how do they keep track where their cars are and how are they paid for the use of the car? thanks…
currently each car has an RFID tag on both sides, its location is reported every time it passes a reader. There is a daily “rental” rate for each car.
The RFID tags are also used at many defect detectors to identify the bad acting car.
Per Diem has been on an hourly basis since the late 60’s or early 70’s. When cars move from carrier to carrier a forma ‘Interchange Report’ is made that lists the time and the car numbers. Each carriers computer systems keep track of the cars and the interchages. The AAR has a computer system that each carriers computer system report their moves to. Many customers deal with the AAR’s data systems to get accurate data on their nationwide car movements.
The data system belongs to Rail Inc. Which is a wholly owned for profit subsidiary of the AAR, just like TTCI. However Rail Inc. is based in Cary NC.
I addition all the major roads have computer inventory systems that keep track of the locations of each car, which track or train its on and the position/sequence in that track. Most systems have been in place since the mid to late 1970’s in one form or another. Most systems have undergone several revisions over the decades. The systems are updated by a combination of automatic systems (AEI and dispatching) and manual inputs (conductors, yardmasters and clerks).
A brief description of the use of punched cards in the 1900 census is found in the January 1900 issue of National Geographic, pages 34-36, in an article by Dr F. H. Wines. By that time, Hollerith had also begun to work with the New York Central and Hudson Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad on applying cards to their data processing problems. The NYC&H use of punched cards was described in the Railroad Gazette on July 4, 1902, and reprinted a year later. This article has a good image of a Hollerith card from around 1900, and line-images of the tabulating machines. More early card images were published in the American Engineer and Railway Journal, Dec. 1906; page 468. All of the cards illustrated from these early railroad applications have 12 rows of 36 punch positions.
It wasn’t in a railroad environment, but I ran tens of thousands of cards through the punches and readers whilst working in data processing. Several jobs would generate several boxes of cards (2000 per), almost daily.
Interpreting the cards (printing the encoded data on the cards) was a separate operation if the cards were for specific purposes and the print ran to two lines, in specific locations. Time cards and supply system cards were two examples.
The cards were made of high-quality card stock. Putting rubber bands around small batches could be a challenge, as the cards easily cut the bands.
Like five-level teletype, it was possible to read the cards, once you understood the language.
Running a keypunch machine was fun, too… We were very glad when we went from actually punching cards to an electronic method, and then to the customers doing their own input…
The fear of programers was after your program was punched, was that the cards might get dropped and wind up out of order. A real 52 pickup fear. Those were the days. RIP.
Some systems let you number the lines. The trick was to initially number them with enough room to be able to add several lines without having to renumber the whole danged program. I usually started with a gap of ten (10, 20, 30…). Major sections might start with the next even hundred.
AEI Readers - Amazing what non-railroaders think those things are. (takes the restraining devices in a 4-wheeled railroad shipping device in a whole 'nother direction.)
Still grinning here after watching an AED Device at South Denver (Union Pacific’s) get sucked into the ground after an RTD/ Sprint construction relocation project went really wrong. A power backhoe snagged a buried railroad signal cable and all of a sudden the AEI detector triangular truss frames started wobblin’ and the actual scanner hardware antenna got yanked up the frame , followed by the 4 ft tall frame and the reader sinking rapidly into the ground. Four AEI antennas died that day. (Life imitating art, like the Bugs Bunny/ Chip & Dale cartoons with the carrots/ row crops getting sucked into the ground by some hungry critter.)
MC,
Don’t worry. They’ll find someone else to blame. [#oops]
I’m wondering whether the AEI system is living up to its full potential. I think some folks look on it as a necessary evil rather than a valuable resource.
Not too long before I retired (maybe in 2004 or 2005 or so) we had a train that showed up with everything out of line–it was as if the hump shove started in the center of the train, and started out toward both ends by twos and threes (talk about your game of 52 Pickup!). Somehow this mess was generated by the yard that put the train together for us (I can’t remember if it was elsewhere on UP or on a foreign line). Of course, we had to put the cars in order–a fairly simple matter to update each car one by one, so that our trains lined up.
While we were in the middle of trying to hump that thing, I asked our General Yardmaster if it was possible to get an AEI report on the train. The request was probably too late for the hump shove we were working on, but the train had taken up two tracks in the receiving yard, and we were able to make a little sense of the train. Too bad we couldn’t have generated a switch list from the AEI read.
Guess the technology has advanced, we do that every day now on CN.
Each carriers data systems have detail differences - as the Trains article on train identification for each of the Class 1 carriers highlighted. I only know the system my carrier uses.
To a greater extent than not, each terminal has a scanner in place to monitor movements arriving and/or departing in the major line of road lines. Some terminals also have scanners within their defined yard area to monitor signifigent moves. The raw data results of these scanners are available to virtually anyone in the company - if you know the proper computer application
Most rookie programmers learned the hard way or by close observation that there was a very good reason for reserving the last 8 columns of a standard card for sequence numbers. However, no sequenced deck was ever known to be dropped.
How do railways keep track?
They tie it down, of course! Spikes and anchors also help.
Please don’t mind me…just a little gallows humor before surgery.
I saw an engineer litterally burst into tears when he was bumped while carrying TWO “Drawers” (4000 cards EACH) of data cards and they spilled onto the floor. No, they were not sequenced and even after I and several others worked very hard at picking them up, trying to keep the sequence, he just dumped them all into the large round trashcan and went home. I never saw him again, but it was a very large company and I didn’t normally frequent that area so I don’t know what happened after that.
Sad! [:(]
Pure data cards (ie, inventory, personnel records) aren’t as bad as a program. Odds are the data cards can be sorted (a process in and of itself). But a program (especially a very large one) might have dozens of cards with exactly the same instruction on them, all intended to fit within the routine that contains them.
Assuming the cards had been printed as well as punched, re-sorting that many would be akin to completely re-writing the program. And re-writing the program may have been easier.
While in college, I wrote a program that ran to almost 2000 cards. I never dropped them, and really don’t remember what might have happened to them once the course was over. They likely were recycled or put straight in the trash.
While cards could be “backed up,” either by cutting another set or transferring them to tape, it wasn’t a simple as copy and paste…
Speaking of programs on cards, as I recall, the programmer usually wrote the program on paper which was then transferred to cards by keypunch operators, so assuming he still had the original paper, the keypunch operators could probably produce a new deck in little time.
Speaking of keypunch operators, they always amazed me. Picture a room full of women (I don’t remember ever seeing a male operator), fingers flying over the keyboards, punches roaring, all the while carrying on a continuous conversation with each other about everything like recipes, diets, Elvis, sky-diving and whatever. They had separated their minds into two separate channels: eyes to fingers and ears to mouths. The human mind is amazing, except mine. I have never been able to do more than one thing at a time.
I did it for a while. My typing speed isn’t exactly superhuman, but I get by. Keypunching does put me to sleep, though.
Biggest problem I ran into was when one of the other keypunchers verified my work (which involves rekeying all of the data) - she tended to make the same errors I did, so goofs sometimes slipped through…