Narrator: Home of the largest rail yard in the world. Union Pacific's Bailey Yard.

Cameron Scott:
The yard is approximately 3,500 acres. It's 8 miles long, about 2 miles wide. No other rail facility like
it in the world. Narrator: Rail yards are the hubs of railroad operations. Here, freight cars from across
the system are funneled in, sorted, and then reassigned to new trains that will bring them closer to
their final destination. Cameron Scott: Just about anything that's produced in the United States is
shipped by rail, so, if you're talking about wine or cheese, fresh vegetables, televisions, radios,
automobiles, automobile parts, you name it, just about everything that America uses on a daily basis
comes through North Platte. Narrator: The Bailey Yard is strategically located in the center of the
Union Pacific rail network. The place is so large, you can't see more than a third of it from any point
in the yard. Well, that is, except from the computer screens of the command center, where all rail
activity on the yard is monitored. Kelly Seachord: What we do in the BCC, Bailey Command Center,
is coordinating the movement of between 130 and 180 trains per day. Narrator: Utilizing the latest
computer based controls, the center monitors all traffic over Bailey Yard's 315 miles of track. In
addition to locomotive movements, workers process 10,000 freight cars through the yard each day.
For some of these cars, their first stop is one of the two classification yards, or hump yards. Jake
Linderman: This is where we process eastbound trains. Trains that come in to North Platte are going
to be sorted here to their forward destinations, so we are taking these cars apart that have come in
on a train, and then we're sorting them to go out destinations further points from here. Narrator: The
hump is a three story, man made hill that allows up to four cars a minute to roll into its bowl. Jake
Linderman: Gravity pulls them off the hill, the computer picks up the weight of the car as it goes over
the scale rails here. Narrator: The car then passes through a system of computerized retarders, or
brakes, that pinch the wheels as they go through to slow the car down Jake Linderman: It slows
them down accordingly not only to distance that it needs to travel to the other end but it also
computes how much distance is left in the rail. The computer will go all the way from 12 miles an
hour down to 1 mile an hour if necessary to allow for safety and careful handling of the freight that's
inside these cars. It's pretty amazing that the amount of tonnage that's going over this hill, how softly
it's handled down here when it hits the bottom end of things. Narrator: The destination of each car is
entered into a computer that automatically switches the track, so the car rolls directly onto its
assigned rail. Jake Linderman: At the trim tower at the other end of the bowl are trim crews, and
what they do is, they actually build the trains that are going to leave North Platte. So we take them
apart here, they put them back together down there. Narrator: Remote controlled switch engines,
less powerful locomotives used for switching cars in a rail yard, assemble the trains when enough
freight cars going to a single location have been humped. Jake Linderman: The hump used to be the
focal point of the railroad yard. Pretty much all traffic was handled in this fashion. What's changed
that has taken the pressure off of this are trains like you see leaving over there. They leave their
originating point all in one big chunk. They arrive at their destination in one big chunk. Narrator: Unit
freight, or an entire train consisting of the same type of freight, like a coal train, is treated differently,
since it doesn't need to be reassigned. For unit freight, there are 26 run through tracks, some with
pad areas, which allow trains to pull up, refuel and depart without having to detach from the
locomotive. Cameron Scott: Every train that comes in must have a mechanical inspection by our car
forces. We have a NASCAR pit team concept for our locomotives. They're a team of five men and
women that attack each locomotive that comes in. Whether it had to be fueled, the oil has to be
checked, they shine the windshields, they get the locomotive ready to go. Larry Odean: Our goal is
to do it in 45 minutes, to service a train completely. And then we expect the train crew to be here as
soon as we drop our protection, which is blue flags. Narrator: In addition to these pit stops, the
Bailey Yard boasts a locomotive repair depot the size of five football fields. Cameron Scott: This is
not a heavy duty repair facility. What we do here is quarterly maintenance, semi annual, annual, and
tri annual standard maintenance on our locomotives. Narrator: And just as importantly, rail cars are
serviced at the Bailey Yard, as well. Cameron Scott: Part of the issue we have with derailments on
occasion are our wheels or axles failing en route, and so our car department employees really focus
in on the conditions of wheels and axles as they're coming through our run through facilities. Casey
Dyer: On a daily basis, we're averaging between 55 and 60 wheel sets changed out a day here at
North Platte. And inspect over 13,000 freight cars a day through this facility. Narrator: The Bailey
