Oh dear, how ignorant. I thought you were an engineer from something you said months ago.
They are designed to operate over our "normal" temperature range with a safety margin both at the high and low ends of that range. It might surprise you that our expected high temperature is not as high as say the south of France, and even there they periodically have issues with wire dangling too low for the trains to run safely at high speed.
Tension the wire to cope with high temperatures and at low temp the wire will snap, tension for low temperatures and the wires will sag at extreme temperatures. And of course the wire can be several tens of degrees above the ambient due to solar gain. Simple physics really.

Tension the wire to cope with high temperatures and at low temp the wire will snap, tension for low temperatures and the wires will sag at extreme temperatures. And of course the wire can be several tens of degrees above the ambient due to solar gain. Simple physics really.

I guess in theory, the pulleys could be made with a greater degree of travel for the weights but if you allow for a greater temperature range, my guess is you also get a substantial increase in cost. There must be places on the American continent where the temperature range is greater on a regular basis. How do they cope I wonder?

Given that a typical assumed temperature range is 100C (-30 to +70C conductor wire temperature) and copper expands about 1.64mm/m over that range and the typical OHLE conductor cable is about 10km long that's over 16m of expansion to cope with, plus an allowance for the "sag & lift" that happens as a train passes. You can see the problems associated with designing an OHLE tensioning system.
Actually the problem isn't so much with the conductor but with all the suspension cables and other hardware, they are "more or less" firmly attached to the large metal pillars, and their connections to the conductor wires don't slide very much (there were experiments years ago, but they found if there was too much movement (caused by wear) it caused a lot more arc damage leading to premature component failure, or random welding and thus unpredictable loss of sliding.

Answering your question about how they cope in the USA - badly (by their own admission).

Okay, I've given Peter a vacation with an assignment, to study what heat does to little children and the elderly (and in some cases to pets). And that he'll show his new found knowledge when he returns in due time.

In the meantime, I've been watching this rollercoaster the past weeks and must say I don't know how to handle it. I think I should give all of us a warning, for flame baiting. Maybe I should just give all of us a vacation for some time but then there's no one to answer the forums.

I could use hints. So a directive, when you see something happen in one of these threads that you don't feel well about, use the red X to report that. I'll direct the moderators to not let it run out of hand so much. But perhaps that they too don't know how to handle this.

How do they cope I wonder?

By using diesel traction power. I don't think there are many, if any, real long-distance routes using electric traction.

Thanks to the moderator. Count me among the list of people who was disturbed by recent - er, what were they? Certainly not 'conversations'. Statements to which any rational response was greeted by irrational re-statement? I didn't know how to respond either, which is why I mostly kept out of it.

Yes, much better here now. Less anti-society, anti-humanism, in fact less of anti-everything-most-people-agree-with.

I red-X'ed a few of the more crazy, post rule breaking stuff, but, that didn't help much. Lot's of stuff breaking for example these rules:

No messages intended to annoy or antagonize other people, or to hijack a thread.
No messages that are deliberately hostile, threatening, or insulting.

Not even admitting to criminality, and even admitting to the crime of growing marijuana at home, was enough obviously.

But finally it became too much, which I'm happy with.

I've seen your reports - and those of others. And I've acted on some of them. But I've not actively followed all the conversations, been busy with personal stuff, so some I may have let go of. We have two more moderators walking around here, I'm of the impression, if I don't do something and they don't, is it that bad then what's written?

I do encourage a lively discussion and don't want to enforce the rules in a heavy handed way. We all learned from Seti that that's not the way to do things, right?

This afternoon however there were just some things that I thought went too far. Downplaying heat deaths on children and the (demented) elderly as if they know what heat is and how to deal with it, was a door too far for me. I'm sure he sees it differently. He always does.

Ah well, but we all know that sending Peter on a vacation does no good other than for the duration of the vacation.
When he's back from the vacation, it starts over again, and we'll be back to the same short vacations again, and again, and again....
It's been going on for years by now, and he doesn't learn anything during his vacations.

It will obviously take a murder or something, to get perma-banned here.

Well, at least we have a "normal" forum for a while.....

Thanks to the MODS I can actually hear a pin drop in the forums.

Looks like I didn't miss much useful information while I was away for the day.

yeah I don't really get why he hasn't been permanently banned at this point. he gets vacations often. but you keep letting him back over and over. why?

there's the old quote (misattributed to Einstein) - "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"

It's 20:10 in the evening here in Fort Worth metro, Texas and currently 100°F/37.77°C outside in my neighborhood. Made it almost to 110F/43.33C this afternoon.

Lots of active fires all over Texas and a "small brush fire" only a few miles from here. Luckily the Firefighters were able to extinguish it quickly and no homes or farms were damaged. Dolts throwing cigarettes out car window.

Amazing. I go to work, don't have time to read anything much less make a post and I come back and the fora is devoid of intentionally antagonizing wild crazy statements. [Where are the moderators when Trump is spouting? Can't they make him take a vacation? Sigh, guess that belongs in another fora.]

