A lot to be thankful for and PTC...almost

My readers may have noticed that I have not posted for over a month, so with my Thanksgiving wishes for a very rewarding Holiday Season, I'd like to explain.

There's a lot going on in railroading in the United States. It's not all good, and it's not all bad, but there's a lot of it. I would have liked this blog to develop into one with a cadre of devoted readers in the hundreds; whereas, they can be counted only with two digits. To cover the grand sweep of railroading and railroad change in America, I would have expected to eventually be posting at least once a day.

Readership and comments bring incentive, and the incentive to increase my frequency just hasn't been there. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a plea for readers to flock to your devices and offer support, nor is it a declaration that I am giving up. It is a statement that, for the foreseeable future, I will post as the spirit moves me.

That means it may be once a week or once a month, but I'll try to keep bringing you some biting observations and just plain interesting material when I can. Again, when the spirit moves me.

That said, let's ask what seems to be the hottest thing U.S. railroading as we tumble toward the last year of the second decade of the 21st century. I think it is autonomous trains. Not just transit agencies or short hops in closed loops or routes, but genuine railroading with nobody in the cab of a swift passenger train or two-hundred-car fast freight. Real, union-busting operations from a dispatch center with specialists sitting at displays as if they were gaming in virtual reality.

The road to Positive Train Control has been long and bumpy, but the railroads will satisfy the mandate in the third decade. With PTC comes all the software and hardware, all the connections, satellite feeds and global positioning, all the detectors, data collection and massive efficiencies that will allow for autonomous operations.

Yes, Virginia, there are obstacles. The biggest is how to detect objects that are not other trains in the right of way or on the tracks in time to get a train to stop when it's going to go two miles or more before it does. In our society, limited access for all rail routes is not an option. The problem is a tough one, but it's not insurmountable.

The second biggest is the aforementioned union-busting. Railroaders are a proud bunch, and the same men and women who have risked their lives or serious injury to complete the complicated task of running trains will not go quietly into the good night of trains that don't have engineers or conductors. Education will reveal to these railroaders that significantly as important but far less dangerous jobs will still be available. (Inevitably, an autonomous train will break down and need field workers. Engineers will train for those virtual reality jobs.)

That's my take, and that's where the spirit moved me today. Tomorrow, who knows? Enjoy the limitless variety and fascination of U.S. railroading.

©2019 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com