I stumbled across two good insider sources of information on railroads. Cory Hamasaki is a old time mainframer heavies. He talks about the mainframe processing required for rail movement.

Cory Hamasaki Date: 1999/01/19

The rail "problem" is a systems problem, not a mechanical switch problem, or a people problem. ...

The location, contents, ownership, destination, urgency of rail freight boxcar contents are stored in a mainframe computer in Washington DC. Years ago, I saw a portion of the source code to the system. It belonged to a IT shop owned by a consortium of railroads. As reported by others in c.s.y2k, this system is now owned by an entity calling itself, Railinc.

Railinc was Y2K remediating the software last summer using contractors from GEISCO, and was moving their operations center away from WashingtonDC. They were also moving the programming work away from the operations center. There was some suggestion that they were converting to new technologies at the same time. This may or may not be important or true. The business rules contained in the Railinc system require current, realtime information. The business rules drive the rail switches in realtime.

There has been some discussion on the ability of track operators to switch track and trains. I don't see that as the heart of the problem. The problem is switching the cars within the trains. To do this, you need accurate information in the central computer. This information has three pieces, where is the car going, where is it in space, where is it in time. My concern isn't with the ability of brave strong workers to switch the trains. They can do it. The problem is, how do they know what and when to switch? Especially when.

...The question is, will the Railinc central database process time dependent data correctly? To know that, we need a first hand report from someone with current experience with the code.

Erich Houchens is a long time railroad man that is still working in Fort Worth. He explains railroad operations in layman terms. A few quotes follow. For more details see Will Y2k effect the remote switching on railroads? and Railroad Ops

Switching.

The old myth about "computer controlled" switches failing to work and therefor stopping trains in there tracks is just that, a myth. While it's true most switches are "power controlled" by a train dispatcher, who can be located hundreds of miles away, the switches themselves don't need a computer or embedded chip to work. Most power control switches in this country are of the "dual control" type. This means that a switch can be thrown remotely "on power" by the train dispatcher from far away or can be "taken off power" and thrown manually ("on hand") by a train crew on the ground. I have often told a train crew to take a power switch off power and "line themselves through the control point".  Now the problem in all this is that instead to traveling through the control point at 45 MPH (normal speed through a switch from one track to another) the train must stop and line the switches by hand which take considerably longer and tends to slowup the whole railroad line.

Control systems

In the old days the movement and dispatching of trains was very much different than it is today. At each junction and crossover location a manned tower stood. In this tower a man using levers connected to rods and pulleys lined switches and cleared signals. This was all done under the instruction of the train dispatcher through telegraph and later telephones. Nowadays the old tower has been torn down and replaced with a brown or silver track side box filled with relays and micro-processors. The boxes are linked to the dispatcher (sometimes hundreds of miles away) by telephone circuits, radio links or sometimes even satellites. At the dispatchers end is a computer work station showing his railroad territory on a video screen in front of him. Everything the dispatcher does is recorded (FRA requirement) and is time and date stamped.

Many lines are single track lines. The dispatcher using signals or TWC (non signaled railroad lines) rules via radio keeps the traffic flowing (well most of the time). Without a central authority (dispatcher) to keep everything running nothing would move. Engineers would not move a train an inch on fear of meeting another train head-on (corn field meet) somewhere. Going to a timetable system or token system would take weeks or months to implement and would greatly reduce capacity of an already overloaded railroad system.

Car and shipment tracking.

At one time there were hundreds if not thousands of clerks who's job it was to keep track of where railroad cars were and on what train they were on. Today these clerks are all gone having been replaced by track side scanners that "read" magnetic tags on each car. This information is feed directly by telephone lines to the railroads central computer.

Best to you.

-- Anonymous, February 11, 1999