Archive for the ‘Railroad Business’ Category

Railroad execution and planning need to be dealing with the same range of significant digits.

For those of us who began our engineering studies before the 70’s, the practicality of the slide rule is well appreciated. This intriguing device of sliding scales, that miraculously performs multiplication and division via the addition and subtraction of non-proportional linear distances, minimized the terror of dealing with an endless flow of variables encompassed in complex engineering equations. That was the heyday for analog mathematical devices as digital computers were being somewhat reluctantly infused into the engineering ranks, and accordingly, it was the pinnacle for the art of approximation, the art of defining squishy limits. Using the slide rule required thinking in terms of powers of 10 as well as understanding that there was a clear rationale to acceptable precision, what was referred to as “significant digits”. For example, did the resulting answer of 8.something shown on the slide rule’s “D” scale after multiplying and dividing a series of 27 numbers actually mean 8.2 ? or 8.25 ? or perhaps was it .0082 ?  or maybe 8200 something?  Back then, “being close” was good enough, in fact expected, as test scores were partially determined by the proper use of the slide rule.  

With the introduction of the personal calculator, arrived the immediate requirement for precision. This was not a level of precision, however, that one had to work for, but instead it was that which was instantly provided to the user on green-lighted displays. If one required the square root, or even a discounted cash flow, one needed only to push the appropriate function key once the data had been entered. And, there was no limit to the number of digits of preciseness it seems. The mind was given the answer, without thought, without question and, unfortunately, without the opportunity to truly understand the underlying mathematics.

Interestingly, for major railroads in North America and across the globe that are either primarily non-scheduled or without moving block operations, the planning and execution processes for traffic management employ opposite extremes of understanding the underlying mathematics and the discipline of approximation.  Practically speaking,  there is a very real opportunity for railroads to transition train dispatching from an art to a science by including mathematics-based movement planners. Currently, the approximations inherent to moving trains are so broad that the railroads are running below capacity in critical corridors. These inefficiencies are due to the lack of both timely train position and speed and the tools to handle the continuous mathematical processes, specifically reactive and proactive planners.  The former would assist the dispatchers with the current approach of crisis-based traffic management, whereas the latter would provide for the prediction of traffic conflicts and subsequently the ability to avoid them.

Whereas the execution side skimps on the mathematical processes, thereby resulting in broad approximations, the planning side of operations embraces the other extreme. Supported by incredibly complex mathematical algorithms being endlessly massaged on digital wizards capable of truly mind-boggling computations per second, the railroad planners pursue the absolute opposite of approximation with the concept of significant digits being totally unknown in their profession. To them, precision is a truly achievable dimension that is to be expected and respected. As such, the Planners proudly serve up their precise results to the execution side, only for many of those results to be dismissed either directly or during execution as reality sets in. This rejection is the inevitable result of either the inability or unwillingness of Operations to handle the significant problems and changes that come with execution and that inevitably make the Planners “precise” schedule an impossible reality. Operations, of course, accepts this lot in life and their thus “un-planned” execution as…inevitable, since they rationalize the events that befall the schedules to be beyond their control.  However though, most are actually within their control.

The execution side has a long way to go in tightening their processes. They need the data and tools that will permit them to approach the level of performance that the planners are attempting to achieve. Conversely, the planners need to back off. They need to incorporate squishy limits into their planning processes.  I have seen some asset planning tools that have managed to do that, but I assume most still do not .  In a rather simplistic way, one could say that execution and planning need to be dealing with the same range of significant digits.

They clearly aren’t today.

Norfolk Southern is a Class I Railroad in North America

In a recent issue of a rail industry periodical there was an informative article on Norlfolk Southern’s use of advancing technologies to advance their operations. What was most interesting to me was the very brief description of GE’s RailEdge Movement Planner that is being rolled out across NS’s network in concert with their next generation CAD platform.  This 1-paragraph discussion validated the Proactive Traffic Management concept that I introduced 5-6 years ago in my quarterly publication, Full Spectrum, as well in Railway Age and more recently in postings on this blog.

The successful deployment of such capability has been a long time coming. Going back a decade, the GE-Harris combo first attempted to implement their moving block, Precision Train Control (PTC™), platform on Union Pacific.  PTC™ (not to be confused with Positive Train Control) was abandoned eventually for 2 primary reasons. First, there was not a cost-effective wireless data solution at the time and second, the Harris side of the operation, driven by Jack Welch’s progressive positioning of technologies , had the “if we can place a man on the moon, then we can run a railroad.” attitude. They truly missed the 80/20 solution – developing solutions that will work … versus the fatuous pursuit of perfection.  It seems that GE and NS have now figured it out, including the evolutionary expansion to include yards, crew operations, and locomotives into RailEdge.  This is great stuff, but this is not the primary purpose of this posting.

