i 

 

 

 

An Analysis of the Opportunities for 

Wireless Technologies in Passenger and Freight Rail Operations 

Commissioned by the Federal Railroad Administration 

Department of Transportation 

1200 New Jersey Avenue S.E. 

Washington, D.C. 20590 

December, 2007 

 

 

Ronald A. Lindsey 

comarch@aol.com

 
ii 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

This document provides the findings of a 

study commissioned by the Federal 

Railroad Administration under the terms of 

the Broad Agency Agreement. The study 

was awarded to and performed by Ronald 

Lindsey, and the value of the findings is 

directly related to the participation by the 

Class I freight railroads, Amtrak, suppliers, 

and shippers. 

Questions and comments may be 

addressed to Ronald Lindsey 

comarch@aol.com. or 904.386.3082 
iii 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ..................................................................................II

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ............................................................................. 1

OVERVIEW....................................................................................................... 4

BACKGROUND.................................................................................................. 4

OBJECTIVE ....................................................................................................... 5

PROCESS .......................................................................................................... 5

FUNCTIONALITY............................................................................................ 6

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT................................................................................... 6

YARD MANAGEMENT....................................................................................... 8

CREW MANAGEMENT ...................................................................................... 9

LOCOMOTIVE MANAGEMENT......................................................................... 10

LOCOMOTIVE MAINTENANCE ........................................................................ 11

LOCOMOTIVE FUELING .................................................................................. 12

POSITIVE TRAIN CONTROL............................................................................. 12

TRAFFIC CONTROL......................................................................................... 13

MOBILE NODE................................................................................................ 14

REMOTE SWITCH CONTROL ........................................................................... 15

MAIN LINE WORK ORDER.............................................................................. 16

WAYSIDE MAINTENANCE .............................................................................. 16

ON-TRACK MAINTENANCE ............................................................................ 17

INTERMODAL OPERATIONS ............................................................................ 17

THREAT MANAGEMENT ................................................................................. 19

PASSENGER SERVICES.................................................................................... 20

OPERABILITY................................................................................................ 20

RAILROAD INTRAOPERABILITY:..................................................................... 21

INTEROPERABILITY: ....................................................................................... 21

INDUSTRY INTRAOPERABILITY:...................................................................... 22

TRAIN INTRAOPERABILITY:............................................................................ 22

CROSS INDUSTRY OPERABILITY:.................................................................... 22

GLOBAL INTRAOPERABILITY: ........................................................................ 22

BUSINESS VALUE ......................................................................................... 23

DEPLOYMENT............................................................................................... 26

COVERAGE & THROUGHPUT .......................................................................... 26

WIRELESS ENVIRONMENT.............................................................................. 30

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ............................................................................... 32

IT ARCHITECTURE ......................................................................................... 33

SCENARIO ...................................................................................................... 35

I. MONITOR PLATFORM.................................................................................. 35

II. RAILROAD POSITIONING ENGINE............................................................... 36

III. CLEANUP THE LINEUP .............................................................................. 36

IV. MANAGE THE LINEUP .............................................................................. 36

V. PROACTIVE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT......................................................... 37

VI. PROACTIVE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT .................................................... 37

VII. INDUSTRY LOCOMOTIVE TRACKING SYSTEM ......................................... 38

VIII. INDUSTRY SERVICE BUS........................................................................ 38
iv 

SKILL SETS..................................................................................................... 38

MOVING FORWARD .................................................................................... 40

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT TOOLS & PROCESSES............................................... 40

LOCOMOTIVE POSITION AND STATUS............................................................. 41

PERFORMANCE-BASED LOCOMOTIVE MAINTENANCE ................................... 41

TRAIN POSITION MONITORING....................................................................... 41

CREW MANAGEMENT .................................................................................... 41

INDUSTRY GIS MODEL .................................................................................. 41

PERFORMANCE-BASED WAYSIDE MAINTENANCE ......................................... 42

MOBILE NODE................................................................................................ 42

EVOLUTIONARY WIRELESS STRATEGY .......................................................... 42

OPERABILITY ................................................................................................. 42

HOMELAND SECURITY ................................................................................... 42

CLOSING COMMENT .................................................................................. 43

APPENDIX....................................................................................................... 44

* Given the broad range of individuals and organizations that may 

read this report, the Appendix provides descriptions of terms and 

phrases that may not be familiar to all. The terms and phrases that 

are included in the Appendix will be followed by a “!” at their first 

appearance in the report.
1 

Summary of Findings 

RONALD LINDSEY 

This study focused on the deployment of wireless technologies to advance railroad operations. 

As such, there are five key phrases that collectively capture the essence of this study. 

1. Levels of Operability 

 Wireless technologies can provide an unprecedented level of timeliness of data as to 

the status of remote and mobile resources both within the boundaries of an individual 

railroad as well as across the industry. This micro and macro perspective, 

respectively, presents the challenge of operability (usability) in deploying wirelessbased infrastructures that overlay, complement, or replace traditional operationalcritical infrastructures, e.g., voice radio, traffic control!

, Automatic Equipment 

Identification (AEI)!

, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)!, and telephone. There are 

six levels of operability: 

Railroad Intraoperability: the ability of a railroad to use its operating 

resources across its own network. This presents the classic challenge of how to 

manage “unequipped” units. In the case of locomotives, up to 20 percent of the 

fleet being used can belong to other railroads, thereby resulting in a tradeoff 

between reduced functionality and increased operating costs to equip foreign 

locomotives.

Interoperability: the challenge of the interchange of trains between railroads 

again presents the tradeoff between reduced functionality and increased 

operating costs relative to unequipped units entering the operating railroad’s 

network.

Industry Intraoperability: the value of having access to a railroad’s 

resources when on another railroad. This area has been little explored due to 

the lack of effective access to each railroad’s data by other railroads, as well as 

the lack of an industry-based tracking system.

Train Intraoperability: a developing level of operability as to the 

environment within and surrounding the train. This is an area that has recently 

received some attention due to some Association of American Railroads 

(AAR)-sponsored activities in addition to the pursuit of Electronic Control 

Pneumatic (ECP) brakes!

. 
2 

Cross Industry Operability: a developing level of operability as the 

attention on security and hazardous materials crosses boundaries between the 

railroads and their respective shippers/industries. 

Global Intraoperability: taking cross-industry operability to the global 

level, with the focus on the shipment and domestic security. 
3 

2. Revolutionary Functionality

 The use of the timely resource status data that wireless technologies can deliver in 

concert with planning and execution tools to process the data, can also provide a 

railroad’s resource managers of track time (train dispatchers), yards, crews, 

locomotives, cars, and maintenance crews with a revolutionary set of business 

processes that predict conflicts in resource allocation. This predictability will permit 

proactive resource management, in lieu of the current reactive fashion, thereby 

optimizing utilization, reducing costs, and increasing customer service. Most 

interestingly, only a modicum of data is required of the wireless data network to 

pursue these major advancements, i.e., each locomotive’s position and speed status 

every 5 to 15 minutes. And, with even less frequent data as to fuel level and health, a 

railroad can substantially advance its locomotive fueling and maintenance processes. 

Additionally, aligned with industry intraoperability, is the opportunity to extend each 

railroad’s planning and monitoring horizon beyond its own borders, as to interchange 

operations, and optimize its train lineup and management of its shipments. 

3. Evolutionary Deployment 

The railroads have substantial IT and communication infrastructure upon which the 

railroads’ business processes are based, and simply providing more timely data via 

wireless will not necessarily improve operations. For traditional IT architecture, such 

incorporation will require modification or replacement of current systems which 

could be viewed as being cost prohibitive. However, in several keys areas, most 

notably crew, locomotive, and traffic management!, complementary systems can be 

readily deployed to obtain substantial benefits without significant modification, yet 

alone replacement of the current systems. And with the requirement of only 

locomotive position and speed every 5 to 15 minutes, an effective wireless 

platform(s) can also be deployed relatively simply along with an industry-based 

tracking system through the use of owned and commercial wireless data services.

4. Hierarchical IT Architecture 

Given the different levels of operability, there is the need for a corresponding 

hierarchical IT architecture. This is a hierarchy that begins with the locomotive 

communications and intelligence platform as a mobile node that serves as an 

extension of both the individual railroad’s IT platform as well as that of an industrybased IT platform that services the requirements across the levels of operability for 

all players including railroads, shippers, equipment owners, and security services. 

 

5. Enterprise Technologist 

The pursuit of revolutionary functionality with evolutionary deployment is beyond 

the scope and expected skill set of a railroad’s traditional technicians and IT 

architects that handle the design, deployment, and management of a railroad’s 

traditional communication and IT infrastructures. Given the various levels of 
4 

operability, this lack of scope and skill set should be addressed within the railroads 

individually, where not already present, and with an industry perspective. The 

necessary skill set includes the ability to deliver business cases that are pragmatic, 

80/20, and based upon an incremental value/incremental cost analyses that require a 

mixture of business, technology, and domain knowledge. Such a discipline points to 

the use of Enterprise Technologists within the railroads, both individually and 

collectively, to complement the skill sets of the technicians and IT architects. Such a 

discipline would focus on delivering value now, instead of latter, through 

evolutionary development that will complement the current industry efforts regarding 

interoperability.

Overview 

Below, background information is provided that contributed to structuring the purpose and scope 

of this study, followed by the objective and process that were used to perform the study. 

Background 

It has been a decade since the railroads collectively performed a study of the opportunity for the 

use of wireless technologies. As effective as that study was at that point in providing structure in 

defining the critical role of wireless communications (both voice and data) for railroad 

operations, the environment has changed substantially in four critical dimensions to the point of 

minimizing the applicability of the study to the railroad industry of today. 

• First, the types of wireless offerings, both private and commercial, have increased 

substantially, along with some obsolescence. Most important has been the 

increasing availability of commercial terrestrial wireless data and the use of 

wireless networks to extend the wired-IT infrastructure and management systems 

to remote and mobile resources in an IT-compatible fashion. 

• Second, each railroad has advanced its individual agendas to include wireless 

technologies and applications. However, there are significant differences within 

their individual progress and approaches to date which has resulted in a concerted 

effort by the railroads, in the last 2 years, to address interoperability, albeit with a 

PTC orientation. 

• Third, there have been several key regulations by Federal agencies that will have 

a profound effect on wireless advancement. Most important of these are the 

Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) VHF narrow-banding!

, also called 

refarming, and the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) March 2005 

rulemaking, the PTC rule, that permits for the quantifying of risk in lieu of its 

subjective evaluation. Additionally, at the time of this report being written, 

Congress is considering the mandating of PTC. 
5 

• Lastly, the industry itself has changed dramatically including the impressive 

advancement of intermodal operations, infrastructure shortages, an increasing 

attention to security, and staggering fuel costs. 

Objective 

In consideration of the changes over the last decade, this study was structured and proposed to FRA 

with the following objective: 

Provide a strategic perspective of the use of wireless technologies in high-speed 

passenger and freight operations, which is beyond the current use of wireless 

across the industry. 

This study was not intended to make, nor does it provide, either a financial, rate-of-return analysis or a 

technical evaluation of advancing wireless technologies. 

 

Process 

The study was conducted via two sets of tasks. The first set consisted of interviews with 

business process managers in the Class I freight railroads, Amtrak, and several shippers. The 

discussions addressed the following points: 

1. The opportunities and advantages to replace voice transmissions with wireless data; 

2. The opportunities and advantages to improve the exchange of information between railroads 

regarding interchange; 

3. The identification of data which would be required to improve current processes for managing 

or just monitoring remote and mobile resources; 

4. The identification of planning or execution tools that are not usable, or are limited in 

functionality, due to the lack of resource status data; 

5. The identification of advanced business processes, and their respective advantages, that could 

be incorporated with more timely resource status data; and 

6. A sense of timeliness of the data that would be required for the advanced functionality 

identified above. 