Yard is home to 4,000 Union Pacific employees who work around the clock, 365 days a year, to keep
freight moving. Cameron Scott: There's an absolute production mandate at North Platte whether it's
rain, snow, sun, blizzard, high winds, we must hit those production targets, because if we don't, we
will back up the railroad on both sides, and we cannot have that kind of impact on the Union Pacific
system. Narrator: The Bailey Yard may be the largest rail yard, servicing the largest railroad in North
America, but it's also a mammoth cog in a much larger machine. We're talking about a $40 billion
dollar a year industry, where 96 cents of every dollar made by the railroads comes from freight. A
system so large, it encompasses over 140,000 miles of track. And extends to nearly every corner of
the continental United States. But it's more than that. It's 22,000 locomotives and 1.3 million freight
cars. It's trains, 100 cars long, extending over a mile and a half. It's 1.8 billion tons of freight crossing
the country each year. And it was the movement of freight that was the driving force behind the
creation of the railroad. The railroad business was born in the form of rudimentary horse drawn
carts, like these, maneuvering over rails in coal mines and stone quarries in the 1820's. Nick Kallas:
The whole principle is that you have steel wheels on steel rails, and that lowers the coefficient of
friction. You could pull more with less power on a steel rail than if you were trying to pull a wagon
over the mud or dirt roads. Narrator: Railways that utilized horses to move public goods soon
emerged. Nick Kallas: After 1830 with the Tom Thumb and the first successful steam engines, the
best friend of Charleston and those early ones, they proved that steam was reliable and more
powerful than horsepower. Narrator: Steam engines quickly replaced horses and mules on rail
operations. And it didn't take long for railroad entrepreneurs to set their sights on capturing the
American freight business. A market cornered by the growing East Coast canals. Jim Boyd: Just
about the time it was taking them to build the canals to a standard where they would be really useful,
you could build a railroad next to the canal and just beat the pants off the canal boats with a train,
and the railroads simply technologically replaced the canals almost overnight. Narrator: Laborers
built tracks as fast as humanly possible. By the 1850s, railroad tracks extended from the East Coast
to the Great Lakes. In 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory
Summit, Utah, and completed the Transcontinental Railroad. Jim Boyd: The railroad business
expanded very rapidly, because you could make a lot of money at it. There was hardly a holler in
West Virginia that didn't have a branch line reaching a coal mine. There was hardly a hill or valley in
the Pacific Northwest that didn't have a lumber railroad in it. Narrator: Railroads changed the
landscape of America, creating new towns along their tracks, supplying the new population with
building materials and other necessities, and carrying far flung crops to markets back east. Jim
Boyd: They could send their money and their gold and stuff back from California to the bankers in
the East, so they could sit there on Wall Street and count their money. This was all because of the
railroads. And people out west could get fancy French fashions from Broadway in New York, and
have it delivered to Market Street in San Francisco. All of the things that people wanted and needed
could be brought in by train. Narrator: Into the 20th century, railroads continued to expand and
develop faster than any other industry in the country. Jim Boyd: What separates the United States
from the rest of the world is that the American railroads were all private enterprise. They were all
private companies, highly competitive companies, often run by robber barons who would have
financial wars and the whole business. Narrator: Due to the infighting among the rival railroads, no
cohesive system existed to move freight efficiently across the various independently owned lines.
Jim Boyd: During the First World War, there was concern that the railroads wouldn't be able to keep
up with the demand for service. The federal government took over the operation of the railroads
under the United States Railway Administration. Their idea was to standardize railroad operating
procedures, and try to make the railroads more efficient. Narrator: Soon after the war, the
government returned the rails to private enterprise. 20 years later, by World War II, the collection of
independent railroads operated as a coordinated system, and no government intervention was
needed. The steel backbone of the nation played its part in winning the war, but by the 1950's, the
railroad's monopoly on freight transportation was quickly eroding. Trucking and the newly created
Interstate Highway System threatened to derail the railroads. Jim Boyd: Then the railroads, which
were a network of little feudal domains of different railroads, all competing with each other in a
system that was set up to compete among each other, were suddenly having to compete with a new,
outside competitor. Narrator: Railroads responded by merging, as well as upgrading and
modernizing. And today, freight trains are still the number one way to move goods long distances.
