I see you disagree and raise another disagreement.
Railroads have adopted new technologies and in many, many places have replaced their wire line based CTC signalling equipment with Satellite based signalling equipment. Likely any Cyber attack capable off knocking air transportation out of the skies could also halt the railroads in grid lock. The Class 1’s non-signalled territory could also be affected through attacks that end up attacking the computers that support the carriers Computer Aided Dispatching Systems.
One step further along, in many if not most, metropolitan areas the controlling authorities have in place many highway signalling and signage that has been installed to permit managing the flow of highway traffic.
The 21st Century USA is dependent on computer and wireless control of so many aspects of our daily lives that a Cyber attack could cripple the country on many levels, nationwide.
You can increase the security of those communications with the proper security measures to a large extent. The issue is that private companies tend to take a min approach to security until there is a major breech then they throw more money at the issue.
You cannot employ a jammer that goes across all radio frequencies because then your shooting yourself in the foot. Likewise some radio transmission encryption approaches are so complex that the chances of decryption are very remote. Still, nothing is impossible I guess nor are any of these solutions cheap. So I can see why a private company would not resort to them unless there was no other option.
As a rule, hackers go to the weakest link in the communications or data processing chain instead of attempting to take security software head on because they value stealth more than anything.
Maybe AI will put a lot of these technologies more in the financial reach of Class I railroads and it won’t be an issue. We’ll see.
It is more likely that a rouge country will disable the GPS satelites or at least reception. Every thing will shut down especially credit card transactions at gasoline pumps. So, do not know what most RRs are doing but our local CPs have both Verizon satellite dishes and land lines connected.
The situation of a sunspot CME is a whole another possibility not likely but a slight possibility,
CSX had a similar ‘attack’ about 20 years ago. A ‘bug’ virus or influenza got into the main headquarters Main Frame computer. The ‘bug’ attacked the various communications links that the Main Frame had with other computer systems with which the Main Frame shared data that benefitted both systems.
The CSX Computer Aided Dispatching System was one such computer. CADS got data such as crew names and train loading specifics from systems that operated on the Main Frame. In turn the CADS computer sent tracking data to the Main Frame where it could be accessed by users that had terminals connected to the Main Frame. CADS also used the communications network that the Main Frame supported to all the terminals and printers attached to it to send Train Messages and other forms of CADS data to locations in the field. The Main Frame also supported the ‘CSX Technofax’ system to be used when the system printer network was down for routine weekly maintenance.
The attack on the computer to computer communications links ‘busyed’ them to the point that the CADS computer would crash. Rebooting the CADS computer would allow it to operate ‘normally’ for 15 to 20 minutes when its comm links would get overloaded and it would crash again. With the frequent crashing it got to the point that Train Dispatcher COULD N
Gas pumps for one are linked to GPS time signals. Credit csrds can only be approved with the proper time signal. Some other CC card terminals as well but not sure where it works.
Any serious “National Emergency” that transiently affects ATC would be solved or addressed long before Amtrak could get extra trains in position, let alone for the first of those trains to begin delivering air passengers to where they could be presumably bussed or Ubered to their actual destinations.
Something more protracted, perhaps a TOT EMP strike over the continental United States, may have affected effective rail operations just as it would flight operations. We saw at Cayce just how well Amtrak could figure out running under much less uncertain ‘emergency’ signal-outage conditions. It has been established here time and time again that nothing Amtrak or a combination of regional operators could do will substitute for dispatch of aircraft to cover multiple sequential daily routes… even on the proposed expansion of the LD network it would only serve a tiny subset of destination pairs on ridiculous-even-in-emergencies time. And that before any freight-railroad delays or increased freight priorities impaired Amtrak’s ability to operate equipment.
One place that railroads were supposed to make a positive difference was in rapid response to weather-required evacuation. As I recall, part of the response to Rita, so soon after Katrina, was to use various trainsets including Amtrak equipment as a shuttle “out of harm’s way”. The logistics didn’t work particularly well, then, with both high political motivation an
Amtrak doesn’t have enough equipment to operate all their currently scheduled trains with those trains traditional amount of equipment on a daily basis. The thought of throwing together additional equipment and crews as the answer to any form of emergency is totally ludicrous at this point in time. Maybe at some point in time when Amtrak has a surplus of both equipment and crews they can be a emergency resource - that day is not today.
Factor in deceleration, acceleration, and station dwell and the numbers don’t look as bad. Much of the current FEC joint trackage still has speed restrictions, a couple of which are severe: look at the timings on the new section between Orlando and the first scheduled stop after the train turns south for a better idea of sustainable operating speed.