In the same issue as the NS article there is a Guest  Comment, PTC – the next great railroad revolution by a gentlemen with impeccable rail credentials.  Here is an individual that has held very responsible positions across all aspects of the industry, i.e. Class I & II railroads, FRA, major supplier, and even education.  But, with all of that said, this fellow just can’t give it up. He can’t give up on associating business benefits with PTC.

Below are two quotes from his commentary:

Business won’t be the same after PTC, if railroads implement it properly, business will be better – for everyone.

The continuous, accurate, real-time train location and speed information from PTC is not available to precision dispatching systems, thus making train meets and passes less efficient

Stop! You gotta let it go. PTC alone does not provide business benefits.

In addition to the above comments, he references several FRA-supported studies that “point to the potential for substantial business benefits (from PTC).”  What he doesn’t state is that he drove several if not all of those studies, and those studies were rightfully dismissed by railroads and independent consultants that could see through the primary folly. That is, PTC requires a wireless data path, as do the primary business benefits to be derived from knowing the position and speed of trains.  However, a railroad doesn’t require PTC to get the wireless data network.   A secondary fundamental point here is that the advancement of traffic management is dependent upon the more efficient generation and delivery of movement authorities. PTC doesn’t do either. PTC only uses the parameters of the movement authorities once they have been generated. You can read more on this subject in my previous post: “PTC Delivers Business Benefits?”

What this gentleman doesn’t understand by forcing PTC at the beginning of events to achieve business benefits is that all of the excessive PTC-design activity in the name of operability is actually holding back railroad advancement for most railroads. These railroads have failed to take a business perspective of how to use technologies now, most specifically wireless data.  But, that’s not the case for NS, is it?  They saw the light 2 or so years ago when it was decided to put train position/speed reporting devices on the locomotives to bring in that most simple, but most critical data that could be used by “precision dispatching systems”, to quote the commentator.  And, they did it without PTC.

While I appreciate the commenter’s passion in pressing his perspective that goes back 2 decades, his lack of objectivity is a very costly, if not a financially dangerous perspective for railroads. Really! You gotta let it go.

For those new to this blog, I should first explain that Teddy Bear postings address beliefs or statements that railroaders like to state as the truth, but in fact are misleading, if not totally false. Such beliefs and statements are unfortunate rationale for those individuals that strive to be comfortable with what they understand of their railroad operations without either the understanding and/or motivation to adjust their concepts of railroading based upon advancing technologies. Keep in mind that it was the 1^st and 2^nd quarter of the last century during which the two key technologies that the railroads depend upon today were introduced, i.e., track circuits and voice radio, respectively.

In this light, this posting strikes at the core of operations in that it takes on the hype that the freight railroads are doing the best that can be done with their primary operations platform, i.e., Computer Assisted Dispatching (CAD).

CAD came into play decades ago as railroads implemented Centralized Train Control (CTC) systems to consolidate block operators into centralized dispatching operations for both the efficiency of train movements as well as eliminating the multitudes of block operators with their individual track segment kingdoms. Clearly, CAD platforms have serviced the railroads well, but not as well as they can now given the recent advancement in technologies, most importantly wireless data and computer-based intelligence that can handle a substantially greater number of operational complexities than the best, most experienced dispatcher.

I start my argument with the fact that CAD is NOT a PLANNING platform in any true sense, i.e. CAD is NOT a traffic management platform. That is, CAD provides a view of where the railroad was at some point in time, but not where it is currently (e.g., CAD does not know if a train has stopped or is still moving) … or more importantly, where it will or can be. Rather CAD is a traffic control platform, an EXECUTION platform, that presents to the dispatcher the status of the railroad as to block-occupancy with the dispatcher left to make his/her too often crisis-based evaluation as how to throw switches to route trains. That is, the dispatcher uses his/her convenient, traditional processes, based upon the status of block occupancy, to decide how to request the routing of trains via the vital wayside infrastructure. CAD then executes those requests based upon the vital process of the wayside control points in permitting or not permitting the switches to be thrown subject to the condition of the appropriate track circuits (a train detection technology). The underlying point is that the dispatcher cannot throw a switch to route trains (usually), if the track circuit indicates that another train is already in the desired blocks. Simply stated, CAD does not do any analysis of what is the best way to meet the operating objectives of the railroad. Granted, there is a simplistic Autorouting process that is used primarily by Western U.S. railroads in selected, straight-shot corridors to set up the switches for high priority trains, e.g., intermodal traffic. But, such a mindless process does not consider critical variables including the status of crews, the availability of yard receiving tracks, and the need of locomotives to be available for other trains.

Autorouting is robotics, not planning.

So! If CAD is not a planning platform, then what is? … and how can it be provided?

