How do the various railroads keep keep track of the locations of their various engines and rolling stock? Do they always know where each car/engine is? Thanks for any information about this topic.
Locomotives when on the home railroad are tracked as follows:
- Engine terminal it is at, if not on a train
- Train symbol it is on, if on a train
- Last “OS” of the train (last reporting location)
The information is input either manually or automatically. Manual inputs include a power dispatcher assigning a locomotive to a train (it may not be on that train yet (still in the engine terminal), or a trick dispatcher manually reporting to the power desk he has placed the locomotive onto a different train (which can be verbal, or by the train sheet, or other transmission of information method). The OS is updated automatically if in Centralized Traffic Control or 9.13 territory, or on the trainsheet if in Track Warrant Control or Direct Traffic Control territory.
It often suprises people outside the industry that this is not a fine-grained method of location, because people outside the industry assume that railroads need to know exact geographic location at any given time. They don’t – that information is of no value, so no one spends money to collect it.
Locomotives not on the home railroad are simply shown as off-line and location/time the locomotive left the home railroad. The foreign railroad tracks it in the same fashion as if it was one of its own. No one needs to know more than that.
Cars are tracked in very similar fashion – the are shown as being in a specific track in a specific yard, or on a specific industry spur, or on a specific train. The train list shows where the car is at in the train, if it’s up to date. If the train has been switched or blocked en route, not in a yard, the train list may not be up to date.&n
(And yes, they still manage to lose a few every year [swg][swg][swg])
Yeah, we’ve got this lost-car list on our site, frequently updated, and there’s one car that’s been on it for a l-o-o-o-o-ong time! Others come and go, but I suspect that it’s mostly a question of improper documentation of a move, usually within a yard and probably not able to be picked up by an AEI scanner. I’m not sure why, but a lot of the problems seem to be in Texas (good thing Ed works for the PTRA!).
Locomotives also have AEI tags, and many now have GPS.
RWM: Some domestic containers and trailers also have RFID tags.
GPS does you no good if you don’t understand the limits of the measurement or know how it works. Most folks can’t distinguish between GPS and GIS, much less understand it. RWM’s signal bubbas just mandated themselves into a hole they may never get out of.
Well I know that that show on the History Channel ( yes god forbid ExtremeTrains) also Modern Marveles. Says that BNSF has electronic “reader” strips on all of thier cars. Thay go past a reader and it beams the info back to a controll house. However I’ve seen cars that don’t have them on it. I know that that pitafull show thay call Exterme Trains says that NS has them on all Bethgon Coalporter cars used for coal service.
That’s the AEI tag. All cars in interchange service have one. Even the ones you thought don’t have them do have them. One one each side.
RWM
Justin, all freight cars have the AEI tags toward the lower right corner of the sides; they’re usually gray in color. I’m wondering if you’re thinking of the old Automatic Car Identification labels, with their red, white, and blue stripes–kind of like a barcode. That system has been outmoded for about 30 years now, though some cars less than 30 years old, especially coal cars, were built with the labels for specific applications after the railroads themselves gave up on it. AEI tags began appearing in the early 1990s.
So if another railroad is using one of “my locomotives”, Does that railroad pay me for the use of “my locomotive”? How does this work?
Yes, railroads do pay for the use of other railroad’s locomotives, both on run-through trains as well as leased power. These are called “Power Miles” and railroads can use them to balance each other off as well as paying with cash for them.
I’d be interested to learn about the arrangements for fueling and such though; is providing fuel the responsibility of the railroad using the locomotive, or does the owner pay for fuel for the loco while it’s on another road’s tracks? Does the railroad have to top the tank off before returning a loco to it’s owner? [:-^]
Someone looks at the gauges each time locomotives go off line, writes down the number of gallons in each tank, and someone looks at the gallons each time locomotives come back. All the numbers are added up at the end of the month, and compared to the total from the other railroad which meanwhile has been sending over its locomotives. If there’s a net difference due one railroad, the railroad owing sends a check to the railroad owed.
RWM
Actually they are called “horsepower hours”. The time in hours a locomotive is off line multiplied by the horsepower of the locomotive. So a 4000 hp RR A engine on RR B for 100 hrs means RR B owes RR A 400,000 hphrs. All the railroad balance with each other on a monthly basis. If one railroad owes the other too many hours then the owing road lets the road owed use some of its engines to “pay back” the debt.
Many of the newer engines report their fuel readings automatically when going by an AEI reader.
Does anybody have figures comparing the % of cars MIA today versus hand written, paper based accounting during the “golden era?”
Maby that is what I’m thinking of. (ACI’s) Once the engines go past I’m usally so cyked up about seeing a train, I dont get to go railfannig that often, I just don’t notice them. So it’s just a gray strip hugh?
Whoops… I was totally convinced I knew the term when I wrote it, but now I’m wondering what I was thinking…
I am wondering why the various railroads “don’t care” where their cars and locomotives are located? They bought them, didn’t they? The company owns them, doesn’t it? They would be property that could be depreciated on their corporate taxes, I would think. Yet, no one really cares where anything is? That really doesn’t make sense to me.
I keep track of the books I own and, if I lend them out, to whom I loaned them. Same with videos and other things that I want to keep.
How is it then, that the companies don’t care if their equipment is MIA?
Looking forward to more information on this most interesting topic…
Who said they do not care? I can’t find anyone here who said that. What people did say is that the location of the car and locomotive is known to the degree it needs to be known and to the degree that it makes sense to know. For example, I know my dog is at home. Whether the dog is sleeping in the front room or in the back room isn’t important to me when I’m at work. When I come home, then maybe I care. People also said that there are a handful of cars that disappear. Principally these are cars that are “phantom cars,” it’s a data entry error and the car never existed in the first place. Also, we’re talking about a handful of cars in a fleet of 1.5 million cars. Do you know of very many systems that are accurate to 0.0001%?
RWM
RRs actually know quite a bit about the location of their equipment, even when it’s off line. Every RR reports arrival, departure, place, pull, interchange and other events and then shares these events with each other thru Railinc (https://www.railinc.com/rportal/web/guest/home). Each road can subscribe to off line events for their equipment or moves that involve their road (all equipment in a pool they participate in, or a move with them in the waybill).
The arrival and departures are typically based on AEI scanners located adjacent to yards and terminals.
It’s become just as important to know where a car or locomotive’s been as it is to know where it is right now. Using detailed stored event history to do measurement, analysis, modeling and costing of operations is a big deal these days.