Do dispatchers have a way to access and view cameras in locomotives and depots in order to track shiments/passenger train status?
[color=blue]NO![/color]
The technology is there to do it. But I don’t know of it being applied. However, I know the DL&W used to have open phones at some places to allow the dispatcher to hear a train going by that spot. NJT’s Light Rail vehicles have monitors so the motorman can view both sides to the rear. Stations do have surveillance cameras on the station platforms in many places but these are more likely tied to security rather than operations. And there are locomotives equipped with forward looking cameras but not sure if they are to the cab or sent elsewhere. And there are (were) freight yards equipped to cameras for the yardmaster to view. The technology is there, but to what extent it is used…I’m sure we’re gonna hear.
No, there is no reason for this to be done.
For dispatchers, they do need to know where their trains and loads are, but video?.. No Chance.
Remember, if you will, the days of yore when they had colored id plates on each car and scanners to read them. Now this was already 40 years ago. But you do not see them anymore.
Ah, my friend, the “system” is still there but they are no longer optical, they are RFID. Radio Frequency Identification. A transponder is mounted on the frame of each car, and radio transponders on the wayside can interrogate these devices as the train passes by. These devices can be seen on each side of the train above one of the trucks, it looks like a plastic wart about the size of a wall wart.
Cameras on the train are used to observe the wayside, and are important in the event of a collision. It is tied into the black box recorders for the purpose of accident investigation.
There is talk of mounting these cameras so that they could observe the crew as well, and naturally the crew does not want this invasion of their privacy, and their unions have lodged major objections.
LION thinks that crew monitors are a good thing, but of course he is not a member of the train crew.
ROAR