These are two great questions that several Class I’s so very recently have addressed, although only to a limited extent in my opinion, as follows –

A TRUE planning platform is one which balances a number of objectives as to the most cost-effective movement of trains based upon a mixture of variables, including the status of yard receiving tracks, crew status as to outlawing and minimal crew deployment cost factors, track maintenance, fueling requirements, locomotive management, as well as being able to react to unpredictable circumstances, e.g., derailments, main line switching, etc.  If that seems to be very complex, then you understand why it can’t be expected that dispatchers take these issues into the routing of trains. In fact, they don’t. Rather, dispatchers work to get the trains across the railroad based upon some simplistic objective without consideration of the above points that can directly affect the railroad’s bottom line as well as the welfare of the employees. That is why mathematical planners, using clear objectives, are necessary especially in the majority of operations that are truly not scheduled. This is even more critical now given the increased push for comingling high (rather, higher) speed passenger trains with freight.  If indeed railroads were truly scheduled by the railroad’s Service Design department, and if those schedules were truly held to by Operations, then the objective function would be relatively simple, i.e., minimize the cost of getting back to schedule.  But, truly working to a schedule takes a leap of faith that traditional railroaders simply can’t accept.

Hmmmm! Surely, with the consolidation of passenger airlines, there must be some of those folks that understand and function by scheduled operations that would be willing to work in the rail industry.   😀

As to providing planning platforms, railroads can expect to be approached by suppliers to replace their CAD platforms with movement planners integrated into their operation, e.g., with CAD displays that permit the dispatcher to perform forthcoming conflict analysis based upon how trains are progressing as to their movement authorities, whether it be signaled or non-signaled operations. However, providing planning platforms can be done without swapping out a railroad’s CAD platform. That is, a planning platform can be implemented that is outboard and independent of CAD. This is really straight-forward stuff that seems to be just too convenient to ignore by traditional traffic control suppliers. Additionally, I need to point out that it can be done NOW, with or without consideration of PTC implementation.

So! What can my team of railroad operations, planning, and technology professionals do for your railroad?  Perhaps we can expose the key issues, backed by objective analyses and technical insight, as to what your railroad can do so as to balance what you are being told by internal resources and suppliers that have not advanced their railroad process thinking in sync with the advancement in technologies. Simply stated, suppliers don’t understand, yet alone are pursuing Strategic Railroading.  Keep in mind that my team neither represents nor accepts commissions from suppliers.  We work in a railroad’s best financial, operations, and safety interests.

Rail professionals, whether from the railroads or the suppliers, associated with North American freight rail or European/Asian high speed passenger live and breathe some form of fixed block, signaled operation, either wayside or in-cab, as the means to provide crews with reliable movement authorities to advance trains. However, of that group only a relatively small percentage is operationally-familiar with the well-established, non-signaled operation (a.k.a. Dark Territory [DT]) that is used across 50% of U.S. rail trackage (albeit handling only 20% of the traffic).

What causes this lack of awareness?  Essentially, traditional traffic control suppliers have nothing to sell in DT  – there is no infrastructure required other than wireless – hence no business interest. Additionally, the heretofore, manual-only processes of DT have made it incapable of handling the requirements of high speed and/or high density operations, whether freight or passenger.  I say heretofore in that the digital age has now come to DT.

Wayside Signalling - An unnecessary cost

The availability of a wireless data network (with or without PTC) permits the time consuming, and possibly compromised, voice transmissions of the movement authorities between the crews and the dispatcher in DT operations to be handled as data presented via an on-board display. Additionally, that same wireless data path can be used to release authorities in the back office DT platform logic, a.k.a., conflict checker.  This double time-reduction whammy provides for a quantum increase in the capacity that a dispatcher can handle in DT operations.

But, outside of the Americas, the capability of DT, with or without the quantum improvement, is one of best kept secrets that, if known, could have a phenomenal effect on small and emerging railroads; railroads that are critical to the business and social welfare of their respective countries.  Again, I am not talking about the sophisticated railways of Europe, but the railways that are being considered across Africa, the Middle East, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere. These railroads could see a massive increase in capacity for minimal investment in a green-field operation to a net-savings for a railroad operating on an older signaling system (removing the older system would save future operating and maintenance costs, often resulting in a net savings). In addition, a traffic control system without wayside infrastructure results in less expensive equipment to be stolen or damaged by harsh environs reducing operating costs and increasing safety.

The railroads across the globe that could benefit from DT come in two types. First, there are railroads that are emerging either as green-field developments or as rebuilds of railways that have been reduced to rumble or abandoned for civil and/or economic reasons. Second, there are those railroads that are fully functional but are dependent upon the most antiquated traffic control system generically known as Token Block (TB). With its development stemming from the middle of the 19^th century in Britain, TB can be found in patches across the globe. TB is safe in concept. That is, to operate within a particular segment of track , a crew must possess a token, physical /electronic that is uniquely assigned to that segment. However, as I witnessed in my assignment in Egypt regarding the Egyptian National Railways (ENR) to evaluate safe railroading, including both traffic control and enforcement, the manual processes involved in TB ( 85% of ENR’s trackage) permit the vitality of operation to be greatly compromised. When those processes are violated; major accidents have occurred.

