InRail Certification
Rail and Transit Design
Swindon, England
1992
To be completely honest, I was NOT the most qualified engineer in the Intergraph Headquarters to send to England for the en masse InRail Certification congregation. I was relatively new at Intergraph: the most qualified expendable resource.
I spent three weeks working with Application Engineers from all over Europe testing the software. Interface, advanced transitions, turnouts.
Almost 30 years later, OpenRail Designer and its ancilary programs are an amazing immersive 3D BIM-ready design and asset lifecycle management portfolio on Bentley's Common Data Platform. The geometry hasn't changed much, turnouts are still part of the fundamental core of the software, Overhead Electrification and other tools are jaw-droppingly impressive.
This was my first overseas trip. It was mostly work, but some exploration occurred.
- It was summer; it didn't get dark until almost 11:00pm.
- Parts of our hotel were over 400 years old.
- One goal was to find some pubs with Bass Ale, which was my favorite at the time. It took me a couple of weeks, surprisingly. I did discovery Scrumpy, which was a delight.
- I got to see The House of Love, one of my favorite bands at the time, in an old church outside of Saulsbury (near Stonehenge). Them playing below a huge stained-glass window still backlit at 10:00p will stick with me forever.
- Weston-Super-Mare: after slogging barefoot through a quarter mile of shin-high muck at low tide to get to the water (I was the only fool doing this), it occurred to me that somewhere around there they have HUGE tidal swings. Panic! I went north instead of back the way I came, which wasn't a better idea. No harm.
- Wales: after escaping Weston-Super-Mare, I drove to Wales. After crossing the bridge, all the signs were in Welsh! Indecipherable! No cell phones then. A very short Welsh foray.