The second set of tasks consisted of a number of workshops held with suppliers and railroads to address 

particular topics as to the supply and application of wireless and associated technologies. Each 

workshop consisted of interactions between the participants on a variety of topics ranging from 

onboard communication and intelligence platforms to wayside requirements to advance asset 
6 

management opportunities. In addition to the workshops, individual discussions were held with 

selected suppliers and shippers. 

This report proceeds from here with the study’s findings to advance functionality, a structuring 

of operability, the means of deployment, and an introduction of a new skill set to advance 

railroad operations via wireless. 

Functionality 

Unlike airlines with their fixed, multi-month flight schedules that are supported with locked-in 

equipment types (if not specific aircraft), crews, maintenance, passenger reservations, gates, etc., 

railroad operations are more unscheduled than not as to traffic control and with little, if any, 

scheduled assignments for the supporting resources. There is a variety of reasons for why a 

railroad does not run to schedule, and some are quite valid. The primary legitimate reasons are 

those in which the railroad’s customers make the decisions regarding the release of trains, e.g., 

ports and mines, and the railroad is required to fit them into the lineup!

 accordingly. However, 

the majority of disruptions are caused by conflicted traffic management due to the lack of 

adequate decision tools and the required timely resource status, including train position/speed 

and the status of yards, that effects the initiation of trains and their progress throughout a 

railroad’s network. Additionally, this lack of lineup reliability within the railroads builds upon 

itself when it comes to the interchange of trains between railroads, and the resulting mutual 

disruptions for the receiving railroad. 

The management of the primary resources that are required to run the trains suffer with traffic 

management due to the lack of lineup reliability. Simply stated, the effective management of 

train crews, locomotive assignments, track time, on-track maintenance crews, and yard 

operations begins with a common, single bit of information. It all begins with knowing where 

the locomotives are and, somewhat to a lesser extent, how fast they are moving (which is not 

known today). Similarly, with a modicum of additional data regarding the locomotive, its 

maintenance and fueling can be greatly advanced over today’s processes. Below, each area is 

addressed as to their current environment and the opportunity for advanced functionality with the 

deployment of wireless technologies. 

Traffic Management 

The effectiveness of managing assets is only as good as the data that are available, as such their 

status; and only as good as the tools and processes that are available to message the data. 

Unfortunately, railroads continue to manage traffic with processes based upon a century-old 

technology aligned with decisionmaking tools that really are not, track circuits! or dispatching 

systems, a.k.a. Computer Assisted Dispatching (CAD)!

, respectively. The latter is only able to 

present, at best, to the dispatcher where the train was at some point in time via On Station (OS) 

reports!

, also called Centralized Train Control messages (CTC), but not where the train is 
7 

currently and whether or not it is even moving, or at what speed. Additionally, the dispatcher 

displays are simply that of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)!

 system that 

presents the status of the signaling infrastructure without consideration of distances between 

signals. The dispatcher is often left to his/her own skills and experience in finding workable 

solutions in complex situations instead of optimal ones, given the wide range of variables and 

lack of timely data. 

In non-signaled territory! (dark territory) there is not even the availability of OS reports to place a 

train. And, non-signaled territory amounts to roughly half of the trackage in North America, 

although it handles only 20 percent of the traffic and 10 percent of the tonnage. 

The railroads have now been caught up in a Catch 22 with data and decisionmaking tools. That 

is, they have not had the availability of timely status data for their trains and therefore, have not 

been able to deploy mathematics-based decision tools, also called meet/pass planners!, capable of 

dealing with a wide range of variables. Since most railroads do not have or explored the tools 

and processes that could use timely data, and have not yet invested in the wireless and related 

technologies that are now available to capture and deliver timely data. 

Opportunity

Breaking into the circular logic above is at hand, and is being explored by several 

Class I railroads, but there are a number of constraints that need to be overcome 

including delivering the functionality (addressed below in DEPLOYMENT), making 

the business case (addressed below in BUSINESS VALUE), and modifying the 

business processes and mind-set of dispatching, as follows. 

With the availability of a wireless data platform capable of reporting train position 

and speed with a frequency required to optimize the use of meet/pass planners, a 

railroad can make the transition from the current reactive (crisis based) traffic 

management processes to that of proactive processes. That is, with in-time data and 

the proper management tools, the dispatching process would change to one that 

projects traffic conflicts and provide recommendations to minimize the 

consequences, if not avoid the situations altogether. The consequences referred to 

are the costs of not meeting the business goals (objective functions) that 

management could vary by type and density of traffic via a set of various meet/pass 

planning tools. 

The meet/pass planning tools that would be used for dispatchers to handle 

disruptions are directly akin to the mathematics-based tools that the railroads’ 

transportation planning resources, known as Service Design, would use to establish 

and modify the schedule as required. Once the railroad is so scheduled, then the 

dispatcher is left with the challenge of using the meet/pass planning tools to get back 

to schedule in the most effective way when disruptions occur. This approach shifts a 
majority of the challenge of effective train movements to the planning resources 

where it belongs. The effective management of the other primary resources shifts to 

the planning phase as well, with their respective execution managers using their 

tools in a proactive fashion instead of the current reactive (crisis) mode. Essentially, 

this is the airline’s model of operations. 

An example of a change in mind-set required to run a scheduled operation is that of 

perceived inefficiency. For example, traditional railroading calls for avoiding short 

trains to not “waste” crews or fuel or track time. Those clearly are inefficiencies. 

However, the price of avoiding those unstructured (unplanned) inefficiencies can be 

an increase in locomotives, crew deadheading, yard congestion, and dispatching 

conflicts to address disruptions. With a scheduled operation, structured 

inefficiencies are built into the schedule based upon past and projected requirements, 

e.g., short trains will occur, but they will still operate to maintain the schedule of 

locomotives and crews. The argument to do so is several fold. Arguably, structured 

inefficiencies will be more efficient than unstructured ones. Second, the reliability 

of service is optimized, leading to increased customer satisfaction and revenues. 

Simply stated, how successful would airlines be if they used the railroad’s model of 

operation, e.g., fly the plane when it is full enough? The airlines instead build and 

modify their schedules with the expectation to “fill” the planes based upon past and 

projected requirements. 

Yard Management 

Yard management has seen a surge recently in yard planning and execution tools in the industry, 

but their usefulness is still constrained by the timeliness and accuracy of the train and equipment 

location data. There are two primary points here. 

 

• First, there is the issue of managing the movement of switching crews based upon a 

train-build profile that is aligned with a reliable schedule of arriving consist and 

humping operations. 

• Second, there is the lack of timely and actual receiving yard capacity and departures 

being provided to the main line dispatcher, thereby providing significant constraints 

to efficient, if not scheduled, train movements. 

Opportunity

Unlike the main-line, the tracking of trains and cars in the yards is more challenging 

than the number of adjacent tracks and the interweaving of car movements in a 

seemingly unpredictable fashion. And, given the range of yards that exist in the 

industry, it is likely that there are a few categories of yard types with each one 

8 
9 

suggesting a different blend of wheel counters, AEI, GPS-reporting, video scan, 

switch monitoring, and other undetermined technologies that could meet the 

timeliness and accuracy requirements. For example, for some yards it may be 

appropriate to use locomotive-borne geo-fencing for switching crews to monitor 

their movements. This is a technique of establishing virtual boundaries on the 

onboard intelligence platform that triggers an action, e.g., reporting position, when a 

boundary is crossed based upon GPS, passing a switch, or some other positioning 

approach. 

With such improved visibility into the depths of a yard’s working and status, 

managers can better monitor and direct their resources based upon the analysis of 

planning tools that can’t be used effectively today. Similarly, with the timely status 

of in-bound and out-bound tracks, the train dispatcher’s efficiency can also improve 

dramatically with the movement of trains on the main-line by incorporating actual 

yard capacity into the meet/pass planners as well as the handling of the lineup 

respectively.

Crew Management 

Considering a railroad’s primary resources, the management of train crews is arguably the most 

vulnerable to an unreliable lineup. This is due to the need to deadhead train crews to meet trains 

in compliance with convoluted labor agreements. This process often works with a 48-hour 

horizon of how the trains are moving across the railroad’s network, or even more difficult, 

approaching from other railroads for interchange. In fact, it is not unlikely that crew 

management is often the first to challenge the reliability of the lineup in an effort to reduce 

unnecessary crew expenses and manning levels. One difference that was noted between the 

railroads interviewed was that one road that operated substantially more scheduled than another 

was able to deadhead and work crews back without rest. The more unscheduled railroad 

routinely deadheaded and rested crews before working thereby resulting in a significant increase 

in crew costs and manning levels as well as a decrease in the crew’s quality of life. 

Train crews are subject to hours-of-limit rules, and accurately knowing both their on- and offduty time would ensure the maximum use of their availability while maintaining compliance 

with rules subjected to FRA inspection. 

Opportunity

Whether or not the railroads could achieve the type of crew scheduling that is an 

extraordinary achievement by the airlines (airline crews bid each month for their 

schedule in a phenomenally flexible fashion), may be a worthy pursuit, but clearly 

impossible without a scheduled operation. However, what is achievable is the use of 

crew management execution tools that can balance a number of critical cost factors 

in an optimizing fashion, based on a reliable lineup including deadheading-then-
10 

work versus deadhead-then-rest, outlawing, maintaining pool balances, avoiding 

terminal runaround, etc. Such tools are available, but they were not found to be in 

use in the industry. This may be due to a lack of awareness of such tools, or it may 

be due to the lack of lineup reliability and the inability to use the tools effectively. 

Additionally, with accurate train positioning information being available, local 

management can be provided with the information and tools to ensure that crew are 

on- and off-duty in compliance with their assignments and the rules. 

Locomotive Management 

Several railroads have incorporated the tracking of locomotives into their operations by means of 

commercial wireless services, primarily for locomotive diagnostics and selective position 

reports. However, the frequency of that reporting is not sufficient for the proactive asset 

management functionality discussed above. One reason for the low frequency may be the cost of 

providing such reporting via commercial services and the lack of identifiable benefits as per the 

previously mentioned tools/data Catch 22. Additionally, foreign locomotives running over a 

railroad’s property will most likely not be providing any tracking information to the operating 

railroad, and their use can amount to 20 percent of the fleet at any given time. 

Railroads do obtain locomotive position reports from the AEI infrastructure that reports consist 

movements across a railroad’s network, but that discrete reporting process is not sufficient for 

proactive traffic management. Lastly, locomotives approaching interchange are not necessarily 

reported to the receiving railroad in a timely fashion for their proper handling, e.g., fuel levels, 

whether the locomotive is equipped for distributed power!, position in consist, etc. This last 

point indicates that there is both an intra-railroad and inter-railroad challenge to tracking 

locomotives. 

Opportunity

While commercial wireless permitted the initial implementation of advance 

locomotive tracking beyond that of discrete AEI reads, it seems now that those same 

services may have become a constraint for railroads in moving forward with industrywide locomotive and other asset management systems. However, that is only true to 

the extent that a business case has not been built that would present the financials for 

taking action on the full spectrum of applications identified above, with either 

commercial and/or private wireless alternatives. 

While making the business case would be the expected approach to moving forward, 

at least one Class I railroad’s CEO has simply mandated the railroad’s fleet to be 

equipped with location reporting capability; thereby breaking into the tools/data 

Catch 22 and providing the opportunity to begin building the management systems 

that can use that data as described above. Another Class I railroad is providing for a 

system-wide wireless data platform that can be used, even though it has yet to make 

the transition to an onboard reporting platform for its locomotives. 
11 

 

Locomotive Maintenance 

Railroads are required to perform different levels of maintenance on locomotives on a 92-day, 1-, 3-, 

and 5-year basis. This prescriptive maintenance process is not based upon any diagnostics of the 

engine’s health and suggests that engines may be spending valuable utilization time sitting on a shop 

track, which leads to an artificially high number of locomotives and excessive maintenance costs. 

While some railroads have used wireless networks to monitor the health of their locomotives with the 

objective of avoiding in-service disruptions via predictive analysis, there is still the issue of foreign 

locomotives operating over their property and the inability to obtain their health data. The point is that 

if it must be operated, then the maintenance and operating consequences must be dealt with, regardless 

of ownership. Conversely, there is the issue of a railroad’s locomotives running on foreign railroads 

and not being able to capture health data in those situations. Hence, in addition to the intra and interrailroad requirement for tracking locomotives, there is also a need for intra-industry access to the 

locomotive’s health. 

Opportunity

With the availability of locomotive diagnostic data from across the industry, and the 

tools which can process that data for predictive analysis of the engine’s health, the 

railroads could move to performance-based maintenance to extend, if not replace, 

current prescriptive processes with arguably increased reliability of locomotive 

operation while decreasing maintenance costs and increasing utilization. The 

capability to capture this data on an industry basis will be available in the Equipment 

Maintenance Information System (EMIS), an AAR-sponsored system that is due for 

full implementation in 2009. However, at this point, railroads involved in 

interchange are not required to report activity associated with locomotives as they are 

with rail cars. By integrating this data with the existing Event Depository Database 

that captures movements in the industry, there is the opportunity to, not only track the 

position and projected health of locomotives, but to implement planning tools for 

setting up the movement of individual locomotives to minimize maintenance costs 

while increasing utilization. 

The availability of wireless data can facilitate the handling of in-service engine 

troubles (in-service via an established communication link between train crews and 

maintenance help desks that can monitor and adjust the engine’s critical operating 

functions). Lastly, as with locomotive management across the system, the monitoring 

of locomotive movements through the shops can lead to reduced shop time, 

congestion and increased locomotive utilization. Wireless is one means to provide 

for this tracking. 
12 

Locomotive Fueling 

Nearly 90 percent of the industry’s locomotives are without electronic fuel gauges that could 

provide fuel levels if wireless data were available to report such dynamic information. In that 

the data are not available, several railroads have very conservative practices of fueling 

locomotives to avoid running out of fuel on the main line. Hence, a substantial amount of fuel 

and locomotive utilization is spent by locomotives sitting on fuel tracks awaiting fuel that in 

reality may not be required at that point. 

In addition to their own fueling facilities, railroads also contract fuel delivery when deemed 

necessary. These direct-to-locomotive (DTL) services charge a premium price, and the 

opportunities for unnecessary fueling or fraud are significant. 

All of the above contributes to the difficulty in determining the fuel burn rate for individual 

locomotives. This information is important for evaluating both locomotive and engineer 

performance, determining the distance that the engine can be operated and obtaining a fair 

evaluation of fuel levels at interchange when locomotives cross railroad borders. 

Opportunity

The use of electronic fuel meters for onboard locomotives and fuel trucks with the 

transmission of the fueling activity by a locomotive in a timely fashion to the various 

planning and management systems, can likely deliver significant savings in fuel costs 

via proactive versus reactive fueling practices, while providing for fair interchange 

accounting, increased locomotive utilization, and increased traffic velocity. These data 

will also provide for determining the accurate burn rate of locomotives that further 

tightens the fueling process while providing guidance to train crews for efficient 

operation. Lastly, there is the opportunity for the railroads to minimize the cost of fuel, 

relative to varying state and province taxes by planning fueling activities based on 

accurate fuel tank status data. 

Positive Train Control 

The greatest source of train accidents is that of train crew errors with violation of the speed, time, 

and/or distance parameters of the movement authorities!

. To prevent these errors, PTC systems are 

partially deployed, or under development, across the industry with three core objectives as defined by 

the RSAC-PTC!

 effort several years ago. That is, a PTC system is expected to: 

1. prevent train-to-train collisions, 

2. prevent over-speeding, and 

3. prevent trains from endangering on-track workers. 
13 

Given the high safety level of railroad operations in general, the incremental safety benefits of 

implementing PTC on its own are not sufficient to cover the capital investment!

 for the infrastructure 

required, and therefore PTC has not been mandated by FRA. However, at the time of this report 

being written, Congress is considering the mandating of PTC across the industry. 

Opportunity

The FRA’s PTC rulemaking provides the opportunity for a railroad to implement PTC 

as a safety balance against changes in operations that may be perceived to, or do 

increase risk and have sufficient business benefits to cover the expenditure for PTC. 

The most notable operational changes include one-person crews, the reduction or 

avoidance of signaled territory operation (discussed below), and operating switches from 

the locomotive in dark territory (discussed below). Hence, PTC can be a facilitator in 

obtaining business benefits via other applications that may not otherwise be obtainable 

due to their individual increase in risk, whether real or perceived. 

Traffic Control 

As mentioned earlier, the majority of a railroad’s traffic runs over signaled territory based on the 

century-old technology of track circuits!

. This results in a fixed block handling of trains, as with 

traffic lights in a city, which automatically provides the aspects (the equivalent of red, yellow, and 

green highway traffic signals) for trains to advance. The infrastructure provides the vitality! of 

operations and requires substantial maintenance to maintain and ensure its reliability. 

In non-signaled territory, the vitality is provided via a rather simplistic software program, 

referred to as a conflict checker, which maintains the status of track occupancy and generates 

movement authorities if no conflicts occur when the dispatcher makes a movement authority 

request. The original form of this process is the train sheet, which is literally that - a piece of 

paper that provides the same process for movement integrity. Once generated, the movement 

authority is read by the dispatcher to the train crew over the voice radio, followed by a read-back 

by the crew. Any misunderstanding results in a repeat of the process. In addition to the effect of 

not having accurate knowledge of train position and speed, it is this voice transmission process 

that greatly limits the level of traffic that can be handled by the dispatcher in dark territory. 

Opportunity

Both signaled and dark territory provide for the safe operation of railroads by 

preventing train dispatchers errors in directing the flow of traffic. Therefore, 

signaling is used to provide greater traffic throughput due to the lack of any 

positioning information, as well as the inefficiency of voice transmission of 

movement authorities in dark territory. But, the signaling operation has a high cost 

of initial capital investment and on-going maintenance. Hence, the use of wireless 

data to transmit the movement authority efficiently (digital authorities) and reporting 
14 

train position and speed could result in the reduction or avoidance of signaled 

territory, all other factors being made equal. In this case, those factors are the 

consideration for broken rail detection, that is inherent in track circuit technology, 

and the perceived, if not real, perspective that signaled territory is safer than dark 

territory. These two issues can be readily addressed by low-grade track circuits 

sufficient for broken rail detection and the deployment of PTC, respectively. 

In addition to the transition or avoidance of signaled territory in favor of dark 

territory, is the deployment of Communication Based Signaling (CBS) which 

eliminates the need for wayside signaling infrastructure. CBS is currently being 

promoted by a number of suppliers in the industry to use wireless technologies to 

transmit aspects directly to the locomotive from a central “vital office” for display in 

the locomotive cab, also known as cab signaling. The vital components that 

generate the aspects currently along the wayside would be moved to the central 

office and train location would be provided by an undetermined technology in lieu of 

track circuits, providing a virtual fixed block operation. With CBS, there still would 

be the issue of providing broken rail protection, as with the transition from signaled 

to dark territory, but the incorporation of PTC would be relatively straight forward in 

that most of the authority parameters (aspects) would already be on board. 

Lastly, there is the ultimate in traffic control referred to as moving block. This is a 

real-time, process control version of CBS that continuously generates authorities to 

provide a safety zone around a train, instead of fixed blocks, based on the train’s 

braking capability. However, the data requirements of moving block where it would 

be most needed exceed the capabilities of existing, cost-effective wireless 

technologies. However, in between moving block and CBS is the opportunity for 

flexible block, which is the discrete generation of moving authorities that would vary 

in length based upon traffic density. Both moving block and flexible block would 

require the development of a software-based vital office that would be a substantial 

effort beyond the CBS approach that centralizes the current, well-proven wayside 

components. Neither moving nor flexible block are known to be under development 

within the North American market. 

Mobile Node 

The railroads have been focusing primarily on the locomotives’ onboard intelligence and 

communication platform for safety purposes. That effort has not been expanded significantly yet 

to incorporate the business and operating perspectives of the locomotive. As reflected above 

with the individual discussions regarding locomotive management, maintenance, and fueling, 

several railroads have little, if any, coordinated activities between the respective departments 

within their railroad, yet alone across the industry. The unfortunate, but unnecessary, 

consequence of this separation is the lack of the integration in building the business case to bring 

the various locomotive-borne applications together for a common communication, positioning, 
15 

and intelligence platform. While the issue is complex, the benefits are very promising once 

pursued. However, as addressed below in DEPLOYMENT, wireless-based applications are 

challenged by transmission constraints as throughput, reliability, and coverage. 

Opportunity

For other than locomotive-centric applications, the locomotive should be provided 

with an intelligence platform that minimizes the need to transmit information to and 

from the wayside and office systems. As such, this onboard platform serves as a 

mobile node on the railroad’s IT platform that provides the basis to pursue a number 

of opportunities for advanced functionality in an integrated fashion. The 

possibilities include the obvious, e.g., PTC, work order, flexible block, digital 

authorities, EOT, customer-gate interaction, engineer performance, and interactions 

with on-track work gangs. However, what has yet to be considered with the 

availability of a mobile node is the integration of an intra-train communication 

platform, as identified in the original demand study, but for which there were no 

pragmatic technologies at that time. This capability would add on a variety of sensor 

and monitoring applications including shipment health and integrity, equipment 

health (e.g., bearings, etc.), track geometry measurements, distributed in-train force 

monitoring, selected braking criteria based upon consist, and other yet-to-beimagined capabilities. 

Remote Switch Control 

In signaled territory, train dispatchers direct trains by the alignment of switches in the rail. The 

dispatcher effects these alignments by making requests of the vital wayside infrastructure, the 

same infrastructure that provides the aspects in the signaling equipment. In dark territory, that 

infrastructure does not exist and the train crews are required to manually operate the switches. 

This activity can require a great deal of time, as well increased risk to crew members, as they offboard the train, operate the switch, and walk the train distance to get back on board. 

Opportunity

With wireless telemetry, the train crew can operate an equipped switch from the 

locomotive cab. Similar in concept to the dispatcher’s activity in signaled territory, 

such an activity would be done in a fashion to not violate another train’s authority. 

This capability is directly compatible with PTC deployed in dark territory that is 

currently monitoring the switch position to determine which track the train is on, as 

well as providing enforcement should the crew attempt to violate their authority with 

movement and speed through the switch. 
16 

Main Line Work Order 

A number of railroads have developed wireless-based work order systems for their dedicated 

industrial switching train crews that are used to deliver cars to/from the shippers and the 

railroad’s yards. However, on the main line there is a significant amount of activity that takes 

place with what would otherwise be through-trains to service shippers beyond the limits of 

industrial switchers. This activity can play havoc with the railroad’s operation by causing 

disruptions to traffic management, as well as extensive delays to the affected train as the crew 

manages the process with imperfect information like car locations, trackage, etc. Finally, there is 

the possible effect that the rearranged consist may have on switching and train building activities 

at the destination yard. 

Opportunity

In addition to the type of information that is made available to yard and industrial 

switching crews, main line train crews could be presented with a schematic of car 

locations along with switching order, with the final consist transmitted to the 

appropriate system(s) prior to the train arriving into a yard. 

