Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle
- Reference: 1588839308
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/07/bork/
- Source link:
Today's entry in the Bork of Shame is a little retro and was snapped by Register reader and frequenter of the comments section "Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese" at Newcastle Central Station in the years before the majority of the country's population was instructed to stay at home.
Caught in the act of bork, the sign appears to be revealing the serial connection doing its stuff in the background (unless "DATA" and "SYNC" are stations to be stopped at in the Newcastle area).
To be fair, this hack is not too familiar with stations beyond those which Southern Rail sometimes deigns to serve. On one occasion my rail experience extended as far as a jaunt to Leeds on a swish Intercity affair before the frankly horrifying experience of a Pacer to Pontefract. As such, "M35:P1091-Plat" might be a hub for transportation when spoken in the local vernacular as much as a device identifier.
As for the sign, rather than a list of departure destinations from Newcastle and the platforms from where trains leave, the undergarments of the serial communications used behind the scenes are on full view. The speed for data is 57,600 and sync is 19,200.
It has been a while since we've fiddled with serial ports, but that looks like normal eight-bit, one-stop bit and no-parity communications to us. Thankfully, the Hayes AT modem commands that float to the top of one's memory when dealing with serial settings are not required here.
The borked display itself appears to be a LED matrix, and while tracking down a definitive manufacturer proved tricky we did enjoy a delightful tumble down a clickhole of urban street furniture thanks to the likes of [1]Trueform .
It is unfortunate. After all, Newcastle Central Station itself is quite the hub, with northbound services heading deep into Scotland and southbound trains going back to Kings Cross. Services also go as far as Penzance as well as towards Manchester and Liverpool courtesy of the TransPennine Express.
But for passengers, the only destination appears to be to bork and beyond. ®
Sponsored: [2]Forrester Build a Digital Experience Portfolio
[1] https://trueform.co.uk/
[2] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8554/forrester-build-a-digital-experience-portfolio?td=wptl1936
This was a regular sight at Newcastle. A worse problem these days is when the displays on the hopeless new Azuma trains don't work: there isn't even a sticker on a bulkhead to tell you which carriage you're in, so good luck finding your reserved seat. And if you've reserved a "window" seat it's likely to be a "wall" seat. Mind you, I suppose we have to be grateful the trains ran at all, given that in initial tests they completely [1]borked the ancient signalling north of York.
Not that it matters at the moment as they're all empty.
[1] https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/signalling-interference-halts-azuma-tests-north-of-york
Our new local trains didn't play properly with level crossing gates at first. The nearest crossing to me had a couple of near misses!
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/greater-anglia-near-miss-at-level-crossing-video-1-6449119
Ah Haynes commands... Remember them vaguely
ATDT 123456
AT &F
AT+MS=V32B,0
ATH
or something - I cant remember the details
Those are *Hayes* commands.
Haynes commands are what you shout at a broken-down vehicle.
Or, looking at their ever expanding repertoire... an AT-AT or Millennium Falcon.
When I were a mere slip of a lad (back in the early 90s), they had just rebuilt East Croydon station. It went from a frankly run down mess of a station to a gleaming, all-glass very modern looking station. A technician was working on the (then state of the art) crt platform information displays. His tool of choice? A Commodore 64 set up on the platform connected to the overhead display via a rather long serial cable.
M35:P1091-Plat
That's just twerk, as we say oop t'north
I remember... maybe late 90s perhaps, they installed new displays - nothing like these - in the underground stations on Merseyrail. They showed testing and then something like "look at the front of the train" for many months, perhaps years. I'm pretty sure they never displayed any actual information and at some point were replaced with the more conventional ones you see these days.
So long as the train service...
...is not operated at Full Duplex along a single track line.
Yawn