But to keep themselves on top, their locomotives would need a 21st century overhaul. Just inside the
doors of General Electric's Building 10 in Erie, Pennsylvania, 208 ton, 4,400 horsepower diesel
electric beasts are coming to life. These low emission locomotives are slated to be the workhorses of
the global freight rail industry for the next 20 years. General Electric needs approximately 26 days to
completely build one of these steel giants. The last 12 days are spent in this final assembly building.
Pete Lawson: This is station one, the first station of a four station final assembly process for the
locomotive. In station one, you can see where the platform is brought in and inverted in the upside
down position. Narrator: It's here that workers install sensitive electronics and piping to the
undercarriage. Next is a staging area for pre built components, waiting to be installed. Pete Lawson:
This is an example of the Evolution series engine that is really the heart and soul of the Evolution
series locomotive. Narrator: The 4,400 horsepower diesel engine produces with 12 cylinders what
the previous engines needed 16 cylinders to accomplish. Pete Lawson: The new Evolution series
locomotive engine is three percent more fuel efficient than its predecessor engines. The average
locomotive will burn approximately 350,000 gallons a year, and if you expand that over a 20 year life,
the three percent improvement in fuel efficiency correlates to about 200,000 gallons less diesel fuel
is burned over the life of the product. Narrator: With the frame now upright, the engine and other
components are ready to be put in place. Pete Lawson: This is really where the locomotive assembly
process turns into an automated assembly line. The platform from station one is brought down and
put in its upright position. Here we will start to place the individual cabs and components on the
platform and start to do the final assembly of the locomotive. Narrator: The locomotive starts taking
shape as it advances down the line, in what workers call the world's largest air hockey table. Pete
Lawson: What happens is we'll connect an air hose to the air jacks. The air will slightly elevate the
locomotive platform and move it down from one work station to the other, which is kind of impressive
when you think of, as it nears the final work station, it's over 300,000 pounds. Narrator: But the 75
foot long, 16 foot high steel behemoths aren't finished yet. Pete Lawson: At this point, the locomotive
is essentially complete except for the truck assemblies. From here, we'll lift the locomotive assembly
off the air jacks and take it over to station four. Narrator: A crane operator lifts the 150 ton locomotive
over the factory floor and deposits it gently onto a set of trucks, or wheel assemblies. Pete Lawson:
After the locomotive is completed in station four, it is brought back to one of our paint booths. As you
can see here, it's in the initial stages of being prepared for the final paint job. Each paint job is
specific to the customer that has ordered the locomotive. An example here is a finished paint job for
a BNSF locomotive. Narrator: This shiny new Goliath is much smarter and much cleaner than the
power and might that ruled the rails for nearly two centuries before it. Jim Boyd: The development of
the steam locomotive was both evolutionary and revolutionary. The biggest problem initially was
finding the proportions, the proportions between the boiler, the cylinders, the drivers and the linkage
mechanisms. The first locomotive that really got it all right in the right proportions was a locomotive
called the John Bull. Narrator: Mechanics put the John Bull into commission in 1831, and it became
the first locomotive ever to be duplicated. But the wood burning model was quickly outmoded, as
locomotives increased rapidly in size and power. Nick Kallas: Wood was used generally in the
American railroads until some time right after the Civil War. What happened was that a lot of
territories that the railroads were going in, in the prairies and the plains, there weren't any trees
around. Narrator: Most locomotives introduced at the end of the 19th century burned coal. Nick
Kallas: Back in those days, about every three, four years, you'd get a larger locomotive. They just
kept advancing the technology every couple of years. It's like your automobile, somebody would
come out with a new model, and the railroads would try it out and find out that, yeah, this is pretty
efficient, and we'll buy some of these. Narrator: Early 20th century locomotives easily dwarfed their
predecessors. Their size and power may have changed drastically. However, there were few
fundamental changes in how they worked. Pressurized steam enters one side of the cylinder and
pushes the piston away. A valve shifts the steam to the other side and forces the piston back. A
series of connected rods convert the piston's back and forth motion to the rotational motion of the
wheels. By the Second World War, the steam locomotive had reached its pinnacle of technological
development. They were a source of pride for the men who had a chance to work on them. Bernie
O'Brien: I worked 51 years for the D&H, several other owners in the interim, and finally the Canadian
Pacific. I worked 22 years with the tools, so to speak, as a fireman and an engineer. I like to call