Wayside Maintenance 

The wayside signaling and grade crossing infrastructure that provides for the integrity of railroad 

operations and the public’s safety, respectively, is subjected to rigorous, continuous testing 

processes, regardless of the actual condition of the equipment. This process requires on-site 

presence. For coordinated combinations of tracks and switches (interlockings), multiple 

individuals are required for observation only in addition to the maintenance and testing effort. 

Opportunity

As with the discussion above regarding locomotive maintenance, the availability of 

timely health and diagnostic data pertaining to wayside infrastructure can provide 

the basis for performance-based maintenance that extends, if not replaces, the 

prescriptive process. Additionally, on-site maintenance personnel can be provided 

with endless access to diagnostic material including history, diagrams, and real-time 

connection with help desks that can monitor, if not affect changes remotely. As to 

complex interlockings, wireless can be used to provide visual observation and data 

acquisition of associated locations instead of manual observation. 

 
On-Track Maintenance 

To train dispatchers, the work zones for on-track work forces are trains that do not move thereby, 

consuming valuable track time, and over which they have little or no control. From the workers’ 

perspective, they are subject to the threat of train movements approaching their work zone and 

are not kept current, if even informed. While most work zones are protected by an authority 

process that requires communication between the train crews and the work gang’s Employee-InCharge (EIC), there are many mobile workers with and without fixed work zone limits that are 

deployed with only a “watchman lookout,” who is watching for approaching trains. According 

to one major railroad, these lookouts are costing them “millions” for otherwise unproductive 

labor. Lastly, there is also the opposite perspective of on-track workers leaving their protected 

zone and placing themselves in danger with legitimate train movements. 

 

Opportunity

There are several opportunities for wireless technologies. First, by providing ontrack workers with some combination of train movement monitoring and proximity 

warning system, the lookout positions can be eliminated by maintaining a virtual 

protective barrier around the work areas, whether changing or static. Second, 

whether or not PTC systems that are installed currently do not directly integrate the 

EIC authority process, a digital authority process would be a significant 

improvement in safety, as well as productivity by eliminating the current voice 

communication process between train crews and the EIC. Lastly, one railroad has 

deployed a High Rail Compliance System that results in an alert to the train 

dispatcher when an on-track maintenance vehicle has violated the boundaries of its 

authority. 

Intermodal Operations 

Although not included in the original scope of the study, the intermodal industry is addressed 

below relative to the rail interface. It presents a phenomenal challenge to the tracking of both 

assets and shipments with the rail component being arguably the most reliable. There are three 

primary issues: 1) asset utilization, 2) shipment tracking, and 3) shipment integrity and health. 

1. Asset Utilization

The challenge of asset utilization begins with the lack of available tracking data. For intermodal 

movements, this issue is directly due to the presence of the beneficial owner (i.e., the party who is 

in possession of the equipment/shipment at any given time, but is not the true owner). The true 

owner of the equipment, if not also the shipper, has little interest in tracking the equipment other 

than by knowing the “chain of custody,” and the shipment tracking processes provide for that level 

of granularity. However, within any given beneficial owner operation, the tracking data doesn’t 

normally exist because no one beneficial owner is willing to make the capital investment to 

provide for such reporting given the short period of possession.

17 
18 

2. Shipment Tracking

As difficult as it is to track the equipment, it is even more relative to containers within yards 

and along the main line. With varying granularity of shipment tracking in concert with the 

reported unwillingness of railroads to share consist data with other railroads, the shippers are 

left without cross-industry visibility of the advancement of their shipments. 

3. Shipment Integrity & Health

Smart seals for containers have been developed and selectively deployed to provide 

indication of when tampering has occurred. Without a pragmatic communication link to get 

this data to the appropriate parties, a great deal of security is lost. Considering health, there 

is no ability to provide exception notification for the majority of rail traveling time. 

 

Opportunity

As to the tracking of shipments, it appears that a depository is required for the 

industry that is independent of the individual railroads. This is a depository that 

would capture all movements relative to trains and consists, and permit subscribers 

to have access to the appropriate data. This concept is addressed below in IT 

Architecture. 

The remaining two areas of utilization and integrity/health have the opportunity of 

being integrated. This is an integration that involves ownership, technologies, and 

operations. It is possible that chassis could be considered as a mobile node for 

intermodal just as the locomotive can be for the railroads. Consider the following. 

Several years ago, the Federal government paid for the development of a chassis 

mounted unit that would report position on some scheduled basis (e.g., three times a 

day), recognizing that RF transmission power would be a major challenge in the 

pragmatic deployment of these devices. Subsequently, there was some degree of 

effort to tying in the reporting of electronic seals with chassis-mounted unit. By 

linking these devices with chassis-mounted reporting units, which were originally 

designed for chassis management, the basic platform is there for exception 

monitoring of shipment integrity, or health if those detection devices are 

incorporated within the unit. To date, the communication link for the chassismounted unit has been cellular-based, given the point that the handling of containers 

when on trucks would need to rely on services provided along highways. However, 

what about when those containers are on the rails? This is same multi-mode 

communication issue that confronts the railroads with their individual wireless 

agendas. 

The problem remains as to who will make the investment in any positioning 

technology. There is one major type of exception to this consideration, and that is 

when equipment enters and leaves a beneficial owner’s confined (controllable) area 
(e.g., an intermodal yard). The use of temporary tracking devices that can be easily 

applied and removed can handle that level of tracking, for which there is tremendous 

value. However, as to the remainder of the supply chain, there needs to be some 

unifying force or entity. One answer may be the use of major chassis pools and 

agreements within the industry, if not a Service Bureau that takes on the capital 

investment and management of the data. Another possibility may be the 

consideration of domestic security and the availability of federal funds. Again, this 

issue is one more Catch 22 with systems and data availability, but with the beneficial 

owner twist. 

Intermodal introduces two other levels of operability, i.e., Cross Industry and Global 

Intraoperability, relative to shipment tracking, integrity, and health. 

Threat Management 

After the terrorist attacks on September, 11, 2001 (9/11), the railroads went through an extensive 

risk analysis of their infrastructure and operations relative to terrorist-based threats to “harden 

the targets.” That analysis would have been bound by the capabilities of the technologies at that 

time to monitor and control remote and mobile resources. 

With the lack of information available for this study regarding the objectives and results of the 

railroads’ effort, it is possible that there is significant value in expanding the scope to consider 

threats other than those of terrorists. The reason for this is one of financial evaluation and 

willingness to make investment in technology. That is, given that the railroads were without any 

significant opportunities for deploying wireless data at the time of the 9/11 analysis, there had to 

have been constraints on what would be considered in the identification of the critical 

infrastructure!

 and how to monitor and protect it. 

In addition to the shipment integrity discussed above, relative to intermodal, there is also the 

issue of interagency communications, whether voice or data, that is most likely not there today. 

Opportunity 

Would the railroads’ post-9/11 analysis be different today if they would take a 

wireless data approach now? With the currently-realistic constraints of limited, costeffective, wireless data removed, it is very likely that the type of systems, processes, 

and equipment deployed for terrorist and other threats could be significantly 

expanded, the lack of an acceptable, risk-based return of interest notwithstanding. 

For example, the monitoring of the integrity of remote facilities (e.g., alignment on 

bridges and expanded video), are well in reach at this point. As to critical rolling 

stock, one major chemical supplier has equipped its fleet of 700 Toxic Inhalation 

Hazard (TIH)!

 tank cars to locate and monitor their integrity on an as-needed basis. 

This information is coordinated within their industry, and the railroads subsequently 

are made of aware of possible problems as deemed appropriate. 

19 
Lastly, the opportunities for wireless would likely include voice and data 

requirements for inter-agency interaction of railroad, municipal, State, and Federal 

resources. 

Passenger Services 

While Amtrak has many of the same primary operation challenges as freight railroads, there are 

several key differences as to its requirements for wireless technologies and how those 

requirements can be met. 

In regard to additional requirements, its customers are on board, or at stations, and its perspective 

of customer service with maintaining schedule and providing associated services is immediate. 

That includes providing communication and Internet access to its customers, status-of-train 

signage at stations, and handling onboard purchases, including services and tickets. This 

capability includes being able to take advantage of the changing availability of various services 

on board (e.g., berths, etc.), given the dynamics of the passenger manifest. From a security 

standpoint, Amtrak is looking to track the passenger manifest and to provide the communication 

requirements for a mobile police force. 

With meeting its requirements, Amtrak is at a major disadvantage given that 95 percent of its 

operations are over another railroad’s property, and therefore without private wireless voice or 

data coverage. Its view of intraoperability encompasses the industry, and it relies on information 

from the railroads about the location of their trains and on commercial cellular services to service 

its basic crew and police communications other than traffic control. 

Opportunity

Amtrak is reportedly looking at private wireless networking over the Northeast 

corridor that it controls for providing a number of the customer services described 

above. However, for the majority of its operating territory, it has little choice at this 

time but to rely on commercial services to meet the expanded functionality that it 

envisions for its passengers and security purposes given the inconsistency of private 

wireless data infrastructure across the Class I railroads. Amtrak would be able to 

benefit substantially from an industry tracking system as discussed below in

SCENARIO. 

 

Operability 

The use of wireless technologies within railroads to advance operations carries with it the 

challenge of operability (i.e., the ability to use wireless technologies not only within an 

individual railroad’s boundaries but also across the industry for the advantage of all roads when 

operating foreign equipment over their respective networks). 

20 
21 

In the latter part of 2005, the railroads agreed to take on operability as it relates to the 

interchange of trains between railroads, known as interoperability, with a series of tasks referred 

to as the Roadmap to Interoperability. The underlying motivation was that of pursuing oneperson crews and therefore the objective of seamlessly implementing PTC across the industry, 

noting the previously discussed point of PTC providing a safety balance for the possible increase 

in risk of one-person crews. However, with a stay in the negotiations between railroad 

management and labor to pursue one-person crews in November 2006, the priority of 

interoperability to facilitate industry-wide PTC has given way to each railroad’s individual 

agenda of technologies and applications. Unfortunately, these singular railroad efforts can result 

in increasing the complexity of, and the resistance to, obtaining interoperability for several 

reasons including evolving infrastructure, as well as additional technical interfaces and business 

processes which will need to be incorporated at some point in the future. 

The challenge of operability is significantly greater than that of interoperability. In the 

deployment of wireless-based applications, there are six levels of operability to be considered as 

identified in FUNCTIONALITY: Railroad Intraoperability, Interoperability, Industry 

Intraoperability, Train Intraoperability, Cross Industry Operability, and Global Intraoperability. 

Railroad Intraoperability: 

Railroad Intraoperability is a common challenge for a railroad when it implements a new 

function or deploys a new technology system wide. Until the entire affected infrastructure 

and/or fleet is configured properly, the application will be required to deal with the “unequipped” 

units in some fashion. As such, the railroad will be making a tradeoff during implementation 

that pits the capital investment for complete or rapid installation against the compromise in 

functionality and/or the operational cost of managing around the unequipped units, (e.g., 

swapping in/out devices on the lead locomotive of trains to provide for the required functionality 

instead of equipping all locomotives). 

With the locomotives specifically, there is an additional complexity for a railroad’s 

intraoperability as to the use of foreign locomotives, which can be up to 20 percent of the fleet at 

any given time. Additionally, when dealing with a railroad’s use of VHF, its primary wireless 

voice network, the issue may involve tens of thousands of radio units, as well as the lack of 

available frequencies that can be assigned permanently or used as a buffer during transition given 

radio channel allocation across the industry. 

Interoperability: 

Interoperability refers to the challenges of the interchange of equipment across railroad 

boundaries. As such, the tradeoff is still the same as that of railroad intraoperability in the 
22 

consideration of capital investment, functional benefits, and operating costs, but its handling is 

raised to an industry level. This means that the AAR is involved to ensure industry-wide 

participation by establishing some mixture of interchange rules, specifications, and guidelines 

that the railroads have agreed to collectively. 

