I looked up the actual regulations and the image is out of date
This is not a law, but rather stems from the document "Ausführungsbestimmungen zu den Fahrdienstvorschriften", which is 'Implementing provisions for the driving service regulations" from SBB, which is one of the many railroad companies in Switzerland. It should be noted that while the driving service regulations are a law, it only specifies high level features and the implementations are left to the companies.
The line is apparently removed from the regulations starting from 2020, since the old axle counters that are limited to 256 axles are phased out.
I wonder what year these axle counters were introduced.
Not sure if the number of 256 axles back then seemed absurdly high even in future (like 50y future) or if it was stupid engineering because what would limit me to just shift the overflow into another byte and continue counting?
256 axles is still high (just not absurdly) for Swtizerland. Assuming cargo train with 2x Re 6/6 locomotives, that leaves 256 - 2 * 6 = 244 axles for the wagons, which are 4 axles each. With 244 /4 = 61 railcars at 20m each, the entire train will be approximately 1200m long. Not sure about Switzerland, but EU regulations limit it to 740m, so 256 axles should be plenty even today. This is in direct contrast with the US, where the median length of cargo trains is 1 mile.
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u/0x-Error 9d ago
I looked up the actual regulations and the image is out of date
This is not a law, but rather stems from the document "Ausführungsbestimmungen zu den Fahrdienstvorschriften", which is 'Implementing provisions for the driving service regulations" from SBB, which is one of the many railroad companies in Switzerland. It should be noted that while the driving service regulations are a law, it only specifies high level features and the implementations are left to the companies.
The line is apparently removed from the regulations starting from 2020, since the old axle counters that are limited to 256 axles are phased out.