So! Here’s the problem. While DT is an excellent traffic control approach for small and emerging railroads, these operators are not being informed of its availability. Instead, major suppliers are selling (and traditional consultants are promoting) the major systems that have been deployed across major rail operations as the only solutions. Such solutions put these railroads at considerable financial risk , not only due to the initial investment required, but also as to the on-going profitability due to a combination of extensive maintenance and training costs, a likely lack of disciplined and educated maintenance personnel, and the susceptibility to theft of wayside infrastructure.

Hopefully, the safety project I mentioned in Egypt, as well as the marketing efforts of myself and my colleagues (we don’t represent suppliers nor accept commissions) will help spread the knowledge of Dark Territory and bring it into the light of those nationalized and private railroads that can truly benefit from its deployment.

The U.S. freight railroads are caught up in their own hype at this point.  They like to state how scheduled they are, when in fact they aren’t. Now, with the threat … err opportunity . . .  to integrate high speed passenger rail into those fine schedules so as to receive a bunch of Federal funds, they may have to fess up as to the true lack of scheduling. Well, maybe not. Perhaps the Feds will buy into the idea that if the railroads add more infrastructure, arguably sidings being the most popular, the freight railroads will be able to squeeze in those high speed passenger trains between the freight slugs. Really? Not a chance.  There may be an opportunity for Higher speed passenger rail, but clearly not High Speed Rail as enjoyed across a good portion of the globe outside of North America. The basic truth is that the only way to achieve High speed passenger rail is with so-dedicated track, save the 1-5 A.M window.

What is being missed by the Feds and several of the Class I’s is what can be done by investing in positioning technologies and mathematical tools, in lieu of additional trackage, to improve the effective capacity of the railroads’ current infrastructure instead of just the raw capacity. What is missing by several of Class I’s is how to complement (not replace) their current dispatching platforms (a.k.a. CAD) with execution platforms infused with mathematical planners fed by both timely train position and speed data via simplistic wireless data systems, whether commercial or private. (And don’t forget those OS reports). These are the type of data that are being fatuously promoted as a subsequent capability of PTC, when in fact it has nothing to do with PTC. It can be done NOW with or without PTC. This is really simple stuff, but railroad technicians are not expected, capable, or interested in focusing on the functionality and the business case of advancing technologies. Rather, their interest, their responsibility, is to deliver the ultimate systems whether they are required or not in the name of PTC interoperability. So be it!

I think the following quote of a quote in a recent on-line posting by John Boyd of the Journal of Commerce regarding the criteria for Federal funds being provided to freight railroads to incorporate high speed rail, is quite revealing.

Szabo (FRA Administrator) now says the agreements must include quantifiable service outcomes based on ‘mutually agreed upon analysis / modeling’ that includes trip times, train frequencies and schedule reliability ‘to the extent it is under a party’s control.‘

There are a number of key points being promoted in this quote, but arguably the most important is that of the last 4 words, i.e., “ under a party’s control.” Simply stated, the Class I’s don’t have control over a significant part of their “schedules”. But what they won’t admit to themselves, it seems, is that the need to dynamically schedule the lineup continuously is their own fault as to mutually-abusive railroad interchange, as well as specific customers, e.g., mines, that determine when the trains will run. The railroads don’t seem to understand that their lack of credible customer service is at fault here; the shippers are simply protecting themselves.

For more in-depth understanding of the above, you may want to consider obtaining the next issue of my quarterly publication, Full Spectrum, Volume 55, titled Buerre Manié which addresses the above in further detail along with other things you may want to consider.

Please contact me via the contact form or directly at ron@strategicrailroading.com, if you wish to discuss further.

___________

Railroads & Math

I can’t quote exactly, but a railroad executive’s statement several years ago went something like:

“ Yeah, those math guys keep pushing those computerized traffic management tools, but they just don’t realize that mainline operations are just too complex with too many exceptions to make them useful.”

Wow!  What a jaw dropper. I was actually on pause for a moment as how to respond as several thoughts flashed through my mind starting with:

“So, I guess that high school algebra stuff wasn’t good for you.”

… to …

“ If it’s that complex, then how in the world is a dispatcher able to make the appropriate traffic management decisions?”

… to …

“Well if you ran your railroad in anywhere near a scheduled manner, there wouldn’t be the steady onslaught of crises.”

Fortunately, my IBM sales training some 30  years prior kicked in, and I took the CSI Miami’s Lt. Caine’s stance of tilting my head while removing (symbolically) my sunglasses, and  I responded with the fail safe :

“Why do you say that?”