 

Industry Intraoperability: 

Industry Intraoperability involves having access to the status of resources regardless of which 

railroad they are operating. Whereas railroad interoperability and interoperability issues for each 

railroad involve owned and foreign assets on its property, industry intraoperability involves a 

railroad’s assets on other railroads. This level of operability has been rarely discussed or 

pursued, and it presents a significant opportunity to railroads for improved operations as noted in 

FUNCTIONALITY, including traffic management, the locomotive application suite of 

management, maintenance, fueling, and threat management. 

 

Train Intraoperability: 

Train Intraoperability focuses on the mobile node perspective discussed in FUNCTIONALITY. 

With the developing expansion in scope of the locomotive’s communication and intelligence 

platform to include intra-train and track monitoring, the challenge shifts to dealing with 1.3 

million units of rolling stock, in addition to only the 22,000 locomotives involved in 

interoperability. 

Cross Industry Operability: 

Cross Industry Operability is a developing level of operability as the attention on security and 

hazardous materials crosses boundaries between the railroads and the respective shippers and 

industries. For those shippers that have attached sensors to their owned rolling stock (e.g., tank 

cars for hazardous material), they will know before the railroad that the hatch has been opened or 

tampered with and will notify their industry association first and finally the railroads. 

Global Intraoperability: 

Global Interoperability is taking cross-industry operability to the global level, again with focus 

on the shipment and domestic security. 

Not all of the applications described in FUNCTIONALITY need to consider all levels of 

operability, as shown in the following table. 
23 

Traffic Management

OPERABILITY LEVEL

Railroad 

Intra

√

Inter

√

Industry 

Intra

√ 

Train 

Intra

Cross 

Industry

Global 

Intra

Yard Management √ √ 

Crew Management √ √ 

Locomotive Management √ √ √ 

Locomotive Maintenance √ √ 

Locomotive Fueling √ √ √ 

Positive Train Control √ √ 

FUNCTIONALITY

Traffic Control √ √ 

Mobile Node √ √ √ √ 

Remote Switch √ √ 

Main Line Work Order √ √ 

Wayside Maintenance √ 

On Track Maintenance √ 

Intermodal Operations √ √ √ √ √

Threat Management √ √ √ √ √ √

Passenger Services √ √ √ 

The most significant thing about this table is that the value of operability far exceeds the singular 

pursuit of one-person crews, and introduces the consideration of how the railroads may want to 

move forward in addition to the current programs stemming from the Roadmap to 

Interoperability. Arguably, the best way to begin is to identify the business value associated with 

each of the areas listed. 

Business Value 

It is not the intent of this study to provide a financial analysis that would be sufficient to make an 

investment decision regarding the deployment of wireless and related technologies. However, 

the intent is to expose the areas of value by functionality and heighten the awareness of the 

opportunities that may indeed lead to appropriate financial analyses (business cases), both within 
24 

the individual railroads and from an industry perspective, given the various levels of operability. 

One of the driving factors for doing such analyses is the consideration of the FCC’s Report & 

Order that deals with narrow-banding (discussed in WIRELESS ENVIRONMENT). This 

action will eventually result in the necessity to replace the current, mostly-analog, VHF 

infrastructure with a digital one. This means that the objective of the business case has changed 

from that of justifying an investment to that of optimizing the return on a required investment, 

assuming the railroads wish to retain usage of this most valuable spectrum. However, even 

without the narrow-banding requirement, it is believed that the value of the opportunities 

identified in this study would be shown to be more than necessary to make the transition to a 

digital VHF platform sooner rather than later based upon the following cursory evaluation. 

While each railroad will have its individual slate of benefits that it uses to consider the 

investment in technologies, the following six categories are being considered in this study: 

• Traffic Velocity: minimizing travel time over the main line, which in turn 

has an effect on resource utilization, direct costs, and customer service; 

• Resource Utilization: minimizing the unproductive use of resources, 

including crews, track time, locomotives, maintenance crews, and yard 

dwell; 

• Direct Costs: minimizing the costs associated with operating the railroad, 

including maintenance, fuel, and crews; 

• Infrastructure: minimizing the requirement for infrastructure including 

wayside and onboard; 

• Customer Service: maximizing the level of customer service in pursuit of 

increased revenue; and 

• Security & Safety: maximizing the cost-effective level of resource and 

shipment security, as well as the safety of operations. 
The following table associates each of the above benefits with the opportunities identified in 

FUNCTIONALITY. Additionally, a subjective determination is made as to the total relative 

25 

value of each. 

 

 

VALUE

Source Total

Traffic VelocityResource UtilizationDirect CostsReduced InfrastructureCustomer ServiceSecurity & Safety LOW MEDIUM HIGH

FUNCTIONALITY

Traffic Management X X X X X

Yard Management X X X X X

Crew Management X X X X

Locomotive Management X X X X

Locomotive Maintenance X X X

Locomotive Fueling X X X

Positive Train Control Fac* Fac* X X

Traffic Control X X X X X

Mobile Node X X X X X X X

Remote Switch Control X X X X

Main Line Work Order X X X X

Wayside Maintenance X X X

On-Track Maintenance X X X X X

Intermodal Operations X X X X X

Threat Management X X X

Passenger Services X X X X X

 * PTC can facilitate the deployment of other business changes.

Value alone cannot be the determining factor in implementing wireless-based applications. This 

point was dramatically demonstrated several years ago with an attempt by a railroad to 

implement moving block, which was considered to be of tremendous value to the railroad. Even 

without considering the substantial effort to develop a vital office required by this ultimate traffic 

control methodology, it was clear that the wireless technology of choice at that time could not 

support the data transmission required over the part of the railroad where moving block could 

provide the greatest value. Unlike wired networks, the communication link is often the weakest 

design and implementation link in the successful deployment of advanced functionality. 

However, the deployment challenges are not just that of deploying wireless technologies, but 

also in providing the means that the data can be effectively used, as follows. 
Deployment 

In the abandoned moving block attempt mentioned above, a primary application killer was the 

inability to deploy a cost-effective wireless solution that could provide the required data 

throughput. Usually, however, in the railroad industry, it is a second dimension of wireless that 

is the most difficult to overcome (i.e., the challenge of coverage). The railroad’s unique footprint 

of tens of thousands of miles of ribbon operations with intermittent hubs, has proven to be cost 

prohibitive for a number of projects that could not singularly justify the investment. Hence, 

commercial services have often been, and continue to be, utilized to provide the necessary 

coverage for individual, wireless-based solutions. 

Coverage and throughput are not the only challenges to the deployment of wireless systems; 

there are three other areas. First, there is the challenge of dealing with the wireless environment, 

the parameters of which include installed infrastructure, regulatory issues, commercial versus 

private network opportunities, and advancing technologies. Secondly, even if the data can be 

delivered, it is likely that the current management systems are not able to use the data in a mosteffective fashion. This is due to the fact that the to-be legacy systems are likely structured based 

on a very limited level of data timeliness and accuracy than that available via wireless (e.g., 

moving block), requiring a vital office development. Third, with the addition of the mobile 

node, a modified IT architecture is required that can effectively manage the positioning dynamics 

of resources, dynamics that are not to be found in the point-to-point communications of a wired, 

fixed node distributed or centralized IT platform. 

Together, the five factors of coverage, throughput, wireless environment, management systems, 

and IT architecture suggest that the railroads may benefit from an approach to the development 

and deployment of wireless-based applications and the related infrastructure that complements 

the current efforts associated with the Roadmap to Interoperability. The railroads may benefit 

from an evolutionary approach to developing and deploying the wireless-based applications 

identified in FUNCTIONALITY that can be delivered relatively quickly and effectively while 

they continue with an industry effort that is clearly a number of years away from actual 

implementation, given technical, financial, and political considerations. A SCENARIO for such 

deployment will be addressed below following a discussion on the wireless parameters of 

coverage and throughput, the wireless environment, issues of management systems, and IT 

architecture. 

Coverage & Throughput 

Incorporated into the initial wireless study a decade ago, was a structuring of wireless’ coverage 

and throughput dimensions, as associated with the applications identified then. To a great extent, 

that understanding remains applicable today, albeit with greater flexibility given the explosive 

advancement of wireless technologies. 

26 
27 

Coverage: Unquestionably, a major issue for implementing wireless systems across 

freight railroads is that of terrestrial expanse. However, not all applications are required 

everywhere. There are clusters of applications that can be related to four different types 

of coverage, as follows: 

 

• Main-line: the inter-city traffic that includes most of a railroad’s terrestrial 

expanse; 

• Metropolitan: the major metropolitan areas that include multiple railroad 

facilities; 

• Yard: an individual terminal/facility; and 

• Group: a number of users that require communications between themselves 

when they are together and are then disbursed (e.g., work gangs, trains, 

disaster teams, etc.). 

Throughput: Throughput is not just an issue of baud rate as one would think of 

relative to wired communications. When exposed to the wireless world, one quickly 

learns that this untethered environment is challenged with a number of message integrity 

issues including dead spots (no signal), EMF interference, restricted bandwidth, user 

contention, limited signal propagation, and the occasional dead battery for the hand-held 

radios. Given this set of challenges, it is appropriate to define the throughput attribute in 

terms of the different types of transmissions, of which there are six. 

Monitor: the transmission of remote data to a source of intelligence. The data flow 

is inbound only and consists of small data bursts that occur infrequently on either a 

routine or as-required basis; 

Voice: a two-way transmission that occurs randomly and may be of relatively long 

duration; 

Transaction: the interactive flow of data that is short in nature, but may occur quite 

frequently; 

Data Transfer: the two-way flow of considerable volumes of data that will occur 

with some predictability as to location or time of day; 

Loose Control: often referred to as SCADA in other industries, this two-way flow of 

data is associated with the remote control of equipment that is perhaps timely, but not 

safety critical as to the timeliness of the data (e.g., code lines!); and 

Tight Control: the two-way flow of control data that is operationally and safety 

critical and, therefore, the throughput attributes must maintain tight variances (e.g., 

moving block).
28 

With four areas of coverage and six types of throughput, the wireless requirements of a railroad 

can be structured into 24 combinations as shown in the following matrix. 

COVERAGE

MAIN LINE METROPOLITAN YARD GROUP

MONITOR 1 2 3 6

UT 

VOICE 5 6 7 8

GHP

TRANSACTION 9 10 11 12

THROU

DATA TRANSFER 13 14 15 16

LOOSE CONTROL 17 18 19 20

TIGHT CONTROL 21 22 23 24

When the applications addressed in the original study were viewed as to which blocks they fell 

into, there was a natural merging of the individuals blocks which led to a more practical strategic 

perspective. Specifically, as shown in the modified matrix below, six “wireless corridors” were 

identified with each being a combination of applications with similar wireless requirements. 

This perspective offers a pragmatic approach to tailor wireless infrastructures for shared usage 

by applications. 

 
29 

 THROUGHPUT

COVERAGE

MAIN LINE METROPOLITAN YARD GROUP

MONITOR MONITOR 

VOICE

YARD 

TRANSACTION MOBILE NETWORK NETWORK INTRA-GANG 

DATA TRANSFER or 

INTRA-TRAIN

LOOSE CONTROL SCADA

TIGHT CONTROL PROCESS CONTROL

Applying this same structure of wireless corridors to the opportunities identified in 

FUNCTIONALITY, as shown in the following table, provides the basis for building a 

deployment strategy for moving forward in an evolutionary fashion. 

