One fundamental “difference” between pure science and engineering is the way the second deals with absolutes, unknowns, infinities and other such theoretical concepts, irrelevant, difficult or dangerous to materialise in an engineering construct and project.
In track design the “virtual transition” is, for a few countries, one such a method to deal with a particular infinite value…
If I want to challenge the “virtual transition”, and propose to get rid of the virtual transition, I end up demonstrating that very often the virtual transitions are not that bad and we will use more virtual transitions, by removing the virtual transitions. But if we keep them, we will still use virtual transitions where we should not have virtual transitions…
Digging for the origin of the concept of virtual transition, I found a legal document from 1915 and, as I was travelling by train, I understood that it is a fact of common sense …
In 1952 the Virtual Transition principle was presented to the Railway Engineering Division of ICE.
Later it became part of the Handbook No 3 Railway Curves.
Long time ago, a good friend of mine, had an interesting design experience. He designed a non-compliant alignment and, after slueing it about 1mm, he turned it into compliant. The magic is described here …
Have you ever wondered why …
(my plan was to publish this a few days ago – sorry for the delay)
A different kind of article … Antescript Several times, in the last ten years, I started to write articles with this title. The only draft I kept is so convoluted and confusing that I might even decide to publish it. I have a few answers to this question. There is one I hesitate to put…
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A railway track blog 