them glorious years now that they're over. The D&H owned 40 fantastic Challenger type
locomotives. I guess it was the biggest power that operated in the northeast part of the country. I
can't think of anybody that had anything bigger. Gorgeous, gorgeous machines. Narrator: By the
time Bernie O'Brien started on the railroads in 1948, his days as a fireman and on steam
locomotives were numbered. Jim Boyd: Diesel was introduced in the 1920's. It was not considered to
be a real road worthy locomotive. They were used as switch engines, they were used in specialties,
they were used in light weight streamliners, but they weren't really considered a threat. Bernie
O'Brien: When the first RS-2s - that was the type of locomotive that D&H bought. And somebody
was telling me they were going to replace the Challengers. I just couldn't believe it. I laughed
because the RS-2 locomotive sitting alongside the Challenger was like a giant and a small person,
you know? Jim Boyd: The Electro-motive Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio, decided that until they
could replace a full size steam locomotive with a diesel, the diesel wasn't going to get anywhere. So,
in 1939, they created the FT freight diesel, which was a two unit diesel, had two 16 cylinder engines
rated at 1,350 horsepower each, and that locomotive single handedly killed the steam engine. Bernie
O'Brien: It was a sad thing for me to see that happen. Our last Challengers were only six years old
when they phased them out of service, which is just pretty hard to believe. Jim Boyd: The steam
locomotive did not fail as a machine because it wasn't a good puller of freight. The steam locomotive
was extremely labor intensive, and it required a lot of care. The diesel is like your automobile; it's
automatic. You fire it up, and it goes. Narrator: The mechanics of a diesel locomotive are very
different from those of a steam engine. In the cylinder, a fuel air mixture is compressed by the piston
to a point where it ignites. The explosion forces the piston down, which turns the crankshaft. An
alternator then converts the motion of the crankshaft into electrical power, which is fed down to
individual traction motors on each axle to turn the wheels of the locomotive. Nick Kallas: One of the
advantages of diesel power is that you could couple as many units together as you needed for
power to get it over the road. Just depends upon how much power you needed. One man controlled
all of those units. Narrator: Like their steam predecessors, each generation of diesel electric
locomotives continued to outpace the last. Today's freight locomotives are able to haul more tonnage
than ever. But it's a feat that requires more than just horsepower, especially when you're going over
one of the most treacherous routes in North America. With its punishing uphill grade, tight curves
and steep descent, Southern California's Cajon Pass is one of the most treacherous railroad routes
in the United States. Patrick Marquez, a locomotive engineer for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe,
must make this grinding journey up the mountain pass several times a week. He does this with a
mile and a half of freight, which weighs upwards of 6,000 tons, trailing behind the engines. It's
normally a two man operation. A conductor, who serves as the manager of the train and its rolling
stock. Conductor: BNSF 7644 East on O'Brien. Over. Narrator: And the engineer, or train driver. But
for this grueling journey, a second engineer, with two helper locomotives, couples onto the rear of
the train to push it to the top of the hill. Patrick Marquez: Helpers are going to contact me and let me
know when he's getting release on the rear end of the train and then we'll leave. Radio: 7644
released. We're coming to get you. Patrick Marquez: Here we go, over. So, now he just gave me the
signal that air brakes are releasing. We come right off the brakes, give it some throttle and we take
off. As soon as we take this corner, you're going to notice our speed dropping dramatically, because
the hill, it's all the way up the summit. Narrator: The engines must provide 64,000 pounds of tractive
effort to propel the train forward. Ron Girard: The more power we exert into the traction motor, the
more likely that that wheel has the opportunity to spin. In order to keep it from spinning, we'll use
sand and that will put a grit or sandpaper underneath the wheel, so we don't have metal to metal.
And it'll keep it moving. Narrator: Today's locomotives are equipped with an electronic traction control
system. The system uses compressed air to spray sand from a nozzle in front of each wheel. Patrick
Marquez: If I spin my wheels the computer will sense a wheel slip - like on a car you feel it. You'll
also feel it in here. I'll get a little signal in here, it'll say "Wheel slip." One of the helpers clear block-
Narrator: Engineer Marquez is in constant communication with the helper locomotive engineer at the
back of his train. Patrick Marquez: If we didn't pick up those helpers, we'd probably be getting a lot of
wheel slip, the wheels would just be slipping, because we wouldn't have enough power to pull this up
the hill. Narrator: It takes a lot of effort to get more than 12 million pounds to the top of the hill.