 

 

 Monitor

WI

 Mobile Network

RELESS Yard Network

 SCADA

CORRID Intra-train Intra-gangORS Process Control

FUNCTIONALITY

Traffic Management X X

Yard Management X X 

Crew Management X X 

Locomotive Management X X 

Locomotive Maintenance X X X X 

Locomotive Fueling

F li

X X 

Positive Train Control X 

Traffic Control X X X 

Mobile Node X X X 

Remote Switch Control X X 

Main Line Work Order X 

Wayside Maintenance X X X 

On-Track Maintenance

TT T

X X X 

Intermodal Operations X X X 

Threat Management X X 

Passenger Services X
30 

The two highlighted columns are the most notable. Between, the Monitor and Mobile Network 

corridors, all but one of the advanced functions can be serviced to some extent. However, the 

most interesting point is that the Monitor and the Mobile Network corridors represent the 

difference between evolutionary and revolutionary deployment, respectively. That is, they 

represent the difference in being able to deliver value immediately in a pragmatic fashion via a 

simplistic Monitor platform, while the industry continues to wrestle with the complexity of the 

long term perspective of a revolutionary Mobile Platform via the various AAR technical 

committees. As if the intrinsic challenges of developing a mobile platform were not 

substantially difficult on their own, the railroads are also being confronted with a FCC Report 

and Order to restructure their VHF infrastructure (discussed in Wireless Environment), which 

presents them with investment alternatives that have yet to be addressed with a business case 

analysis by individual railroads, yet alone at the industry level. 

The Monitor corridor is a no-brainer, throw-away solution that will pay for itself immediately. It 

is an individual railroad approach that does not require standards, a data model to size, or even a 

complex business case to be made. In fact, it is an approach that one railroad CEO has taken to 

break into the aforementioned Catch 22 (i.e., having the data, to use the tools, to get the value to 

pay for the data). This is a simple “Just Do It,” and for an individual railroad, it makes a great 

deal of sense to get rolling on advanced functionality. But, from a multi-operability standpoint, 

there are some other challenges to be considered. Fortunately, those challenges are actually quite 

straightforward and readily achievable, as will be addressed in SCENARIO below. 

Wireless Environment 

The railroads have extensive private wireless infrastructures across their individual systems. The 

primary set of frequencies that have been in use since the middle of the last century for voice 

communications is in the 160 MHz portion of the VHF band. There are an estimated 250,000 

units across the industry that operate on those frequencies. The railroads also use frequencies in 

the 450 and 900 MHz UHF bands for a limited amount of data for isolated applications, most 

notably EOT and wireless codeline, respectively. Recently the railroads purchased five channel 

pairs in the 220 MHz range for Remote Control Locomotive (RCL)!

 and other possible uses. 

Lastly, one railroad has purchased a company with licensed frequency at 44 MHz and is using 

that network for at least its PTC data requirements. Such an inventory provides the basis for 

moving forward. 

Since the original wireless demand study a decade ago, there have been substantial changes in 

the availability of wireless technologies, both for private and commercial networks. 

Additionally, for sometime following the study, wireless and IT were seen as separate disciplines 

with neither exhibiting understanding, nor experience in the technical challenges of the other. 

That has now changed with the recognition that the wireless technologies offer the opportunity to 

extend the IT infrastructure beyond the end of the wire to more tightly incorporate the mobile 
31 

and remote resources into the management systems. However, unlike wired infrastructures, wireless 

technologies vary substantially in their ability to service the throughput, coverage, and reliability 

requirements of applications. And, since there is no one technology that provides the most cost 

effective infrastructure across the broad range of applications, it is necessary to consider a range of 

wireless technologies and services, both private and commercial. 

Arguably, the most popular choice for wireless data for the last several years has been the usage of 

commercial services. As noted earlier, commercial services have been used to implement singular 

solutions to meet individual railroad department requirements that could not justify the installation of a 

private network. The good news is that railroads have been able to advance selected applications, albeit 

at a relatively high cost for the amount of data required when compared to a private network if it was 

available. However, other key applications have not been able to be advanced due to such costs. For 

example, as noted earlier, this same cost consideration has been a likely deterrent to moving toward a 

proactive traffic management functionality, given the value/data Catch 22. Therefore, a collective 

understanding of the opportunities for wireless is an underlying consideration of promoting private 

wireless infrastructure. But, there are several other considerations as well. 

As noted earlier, the railroad’s primary wireless infrastructure, VHF, is subject to the FCC’s narrowbanding Report and Order. This order currently requires the railroads to split each of its 25 KHz 

channels in the 160 MHz portion of the VHF band in half to create twice the number of channels by the 

end of 2013. While on the surface this seems to be an excellent idea, the challenges are substantial 

including providing a channel plan that allocates frequencies efficiently and fairly along with providing 

a multi-year, interoperable migration plan. However, due to the way that the railroads have cleverly 

coordinated their channels in the past at the 25 KHz spacing, they will gain very little additional 

channel availability and usefulness with the 12.5 KHz spacing. Hence, without having developed a 

strategic perspective and associated business case of what a digital platform could provide, the railroads 

have invested in analog 12.5 KHz equipment to replace the 25KHz analog equipment to meet the time 

line of the FCC’s order. 

Recently, the FCC announced that they will be demanding an additional split in same spectrum 

resulting overall in a four for one split of channels to a spacing of 6.25 KHz. While this does indeed 

offer additional capabilities to the railroads, by supporting many of the opportunities noted in 

FUNCTIONALITY, it also means that the analog infrastructure, including the recent 12.5 KHz 

equipment, will need to be replaced with a digital infrastructure. This is estimated to be at least a $500 

million investment for the industry that would have to be spent by a date not yet determined for the 

transition. This point introduces a second consideration of advancing wireless in addition to 

understanding the opportunities. That is, if the order is made regarding the second split, then the 

railroads will have to make the investment to keep the most-valuable frequencies. This changes the 

business case from a return-on-investment analysis to one of maximizing the return on a required 

investment. As suggested by this study’s findings, the sooner the transition is made, than the greater 

the return. This is directly opposite to the current perspective of delaying the investment for 

replacement purposes only. 
32 

There is one other consideration, however. In light of the total replacement of the VHF 

infrastructure to meet the possible 6.25 KHz spacing, an infrastructure ripe for data, there is the 

opportunity to do what the railroads did with their wired communication backbone requirements 

along the right-of-way, when fiber optics came into play several decades ago. That is, the 

opportunity is there to bring in a third party to make the investment in whole, or in participation 

with the railroads, to deliver the services to the railroads and others as a commercial enterprise. 

As to the other wireless corridors that were identified earlier, there is one particularly interesting 

approach that is being pursued for the intra-train environment. This is the use of a wireless mesh 

network! throughout the train. A key design factor here is that of evolutionary deployment again. 

This technology does not require each car in the train to be equipped with the technology. 

Instead, the low-power, wireless-based, sensor nodes, (motes), can be installed on cars as 

deemed appropriate with their connectivity being coordinated via a gateway (a network 

controller that then can interchange data with off-board wireless networks). 

Management Systems 

The deployment of wireless data infrastructure doesn’t mean that the current management 

systems and business processes will be able to use that data effectively. This is the next 

challenge to providing evolutionary versus revolutionary deployment that can deliver value 

immediately; value that might not have been achievable otherwise. Indeed, revolutionary 

changes in business processes may be perceived to be too difficult to implement or to have 

insufficient benefits to justify revolutionary changes in the IT and communication infrastructure. 

This is especially true for railroads in general, where the primary business processes have 

changed relatively little in decades. Arguably, the ideal opportunity in the railroad environment 

is that of revolutionary change with evolutionary deployment, which is very possible in a number 

of key areas. As identified in FUNCTIONALITY, there are those applications which are 

applicable to individual railroads and those that require access to resource status data from across 

the industry and have not been pursued due to do the lack of an industry-based infrastructure and 

databases. 

Recognizing which management services to begin with is actually quite simple. If one is willing 

to make cursory evaluations of two criteria that need to play well together in a wireless 

environment which are value and data. As shown in the following matrix of these two 

parameters pitted against each other, there is an opportunity to define a deployment strategy that 

delivers high value, but with low data requirements. First with some level of wireless data 

infrastructure (e.g., commercial services) and then progress to, or complement with, a more 

robust wireless data platform (e.g. a private wireless network). This movement from light to 

darker shaded blocks (upper right to lower left) is directly aligned with the previous discussion 

regarding the Monitor versus Mobile Platform corridors. 
33 

 

 

Low

VALUE

Medium High

Low Wayside Maintenance 

Crew Management 

Locomotive Management 

Locomotive Maintenance 

Remote Switch 

Traffic Management 

Locomotive Fueling 

DATA

Medium

High

* Eastern railroads expect little value from moving block due to the high density of

On Track Maintenance 

Threat Management 

Moving Block - Eastern 

Railroads *

Yard Management 

Mobile Node 

Main-line Work Order 

Intermodal Services 

Passenger Services

P T C 

Traffic Cont

Flexible Blo

Moving Block - Western 

Railroads

 contentious traffic.

rol 

ck

Specifically, railroads could benefit immediately by having the simplest of wireless data systems 

that could evolve in a financially responsible fashion. This is an approach that would include the 

shunning of installed technologies and implemented processes that were valuable at some point, 

but that are no longer required. However, discarding installed equipment is a difficult concept 

for many to embrace in the industry, even though the rapid changes in wireless and related 

technologies have, and will most likely continue, to provide valuable functionality. As such, 

those technologies may not be deployed due to the inability to discard the equipment of previous 

investments, even though the payback period has been well exceeded. 

IT Architecture 

Not inherent in the distributed fixed node or centralized IT platforms in use by railroads today, 

are the parameters of positioning and speed. The resources being managed by those platforms 

either do not move, or if they do, their management process progresses in a discrete fashion 

throughout the sequence of fixed nodes or in-frequent update reports. This is the case with 

current traffic management in the railroads based upon the SCADA, CAD-signaling platform 

with trains advancing on a block-by-block basis with no indication of speed (as in, did the train 

stop?). This lack of visibility as to interim train status has contributed substantially to the current 

reactive (crisis-based) traffic management approach addressed in FUNCTIONALITY. 

Therefore, moving forward with location-based systems require changes to the IT architectures 

in the railroads, both individually and from an industry perspective. There are four major 

considerations to make those changes. 
1. Moving forward with wireless-based systems relative to proactive management of mobile 

resources can greatly benefit from the availability of a positioning platform, a positioning 

engine, that is tightly integrated with the IT architecture. This is a platform that merges 

the various sources of positioning data into a single data domain that services all 

applications requiring such data. Those data sources would include direct reports via 

wireless, AEI, voice messages, EDI, OS reports, lineup entries, and the handling of 

authorities in dark territory. At least one railroad is known to have developed such a 

Kalman filter-like! approach. 

2. Given the levels of operability identified previously, the issue of positioning being 

incorporated into the IT architecture is not confined to each railroad addressing its own 

singular requirements. Positioning also has an industry perspective, as well as a cross 

industry and global perspective, depending upon the resource. For locomotives, 

obtaining positioning information today, whether on or off of the owning/leasing 

railroad’s property, varies greatly by railroad with a number of different sources as noted 

above. Reportedly, a significant amount of this information is not being shared between 

railroads for competitive reasons when associated with train consist data. 

3. Associated with each perspective of positioning is the necessity for a common 

referencing system, a Geographical Information System (GIS) that ensures that each 

positioning reference is interpreted by all in the same way. While each railroad has 

greatly expanded the sophistication of their individual GIS platform and associated data 

within the last 5 to 10 years for their own reasons, each effort has been done without an 

industry perspective. Additionally, there has been no sponsorship at the industry level to 

assure compatibility, or host an industry-level GIS platform, e.g., a Railroad 

Transportation GIS Model, as in other industries. 