All that I heard for the next 10 minutes or so were examples of train movement crises that had been handled “satisfactorily” by experienced dispatchers.

Again, a series of comments went through my mind during the executive’s tyrant starting with: “How do you know they were satisfactory solutions?” … to … ‘Did the dispatcher consider options as to alternate routings given yard or crew constraints?” … to … “So, what did the dispatchers learn as to how to prevent similar situations in the future?. Again, the IBM-conditioned response:

“Really?  How interesting?”

I had to get out of there; my sales training only took me to level 2, and this executive was pushing all the boundaries of cognitive rationalization.

Looking back, I can now understand where I was being too critical in evaluating this executive’s perspective of the railroad’s operations.  Simply stated: He didn’t understand what he didn’t understand.  He had been raised on traditional railroading based upon technologies that have changed little since their introduction in the early parts of the last century, i.e., track circuits and wireless voice. And, unfortunately the subsequent introduction of CAD platforms were limited to provide basic block status, from which dispatchers have been forced  to make decisions on untimely and overly-gross data. By default, this sophistic process had become the state-of-the-art traffic management methodology.

A study of dispatcher operations performed in Sweden several years back revealed (as in “a firm grip of the obvious) that dispatchers attempt to find workable solutions instead of ideal solutions. That means, in part, that dispatchers restrict their decision making process as to handling a very, very few variables to get out of a mess.  That is, they have learned through their experience to consider only a very few variables that provide the quickest solutions, but not necessarily the most cost-effective ones from the railroad’s standpoint; dispatchers are the heroes that master the inadequacies of antiquated practices based upon antiquated technologies.

In the last several years, two U.S. Class I’s have taken a more or less aggressive position that things have to change.  I say more or less, because one railroad bought into the concept of Proactive Traffic Management just way too much  They brought in a supplier who is so idealistic as to the movement of high speed passenger trains without the pragmatic, 80/20 perspective of what can be done with freight trains. In short, they blew it. Perhaps they are coming around, I don’t know. Reportedly, the other Class I has taken a more realistic perspective of what can be done with in-time data as to train status as to position and speed, if not just OS reports. I’m not going to give away all of the secrets here since I am a consultant that strives to make a living on dealing with the 80/20. But, permit me to just say that there are really important variables, that are much more critical than those considered by dispatchers traditionally, that can lead too much better analysis as to handling the dynamics of freight movements.

There is a next step, I can assure you, as how to merge higher-speed passenger trains into freight operation.  That’s a major perspective that sets up the importance of future posts on Strategic Railroading.

Okay, so let’s test your algebra. Consider the following problem.

Train A leaves Chicago at 11:00 A.M heading East at 30 mph (instantaneous acceleration assumed) on Track 1. At  9:00 AM  Train B leaves Cleveland heading West at 25 mph.on Track 2 (again, instantaneous acceleration).  These are parallel tracks with the distance between Cleveland and Chicago being 350 miles.  The question is where will the trains pass each other, assuming no hours-of-limits for the crews … or fuel limitations …or locomotive breakdowns … or wayside detector problems … or  other disruption issues?

ANSWER:  The trains meet at 200 miles West of Cleveland (150 miles East of Chicago) at 5:00 PM Eastern (clue).   For the equations contact me at  ron@strategicrailroading.com.

Lastly, now take this discussion to the next level of dealing with interchange between railroads, and quickly one realizes that dispatching is one freaking mess. That is unless we use timely train status, both position and speed, regardless of the interconnecting railroad over which it is operating, fed into mathematical planners.  While several railroads are beginning to realize this on their individual basis, there is clearly no industry perspective as addressed in the previous posting to this blog: Operability’s Dimensions.

Capitalizing on RR Industry Intra-Operability

Any Class I railroad’s Chief Engineer can quickly and dispassionately list the challenges of handling an “unequipped train” when new technologies, equipment, and systems are being deployed across the property. This perspective of railroad intra-operability is an inherent aspect of maintaining the physical plant and functionality of a railroad as technologies evolve. For example, the migration to narrow-band VHF will involve the eventual replacement of nearly ¼ million radios nationwide without interfering with operations. Now, with the enactment of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, an additional level of operability that has been long discussed and studied, but effectively unresolved, has come to the forefront of the technicians’ tasks. I refer to railroad inter-operability as the ability of trains with foreign power to cross onto and perform PTC effectively.

With the pursuit of railroad inter-operability consuming unprecedented levels of resources and cooperation across the industry to meet the end-of-2015 deadline, a different perspective of operability is not even being considered, yet alone pursued. This is the concept of industry intra-operability that provides the ability to track resources without regard to the property over which they are operating. Unlike railroad inter-operability, industry intra-operability offers substantial business benefits that are either being handled poorly today or are not even available to the railroads, both individually and collectively as an industry.

