This website is meant to satisfy my need to leave some sort of documentation of my existence. One that I have full control over. You have to excuse my inabilty to write without making mistakes, I may be beyond dyslexic. Also, as you may have noticed, the website is in it's "early access" stage, so hyperlinks to nowhere will be common throughout the site. Sorry :p
I love to discuss all things rail, engineering in general, music and photography.
Welp. I lied. It seems this semester was more time and energy consuming than I originally imagined. As a result I was not able to add anything new to the site over the entire semester. The next two weeks will be a bit of a respite for me, as the Lecture free period has begun and will leave me with a bit of free time.
What I have done in the past three months: Suffered. Kinematics and Dynamics was a massive pain in the ass. I wrote the exam two weeks ago and am 85% sure I just barely failed. I will most likely repeat the course next semester to get better at the theoretical part, since it seemed to be the most difficult part for me during the exam. I also had Konstruktionslehre (Workign with CAD and drafting mechanical parts). This meant a whole boatload of homework which followed me well into the lecture free period (last deadline was 3 days ago, which was a week and a half into the lecture free period). I also had a work trip more than a month back. Same place and same task. Just follow-up measurements. Of-note was the two hour delay of the train that was supposed to get me back to Berlin. Somehow they were missing a single UIC cable which supplies electrical power and data between carriges. Since all trains have two cables connecting the carriges it would have been feasible to run the train with just one in that spot. It would, however severly limit the permissible operating speed. As a result the staff decided to search for one. By the time they found it 2 hours had gone by. The delay announcement came in stages of 30 minutes. By hour two I had no hope of ever getting back home. There is an hourly train service but I already reserved a seat and wanted to have the opportuinty to work. This wouldnt be possible in a train carrying two trains worth of people. So I waited.... and waited.... and waited....................................................... eventually it arrived and I got home. Managed to work along the way too :)
What I will be doing: I still have two exams in the next two months that I will begin studying for gradually. They do not pose much of a challenge and I am not particularily worried. Aside from this, my friend and I have decided on a little coding challenge to not get rusty on our knowledge. I bitterly had to accept coding in python (I suggested C as we already have knowledge writing in C) his argument of broadening our horizons was convincing enough unfortunately. First task is two automate the calculations necessary to know the minimal diameter of a shaft. Very simple but sicne this is a language I do not yet know I belive it makes sense to start off easy. My birthday is coming up soon, I will be taking the IC Niespieszny (EP05 Locomotive with 60-70s era coaches) with my girlfriend. Aside from that I will use this time of relative peace and rest to spend time with family.
P.S. A pen my girlfriend got me in Luxembourg. Not just a standard BIC pen, this one is metal (probably cast juding by the texture but I cant be sure), just thought it's cool :3
The new semester starts tomorrow. For me that means very early mornings, and another few months of damnation. I'll be taking Dynamics and kinematics, Construction-1 (Essentially CAD), and Engineering of Rail Vehicles.
I'll try to update the site despite being increasingly busy. I can always write on off-times between classes. Most recently I added a few more photos to the photo section, all mine of course.
My most recent project at my University revolved around planning a "Strecke" or line that runs between two other pre-existing lines, while also connecting two residentail areas in the process. The ~15km double track and electrified line was created with the help of CAD overlayed with the "Programmsystem für Verkehrs- und Infrastrukturplanung" (ProVI). As this was a group project I unfortunately can not share pictures/screenshots, as these are protected under privacy laws. In my opinion the program feels generally unpolished, and helpful information is scarce, if not impossible to find. Once you do a bit of experimentation, things go much smoother. Which was helpful whenever it turned out I needed to redo some of the planning :).
Each group also had to submit a report detailing the planning process, issues, etc. Our group used LaTex for the report, which may or may not have given me some motivation to learn to code in HTML and CSS, as creating your own personal format and design intrigues me quite a lot.
I recently had a work trip to Hamburg, more specifically, to the sections of track under the managment of the Hamburg Port Authority. The task revolved around measuring the "Schienenrauheit", or how smooth the rails are. Hamburg itself is a very nice city, definitely very different than Berlin. I got to ride the ferry, and food was cheap. Almost didnt make it home because the trains got cancelled due to damage to the caternary on the line back to Berlin. Mine was magically brought back from the dead (the DB found a detour). It even made it without more than a minute of delay, anyone who knows the DB is well aware how rare that is haha.
Measuring the Schienenrauheit is done by guiding a sort of sensor across the rail's surface. The device returns a graph which magnifies and visualizes the differences in height over distance. This helps us decide if the rails need to be "polished" or not. A rough rail surface can cause excessive vibrations which resonate through the rails and contribute to noise, and piss off the Nimbys. So its better to reduce noise in any way possible.
