The operation of driver-less mainline freights becomes a reality in Australia.
OK, it seems to be a captive line, but nonetheless it does move across the open countryside.True open countryside in Australia is not the same as open country in Indiana. The point is automation is coming.
Subsequent posts point out that these unit trains all have uniform handling characteristics and do not switch out cars en-route. Still come out to North Dakota: Most trains through our town are unit coal or unit hopper trains. Unit Oil Trains are becoming more common given the activity in the Bakken. Full automation would work quite well on this part of BNSF, and besides the LION thinks that automation can handle trains of many different handling characteristics. Captive equipment is more congenial to automation than random consists, but the LION thinks that these things are coming.
As many objections as people raise, developers of automation can address.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Much like Nuclear Power and High Speed Rail, the NIMBY's and politicians will do everything they can to prevent this.
Would drivers be more attentive at grade crossings if they knew no one was driving the train? Also would tresspassers think twice about jogging on the rails? I hope so.
There are no NUMBYs in this part of Australia.
AS for CONUS... If they pull the crews from trains out here, nobody would ever know about it.
Crew or no crew, the train will not stop for trespasses on the ROW or cars on an intersection.
Dollars Rule. Once upon a time it was thought that nobody would ride in an elevator without an operator.
I know it is not real 'Railroading'. But do not the BART Trains in San Francisco operate without a live person on the train? I am not 100% certain but the coal trains on the Black Mesa (?) line operate under computer control, but have an operator riding for safety(?)
Also, Hundreds of thousands ride on the railroad at Atlanta's Airport every year. Those trains operate in close proximity and multiple trains on the same loop servicing the various terminals.
I am certain that there are many more examples of total computerized operations moving all sorts of people all over the world. Point being, the technology is out there, and could be tailored for Heavy Rail operations, seems as if the only problematic issue is the Incursions of errant drivers at crossings, and trespassers on the ROW.
Lion, I think, pointed out earlier that Coal trains seldom stop in his area due to crossing accidents, and trespassing incidents(?). So if the ROW were pretty much fenced, and crossings gated and/or otherwise protected, unless there was a derailment, the RR Police, and the local LEO'S would just be there to pick up the pieces and any resultant debris. It might sound good, but a plan like that would require a serious reduction in the number of Lawyers around.
What about those knuckles and air hoses that need replacement in areas where no vehicles can go?
According to a Rio Tinto web site, they run about 60 trains per day with 132 locomotives on 900 miles of railroad. It is exclusively a unit train operation with all the trains about the same size. I'd guess that the operation is highly scheduled with the train sets doing the same work every cycle.
That is railroading at its simplist and yet the price tag for the automation is $317 million. Since the technology has already been developed, those bucks are mostly for the installation.
You might want to contrast that railroad with the 7 US Class 1's. 95,000 route miles, 161,000 track miles of which 65,000 track miles carry over 20 million tons per year with a fleet of 23,000 locomotives. Scale up the Rio Tinto project and I'll bet the price tag for the US railroads would be in the ten's of $Billions.
Want to start small? Let me know if you aware of a 900 mile stretch of US rail used only for unit trains-no mixed carload, intermodal, passenger, locals, nothing to complicate the automation. Better yet, write the CEO of the railroad owning that track and tell him how he is missing a big oppurtunity to make more money for the shareholders.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
jeaton You might want to contrast that railroad [Rio Tinto] with the 7 US Class 1's. 95,000 route miles, 161,000 track miles of which 65,000 track miles carry over 20 million tons per year with a fleet of 23,000 locomotives. Scale up the Rio Tinto project and I'll bet the price tag for the US railroads would be in the ten's of $Billions.
You might want to contrast that railroad [Rio Tinto] with the 7 US Class 1's. 95,000 route miles, 161,000 track miles of which 65,000 track miles carry over 20 million tons per year with a fleet of 23,000 locomotives.
Scale up the Rio Tinto project and I'll bet the price tag for the US railroads would be in the ten's of $Billions.
Well if the price goes up to tens of billions, wouldn't the money saved by the efficiency increase also go up accordingly?
Here is my question: Why did Rio Tinto spend $317 million to automate? I assume there must be a return on the investment. What is that return?
Assuming that there is a return on the investment by saving crew costs, why wouldn't the automation investment be scaleable to the larger systems of railroads such as in the U.S. ?
