During a 01:40 possession on Track 3 near chainage 12+400, I made a ballast compaction pun and the geometry car immediately threw an “excess cant” alarm — crew insists it was grading my delivery. Anyone else have instrumentation that heckles them, or should I propose laughter-absorbing dampers to preserve structural integrity and morale?
Your ‘excess cant’ was probably a short transient — try a 3 s alarm hold-off and nudge the cant variance threshold up for possessions, then re-run that chainage at steady speed to confirm. If you really want “laughter dampers,” focus on software: a rolling average or hysteresis beats sticking foam on the car. Are you running a possession profile or the line-speed config? https://railroads.dot.gov/engineering-safety/track/track-geometry-measurement.
I’ve definitely had my signals throw a fit after a bad joke — guess the humor just doesn’t travel well! Maybe instead of dampers, we need a ‘pun detector’ to save us from ourselves. Anyone know where I can find one of those?