4. Recognizing the in-time and exception aspects of position reporting, instead of 

continuous real-time based upon the resource involved, a concept of geo-fencing is 

becoming increasingly important. As introduced earlier, this is the ability to have a 

location-based system take some action when a geographical boundary defined in the 

positioning platform is crossed. For example, a locomotive could report its fuel level 

when it crosses railroad boundaries. As with the GIS requirement, there are different 

levels of geo-fencing opportunities, e.g., mobile platform, individual railroad, and 

industry. 

Together, the levels of operability and the selective availability of data, along with the multiple 

levels of GIS and geo-fencing, demonstrates the need for a hierarchy of positioning platforms 

that can be used on a selective basis by authorized users (subscribers) independent of the 

providers (publishers) of the data. This publish/subscribe (pubsub)!

 concept is a key IT design 

perspective in assuring data accuracy and consistency across the enterprise and industry. It can 

minimize the duplication of data collection and storage in lieu of the isolated, self-contained 

model of traditional application development. 

34 
Scenario 

Having identified the deployment issues of wireless coverage and throughput, the wireless 

environment, management services, and IT architecture, a possible scenario is provided below on 

how railroads can advance a number of the opportunities identified in FUNCTIONALITY in a 

pragmatic and/or evolutionary fashion. It all begins with the deployment of a monitor platform 

on all locomotives for an individual railroad and finishes with an industry perspective. 

I. Monitor Platform 

While the industry proceeds to work through the development of a sophisticated mobile platform 

that will service the long term perspective of interoperability, there is a great deal of business 

value that is not being taken advantage of, as noted in this report. Additionally, once the 

futuristic platform is available, there will be a substantial amount of time involved in building the 

management systems that can use the data. What is not being considered by most of the 

railroads, and clearly not at the industry level, is an interim solution that can deliver advanced 

functionality sooner rather than later, a solution that disrupts the tool/data Catch 22 to get the 

railroads moving forward with advanced functionality, as described in this report. 

By placing a simple GPS-based, position/speed reporting unit on a locomotive that can provide 

information every 5 to15 minutes along the main line (for example, an inexpensive unit using 

commercial services), a railroad will have the opportunity to begin the development of the 

evolutionary management systems (described below) to deliver the range of benefits associated 

with proactive asset management. With just a modicum of additional capability of reporting key 

locomotive health and fuel data, along with geo-fencing, the business values associated with the 

full locomotive application suite are obtainable. This is a platform that need not be uniform 

across the industry as to the equipment, message sets, or even protocol. It will be uniform to the 

minimum reporting requirements as to exception and/or time intervals for various applications; 

thereby expanding beyond interoperability to address industry intraoperability. Reportedly, 

several roads have priced out commercial services for an increased frequency of reporting, and 

they have been disappointed by the cost of the offerings. However, if done as an industry, 

including the requirements for Amtrak against a number of suppliers in concert with a business 

case built on the business values identified in this study, it is believed that such an interim 

approach will have substantial net value. It is important to keep in mind that the requirements 

for such a platform are neither safety critical or of significant throughput to be subjected to the 

reliability issues that have discouraged some railroads from considering cellular systems to date. 

Some railroads already have the beginnings of reporting locomotive speed and position with 

either a private wireless network or the deployment of onboard communication/intelligence 

platforms, but no railroad was found to have put together the evolutionary perspective, that 

follows below, in delivering the business value, a perspective that begins with a positioning 

engine. 

35 
36 

 be 

II. Railroad Positioning Engine 

Again, the proactive management of a railroad’s major mobile resources begins with knowing 

the position and speed of the locomotives, and there are a number of sources for positioning 

information. Currently, the railroads collect locomotive position, either directly or indirectly, by 

numerous means including commercial wireless services, AEI reports, OS reports (as to train 

movement), voice communications, lineup entries, and generation of authorities in dark territory. 

The accuracy and timeliness of these reports, as well as where and how they are maintained by 

their respective users, vary substantially. Most importantly, none of them are of sufficient 

timeliness, if even accurate, to be used for proactive traffic management and none provide speed 

information. However, they do have some value in servicing other applications, especially if a 

pubsub-based positioning engine is established that incorporates geo-fencing. With the 

development of such a platform that incorporates the appropriate data from the Monitor platform, 

a platform that is outboard of current systems, the next step becomes that of cleaning up the 

lineup. 

III. Cleanup the Lineup 

A railroad’s lineup that is an integral part of the CAD platform is 

typically fraught with errors and poorly managed due to the lack of 

timely data and the tools to manage the data. However, with the 

matching of the lineup against the positioning engine, the lineup can

cleaned up and made available to proactive resource management 

systems that are outboard of CAD. 

IV. Manage the Lineup 

Cleaning up the lineup is not the same as managing the 

lineup. The former is that of continuously updating the true 

position of trains that have been initiated on the lineup. To 

manage the lineup, however, is the ability to bring planning 

tools into play that can project how the lineup will be 

changing over some period of the future. This means 

incorporating a Tier I planner that is used by operations 

management to align unscheduled and scheduled operations 

and account for physical network parameters, physical train performance, basic crew 

management rules, locomotive power requirements, and in-bound capacities of yards. 

 
37 

is 

t be 

e 

AD 

evels 

d basis. For example, the 

ier II would be used for a 

t necessarily optimal 

Tier III planning tool to be 

ement. Again, for a 

t of getting back to schedule. 

 of action, he or she would then use the 

ts 

h, 

 to 

-

I

 

 could be maintained 

V. Proactive Traffic Management 

 

With the availability of a clean, managed lineup that 

as timely as the most recent position report, whether i

an AEI report or via the Monitor Platform, a proactiv

traffic management system can be provided to the 

dispatcher independent of, but complementing, the C

platform. That is, this platform will provide various l

of planning tools that permit the dispatcher to perform

advanced traffic management analysis on an as-neede

dispatcher could have two levels of planning tools. T

true-crisis solution that strives for a workable, but no

solution in pressing situations. There would also be a

used to meet the objectives of proactive traffic manag

scheduled railroad, the objective would simply be tha

Once the dispatcher has determined the proper course

CAD platform, as is done today, to set up the routing accordingly. At some point, there could 

also be an integration of the planning capability directly into the auto-routing! mechanism of 

CAD, if deemed appropriate. 

VI. Proactive Resource Management 

Expanding upon the above approach for traffic 

management, it is possible to advance the planning 

of other key resources, as well as incorporate their 

management within the dispatching function. Two of

the resources, crews and locomotives, have direct cos

associated with their deployment alternatives. As suc

a cost optimizing function is added for the dispatcher

balance the costs with those associated with train 

movements (train delay and fuel consumption). Two

other resources, yard availability and maintenance-of

way activity are constraints that are used by the Tier I

and Tier III planners in deciding the routing of trains.

As with Proactive Traffic Management, each of these

independent of, but complementary to, their respective current processes and management 

systems. 
38 

VII. Industry Locomotive Tracking System 

If railroads were self-contained, then the structures presented above for this scenario would be 

sufficient to optimize their individual performance. However, there are challenges as to 

interoperability and industry intraoperability for both traffic management and the suite of 

locomotive applications, at least. Recognizing that the threshold unit of tracking is the 

locomotive, then there is a requirement for an Industry Locomotive Tracking System, as well as 

the positioning engines for individual railroads, to service these levels of operability. As noted 

previously, there is an excellent way to move forward with that possibility now, given the 

development of the EMIS system via Railinc’s services. However, there will be a requirement in 

the railroad’s interchange rules that require locomotive activity to not only be reported (which 

isn’t required today), but also be required to provide a certain level of report frequency as to both 

position and speed. 

What is interesting about this point is that locomotive positioning could be achieved in two 

different fashions. First, there would be a continuous link between the Industry Locomotive 

Tracking System and the individual railroad positioning engines. Additionally, to the benefit of 

everyone, the use of commercial services that a railroad may employ for locomotive tracking 

could also feed this data to the industry positioning engine, instead of to only the subscribing 

railroad. The Industry Locomotive Tracking System thereby becomes the clearing house for this 

information for the benefit of all. The Industry Locomotive Tracking System avoids the current 

issue of the privacy of consist data by means of the pubsub structure that restricts the 

accessibility of specific data to subscribers with the proper authority while blocking associated 

data that is not to be distributed to those same parties. 

VIII. Industry Service Bus 

Morphing the Industry Locomotive Tracking System into an Industry Service Bus is a small step 

that can service a number of applications including locomotive health, hazmat alerts, shipment 

integrity, and fuel management. Associated with this approach would be an appropriate level of 

GIS, as well as geo-fencing relative to the industry issues for which this tracking system would 

be used, e.g., fuel level at interchange points. 

 

Skill Sets 

To effectively deploy wireless-based applications requires three types of skill sets, three types of 

disciplines, of which only two can be expected to be found today in the railroads and at the 

industry level via the AAR and its various committees. 
39 

First, there is the requirement for the Technicians within each railroad that understand the 

capabilities of the wireless technologies that may be deployed. As such, each road has it 

technical staffs from which the respective AAR technical committees are staffed on a volunteer 

basis. 

Second, recognizing that wireless can extend the IT architecture to the mobile and remote 

resources, as wired infrastructure does in a manufacturing facility, then wireless needs to be 

incorporated in a compatible fashion with the IT architecture. Fortunately, within the last several 

years, there has been a concerted effort to merge the two disciplines of wireless and IT together 

both within the individual railroads and the AAR technical committees, to expand the role of the 

Enterprise Architect! that aligns the IT architecture with the business requirements. 

Third, with the infusion of wireless data into the railroad environment, the current enterprise 

architect discipline is unprepared and for justifiable reasons. That is, the current railroad IT 

architecture is typically structured to service primary business processes that have existed for 

decades based on technologies that stem back to the first and second quarters of the last century 

(track circuits and voice radio, respectively). Hence, these key business processes and the 

supporting management systems are geared toward a certain level of data timeliness and 

accuracy that are less than optimal. However, with the deployment of a wireless data 

infrastructure, in-time data as to the status of resources is introduced. This infusion presents the 

opportunity for a revolutionary change in the business processes across the individual railroad, as 

well as across the industry. These are changes that can incorporate planning and execution tools 

that embrace a wider range of variables, with a greater level of accuracy and detail, than that 

which is possible of being done today. Accordingly, these are changes that are likely to be 

beyond the experience and knowledge of Enterprise Architects that have operated primarily in a 

wired environment and/or who have been subject to the constraints of the railroad’s traditional 

technologies. Hence, there is a requirement for a new discipline, an Enterprise Technologist. 

The Enterprise Technologist is a discipline that is focused on a revolutionary re-engineering of 

business processes across the railroad that can include: 

$ distributed intelligence to the mobile resources as an extension of the IT architecture (a 

mobile node), 

$ the use of execution and planning tools based on Operations Research (OR), 

$ the establishment of new voice/data links between otherwise-disparate entities, and 

$ the integration of the management of remote and mobile resources. 

However, revolutionary functionality is without value if it cannot be delivered in a fashion that is 

financially, organizationally, and technically responsible. This leads to the second role of the 

Enterprise Technologist, which is the challenge of evolutionary deployment. Such a deployment 
is necessary given a railroad’s extensive physical plant and IT architecture that is well 

established and not readily modified, or replaced. This is a discipline that structures the business 

case that includes: 

$ 80/20, incremental value/cost analysis, 

$ phased deployment based on payback analysis, 

$ multi-department infrastructure sharing, and 

$ the recognition that refarming has changed the business case model. 

