10th
Curves and Rollercoasters
Vertical curves (gradients) of NB track from Pine Street to UW Station are complete. I’m calculating horizontal curves in Excel to roughly approximate the spiral transition from tangent to curve. There’s a serious bug with the curve leading out from Pine St. It loops in a circle once before heading up the Hill.
Despite the bugs, it took me 6 minutes 40 seconds to travel from Pine St to UW Station. That’s just under the 7 minute journey between Westlake and UW that Sound Transit estimates. The journey from Capitol Hill to UW Station took about 3 minutes. Note that I haven’t implemented speed limits or signals yet and I’m using a London Underground 1995 Stock train to test the route.
U-Link is going to be one big rollercoaster ride. The south approach grade from Downtown is 4.88%. The north approach grade from UW is 4.5%.
Gotta fix that loop and the curves. After that I can proceed south into the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT). Of course, given the limitations of the software, it won’t be an exact replica of the actual route but a very close approximation.
