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Don't laugh. Amtrak just started using iPhones for ticketing. This replaces some sort of system involving paper sheets and ticket punches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/techn ... .html?_r=1
Note the cost of the hardware (phones + service) is nothin' compared to development of the software/systems.

When I was traveling by rail in eastern Germany about 6 years ago, the Deutsche Bahn conductors used a hand-held scanner/printer/wireless-PC that apparently does everything: checks schedule, makes online ticket & seat reservations for connecting trains, processes payments (not all small rural train stations have ticket offices anymore), and prints tickets with the schedule on them. This was well before iPads were available.

I sometimes wonder why U.S. systems seem to be unaware of what is already available in Europe.

- Doug Debs

I also watch and post on a high-speed rail site dealing with the proposed system in California. Of this story, another poster there had this to say:

Nathanael Reply:
May 28th, 2012 at 7:08 pm

Amtrak’s been pouring a lot of money into modernizing / computerizing its processes; also going on at the same time as e-ticking are:
- conversion of the food service cars to point-of-sale inventory tracking (currently they hand-count inventory after EVERY train run)
- the back-end reservations system dating from the 70s is being (has been?) replaced, with one with fewer hard-coded limitations
- computerizing fault reports for the rolling stock and transmitting them over the Internet directly to the maintenance staff
- computerizing the records of replacement and maintenance for every part in the rolling stock
- integrating all of this with a revised accounting system

This is all good stuff. Unfortunately it’s been consistently over-budget and late, but huge IT conversion projects do tend to be like that; at least every project so far has actually gotten finished and accomplished its goal (IT projects often get cancelled halfway through.)

....just means more unemployed Americans.

This isn't exactly preservation.

My bad. I should have guessed the subject would take a left turn.

The reason I raised it was to note what it's doing to that last bastion of historical practice: the ticket punch.

Let me bring it back to a historical context. Passenger railroading in the U. S. has long been late to adopt anything new. I clearly remember the big news at a railroad club meeting around 1968 or '69 was that (I believe) C&O/B&O was starting to take credit cards for meal service (dining cars only, and only Diner's Club cards). I believe that they still didn't take credit cards for ticket sales that late. This would have been in the Reistrup/Howes era at B&O/C&O, who were both trying to save the service by innovating, so I'm fairly confident of the carrier.

So, nothing new under the Sun with Amtrak being late to the technology party.