US railroads are already signaled. There are cab signals. How hard can it be to connect the cab signal to the throttle and brakes. My biggest concern it the horrible accidents that occur due to crew inattention. Computers do not forget what they are doing.
Heck, my HO layout is fully automated, I can run 8 trains all at once without paying any attention to them. They slow down, make all station stops and speed up again without my intervention. I only control the tower at 242nd Street.
Bucyrus Here is my question: Why did Rio Tinto spend $317 million to automate? I assume there must be a return on the investment. What is that return? Assuming that there is a return on the investment by saving crew costs, why wouldn't the automation investment be scaleable to the larger systems of railroads such as in the U.S. ?
You have to consider the location where the mines and ports are located. The only permanent settlements are the mining camps themselves. All supplies are flown in, other than fuel. The employees are flown in from Perth for a tour of duty, I believe it is two weeks. The mining companies provide all services, doctors, dentists, entertainment, housing, etc. Plus in order to attract people to work there the railroad crews are paid above the scale paid for the same job elsewhere in Australia. It wouldn't surprise me if the payback period was as short as 5 years.
The braking problem is very real and is what is delaying PTC, and with PTC every braking action by the computer will bring the train to a stop. With ATO you need to be able to control train speed with the air brakes, also you need to control the interplay between dynamic braking, and the Independent and Automatic air brakes.
Fully automated operation of trains without an on-board crew probably is a long way off. It may never be achieved fully. Having said that, I can envision the day when most of the work is done by automation, with the role of the on-board crew being to monitor the operation and, if necessary, override the system in an emergency.
When I started in the electric power industry more than 30 years ago, the power plants, transmission system, and significant portions of the distribution system were controlled manually. If we needed to bring a generator on-line to meet the increased demand associated with a July afternoon in Texas (they get pretty warm), the system control center operator called one of the power plants and told the plant control room operator that a unit would be needed at such and such a time. Today it is all automated. In fact, practically everything is automated. From the time a customer flips the switch until he or she receives a bill, except in extraordinary circumstances, no one touches anything. It not just the electric utility industry.
Today most commercial airline flights are essentially controlled by an on-board computer, which probably controls 95 per cent of the flight. In many respects the pilots are along for the ride, except when it all goes to Hades, in which case the pilots earn their lifetime pay in a few blood curling moments. A pilot recently told me that the machine can fly the plane more efficiently and effectively than a person, but it is creating a problem for the pilots. They are bored.
Sam1 Today most commercial airline flights are essentially controlled by an on-board computer, which probably controls 95 per cent of the flight. In many respects the pilots are along for the ride, except when it all goes to Hades, in which case the pilots earn their lifetime pay in a few blood curling moments. A pilot recently told me that the machine can fly the plane more efficiently and effectively than a person, but it is creating a problem for the pilots. They are bored.
Not only bored, but under-experienced in how to handle the plane in the few 'blood "curdling" moments'! If the pilots had been handling the plane day-in-and-day-out they would have experience in the minor difficulties and could extrapolate what to do when things get worse and there would be a lot less curdled blood.
As far as present day automated rail operation, the examples cited (airport trams/people movers) are all insular, tightly controlled ROW, where there is a lot less chance of obstructions to the operation. (Usually, no stray cows or moose at an airport.) And at the places were public interaction with the RR would normally occur there are employees available to monitor the public causing problems.
And an automated HO layout also does not have the problem of unanticipated obstructions... unless the household has a CAT and then I bet the automation all goes to pot in a big hurry. El Gato knocks the engine off and the train cars are not detected as being in the block so the following train does a rear-ender and that engine also derails, thus the next train repeats the scenario. Granted, there will be little curdled human blood, except the plastic carnage that can be significant, such that there might be some curdled blood in the owner (and/or his significant other when the prices of the damaged cars and locos are revealed). Bar-be-qued cat, anyone?
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Computers don't fail? Won't buy it. When I first started fixing computers (1956), mean up time was but 15 minutes. Sounds unlikely any one would buy or trust one back then, but the government did. When the computer worked, it was really, really fast compared to what had been available.
When I retired, they failed a lot less often, but they still failed. And still, even today. For space flight, they used three computers. If one disagreed with the other two, somebody started working on it - fast.
And the Air France jet crashed in the Atlantic because nobody knew which direction was up, and it wasn't even a computer failure although the computer might have saved the flight had all inputs to it functioned properly.
