Selective Door Opening On The East London Line
Selective door opening (SDO) is used in several stations on the London Underground like Baker Street, Camden Town and Moorgate. No-one seems to mind, especially as at stations where it is used, there is usually an automated announcement.
On Friday I saw this notice on the East London Line of the London Overground.
Selective Door Opening On The East London Line
Hopefully, SDO should work well on the Class 378 trains of the Overground. After all the continuous design of the trains will mean that unless the train is very busy, it should be much easier to get to an operational door.
According to Wikipedia, the SDO is controlled by GPS. So we have the door opening on a train running beneath London’s streets, being controlled by a satellite system.
As time goes on, more and more it seems that trains are becoming sentient beings with seats in them!
I wonder how long it will be before a version of the technology used on the 141 bus that counts the passengers, is giving TfL accurate loading information on some of their trains!
The Anonymous Widower 
The SDO is in fact controlled by beacons in the track at each platform. They also contain Correct Side Door Enable information too. The whole operation of the train is manually controlled by the driver, including the doors. All that will happen is that when the train reads the tag, it will only release the correct amount of doors for that location, as well as on the correct side. The driver still releases the doors manually. If the driver accidentally releases the doors on the incorrect side, it will not release but set off an alarm in the cab (and trigger tea and biscuits with the manager!).
The systems uses 3 different systems to check the location. The balise in the track, GPS, and distance monitoring (via the wheel rotation). It needs to identify using a minimum of two of these systems to operate, the balise and one other. If they don’t correlate the system won’t work and the driver has to identify where the train is before the doors can be operated.
Comment by 378driver | November 13, 2014 |
Thanks for all that concise explanation.
I wonder if you’ve ever driven me.
And are the trains as nice to drive, as they are to ride in? I’ve only ever been in a cab once and that was in an InterCity125 from Edinburgh to Inverness.
I still haven’t seen a five-car yet!
Comment by AnonW | November 13, 2014 |