The business benefits fall into three categories, i.e., resource management, equipment maintenance, and security, as follows –

Increased resource management effectiveness is potentially available via industry intra-operability including moving from the current crisis-based management processes prevalent today to that of being proactive.  This means having timely data on train position and speed and approaching a railroad’s network in sync with the tools to project conflicts in a railroad’s lineup whether truly scheduled or not. Such projections will permit the various resource managers to minimize, if not avoid altogether, the effect of projected conflicts including track-time, yards, train crews, locomotives, and critical rolling stock.

Industry intra-operability offers unique advantages as well in the maintenance of locomotives including knowing the status of a foreign locomotive and the opportunity for performance-based maintenance in lieu of prescriptive mandates. An accurate and complete history of diagnostic data could also result in a different concept of competitive nationwide maintenance and warranty services contracted on a railroad if not an industry basis.

Given the increasing expectations and requirements for security of shipments for both commercial and safety purposes, industry intra-operability provides a reliable and commanding level of data for both a shipment’s status and its chain of custody, including TIH shipments. As noted in the Teddy Bear posting PTC Delivers Business Benefits, these business benefits as well as a range of other business benefits that are mistakenly associated with PTC, can be achieved relatively easily with a strategic railroading perspective leveraging the three core technologies discussed in the three prior postings – if the appropriate human resources are provided.

As noted earlier, the railroads are applying substantial technical resources to obtain railroad inter-operability. Fortunately, these technicians are not the same resources required to pursue the business benefits. Unfortunately, the appropriate human resources actually don’t exist in the railroads today, i.e., technologists that can deliver a unique blend of multiple disciplines including wireless & IT technologies, business case development, business process analysis, operations research, and a touch of Six Sigma. Fortunately, however, the ROI’s of the business benefits that can be delivered are quite substantial and can thereby justify obtaining and committing the appropriate resources. Unfortunately though, few railroads, if any, have identified the use of technologists to rethink operations based upon advancing technologies, most specifically wireless.  It seems that there are no senior technologist positions in the railroads that can develop and present a threshold business case to senior management to pursue developing a strategic technology plan in sync with a strategic business plan.

As to the supplier community, there are at best a few that have the wherewithal to put together synced business / technology strategies, albeit somewhat biased undoubtedly. But even those suppliers that may be capable of doing so are reluctant to take on the railroads in a top-down fashion instead of the politically correct but likely ineffective bottom-up approach. In either intrinsic railroad practices or supplier marketing practices, senior railroad management is not getting the message as to what can be done with advancing technologies.

The bottom line is that the railroads don’t need to wait for the business benefits that have been inappropriately associated with the deployment of PTC. The financial justification is there to deploy a team of technologists to structure the business and technology strategies, the implementation of which will handsomely offset the investment required for narrow-band 160-161 MHz and PTC’s 220 MHz. The cost to take full advantage of narrow-banding as well as the somewhat green-field deployment of the 220 MHz bands for PTC by 2016 will be extraordinary. However, the business value that the new-found wireless capacity can deliver is unprecedented, that is if the railroads collectively expand the dimensions of operability.

The North American railroads have the opportunity to make a phenomenal paradigm shift in running their operations, both individually and collectively as an industry. However, to date they have failed to recognize the possibilities, yet alone to take a proactive position to break away from traditional railroading and make the transition to strategic railroading, i.e. syncing strategic operations with a strategic technology plan.

The reasons for such an unfortunate lack of progress are actually quite few but nonetheless difficult to overcome with the railroads’ current management teams.  In the simplest terms, the reasons reduce to the lack of a true business perspective relative to the deployment of technologies by railroads and suppliers alike.  This is due to the lack of Technologists that can provide cost-effective technology solutions that support operational changes … instead of the current terror of technicians who believe they are driven to deliver the ultimate system, i.e., technology platforms that only they can design.

The shift to strategic railroading is based upon making substantial changes in a railroad’s core technology infrastructure, i.e., the mixture of communication, intelligence, and positioning technologies.  Such changes will eliminate the constraints placed upon operations by the two traditional technologies that have been in use since the early part of the last century, i.e., track circuits and wireless voice.  Each of the three technologies that comprise the core technology infrastructure will be explored in individual postings with this one addressing the positioning perspective.

I start this perspective by first looking back to the 80’s and 90’s to several interesting, not always successful, pursuits of various positioning concepts. At that point, wireless data was beginning to get some facial hair with End-of-Train (EOT) being the first true application of its use across the industry.  More importantly, or so it seemed at the time given the hype of the GE-Harris combo, a significant attempt was made by several railroads to advance traffic management. Referred to as Advanced Train Control Systems (ATCS), this platform attempted to incorporate a concept for a positioning technology to ascertain which track a train was on when in parallel track operations, as well as another concept for determining the precision of position along the track required for moving block. Fortunately, the industry soon rejected the two ill-founded concepts, i.e., transponders embedded in tens of thousands of track miles, and expensive, on-board gyro platforms infused with convoluted track databases.