Mr. Vacation is very good at gaslighting and building armies of strawmen. He knows how to push many buttons. He is a student of Saul Alinsky and studies how to construct logical fallacies, all his reality consists of. His entire reason is to scratch an itch to see if there is a reaction. If you scratch hard enough and long enough you will draw blood or hit "that spot" and get decked.

I'll admit to pointing and laughing. With such childish public tantrums it is very hard not to and can even become impossible. Humans laugh at others misfortunes, if minor.

Perhaps like Knut has his own thread over at Seti, Mr. Vacation needs his where the reasonable know not to tread?

Glory - I'm so glad next door's grand daughter is getting over heatstroke. She was ruched into hospital yesterday afternoon and for a time it was a bit touch and go if she see today. Thankfully steps taken before paramedics and ambulance arrived bought her the time needed and they could take over and get her to hospital where complete treatment could be undertaken.

yeah I don't really get why he hasn't been permanently banned at this point. he gets vacations often. but you keep letting him back over and over. why?

Because by the forum's moderation rules we're only allowed to permaban spammers immediately, the rest of the time we have to look at the severity of what's said and what consequences it has on the discussion and decide upon things without our mood allowing interference. And that's not easy. As some of you flame bait him into saying things as well, so if I were to permaban him over an answer he gave, I should do that to those who flame baited as well.

Rest assured, yesterday was no flame bait, but post after post from him with deliberate misinformation.

Because by the forum's moderation rules we're only allowed to permaban spammers immediately, the rest of the time we have to look at the severity of what's said and what consequences it has on the discussion and decide upon things without our mood allowing interference. And that's not easy.

Thank you for your efforts on this. I know from experience elsewhere that moderation is not always easy though this forum mostly seems to require more intervention than CPDN though less than some social media groups.

yeah I don't really get why he hasn't been permanently banned at this point. he gets vacations often. but you keep letting him back over and over. why?

Because by the forum's moderation rules we're only allowed to permaban spammers immediately, the rest of the time we have to look at the severity of what's said and what consequences it has on the discussion and decide upon things without our mood allowing interference. And that's not easy. As some of you flame bait him into saying things as well, so if I were to permaban him over an answer he gave, I should do that to those who flame baited as well.

Rest assured, yesterday was no flame bait, but post after post from him with deliberate misinformation.

I think his constant posts and misinformation (your own words) can and should be classified as "spam" to fit the needed criteria.

if not, sometimes exceptions should be made for the sake of sanity of the board. otherwise you're just being complicit to the consequences of lifting the bans. you KNOW what will happen when the vacations are over, and you KNOW he will just keep doing it again and again to inevitably result in another ban/vacation. and by this point he knows it too and he revels in knowing he'll be back eventually. you need to not only ban the account, but also the IP range, as he's been known to create several aliases.

Over several decades in Logistics, I learnt that there are 2 dangerous issues that no normal person can deal with.
Blatant stupidity
Blatant selfishness.
They actually got me sacked 3 times in life.
Won 2 tribunals & 1 out of court settlement.
Refused to take a lorry on the road.
Refused to work with a drunk.
Refused to work with a druggie.

There was another incident , but I was't; sacked, I walked out. Got a rollicking for not answering my phone (got a nice payout to avoid a tribunal).
The drunk issue actually made the news sometime later. Well under the influence, he crashed his lorry into a long standing oak tree on the slip road to Stamford off the A1.
The council ended up removing the remains of the tree later as it was a hazard.

One important thing also learnt was this: Do not profess to know everything because the day will come when you end up digging a large hole for yourself.
I;m not perfect, there were good days & bad days, but overall I enjoyed the industry.
With what is seen on the roads these days, I'm more tan content to rely on public transport. Pre-planning takes much of the sting out of things.

you need to not only ban the account, but also the IP range, as he's been known to create several aliases.

Banning IP addresses isn't an option as that needs to be done on the (firewall) server of the University, and I'm not going to ask that of David as I know his answer: not necessary. Aside from that, IP addresses aren't all static, some are dynamic. You wouldn't want to block many other people just over one guy. We can deal with his aliases.

I've been watching these threads the past weeks and have seen a pretty coherent conversation with him by many of you. If you find he's spreading misinformation, you can call him out on that. Or all stop reacting to his posts. If he doesn't get any reactions, he'll go elsewhere where he will find people to react to him. Simple as that.

Or all stop reacting to his posts. If he doesn't get any reactions, he'll go elsewhere where he will find people to react to him. Simple as that.

it's clear that this isn't the case. he continues to spew his vitriol, reaction or no reaction. this is shown time and time again.

victim blaming and forcing everyone else to bend to his will is not only exactly what he wants, but doesn't solve the root of the problem. you know the root cause and source, and refusing to act on it in a permanent way seems illogical.

would you leave live electrical wires sticking out of the walls in your home and just tell your kids not to touch them? would you leave massive potholes in the road and tell drivers to just go around? no. you fix the problem. and these are much more serious issues that just banning someone on a forum.