At first glance, it may seem that the Enterprise Technologist’s tasks are not unlike that of the 

traditional Six Sigma process referred to as Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control 

(DMAIC). However, DMAIC Six Sigma focuses on evolutionary, continuous improvement of 

existing processes. That is not the case for what is presented in this report, i.e., the revolutionary 

change in processes albeit via evolutionary deployment of management systems. In actuality, 

the Enterprise Technologist, is quite similar to an emerging discipline in Six Sigma referred to as 

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). A key difference remains in any event, and that is the ability to 

deliver the business case aligned with the revolutionary changes in functionality, both at the 

individual railroad level and for the industry, given the various levels of operability. 

Moving Forward 

Based upon the findings of this study, there are a number of activities that would promote the 

advancement of rail operations, via the use of wireless technologies, which are not being pursued 

by the industry or most of the railroads. These are activities that would complement the current 

Roadmap to Interoperability and associated tasks currently underway. These are activities that 

would benefit by the availability of Federal support. 

Traffic Management Tools & Processes

In general, most North American railroads have little to no experience with traffic management 

tools, and certainly not with those based on timely position and speed data, as discussed in this 

report. Developing and deploying such tools will be a blending of art and science, given the lack 

of experience and data that exist to identify the key variables and the primary objective functions 

that can be delivered through their use. And, there is both a planning (Service Design) and an 

execution (Operations-dispatching) aspect to these tools that should be considered. Hence, there 

is a need to perform the following analyses that would be applicable across all Class I railroads: 

$ the coordination of traffic management activities between Service Design and 

Operations; 

$ the identification of different tiers of dispatching tools as suggested in SCENARIO; 

40 
$ the identification of dispatching processes and displays to support the use of traffic 

management tools; and 

$ the study of interchange requirements to efficiently support the use of traffic management 

tools. 

 

Locomotive Position and Status

An Industry Locomotive Tracking System has substantial value for both the freight railroads and 

Amtrak. Railinc appears to be in a favorable position to deliver such a data service to the 

industry. However, the analysis still needs to be performed as to what data are needed when and 

where, not only as to locomotive position and speed, but also as to diagnostics and fuel. This 

would include the identification of geo-fencing criteria at three primary platform levels, mobile 

node, individual railroad office, and industry. 

Performance-Based Locomotive Maintenance

As was done with PTC, there is an opportunity to have a RSAC or similar process associated 

with performance-based maintenance of locomotives based upon the availability of an Industry 

Locomotive Tracking System that included health and maintenance data. 

Train Position Monitoring 

In-line maintenance crews could benefit from the availability of train position monitoring 

available via an Industry Locomotive Tracking System. Such a capability could complement, or 

replace the current use of watchmen lookouts where currently required today. 

Crew Management

Railroads and their train crews could benefit from the use of crew management tools. These are 

tools that can improve both the efficiency of crew usage, as well as the quality of life by 

minimizing non-productive crew usage (e.g., deadheading, held away, etc.). While there has 

been some pursuit of such tools, they require further refinement and the opportunity to be 

deployed. 

Industry GIS Model

The industry could benefit from a concerted effort to identify an uniform, rail industry GIS 

model. This is a model that may need to be aligned with similar efforts in other industries (e.g., 

utilities, petro-chemical, etc.). 

41 
42 

Performance-Based Wayside Maintenance

As was done with PTC, there is an opportunity to have a RSAC or similar process associated 

with performance-based maintenance of signaling infrastructure based on a 

yet to be determined level of monitoring and diagnostics reporting. 

Mobile Node 

The railroads’ primary focus on the onboard intelligence and communication platform has been 

that of interoperability and safety given the interest in PTC and one-person crews. There has 

been some activity relative to expanding the functionality of the mobile node relative to intratrain operability. However, there remains the broader philosophical, functional, and strategic 

perspective of the mobile node as an extension of the IT platform. 

Evolutionary Wireless Strategy 

While the railroads’ technicians and enterprise architects pursue the interoperable mobile 

platform and associated VHF refarming challenge, the opportunity exists to develop an 

evolutionary wireless strategy that can deliver substantial benefits in the interim. This approach 

involves the enterprise technologist discipline, as defined above, instead of just technicians and 

architects, to produce a business strategy aligned with an elementary wireless approach. 

Operability 

The challenge of operability is substantially greater than that of railroad intraoperability and 

interoperability, as is being currently addressed across the industry. The other levels as 

identified in this report need to be addressed as well as to the areas of functionality, data flows, 

and supporting infrastructure. Such a pursuit is as much functional as it is technical, with a touch 

of intra- and inter-industry politics. 

Homeland Security 

The response to 9/11 by the Class I railroads was immediate and responsible. A renewed effort 

may be appropriate, however, with an expanded understanding of what a wireless data 

infrastructure(s) can now provide, which was not available at the time of the initial effort. 
43 

 

Closing Comment 

This study was not designed to be all-inclusive of the opportunities for wireless technologies in 

high speed passenger and freight rail. Instead, it was structured to seek out the incremental 

opportunities and the means to deliver those opportunities given the individual and collective 

railroad agendas as to functionality and wireless technologies. The bottom line for this study is 

exactly to identify the opportunity to deliver the business case that demonstrates the value of 

moving forward now, both at the individual railroad and industry level, with systems that deliver

tremendous value while the industry continues to work on the long term visions. And, to do so 

takes a new discipline of the Enterprise Technologist that complements the efforts of the 

technicians and enterprise architects for the railroads, both individually and collectively. 

 
44 

APPENDIX: Description of Terms & Phrases

Automatic Equipment Identification: the passive RF tag and interrogator 

infrastructure that is used to identify cars and locomotives when they pass an A E I interrogator. There are approximately 1.3 million rail cars and locomotives that 

have been tagged in North America. 

AAR Association of American Railroads: Industry association for the Class I railroads 

a process built into some CAD systems that permits the dispatcher to set up 

Autorouting routing for trains that will align the switches automatically as the train progresses 

based upon a relatively simple priority basis. 

the underlying rules for on-track operations - the passive vitality of railroad Book of Rules operations. 

Computer Assisted Dispatching: the platform that permits the dispatcher to request C A D routing for trains. 

the non-vital communication link between CAD and the wayside signaling 

infrastructure that permits the train dispatcher to make requests of the vital Code Line wayside infrastructure to route trains as well as provide indication of wayside 

signals - a SCADA platform . 

“those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of 

the economy and government. They include, but are not limited to, Critical telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems Infrastructure and emergency services, both governmental and private.” (Source: Presidential 

Decision Directive NSC-63.) 

Electronic Data Interchange: A set of standards for structuring information that is 

E D I to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, 

government entities and other groups.(Source: Wikipedia) 

Electronically Control Pneumatic Brakes: the use of a wired connection running ECP Brakes through the train that activates each car’s brakes simultaneously. 

a discipline that “build(s) a holistic view of the organization's strategy, processes, 

information, and information technology assets (so as to) take this knowledge and 

ensure that the business and IT are in alignment. The enterprise architect links the Enterprise business mission, strategy, and processes of an organization to its IT strategy, and Architect documents this using multiple architectural models or views that show how the 

current and future needs of an organization will be met in an efficient, sustainable, 

agile, and adaptable manner.” (Source: Wikipedia) 

an efficient recursive filter that estimates the state of a dynamic system from a 

Kalman filter series of incomplete and noisy measurements. It was developed by Rudolf 

Kalman. (Source: Wikipedia) 

the listing of trains that are expected to operate over a railroad’s territory within Lineup the railroad’s operation horizon. 
Meet / Pass a set of mathematical algorithms that is used to optimize the objectives of traffic 

Planner management selected by a railroad for its operation. 

the permission provided to a train crew to advance the train as to distance, speed, 

and/or time. In signaled territory, the movement authority is provided as an aspect Movement ( a configuration of lights) that indicates permission to proceed and speed Authority restriction. In dark territory, the authority is transmitted by the train dispatcher to 

the train crew. 

a method of train operation in which the primary authority is generated by a 

manual process( train sheet) or a computerized conflict checker. The transmission 

of the authority to the train crew is done by the train dispatcher. There are two Non-Signaled types of dark territory. One in which there are no signals (most common). The Territory second type, known as Absolute Manual Block, incorporates signals in the 

territory, but the signals only provide a secondary level of authority within the 

primary authority, and their aspects are not provided to the dispatcher. 

the (On Station) indications of a train entering a new control point in signaled OS Reports territory. 

a system that is used to prevent train crew errors. There are 3 core objectives of 

Positive Train PTC: 1. prevent train to train accidents, 2. prevent trains from over-speeding, and 

Control 3. prevent trains from endangering work gangs. An overlay PTC system is one 

which does not affect the method of operation, meaning that it is not vital. 

On its own, PTC is a locomotive-centric application, which by design requires 

only the transmission of information to the train, and not visa versa. Hence, 

PTC capital designing a wireless network for PTC does not mean that the network would be 

investment capable of applications that are office-centric, e.g., traffic, locomotive, or fuel 

management. 

Publish/subscribe (or pub/sub) is an asynchronous messaging paradigm where 

senders (publishers) of messages are not programmed to send their messages to 

specific receivers (subscribers). Rather, published messages are characterized into 

classes, without knowledge of what (if any) subscribers there may be. Subscribers Publish Subscribe express interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages that are of 

interest, without knowledge of what (if any) publishers there are. This decoupling 

of publishers and subscribers can allow for greater scalability and a more dynamic 

network topology. (Source: Wikipedia) 

Remote Control Locomotive: a wireless application that permits an individual on 

the ground to move a locomotive. This application is used for switching in yards. R C L This should not be confused with pursuit of one-person crews which involves main 

line operations. 

Railroad Safety Advisory Committee - PTC: a joint effort by the FRA, railroads, 

and labor as voting participants to define a possible rulemaking relative to PTC as RSAC - PTC well as to evaluate the safety case for PTC. Suppliers also participated, but 

without voting rights. The PTC rulemaking was a direct result of this effort. 

45 
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition: “system that is placed on top of a realtime control system to control a process that is external to the SCADA system (i.e. 

a computer, by itself, is not a SCADA system even though it controls its own 

power consumption and cooling). This implies that the system is not critical to S C A D A control the process in real time, as there is a separate or integrated real-time 

automated control system that can respond quickly enough to compensate for 

process changes within the time constants of the process. The process can be 

industrial, infrastructure or facility...” (Source: Wikipedia) 

Toxic Inhalation the transportation of chemicals that when inhaled can cause hazards to living 

Hazard organisms. 

Traffic the management of the traffic control process to meet a railroad’s objectives for 

Management the movement of trains. This is the true purpose of the train dispatcher. 

a DC circuit that runs through the rails. When a vehicle (locomotive) enters a 

Track Circuits segment of track circuit (block) and shunts the circuits between the rails, then the 

signaling infrastructure generates aspects based upon the block being occupied. 

the process that generates movement authorities that thereby is the vitality of rail 

Traffic Control operations. This is not what the dispatcher does directly, but is what s/he often 

initiates in the traffic management process. 

the handling of the train by the train crew. This phrase is often used mistakenly to Train Control refer to traffic control. 

a.k.a. narrow-banding, a FCC Point & Order to split the frequencies in half in a 

portion of the VHF by 2013. An additional Point & Order was issued in March VHF Refarming 2007 to note that the same channels would be split again at some point, but no date 

was provided. 

From a safety design perspective, vitality means that the device / system will fail 

safely, i.e., with no increase in risk. From a railroad operation standpoint, vitality Vitality refers to the functionality of the hardware and/or software that generates 

movement authorities that provides for the integrity of train movements. 

“a wireless cooperative communication infrastructure among a massive number of 

individual wireless transceivers (i.e. a wireless mesh) that has a network routing 

capability. Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate even Wireless Mesh when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, a very reliable 

network is formed. This concept is applicable to wireless networks, wired 

networks, and software interaction. “(Source: Wikipedia) 

46