Re: CityRail passenger info upgrade

[Eddie Oliver <eoliver@efs.mq.edu.au>]

Hunslet wrote:
> 
> Eddie Oliver wrote: it's never been obvious to me
> 
> > just what those special skills were in the case of the old-style
> > indicators; most of the time they seemed maintenance-free).
> >
> 
> Which "old type" indicators?    The upper quadrant (pull-down) indicators, or the
> recently replaced ones from Central Concourse.

Central, Museum, St James, Circular Quay - i.e. where the station names
and illumination sources were behind a translucent substance which
causes only the illuminated names to be visible.

> If you mean the latter, you should look inside them to see how they worked!   To
> re-assemble them back to operational condition will be a nightmare!

Yes, but they failed very rarely in practice, probably because the light
sources were run at under their rated 
voltages and therefore lasted much longer. If something doesn't fail,
difficulty in fixing it is scarcely an issue.

And as somebody else pointed out, replacing bulbs in the Wynyard/Town
Hall type indicators should not be difficult, and the argument that the
bulbs are no longer readily available sounds like a copout.

Eddie