14-Year-Old Turns Tram System Into Personal Train Set

F-3582 writes "By modifying a TV remote a 14-year-old boy from Lodz, Poland, managed to gain control over the junctions of the tracks. According to The Register the boy had 'trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. [...] Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit.' Four trams derailed in the process injuring a number of passengers. The boy is now looking at 'charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.'"

Comments

Other Similar Systems: Signal Pre-emption

[Palal]

In the US many places with newer traffic signal circuitry (at least on the west coast) have something called Signal Pre-Emption.

This allows emergency vehicles to by-pass traffic lights by turning them green. It uses an IR transponder on vehicles, and an IR receiver on lights. When a certain frequency (pulse) is sent out from the vehicle and picked up by the receiver, the light turns green.

Before you try to build a device to do that I want to say 2 things:
1. Devices are available on the 'black market', and
2. Every time this signal gets sent, it gets recorded in a log. There have been cases of people getting caught using these and the fines are hefty.


The same system is used, called "Signal Priority" can be used by buses to hold the light green or trigger an early green in various circumstances. (Basically this involves sending out a frequency that's different from Emergency vehicles.

I bet that Lodz uses a similar technology for its trams, but maybe they thought nobody could figure it out, so they simply went with security via obscurity (or whatever the term for it is).

Czech Republic has a single system (as in same system type, not same transponders) in the entire country for its trams and trolley buses and uses something similar to your car key remote.

If anyone manages to figure out how the signal pre-emption works, please post details online :).

Re:Other Similar Systems: Signal Pre-emption

[Daniel_Staal]

Some places have a more inteligent system: The signal turns the light Red (in all directions), and the emergency vechicles just go through the red lights.

Works just as well, and less suceptable to hacks. (Not impossible of course, but less chance of people doing it for their own benifit.)

Re:Other Similar Systems: Signal Pre-emption

[cp.tar]

The downside to that approach is that emergency vehicles encounter cars stopped at a red light at every intersection. Where I live, drivers panic when an emergency vehicle approaches, move their car six inches towards the side of the road, and don't realize they should go through a red light to clear the roadway.

I've heard emergency drivers say: "If you don't know what to do and where to go when you see/hear an emergency vehicle, simply stop. It's much easier to manage your way around a halted vehicle than around one whose driver is panicking."

Re:OK, I have to ask

[ThreeGigs]

Tram line 21 runs east to west.
Tram line 19 runs east to west on 21's tracks, then turns onto a north-south track heading south.

Driver of 19 sets his left-straight-right turn lever to broadcast "right".
Kid overrides with a left, lead car turns left.
Kid stops overriding, the junction again sees the signal on the tram to switch to turn right, and the second car goes right, causing a derailment.

In the US, most remote junction switches have a fail-safe that prevents the tracks from switching if there's a car over the junction, thus preventing driver error or malicious external elements from causing a derailment by making the train go in 2 directions at once. Apparently no such fail-safe is present on the systems in Lodz (pronounced 'woodj' in Polish).

Yes, there's an RF remote for the thing

[Animats]

This is a street tram switching system similar to the Elektroline system. It's not a full signalling system with interlocking. The tram driver is in control, and has an RF transmitter which can control switches. The current generation, the "TRAMVYS 6K", is an RF transmitter on 433.9 or 868.35 MHz. Normal range is very short, about 2M, with the transmitter down on the front truck of the tram and the receiver buried in the road. But it could probably be triggered by someone at the side of the street with a suitable transmitter. This system is interlocked so that the switch can't change position underneath a tram.

That's current technology. Older systems are much dumber. Some of this stuff is at the garage-door-opener level of RF devices. The Lodz tram system dates from 1898, so they have lots of legacy trackwork.

Re:New terrorist plot for TV

[joebok]

Have you never had a train set? A switch will have one pair of rails on one side, and two pairs of rails on the other. If you are coming to the switch from the side with one pair, you won't get derailed - you'll just go to one or the other output tracks. But if you are on the other side of the switch it has to be set right to get your train back to the single pair side. If the switch is set to route traffic from the other side rail then you would derail if you didn't stop.

I'm sure there are visual indicators if you are heading into a situation where the track ahead isn't switched correctly (my train set had red and green lights), but it is easy to see how there could have been derailments if somebody was running amok with the switches.

Re:how many other "systems" like this?

[TamCaP]

I read on one of the Polish websites about this guy, and he contacted the local public transportation club and was asking way too many questions (either during a meeting or on a webforum). As he didn't join the club / pay the fees and he disappeared immediately, it seemed a bit awkward. When the trams started behaving strangely, the authorities suspected outside interference and contacted the club leader for any information. The club leader recalled this strange guy asking too many questions, and the rest is history.