Shortly after the demise of ATCS, I was employed by CSX to develop a Positive Train Control (PTC) system for dark territory operation.  A major challenge was to find a solution for parallel track operation without the availability of track circuits to declare block/track occupancy. Luckily, I had the advantage of what not to do given the ATCS failure. The solution I developed, that has since been used in all PTC pursuits by freight railroads in North America, was to monitor switch position for the back office system to “route” the train within the accuracy of GPS once the initial track was known by PTC.  There were significant additional advantages to monitoring switches, i.e., being able to enforce a train should the crew be in danger of violating either the switch’s position or run-through speed.

While routing has been incorporated successfully into PTC functionality, there still remains the issues of accuracy and timeliness of positioning data for the purpose of advancing railroad operations. Specifically, what is missing is the middle ground between what the century-old technologies provide and what the technicians left unmanaged with seemingly unlimited capital funds would provide (as is currently the case).  The former can only provide block ID, and not actual position or speed of a train in signaled territory. In dark territory, not even that level of information is available.  Contrarily, the un-tethered technician will attempt to deliver real time data of both position and speed, even though it clearly isn’t necessary. Such fatuous pursuits by technicians result in expensive wireless infrastructures.

There are two key points here –

1) The advanced traffic management systems being deployed in Europe, ERTMS, are using GSM-R wireless with base stations as close as every 4Km so as to insure no more than a 7second lapse in transmitting critical information to keep the high speed trains moving.  Such an approach can increase the cost of the wireless infrastructure by a factor of 10 compared to what is required when dealing with slower freight trains.

2) A number of years ago, I contracted an Operations Research (applied mathematics) consultancy to determine the pragmatic requirement for reporting train position and speed in a fashion capable of supporting meet/pass planners.  This analysis showed the optimum frequency of reporting such data ranges from reports every 5 – 15 minutes, depending upon the level of traffic. This is not real -time data, but rather in-time data; the difference is critical when deploying wireless data infrastructure as well as the design of the back office systems that use the data. With in-time data, dispatchers can foresee traffic conflicts and dynamically re-plan train movements; a concept I refer to as Proactive Traffic Management (PTM) and introduced to the industry 6 years ago.

In addition to the use of wireless to report train position and speed, there is a variety of positioning data that are being provided for singular activities, including OS’s, AEI and wayside detection reports. Hence, there is an opportunity to merge these data into a single data base/server that can be used to service all requiring applications with improved timeliness and quality of data. Such capability would be the function of a positioning engine that is a type of Kalman filter that maintains a statistically rational tracking of trains based upon a continuously updated data base. I know of only one railroad that has built, reportedly, such a strategic component within their IT infrastructure.

Revving up a positioning engine requires a succession of steps; I can envision the following: 1. Construct a locomotive tracking platform by integrating AEI reports with recurring wireless data transmissions from the locomotives; 2. Incorporate a locomotive-to-train converter to form a train tracking platform; 3. Introduce train OS’s from CAD as well as the status of critical manual switches (e.g., dark territory operation) and layer on train routing logic. Voila! You have an IT server that is available for all purposes including the management of traffic, crew, track gangs, and locomotives, as well as PTC. This is an enterprise solution that, most interestingly, can be provided outboard and independently of the CAD – CTC infrastructure. This is a solution that can stand easily on its own merits without the organizational, technical, and functional barriers that are normally confronted when taking on changes to a railroad’s operations practices or its stoic IT infrastructure.

I am not suggesting that the above 3-step process to obtaining a positioning engine is particularly easy. But, it needs to be done now given that the PTC mandate has resulted in the railroads finally working together to develop a wireless strategy, albeit an overly complex and unnecessarily expensive one. Actually there are really two levels of positioning engines required. The first level is required by each railroad, and for a railroad not to do so affects only that particular railroad. The second level of positioning engine is for the industry.  What I refer to as industry intra-operability is a strategic platform that is required to improve the advancement of all railroads. It is the ability to know where assets are regardless of which railroad they are operating. The advantages can be significant, including fueling, maintenance, and traffic management. Industry intra-operability will addressed in a separate posting.

Lastly, positioning data is only as good as the reliability and accuracy of the reference points.  This means that the railroads require substantial GIS systems.  Fortunately, that seems to be the case for each railroad individually, but not necessarily from an industry standpoint.  Furthermore, the GIS platform within a railroad needs to be enterprise level in concert with the positioning engine. That is, the E-GIS platform needs to be common to all applications requiring such data, and the data collection and modifications requirements need to be specifically assigned to individual departments with no overlap. Simply stated, there can only be one source for any given data element … or … a version of the positioning gateway is required to blend multiple sources of the same data into one usable source. This is a critical design point for safety systems such as PTC.

