When were ACI labels first used on freight cars? When was their use discontinued?
They were first put on cars in the 1960’s, and were supposed to be mandatory by 1972 and were supposed to be removed by 1980. They were never used. The best they ever did in experiments was achieve a 93 percent accuracy. At that rate, if 10,000 cars a day were interchanged in Chicago, for example, 700 were missed! Since they were optically scanned, dirt soon rendered them unreadable!