The Western Railway Museum has its Boeing Vertol LRV in the shop, and I discovered much to my shock and surprise that the unit is equipped with ATO (Automatic Train Operation). This was added in the last year or two of its service life. The system will accelerate, brake, open and close doors, etc. Once, an operator left his cab to talk to the supervisor in Embarcadero station, and his train pulled out without him! It traveled 3 stops, loading and unloading passengers before someone intervened. (would've gone all the way to West Portal if they hadn't.)

Once we install the requisite wayside equipment, we're hoping the ATO system will reduce our requirement for operators! OK, just kidding about that...

but all this business in L.A. makes me wonder. What if the FRA finally drops the ATC hammer and requires all passenger territory to be ATC? What would that do to museums? Surely some equipment in preservation is ATC/ATS... I wouldn't put it past IRM to wire up ATS on their railroad. But what would that be like for the rest of us? Is that likely?

The new FRA regulations coming down the pike will require all Class 1's to have some type of PTC in the future. I have a feeling the FRA will require it for track of a certain class or greater (3 maybe?)

As for museums, very few of the museums I've been to go over 20mph so, the FRA won't require anything from them. Low speed and low traffic is not what the FRA is going after with the new PTC laws.

There is a more profound effect that the wishes of FRA, et al, when it comes to the possible operation of "modern" light rail cars in the museum environment.

Such vehicles are loaded with all sort of electronics, computers, and high tech stuff. Any decent museum maintenance crew can deal with K control cars and PCCs. But are they prepared to deal with obsolete processor chips, thousands of lines of computer code in obscure languages, including code that the vendors considered proprietary? Will you have the test fixtures and automated test gear to deal with maybe 50 different varieties of printed circuit boards? How about a/c systems that use the banned R12 freon? Will you get with such a car the huge number of spare parts it will require to operate reliabily, if at all?

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum does have several such cars on our long term wish list. But practicality suggests that they might end up as static exhibits, if not initially, then more certainly for the long term.

ATO has its place in the real transit industry, but not in the museum world.