US railroad uses Wi-Fi to run ‘driverless’ trains
PrintWorld's biggest train set?
Posted in Wireless, 20th November 2003 11:39 GMT
Free whitepaper – Enhancing retail operations with unified communications
The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company (BNSF) has found a novel use for Wi-Fi. It has started using the wireless networking technology to control trains remotely.
BNSF locomotives carry freight across the continental US. However, it is using wireless technology to move units around its rail yards. It reckons the system is more efficient - presumably one driver can run multiple locos from the same seat in the yard control centre - and a darn sight safer than putting drivers inside the engines, the Fort Worth, Texas-based company claims.
Instead, they operate a control panel that mirrors what they'd see if they were sitting in the cab. Their instructions are relayed to each loco via the "industrial strength" WLAN.
"You can even blow the horn," says BNSF CIO Jeff Campbell in a throwaway line included in an interview with Computerworld concerning the company's dealings with cellular providers.
Beat that, Hornby. ®
Related Stories
France to roll out Wi-Fi on high-speed train lines
Silicon Valley to get US' first Wi-Fi train
GNER to spend £1m on Wi-Fi trains
Wi-Fi gets on the right track
Related Products
Buy Wireless, 802.11 & WiFi products from The Reg mobile store
Free whitepaper – The business value of SIP VoIP and trunking
Enabling The Agile Data Center
What Exchange can't do - and Dell can
Enhancing retail operations with unified communications
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
The business value of SIP VoIP and trunking
Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Fedora 12 polishes Linux for netbooks
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter