Automatic Train Control (ATC) is the term for a general class of train protection systems for railways that involves some sort of speed control mechanism in response to external inputs. ATC systems tend to integrate various cab signalling technologies and the use more granular deceleration patterns in lieu of the rigid stops encountered with the older Automatic Train Stop technology. ATC can also be used with Automatic train operation (ATO) and is usually considered to be the safety critical part of the system.
Over time there have been many different safety systems labeled as Automatic Train Control. The term is especially common in Japan, where ATC is used on all Shinkansen (bullet train) lines and other lines as a replacement for ATS.
Famous quotes containing the words automatic, train and/or control:
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“The inability to control our children’s behavior feels the same as not being able to control it in ourselves. And the fact is that primitive behavior in children does unleash primitive behavior in mothers. That’s what frightens mothers most. For young children, even when out of control, do not have the power to destroy their mothers, but mothers who are out of control feel that they may destroy their children.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)