Patrick Marquez: Gravity's pulling it that way, I'm trying to pull it that way, right? If we stopped out
here and if I released my brakes without giving it power we'd start rolling back. Narrator: With all the
tools on board to keep his train moving forward, Marquez can sit back and enjoy the ride to the top...
well, sort of. Patrick Marquez: That's an alerter. It's like a safety device. It's basically to keep me
awake. If I'm incapacitated somehow and the alerter times out, it'll apply the brakes at a service rate.
It'll just slow the train down gradually, and just come to a stop. I just hit this button, the alerter resets
it every time it pops up. If I do something with the throttle, the brakes, something like that, it'll reset it,
too. Because it's showing that I'm awake and I'm, I'll move the controls. Narrator: Marquez has to
stop his train at the summit, to let off the helper engines. Patrick Marquez: All I got to do is throttle
down and the train will stall out, come to a stop. Narrator: This stop was planned, but not all of them
can be. Ron Girard: If we're moving 20 miles an hour, and we're coming down a mountain grade
territory, and this train weighs roughly 6,000 tons or more, it could possibly take us a quarter of a
mile to stop the train in an emergency application. Narrator: And as every early railroader knew,
being unable to stop a speeding train was, well, a train wreck. Jim Boyd: The earliest railroads used
hand brakes of various types. Often this was as simple as a lever with a wooden block going against
a wheel. As the cars got bigger, they would go to what we would call a stem-winder that tightened a
chain that pulled iron shoes against the wheels. But they all had to be done by hand. Narrator: Every
five or six cars would have a brakeman who had to apply the brakes on each of his cars. Nick Kallas:
The brakeman was probably one of the most dangerous jobs in railroading because there was this
chance that you would be thrown off the car or lose your footing in that, but you had to walk from car
to car on the roofs of the cars, applying the hand brakes in order to stop the train. Jim Boyd: But
back then, the workers were considered expendable and that's what it took to stop trains. Narrator:
In 1866, George Westinghouse took on the challenge of finding a more effective way to stop a train.
By 1873, he developed, what remains to this day, one of the most significant safety inventions of all
time. The automatic air brake. The air brakes on a freight train are supplied with compressed air from
the locomotive. As the air reservoir in each car fills, it trips a valve to release the brakes on that car.
Only when the last car disengages its brakes can the train move. The system is fail safe, as any
reduction of this air pressure such as a rupture in the air supply hose, causes the brakes to be
applied. When diesel electric replaced the steam locomotive, it brought with it another revolutionary
technology: dynamic braking to supplement air brakes. Back at the Cajon Pass, Engineer Marquez
relies upon dynamic braking to start his downhill descent. Patrick Marquez: I'm in dynamic braking
now, and it just turns the traction motors into big resistors. Narrator: Instead of feeding power to the
wheels, the traction motors now take power from the wheels. This energy is dissipated as heat. The
under powered traction motors have become hard to turn, thereby providing resistance to the
wheels, slowing the train. Patrick Marquez: The more I move this lever forward, it demands more
amps, which basically slows the motors down, adds resistance to them. So, they're the ones slowing
us down now. Which means I've got to be prepared to add more amps to keep my train under
control. Narrator: Dynamic brakes are very useful on downgrades and save a considerable amount
of wear on air brake shoes, thus lowering maintenance costs. Patrick Marquez: Gravity's just pulling
us downhill. Like I said, I have a resistance on my head end, because I turn these traction motors
into, to resisters, so the wheels are turning them. I'm trying to slow us down. The engines are trying
to slow us down. The train's just pushing against our engine, and I could control my speed with
dynamic brakes. As we get faster, if I don't want to go too fast, I'll add more dynamic brakes, trying to
slow down or keep our speed constant. If I want to gain some speed, I can reduce my dynamic
braking, which means the wheels will turn easier on the engines. That means gravity will shove
more. Narrator: But the dynamic brakes may not be enough to keep this freight train from becoming
a roller coaster ride. Patrick Marquez: I'm in full dynamic brakes. I'm demanding 35 kilo pounds from
my motors and all that resistance, the train's just going too fast. I'm just going to keep picking up
speed unless I do something. So, now, I'll slow my train down with some air brakes. Narrator:
Essentially, he's riding the brakes the rest of the journey down. When Marquez's 6,000 ton train
reaches the bottom, it becomes yet another train that has successfully negotiated the Cajon Pass
and transported hundreds of freight containers over the mountains. The containers it carries are
significant beyond the goods they hold. With the increase in imports coming from Asia, these freight
containers have come to rejuvenate the railroad industry. Over seven million containers enter the
ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach every year. More than anywhere else in the United States.