There is such a thing as technological overkill... perhaps the best example of that (since we already mentioned airports) are the laser activated toilet paper dispensers at Detroit International. Just because certain technology is available doesn't mean that we should be using it or that it's even economically feasible to do so. If the plane (or train) has two people on it anyway, then it would make sense to use them. Or else the pilots or train crew members lose their "edge"..and in a moment of crisis they don't know what to do.
Computers do fail, and you cant compare running a real railroad to that of a toy one....
I was reading the final report on the Air France crash in my local paper...turns out the pilot tube, (a device that measures air flow/speed over the wing surface) got plugged with ice, the on board auto pilot did exactly what it was programed to do, once the input info exceeded the parameters of its program, because it couldn't read the air speed, it kicked the control into manual, the expectation being the pilots would simply take over and fly.
Problem was, by then, the plane had begun to stall, the pilots had no clue the computer had flown them into a stall and once they realized that they were way to high, the plane began a flat spin stall, and they had never experienced such a problem, because the computer had always flown the plane...they had never been trained on how to recover from a flat spin stall, and pancaked into the Atlantic.
The report, (I believe it was an FAA report, but may be mistaken) stated that once the stall began, everyone on board was already doomed, because there was no one on board who knew how to solve the problem.
The report went on to recommend that pilots in this particular aircraft, even those pilots considered experienced, have mandatory training in how to solve flight problems such as this...seems they have been relying on the computer so long and so much few, if any of the pilots have quite the actual flight hours one would expect...they have been riding, not flying.
Personally, I will take one Cap. Sully over all the computers you can cram into the flight deck.
And, I will take one experienced engineer on the seat box over all the PTC you can invent...nothing replaces experience.
23 17 46 11
Semper Vaporo Sam1: Today most commercial airline flights are essentially controlled by an on-board computer, which probably controls 95 per cent of the flight. In many respects the pilots are along for the ride, except when it all goes to Hades, in which case the pilots earn their lifetime pay in a few blood curling moments. A pilot recently told me that the machine can fly the plane more efficiently and effectively than a person, but it is creating a problem for the pilots. They are bored. Not only bored, but under-experienced in how to handle the plane in the few 'blood "curdling" moments'! If the pilots had been handling the plane day-in-and-day-out they would have experience in the minor difficulties and could extrapolate what to do when things get worse and there would be a lot less curdled blood. As far as present day automated rail operation, the examples cited (airport trams/people movers) are all insular, tightly controlled ROW, where there is a lot less chance of obstructions to the operation. (Usually, no stray cows or moose at an airport.) And at the places were public interaction with the RR would normally occur there are employees available to monitor the public causing problems. And an automated HO layout also does not have the problem of unanticipated obstructions... unless the household has a CAT and then I bet the automation all goes to pot in a big hurry. El Gato knocks the engine off and the train cars are not detected as being in the block so the following train does a rear-ender and that engine also derails, thus the next train repeats the scenario. Granted, there will be little curdled human blood, except the plastic carnage that can be significant, such that there might be some curdled blood in the owner (and/or his significant other when the prices of the damaged cars and locos are revealed). Bar-be-qued cat, anyone?
Sam1: Today most commercial airline flights are essentially controlled by an on-board computer, which probably controls 95 per cent of the flight. In many respects the pilots are along for the ride, except when it all goes to Hades, in which case the pilots earn their lifetime pay in a few blood curling moments. A pilot recently told me that the machine can fly the plane more efficiently and effectively than a person, but it is creating a problem for the pilots. They are bored.
No responsible official in our company ever suggested that the control room operators in our cyber controlled nuclear plants, or any other plant for that matter, should not be trained to take over if the systems fail. They are constantly under going drills in a simulator to handle any conceivable emergency. Yep, the simulators were designed by the same folks who design flight simulators. At the end of the day computer controlled plants do a more effective job of optimizing daily, normal plant operations than manual operators.
No one has suggested that pilots not be trained to handle whatever emergencies are likely to pop up. They too spend hours in simulators responding to a variety of simulated emergencies. The problem for Air France 447, according to the French authorities, not the FAA, is the pilots had not been trained properly how to fly a partial panel. Again, there is no substitute for a trained pilot when it comes to an emergency. But for most point A to point B flying, the computers do a more effective job than people.
Ultimately, more automation will come to train operations. This is not to say that on-board crews will be dispensed with. But they will become monitors as opposed to doers, much like pilots and nuclear plant operators, only taking over in the event of an emergency. The return on the investment will be found in better operating outputs. Moreover, automation is coming to road vehicle operations too.
The technology for self guided cars and trucks, on highways designed to handle them, is coming like it or not. The technology is being tested. We may not see it in our lifetimes, but it is coming. Oh no say the oldsters. It will never happen. Wanna bet? The oldsters of a generator or two back said that they could not automate car plants and electric grids. They were wrong. If you think I am a bit looney, visit the GM plant in Arlington TX or the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio. They conduct regular tours. More than 70 per cent of the work is done by machines. Machines assembling machines.
edblysard ...nothing replaces experience.
...nothing replaces experience.
AMEN!
BroadwayLion US railroads are already signaled. There are cab signals. How hard can it be to connect the cab signal to the throttle and brakes. My biggest concern it the horrible accidents that occur due to crew inattention. Computers do not forget what they are doing. Heck, my HO layout is fully automated, I can run 8 trains all at once without paying any attention to them. They slow down, make all station stops and speed up again without my intervention. I only control the tower at 242nd Street. ROAR
PTC is only costing the railroad $19B to cover the parts of their plant that carry HAZMAT or passengers. Which still leave a lot of mileage that does not get PTC..
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
edblysard I was reading the final report on the Air France crash in my local paper...turns out the pilot tube, (a device that measures air flow/speed over the wing surface) got plugged with ice, the on board auto pilot did exactly what it was programed to do, once the input info exceeded the parameters of its program, because it couldn't read the air speed, it kicked the control into manual, the expectation being the pilots would simply take over and fly. Problem was, by then, the plane had begun to stall, the pilots had no clue the computer had flown them into a stall and once they realized that they were way to high, the plane began a flat spin stall, and they had never experienced such a problem, because the computer had always flown the plane...they had never been trained on how to recover from a flat spin stall, and pancaked into the Atlantic. The report, (I believe it was an FAA report, but may be mistaken) stated that once the stall began, everyone on board was already doomed, because there was no one on board who knew how to solve the problem. The report went on to recommend that pilots in this particular aircraft, even those pilots considered experienced, have mandatory training in how to solve flight problems such as this...seems they have been relying on the computer so long and so much few, if any of the pilots have quite the actual flight hours one would expect...they have been riding, not flying. Personally, I will take one Cap. Sully over all the computers you can cram into the flight deck. And, I will take one experienced engineer on the seat box over all the PTC you can invent...nothing replaces experience.
Me too...Sully over a computer any time. And recovering from a stall involves some conterintuitive action...but's its really quite simple. Any pilot (and I'm a licensed private pilot) who can't recover from a stall shouldn't be flying and isn't worth his/her weight in salt. That goes double for professional pilots.. When I first took flying lessons back in the mid 70s, being able to recover from a stall was required in order to pass the test... I remember my instructor purposely putting the plane into a stall and expecting me to recover. Back then we didn't have the computer diagnostics we have today, and we had to recognize the telltale signs of a stall by the feel of the plane and how the controls felt..
Georgia Railroader Computers do fail, and you cant compare running a real railroad to that of a toy one....
Computer fails: Train stops. End of Story. I'd trust a computer far more that I would a sleepy locomotive crew. Let the computer run the train, and let the crew sit at a table in the back of the cab watching TV, playing cards, or surfing the internet. LION thinks *that* is safer.
BroadwayLion Georgia Railroader: Computers do fail, and you cant compare running a real railroad to that of a toy one.... Computer fails: Train stops. End of Story. I'd trust a computer far more that I would a sleepy locomotive crew. Let the computer run the train, and let the crew sit at a table in the back of the cab watching TV, playing cards, or surfing the internet. LION thinks *that* is safer. ROAR
Georgia Railroader: Computers do fail, and you cant compare running a real railroad to that of a toy one....
Semper Vaporo And an automated HO layout also does not have the problem of unanticipated obstructions... unless the household has a CAT and then I bet the automation all goes to pot in a big hurry. El Gato knocks the engine off and the train cars are not detected as being in the block so the following train does a rear-ender and that engine also derails, thus the next train repeats the scenario. Granted, there will be little curdled human blood, except the plastic carnage that can be significant, such that there might be some curdled blood in the owner (and/or his significant other when the prices of the damaged cars and locos are revealed). Bar-be-qued cat, anyone?
