Up a bit, down a bit

Almost collapsed on Wednesday whilst doing my day job. I had been suffering with a mild cough and ended up almost needing to be carried home. Well, considering I’m just short of 18 stone, they would have had a job, but I managed to get transported to my front door before collapsing onto the front room sofa for a couple of hours. Very light headed and woozy, very unstable on my feet. Went to the Doctors today, which I didn’t do me much good as he concluded I’ve got a viral infection which antibiotics or other medications won’t touch. Water, lots of, fresh air when I feel up to it, paracetomol for the fevers. Oh yes and rest.

On the writing front I’ve managed a few hundred words on the upstairs laptop, but nothing I take any real pride in. My head is all wrong ways round at the moment and I’m having difficulty thinking straight for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch.

Never mind; on the plus front an old mate who has asked to remain nameless says he has been passing copies of one of my old patented inventions around. On any number of occasions I must have bored the poor sod senseless with just how good it was for taking the edge off road and rail congestion. Poor sod. Never mind, it never did me any real good; but then I’m good at finding solutions, but not so wonderful at persuading the people who matter of their merits. More often than not; whenever I’ve put these ideas forward they’ve been dismissed as ‘crank’ stuff without a proper hearing from the money men.

The invention we were talking about was my part solution to congestion; quite an elegant bridging solution between roads, foot or rail. Well at least I thought so (But then I would, wouldn’t I?). The overhead Minitram system is a simple solution to a complex problem. I got the idea for the switching system one day in London whilst doing a job near Oxford Circus in November 2003. After that, everything just slotted into place. Routing systems, rail switching, the whole enchilada.
There have been similar solutions in the past, but none have ever been lightweight enough or flexible enough to provide the extra layer of public transport with the privacy and security that a car provides for example.
This one for example looks good, but how are the disabled to use it? You need to go up a flight of stairs to get to a boarding point for crying out loud. The same for all the other lightweight overhead monorail systems. They all end up being too heavy or too inflexible and complex.

You get round all the stability and switching complexity issues with a simple fixed lightweight primary & secondary rail system and cantilever arm like the one I came up with in 2004. Simple, proven technology that is both practical and cheap. Most of it comes in a ‘bolt together’ package that uses existing devices to deliver. Sensor packages which have been available since the 1990’s. Proven lightweight material technologies.

Is trundling along 4-5 metres above the street safe? Well let me think; the door interlock only opens if the sensors confirm it is on the ground in a stop, or a special override is used. If the power fails, the cab trundles to the next stop under battery power and shuts down there using the same kind of shutdown routine as a UPS does with a computer system. All the safety aspects have been thought through. About the only thing I was never sure of was the bending moment of the rail section.

All that and it’s scalable; you build it in loops, one to a street. You want a new interchange, you stick on a new secondary rail loop which can’t be accessed until the Wi-Fi guidance points go in. Want to add a street to the system? You stick in a new primary loop and download the upgrades to every autonomous cab unit. The day to day working of the system is, saving the passengers getting on and off, a mostly people free affair. Which is what you want from public transport. The cab software will even choose an alternate route if the loops between it and it’s destination is too congested, or even shut down because of an accident.

Oh bloody hell, I’m pontificating again. Must be the fever.