They are intermodal loads, containers designed to flow easily from one mode of transport to another.
They have revolutionized and revitalized the rail industry. Chris Chase: Intermodal containers are an
extension of the container ship operations that are here at the port of Los Angeles. Containers come
off the ship, they move on to the dock, and then they're either moved out by truck or moved out by
rail. Narrator: Over 50 trains leave the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on a daily basis,
each carrying approximately 220 containers. That keeps about 11,000 trucks off congested Los
Angeles freeways every day. Chris Chase: The advent of trade with Asia, especially in the last 20
years, and specifically China in the last 10, has doubled the amount of volume that is coming into the
West Coast ports over that period of time. The container trains have really been a way to be an
outlet for that for large volumes. Intermodal train traffic coming out of the ports is expected to double
to 100 trains daily in the next two decades. John Doherty: Over 60 percent of the cargo that comes
through these ports, containerized cargo, in the form of imports, is destined for the rest of the nation.
The first stop, or the first passage, if you will, for that traffic is on the Alameda Corridor as it heads
east to service the rest of the nation. Narrator: The 20 mile long corridor is essentially an expressway
for trains connecting the ports to rail yards east of the city. John Doherty: This 10 mile section that
we fondly refer to as The Trench, was kind of the crown jewel of the program. It's 10 miles long,
represents about one half the length of the overall corridor. Narrator: In the trench, trains travel
unimpeded beneath city traffic. A journey that once took almost two hours has been cut to only 45
minutes. John Doherty: It's really a national asset. What the Alameda Corridor represents is probably
one of the strongest links in the transcontinental rail network at this point in time. Narrator:
Intermodal freight has surpassed coal as the number one revenue generator for the rail industry. The
articulated well car, designed to carry intermodal containers, helped railroads remain relevant in the
competitive world of freight transportation. Each car is able to fit one container in a depressed well
area, with another resting on top. The well area lowers the height of the load, allowing it to make
bridge and tunnel clearances, as well as lowering its center of gravity. Chris Chase: The double
stack opportunity provides two for the price of one in a given car space, so the loading volumes can
increase. The cost per unit drops and makes the rail a very, very efficient and cost effective way to
move cargo. Narrator: Of course, the well car isn't the first freight car to fill a special need. The
earliest freight cars were simple platforms with wheels attached. But soon enough, sides were
added. Mike McBride: This particular type of car here is a "gon-dough-la." Now it's "gon-dough-la",
not "gon-dah-la", all those are in Venice. There are none on America's railroads. This particular type
of car was one of the earlier types of cars. Narrator: But gondolas were no match for harsh winters,
extremely hot summers, and long treks between settled areas of the U.S. This called for an enclosed
car. Thus, the boxcar, an icon of American freight railroading, was born. Boxcars often functioned as
rolling billboards for the railroads they serve. Mike McBride: Boxcars were modified into several
other car types. With open slats on the side, it was modified into a cattle car to carry cattle. With
heavy insulation and ice bunkers in either end, it could be used as a refrigerator car to haul
perishable items. Narrator: Reefers, or refrigerator cars, changed the way America ate. Mike
McBride: The refrigerator car was essentially an icebox on wheels. This worked well until the advent
of the frozen food industry. Enter the mechanical refrigerator car. In the early 1950's, a small diesel
engine was used to power a refrigeration device. The cars then became, instead of iceboxes on
wheels, actual refrigerators on wheels. This spelled the doom of the iced reefer. Narrator: The rail
industry was able to accommodate just about every market in the United States. The petroleum age
led to the introduction of the tank car. The automobile revolution led to the emergence of the auto
rack. The piggyback, or TOFC, trailer on flatcar, was developed in response to trucking competition
in the 1950's. But with the proliferation of freight car designs came the demise of another railroad
car. The caboose. Jim Boyd: Radios made possible to work with fewer people. So you didn't need
four or five people to run a train. You could run a train pretty effectively with two or three people. The
caboose became an unnecessary appendage on the rear of the train. Narrator: Technology caught
up with the caboose in the form of FRED. Nick Kallas: FRED means flashing rear end device. For
the men who lost their jobs as a result of this, the "F" had a different connotation. Narrator: The
Dumb FRED can be anything from a blinking light to a simple red flag stuck on the end of the last
car. Smart FRED, or the end of train device, as it came to be called, can radio information about the
air line pressure, as well as let the engineer know what the cars at the end of the train are doing. But
it's not just the end of the train that's gotten smarter. Railroad operations are moving full throttle to
the very cutting edge of the information age. At any given time, there are thousands of trains snaking
their way across the North American continent. Their paths intersect. They share some of the same
rail, and may even use the same line in opposing directions. It may sound like a train wreck just
waiting to happen. But every move of every train is closely monitored and calculated by dispatchers
located at operations centers throughout the United States. Danny Reynolds: The train crew has a
responsibility to operate the train. But the train dispatcher gives them the route to run on. Narrator:
Train dispatchers are the rulers of the rails, and no move can be made without their authorization.
