Passenger Trains > New Big Board at NY Penn Station: Tech Problems

New High-Tech Big Board At Penn Station Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Gothamist
by Raphael Pope-Sussman
Feb 17, 2017 12:24 pm

> It’s only been a few weeks since Amtrak took down the legendary
> old-school "Big Board" of arrival and departure times at Penn Station
> and the new digital system has already gone on the fritz.
>
> Commuters reported Friday morning that the system, which features a
> series of smaller screens distributed around the terminal, briefly
> stopped working, leaving them to fend for themselves/look at their
> phones/ask other humans for help.
>
> Some, or at least one, were calling the meltdown the "Big Board
> Blackout."
>
> Kimberly Woods, a spokesperson for Amtrak, confirmed that the system
> had gone down for approximately an hour beginning at 10 a.m. It is
> apparently now up and running. During the outage, Amtrak employees
> fanned out at the terminal to make announcement to commuters.
>
> "We’re looking into exactly what was the cause of the outage," Woods
> told Gothamist.

http://gothamist.com/2017/02/17/big_board_blackout_of_17.php



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/17 22:19 by GenePoon.

---

Windoze based?

No!!!!!!!!  The Solari boards were so much better, fun to watch, and sounded so cool!!!!!!!!

This is not progress!!!!!!!

So Amtrak can find enough money to pay for this unnecessary new board, but can't afford to put a diner on the Star?  Were parts still available for the old board or was replacement really necessary? 

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So Amtrak can find enough money to pay for this
> unnecessary new board, but can't afford to put a
> diner on the Star?  Were parts still available
> for the old board or was replacement really
> necessary? 

Musta been ordered by BOARDman...

the board from the late sixties that was there worked fine too....

Sometimes the old ones are maintained on a wing and a prayer. No seller parts available, even big companies surf ebay for spare parts on old tech.

A lot of customers use this information. Probably more than eat in diners.

The old one wouldn't have been susceptible to Russian hackers.  ;-)

And spewing out "Alternative times", :}

jcaestecker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The old one wouldn't have been susceptible to
> Russian hackers.  ;-)

Let's see here, recent computer glithes at a couple of major airlines screwed up the works bigly. Guess you are out of luck getting an AmDog on the Star.

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So Amtrak can find enough money to pay for this
> unnecessary new board, but can't afford to put a
> diner on the Star?  Were parts still available
> for the old board or was replacement really
> necessary? 

Damn "So-Called" hi tech equipment.State Of Good Alternate Reality.

I like it.

Dispatcher68 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Damn "So-Called" hi tech equipment.State Of Good
> Alternate Reality.

The old digital one was less than 17 years old. Sorry, but in terms of the Solari Boards and other things around Amtrak, that's not too old. Frankly I don't understand why they needed to replace the old digital board. It seemed to function fine. Even the old Solari Board at NYP, which was pretty big, operated great till the day it was shoved over and replaced.