail near Morgan Hill and SB #324 had engine trouble and had to be combined with SB #230.

Fri Jun 27 11:39:02 2008:24834: Tweet: ‘230 old 1car: 332 new 1 car’

Fri Jun 27 11:52:06 2008:25590: Tweet: ‘NB329 5min late at Millbrae’

Fri Jun 27 11:56:18 2008:25865: Tweet: ‘SB230 old style 1 car; room after 22nd’

I am still on the fence on how to handle failed updates.  I suppose I could retry 3 times or so, but anything more may run the risk of having the tweet become unnewsworthy.  Any thoughts?