BNSF Railway's Network Operations Center is command central for the dispatchers of one of the
largest railroads in North America. Danny Reynolds: The facility is 45,000 square feet, about the size
of a football field. We house, at any given time, about 225 employees. There's 94 different
dispatching work stations. Narrator: Each dispatcher's territory is 200 to 500 miles and their planning
horizon is two to three hours ahead. Danny Reynolds: He or she has a screen with a track layout on
the computer screen and it's all point and click. The dispatcher can point to a switch or a route and
direct that train's movement over that with just a point and click operation. Narrator: This way, it's the
dispatcher that selects the path of the train, not the engineer. So it's imperative that the dispatchers
know exactly where their trains are at all times. Danny Reynolds: We've got two different tracking
mechanisms. One's through the signal system that actually tracks trains through electric current in
the rail. It brings the information into the train dispatchers' dispatching system, and then secondly,
we've got a wireless AEI, Automatic Equipment Identification, that wirelessly transmits information
into the train dispatcher and gives him or her location and route. Shannon McGovern: This is
basically an RFID that we place on all the rail cars, all the locomotives, on every rail car in North
America. BNSF has around 500 AEI readers. And as the trains go by these readers, it energizes the
tag and captures what car that is, or what locomotive that is, and then we use that information to
update our mainframe and identify exactly what's on the train at that point in time. Narrator: Within a
few seconds of a train going by a reader, the information's available to the dispatchers at the
Network Operations Center, as well as to customers online. But since readers may be up to 100
miles apart, and conductors set out cars at various points along the route, dispatchers need even
more accurate reporting. Shannon McGovern: BNSF on a daily basis has somewhere around 1,200
trains running at any point in time. Basically, if they aren't going by a reader, they're reporting a lot of
their information through the Voice Train Reporting application. Narrator: The application
automatically converts verbal information into computer data. Shannon McGovern: So they basically
just use the radio that they have. They tell us what they did. Within nine seconds, that information's
updated in our mainframe. Narrator: This information can be anything from picking up cars to leaving
cars out at various side tracks and yards along the route. Handheld computers are also used to
report car movement. Shannon McGovern: This would be very similar to what UPS does, in that
that's how they keep track of their packages. This is how we keep track of our rail cars. If you
consider a railcar is just a lot bigger package, this is basically where we track where we left the car,
when we left it there, and it's how we identify to the conductor "You need to go pick up that package."
Narrator: Railroads are now exploring innovative ways to utilize Wi-Fi and GPS technologies to
increase rail safety. Danny Reynolds: An example of a safety initiative is Electronic Train
Management System, or ETMS as we call it. Narrator: ETMS is a virtual safety net for the train and
has the ability to independently slow down or even stop a train electronically. Danny Reynolds: The
locomotive onboard system would have the authority that's granted to the train, the speed, the
distance that they have to travel with the authority that's been issued. Narrator: The system
automatically takes control of the train if the engineer exceeds the authority given to him by the
dispatcher, fails to acknowledge a signal, or even if he's about to take a curve too quickly. The
system constantly monitors information about the path ahead of the train and determines what
actions are required from the engineer. It gives a warning to the engineer if he's not taking the
appropriate action to stop or slow down the train. Danny Reynolds: If they violate that or don't react
to stop the train before they get to the end of their authority, it'll automatically stop the train. Narrator:
Once implemented, ETMS will allow railroads to run trains more safely and efficiently. So as we
move deeper into the 21st century, we can be sure that the rail industry will continue to be the best
and most cost effective way to move freight.