Railroads run as much on paper as on steel rails, as all rail managers up to their necks in reports and other paperwork can readily attest. Computers have helped, but the “paperless railroad” remains far out of reach. A new system now entering service on CSX Transportation and the Alaska Railroad is not only making a dent in the mountain of paper, but is also giving railroad management a better handle to make sure the required tests are being done.

“CSX Transportation identified a need to improve its compliance with the requirements of federally-mandated routine tests and inspections,” said M. Michael Choat, assistant chief engineer signal maintenance, CSXT, and Lester Hightower, chief technology officer of 10East Corp., at the 2003 AREMA technical conference in Chicago. “Our goals were to provide superior management and oversight of FRA compliance across our entire infrastructure, while eliminating paperwork at all levels. Our approach integrates four key components to deliver a complete solution: Hand-held computers for field use, Secure Digital[TM] memory cards for each hand-held computer user, a cost-effective and reliable communications infrastructure and a central computer system to manage assets and test records, as well as to support the hand-held computers. CSXT has deployed more than 300 hand-held computers to signal supervisors, maintainers and inspectors on its Southern Region, and we have processed tens of thousands of test forms, representing many hundreds of thousands of FRA inspections, thus far.”

A recent project at CSXT is designed to provide and support electronic FRA test and inspection records, the paper noted. Test and inspection records are now fully electronic, end-to-end, originating on hand-held computers utilized by field forces and culminating in on-screen viewable and printable test records. A central computer system manages inspectable assets and test records and provides work-planning and scheduling.
SXT embarked upon this project for three primary reasons:The FRA Safety Assurance and Compliance Program at CSXT identified a need to improve compliance with the testing requirements of 49 CFR 234 and 236; existing processes placed all management of test and inspection records at the local level (paper in file cabinets at supervisor offices), which was burdensome, inefficient and error-prone; and, in the past, CSXT has proven that the reliability of its signal system improves directly with increased focus on proper and timely performance of the federally-mandated tests and inspections.

Representatives from both the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and the Federal Railroad Administration were invited to planning meetings in the very early stages of the project.

“Both the BRS and the FRA have supported this project from the beginning, and both were heavily involved from the planning stages through the initial rollout of the project,” the two said. “This project has truly been a joint effort by CSXT, the FRA, the BRS and the technology vendor, 10East Corp.

“The primary goal of this project, initially, was to improve compliance with federal testing requirements by providing tools for work planning and management oversight,” they said. “Providing consistency in record-keeping across the entire system, while dramatically reducing or eliminating the paperwork and filing burden from field supervisors, was another important goal. CSXT also feels confident that it will benefit from improved signal system reliability as a result of improving its testing and inspection processes.”

Other project goals included the ability to accurately know what signal assets are in the field that need inspecting, who is responsible for inspecting them and when.

“Of utmost importance is the additional requirement to maintain correct and current data regarding those assets that require inspections,” Choat said. “Not only does this improve accountability and limit the chance of required tests being overlooked, but it also allows us to better balance assigned territories based on testing loads and, importantly, to rebalance territories as the equipment configuration on the CSXT infrastructure changes.”

Keeping up-front and recurring costs to a minimum was another strategic goal.

Choat and Hightower continued: “This led to two important design decisions: First, the hand-held computers had to be self sufficient, not reliant upon a personal computer or laptop to accomplish their assigned tasks. Second, communications costs had to be kept low due to the sheer numbers of users and the associated volumes of tests being performed and transmitted to the central computer system.”

Project implementation

In 2001, CSXT asked 10East Corp. to investigate available options for this project.

10East, an applications services provider, has been providing technology services to CSXT’s signal department for many years.

During several months of research on various data-collection technologies, 10East checked virtually every brand of hand-held computer, Interactive Voice Response systems and even Image Character Recognition systems. Also, researchers looked at both wired and wireless communications options.

In the end, four key components were chosen:

1) Hand-held computer for field data collection: Sharp Electronics Zaurus SL-5500, Personal Mobile Tool.

2) Hand-held user identification, authentication and data storage: Secure Digital[TM] Memory Cards.

3) Communications Infrastructure: Encrypted and digitally-signed communications over the Internet.

4) Central computer to manage records and support the field devices: 10East’s RailDOCS[TM]–Railway Daily Operations Control Systems.

10East built and demonstrated a fully-working model of the system in early 2002.

CSXT wanted to quickly improve these processes, which resulted in an unusually-large pilot project. CSXT’s entire Southern Region was chosen to pilot this program. The Southern Region is CSXT’s largest region, and required more than 300 hand-held computers for deployment to signal supervisors, maintainers and inspectors.

The railroad opted to use “train the trainer” and “peer training” methods to deploy this project.

In early October of 2002, the initial trainers were chosen from CSXT’s Jacksonville Division and given the first of the project’s hand-held computers. Those trainers, with support from 10East, began rolling out the system to the entire Jacksonville Division on November 11, 2002. Peer trainers were then chosen for the other divisions in the Southern Region. Training on the entire Southern Region was completed in mid-February 2003.

Added benefits

“The FRA requires us to periodically perform and document tests on signal appliances. The test period can vary anywhere from monthly to every 10 years, based upon equipment and location type,” said Craig King, CSXT assistant chief engineer-signal operations. “The age-old method of recording tests prior to this was on multi-part paper forms. Signal maintainers performing the test, as well as the signal inspector, and their signal supervisor, each received a copy of the paper form. With 87 signal supervisors, representing almost 1,100 workers, maintaining paper records for their individual territories was challenging and costly. You can also imagine the issues we had in gathering quantitative data to support management decisions. Short of going to the supervisor’s office, or having the supervisor send the tests to Jacksonville, there really wasn’t a good way to aggregate data system-wide.

“With our new electronic mobile system, records are maintained in a centralized data warehouse,” King said. “Anyone with an Internet-connected computer and system access rights can view information in real time. We can see statistics that cover every signal asset in our entire infrastructure right down to an individual test on a single asset. And it’s available in seconds. Now we have a proactive way to manage a very tough job.

“In addition to eliminating the cost of paper forms, along with all the associated labor that a paper system commanded, we now have a higher level of intelligence at less cost. Now, through the normal course of business, I have records of every signal appliance we test, and the data is refreshed as of the day of my most recent test”, he said.

King noted that the transition from paper to electronic methods has been fairly smooth.