What's Frying the Electrical Systems On BART Trains? (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Earlier this month, BART engineers shut down a substation in hopes that the closure would quiet the power surges that were frying the electrical propulsion equipment on BART cars -- a peak of 40 in just one day in February. The shutdown seemed to solve the problem, but BART officials weren't sure they'd really found the answer. Yesterday, the power surges popped up again, on an entirely different section of tracks, damaging 50 cars before BART closed off that section, rerouting passengers onto buses. Track inspections yesterday revealed nothing, and BART reports that it has reached out to experts around the country and asked them to fly in and help solve the mystery. Do you have a theory? Note: BART is the 5th-busiest heavy-rail rapid transit system in the U.S.

Comments

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[flopsquad]

Which nation-state is sponsoring the hacking crew that will inevitably be blamed for this issue?

Well dammit we'd know already if they hadn't gone dark with all the unbreakable encryptions on their iPhones!

control computers probably spygrading to Windws 10

[raymorris]

Perhaps the newest computers controlling the system have forcibly "upgraded" themselves to Windows 10.

Eels on a train

[sjames]

It all started 2 years ago when a student majoring in EE took an exotic canoe trip on the Amazon. One day the canoe capsized while he was studying and his book sank to the bottom. Thee eels read voraciously and learned about series parallel wiring of batteries. An idea was born.

And so now we have Electric Eels on a Train!

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[frovingslosh]

Of course it's the Chinese, but we will never know for sure until we make out computers even less secure by forcing Apple to build in back doors.

Re:I suspect ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Transients caused by the inherent imperfect third rail to car contacts causes a ringing (oscillation) in the system ...

Oh, sure - blame the homeless.

Re: I-squared-L?

[hey!]

I had a boss once who hired a consultant and was angry when the consultant told him to do the obvious thing.

"You know what a consultant is?" he groused. "Someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time."

I thought about this for a moment. "Yeah, but what's he supposed to do if you're standing there with the watch on your wrist and you don't know what time it is?"