Railroad Wayside Equipment Explained: Automatic Equipment ID Scanner
Trains are are long and are getting longer all the time. Until a decade or so ago all those cars (and locomotives) were kept track of through a system that only identified them at terminals and if a car was sidetracked somewhere along the way, finding it could be a real problem.
The AEI (Automatic Equipment Identification) system changed all that. Cars and locomotives are now tracked by a radio communications network that scans them at regular intervals (about every 25 miles) and transmits that information to a central server.
No longer do clerks and managers have to drive around between two terminals which can be hundreds of miles apart to physically find a piece of equipment that may have been dropped at the wrong place or set out due to a problem.
I admit that I knew little about how this new system operated but with a little research and a couple of phone calls I had a better idea.
So, join me for an informational trip to an AEI site!
North Bakersfield CPSP311 35deg 23'53"N 119deg 01' 19"W