It's now August 20, 1998; we have fewer than 500 days till Y2K. Can anyone give me information -- even a URL -- about the progress (or lack thereof) of the Railroad Companies?

I am terribly concerned about them. I have only lately begun to fully realize how dependent we are on them for coal and food. What good will it do for your local electrical utility to be fully prepared if they have no coal for their generators (or whatever fossil fuel they might use; obviously this doesn't apply to the nuke plants or the hydros)??

Any information appreciated.

-- Fred W. Noltie Jr. (criterion-consulting@usinternet.com), August 21, 1998

Answers

Here is a status update on Railroads from 6/22/98. It's from Cory Hamasaki and is the most recent thing I've seen... Bertin

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Computerworld June 22, 1998

Experts needed for 2000 fixes

Union Pacific Corp. was well into building a new $6 million computerized railcar for recording maintenance data about its 36,000 miles of track when a frightening thought stabbed Mike Sundberg.

"I remember worrying, 'Oh my God, we poured all of this money and resources into this new system. And everything we're doing with planning and long-range budgeting would be driven by data coming from the car. What's going to happen if it's not year 2000-compliant?' " recalled Sundberg, chief engineer of equipment systems at the railroad.

That was five years ago. And as it turned out, the railcar's onboard computer and sensor systems had some date problems, which Union Pacific and the car manufacturer later identified and are now fixing.

But Sundberg's stabbing feeling remained. He figured if there were problems with the test car, there also must be problems with a lot of other systems. "That was the defining moment for me," he said.

Sundberg's discovery of date problems with the test railcar was "all part of him doing his job," said Jim Fox, information systems director at the $9 billion railroad. Yet the discovery is a telling illustration of why business and operations managers outside of information technology must be involved in year 2000 projects.

Union Pacific's year 2000 team relies on experts such as Sundberg. Fox said IT systems for automatic train refueling or weight and motion scales "are the responsibility of managers who, as part of due diligence, must check the technology they use in their departments."

Sundberg came up with a plan to ferret out the location and nature of date problems in the computer systems his group uses for everything from assembling railcars into trains to operating railroad crossing and signaling systems.

REPLACEMENT PLAN

Today, Sundberg's plan in engineering includes replacing several older systems, including Union Pacific's signaling system, with new software. That is less costly than repairing the original system. "We've classified all of our computer systems into two classes ; critical and noncritical. The critical systems are those that would affect safety, such as the signal system and crossing system," he explained. Noncritical systems, he said, "are those that might give us a little heartburn, but would not affect either safety or operations."

Other systems deemed critical by the Union Pacific engineering department's 11-person year 2000 team are being renovated in-house by information systems staffers and contractors. The team identified four critical mainframe systems and another 10 client/server systems, all of which will be completed by this time next year, Sundberg said.

But to meet that deadline, other IT projects in engineering have had to take a backseat. Among the postponed projects are enhancements to a predictive modeling system, which would use data retrieved by the new computerized test car to generate long-range maintenance schedules and capital improvement budgets.

"When we first started getting into year 2000, we didn't realize it was going to take nearly all of our resources. But the deeper you get into it, the more you find," Sundberg said. As for the predictive modeling systems, "we'll still do that work. We'll just have to do it next year," he said.

Rail safety is the No. 1 priority of all railroads, according to Treadwell Davison, who manages the Association of American Railroads' year 2000 task force. Because railroads work together on customer shipments that cross company lines, association members, including Union Pacific, are sharing their year 2000 research, testing and recommendations, he said.

? Julia King --------- End Virtual Xerox ------------

Is Rail on track? Don't bet on it. Here're the touchstones...

"...assembling railcars into trains..."

"The team identified four critical mainframe systems and another 10 client/server systems, all of which will be completed by this time next year"

"...take nearly all of our resources."

"...the deeper you get into it, the more you find..."

Hmmm, let's buy a clue... They're a year away from completion ... they'll find more to work on... Anyone screaming yet? What comes by rail? Lots of big heavy stuff. Rail is efficient. Without rail, costs skyrocket. Same with ships, ships are cheap economical transporation. Without ships, costs skyrocket...

...say, aren't we supposed to have deflation?

-- Bertin Opus (third@hotmail.com), August 21, 1998.

Last week I drove over the bridge that straddles the mouth of the CSX railroad yard in Richmond, Virginia; there was not a manual switch machine in sight. A phonecall to the CSX yard office revealed that all the swithches (presumably on the entire eastern seaboard) are controlled by a computer system in Jacksonville, Fla. We can only hope that the CSX computers are Year 2000 compliant.

Dealing with the consequences of Y2K failure is the theme of my new free website, Y2K Survive, (www.y2ksurvive.com) and I invite everyone to check it out.

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), August 27, 1998.

If I may be allowed to mitigate a bit of error on previous posts:

A good and reliable source informs me of the following :

1) all electrified track switches are both electric and manual - i.e. if the electric power to a track switch goes off, a knowledgeable railroad worker can switch the switching mechanism from electronic control to manual control and thereby, manually move a track switch

2) while a desireable scenario may be to have trains controlled from Omaha or some other central location for efficiency, track-side semaphores (signals) are setup in such a way that an engineer can proceed with a green light and will stop on a red, thus, he can, if necessary, inch his way from point A to point B in two mile increments, by using his head and his eyes and the rules of the road - even if Omaha does go down

3) trains are already setup for hauling their own fuel to run the locomotives for long hauls; - i.e. they have special diesel tanker-cars that they put between multi-engine consists for non-stop, cross-country runs; the engines can pump fuel from these tankers on the fly; thus, as long as they can get diesel fuel, the trains can run, and, they are not dependant on stopping every so often to refuel

I'm sure others with more intimate knowledge can expand on this thread.

Hope that this ray of hope is not a false ray...

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), September 17, 1998.

I should have added in Para 2, that:

semaphore signals are activated by the physical presence of a train on that 2 mile section of track- i.e. the signal shows what is on the track ahead, not what a controller in Omaha may think is on the track ahead - thus, the system is safe, based on reality

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), September 17, 1998.

It means "inching" across the country, one train at a time.

So if 60-80% of the coal for power plants comes by rail, and power plants have 3-12 days reserve coal stockpiles, and coal can't be shipped as quickly as possible, and satellites (computers) control national links over phone lines (compuer switches), and .....

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 17, 1998.

"inching"...

not exactly:

any number of trains can ( and do) follw each other safely in the same direction, so long as any train does not enter the "safe" space of the train ahead of it.

this can be done at any safe speed.

additionally, trains can safely travel in opposite directions on the same track - so long as each does not enter the "safe" space of the other; i.e. - one must pull off on a siding and wait for the other to pass, then it can resume its travel; this is done routinely, now.

- and all this is controlled by the physical presence of a train on the track , the semaphores that report the position of each train, and the pre-arranged "rules of the road" - just good sense

again, expert commentary welcomed

-- perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), September 18, 1998.

Understood, thank you.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 18, 1998.