I do have two cats, and they do not like being indoors, let alone up in the train room, so no problem there. All of my trains are subway trains, all permanently coupled with draw bars. There are no computers and no detection systems in my automation. Track power is on (10.5v at 15A) and track resistors control the speed of trains in and out of the stations. Departure times are regulated by a master timer that pulls in a track relay. Dead simple stuff really. There are emergency buttons all around the layout so that no matter where I am in the room, I can stop all action at once. Pressing the button stops the trains, stops the timer, and stops the Standard Clock. The whole thing just pauses until I fix the issue and return to the tower to reset the master power relay. Since I rue more that 500 trains a day against a real time Standard Clock it takes about a month to complete a full day's operations. The pause button is great, I just leave everything where it was and come back another time. In the tower there is a train register that the towerman must keep of the railroad's activity.
"And if it was only that simple..."
It never is as simple as a LION makes it out to be. But complications are just little bumps on the path to be overcome.
If it does not move, it is dead and you can eat it.
If it does move, then you can catch it and then eat it.
SIMPLE!
Well the Georgia Railroader doesn't care what kind of computers are present I trust my brothers way more than some software programmed to run a train. Oh yea, it's also against federal law to watch tv and be on the internet while working, I dont know where you got that idea from. You think that is safer? The Georgia Railroader thinks NOT!
BroadwayLion Semper Vaporo: And an automated HO layout also does not have the problem of unanticipated obstructions... unless the household has a CAT and then I bet the automation all goes to pot in a big hurry. El Gato knocks the engine off and the train cars are not detected as being in the block so the following train does a rear-ender and that engine also derails, thus the next train repeats the scenario. Granted, there will be little curdled human blood, except the plastic carnage that can be significant, such that there might be some curdled blood in the owner (and/or his significant other when the prices of the damaged cars and locos are revealed). Bar-be-qued cat, anyone? I do have two cats, and they do not like being indoors, let alone up in the train room, so no problem there. All of my trains are subway trains, all permanently coupled with draw bars. There are no computers and no detection systems in my automation. Track power is on (10.5v at 15A) and track resistors control the speed of trains in and out of the stations. Departure times are regulated by a master timer that pulls in a track relay. Dead simple stuff really. There are emergency buttons all around the layout so that no matter where I am in the room, I can stop all action at once. Pressing the button stops the trains, stops the timer, and stops the Standard Clock. The whole thing just pauses until I fix the issue and return to the tower to reset the master power relay. Since I rue more that 500 trains a day against a real time Standard Clock it takes about a month to complete a full day's operations. The pause button is great, I just leave everything where it was and come back another time. In the tower there is a train register that the towerman must keep of the railroad's activity.
Semper Vaporo: And an automated HO layout also does not have the problem of unanticipated obstructions... unless the household has a CAT and then I bet the automation all goes to pot in a big hurry. El Gato knocks the engine off and the train cars are not detected as being in the block so the following train does a rear-ender and that engine also derails, thus the next train repeats the scenario. Granted, there will be little curdled human blood, except the plastic carnage that can be significant, such that there might be some curdled blood in the owner (and/or his significant other when the prices of the damaged cars and locos are revealed). Bar-be-qued cat, anyone?
Your model is cute and all, but it's still a long ways off from being anything remotely close to running a real railroad. There is no reset button on a real railroad...
samfp1943 I know it is not real 'Railroading'. But do not the BART Trains in San Francisco operate without a live person on the train? I am not 100% certain but the coal trains on the Black Mesa (?) line operate under computer control, but have an operator riding for safety(?)
BART has Train Operators on board in the cab. BART uses an automated operation that originally did not need human input. This was changed due to the realization of unexpected human problems.
The first was a change in the operation of the doors. Originally no input was needed by the train operator for the doors to close. This was changed to having the operator having to push a button for the doors to close.
The next was to have a safety that when a tone sounded in the cab the operator had to push a button or the train would stop.
Both of these changes happened after the unthinkable happened. A Train Operator Fell Out of the cab at a station and the train departed without a human in the cab !!!! The first time it happened BART management described this as a fluke. The second time it happened state regulators insisted on changes.
Thx IGN
Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment. Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Murphy's law at it's best.
Just remember the movie West World with it's robots were nothing could go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong go wrong
Every job has smart people looking for ways to eliminate it.
Bucyrus Every job has smart people looking for ways to eliminate it.
I was always told that was the definition of a good employee! You should always be seeking ways to make your job easier and simpler, with the ultimate end to be the elimination of the job altogether. The trick is to stretch it out to retirement age without bankrupting the company.
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