Re: [TUHS] OT: trains [Was: Date madness]

Ian Zimmerman: Dave Horsfall: UTC? It's not hard to get used to it. ===== You misunderstand the problem. Suppose I'm planning to board a train at 0300 on the morning Daylight Time ends. Now suppose the train actually departs an hour early, at 0200, because it originated before the time change and some nerd who never rides trains declared that it shall not wait the extra hour until scheduled departure time. Nerds may be happy, but the paying passengers won't be. Telling passengers to set their watches to UTC just won't happen. (Some of us nerds actually had our watches on GMT for a few months back in the years that gave the `Nixon table' in old ctime.c its (informal) name, but gave up because it was just too damn much work to stay in sync with the real world.) Once upon a time, before railways had radio communications and proper track-occupancy signalling, the consequences were more serious than that: if you run an hour ahead of schedule, you risk colliding with another train somewhere. That is why it was the railways that first accepted and promoted standard time zones. Nowadays it's not about scheduling and safety, just about having an acceptable user interface. In a similar vein, I know of at least one case in which Amtrak changed the official departure time of a train (that requires advance reservations and often runs full) from 0000 to 2359, because people would get confused about which day midnight falls on and show up a day late. (Actually the Amtrak timetable read 1200 midnight and 11:59 PM, but 24-hour time is one of the changes I agree people should just accept and use.) Norman Wilson Toronto ON