The Illusive Mobile Node

Is it politics or perspective that is causing the PTC debate to derail?

As discussed  in the Last Mile posting,  US railroads are still failing to take on the strategy of incorporating the advanced business applications that can be achieved with the wireless data path required to support Positive Train Control (PTC) so as to most effectively manage their resources.

Specifically, the voice radio and signaling infrastructures that are currently depended upon to provide train status data to the traffic control systems, are unable to deliver the timeliness and completeness as to both location and speed data for trains so as to permit the use of meet /pass planners that could optimize the railroads’ most dense and most critical operations.  Therefore, this primal infrastructure needs to be advanced, and to do so effectively requires a perspective that integrates the three principle technology platforms (communications, positioning, and intelligence) to form a strategic core technology infrastructure. In this post, I address intelligence, i.e., the processing power for applications, of such an infrastructure. The other two platforms will be addressed in following postings.

With the shift from the mainframe of the 60’s to that of client / server of today, intelligence has made the transition from being only centralized to that of being distributed with seamless flexibility between the two, at least for those industries whose distributed resources are fixed as to location. For these fixed node operations, the challenges for distributing intelligence tend to be less technical and more functional as how to optimally allocate the processing power across a mesh of private and commercial networks, internet, and back office systems.  But, what about railroads where the assets are mobile and, even worse, where those assets traverse across railroad boundaries? This convoluted concoction of mobility and interoperability adds new dimensions to distributed intelligence far beyond those of fixed node, thereby necessitating a mobile node perspective with philosophical, technical, and functional considerations garnished with industry politics.

From a philosophical standpoint, the mobile node should be viewed as an extension to the IT architecture, meaning that the discipline and expertise well established in the traditional wired-IT environment should be imposed upon mastering the wild west of wireless. In short, this means that railroads and suppliers alike need to coalesce wireless and IT expertise into a dedicated Mobile Computing organization in lieu of the parallel lines on an organization chart that are too often the case today.

As to a functional perspective, the deployment of mobile nodes offers the extraordinary opportunity to rethink business processes that can take advantage of unprecedented connectivity and the timeliness and accuracy of position and speed data that wireless data afford (think UPS or Fed Ex).  For some this may be extraordinarily uncomfortable when they are confronted with revisiting the functionality of their traditional back office systems, e.g., how would train dispatching be done with train speed and location data available every 5 minutes?

Unlike the fixed node, the mobile node is technically challenged by both the constraints of the communication medium and the physical environment in which it operates as well as the requirements of interoperability. As to communications, the mobile node must be able to strut its independence given that the wireless throughput is relatively limited and unreliable compared to a fixed node’s wired throughput. As to the physical environment, what could be worse than the cab of a locomotive or a maintenance-of-way vehicle? For this challenge I subscribe to the screwdriver-penetration test, a railroad’s version of Psycho’s shower scene applied to on-board equipment.

Given the extensive interchange of trains between railroads in North America and the EU, there is often the issue of  interoperability, i.e., the ability of foreign equipment to provide the desired functionality on a railroad’s property. There are only a few applications that have been recognized for this intra-industry pursuit. Unquestionably, the most important for this discussion is that of Positive Train Control (PTC) which has been mandated by the US Federal government for implementation across the major freight and passenger railroads before 2016.  With an unprecedented level of cooperation, it would seem to many, that the primary 4 Class I railroads in the U.S, via a joint effort referred to as the Interoperability Train Control (ITC) agreement, are working on all aspects of interoperability to meet the deadline.  The ITC efforts are being handled by 7 technical committees:  Architecture, PTC Application, Wayside Signal, Messaging, On-board Platform, Communications Steering, and Data Management.  The standards that come out of these committees are to be available by January 2011.

However, there are still 2 major points to consider. The first is that the effort does not have any purpose other than that of PTC. While many railroaders and suppliers will state the business benefits of PTC, they fail to recognize the foolishness of their own hype. Simply stated, it is the wireless path now required for the mandate PTC effort that will finally deliver business benefits not PTC itself; PTC is just one user of the wireless data infrastructure.  BUT, the ITC efforts are not providing a business perspective of the on-board platform that would deliver a true mobile node perspective that could handle not only PTC, but also  support business-value applications such as pacing, locomotive tracking, fuel consumption, in-train monitoring, etc.

There is also another reason that the ITC efforts are less than complete, certainly not altruistic, if not a bit misleading; it is the issue of industry politics. That is, each major railroad came to the ITC table with a very different technology agenda. There are solutions to address these differences, and the railroads more than ever are working in that direction. However, I believe the solution to develop a single technology platform is poorly evaluated as to both scope and costs, while other wireless spectrums are being very poorly utilized, i.e., Meteorcomm and narrowband 160-161 MHz … clearly a discussion for a forthcoming post.