After a Federal mandate and years of investment, the Class I railroads have finally given up on PTC.

"We agree with the reasons the government wants it", said Stephen Rogers, KCS Technologies. "But we're spinning in circles at this point. It's just not coming together, and they never should have legislated this particular technology. Now, late in the game, we just can't hit their deadline, and I question why we really should be trying, and today, the railroads decided on a change in plan." They say they've found an alternate technology that does the same thing off the shelf. It's called Digital Command Control, or DCC.

"Why didn't we think of this before?" remarked Rogers. When we asked Anthony Stark of UPI, he said, "We did. We've had people inside the DCC working group all along. First to lend our expertise, then to have a plan 'B' in case this stupid PTC turns into a government fiasco, which I have to say, saw that coming."

Implementation has been going smoothly. While it does require a track overlay circuit, it's a simple module at low cost. Rogers reports "We like the MRC Prodigy, but they apparently were surprised by our orders and have struggled to manufacture the quantity we need. Our alternates are the Bachmann or Atlas units."

It turns out DCC kits are already available for every locomotive in the railroad fleets. "No problem getting an SW1500 or even a GP9. It's amazing, the control board is the size of your thumb, by which I mean your thumb," reported Buck "Hulky" Banner, chief mechanic at the diesel ramp in Proviso. "The power and control requirements are a little peculiar, but nothing we can't handle. There are these two terminals marked 'sound' that we really had no idea what to do with. We had a locomotive with a PA system, so we hooked it up to that. We think it's some sort of active noise cancellation system, but we must have reversed the polarity because it actually makes the engine sound ferocious, like a total boss. We're thinking of doing that on all our units, so take that, Mr. trespasser-wearing-headphones."

Another valued feature is remote control. In contrast with remote controls of the past, railroads are finding that a DCC wireless remote controller was only $229 on Amazon.com. There's also an app for iPhones and Android.

Supplies are tight, though, and two railroads are buying modules from rail modelers. "We're paying $45 each for the Bachmann or $40 each for an Atlas module, and you're building Ameri-- I mean, it's how tomorrow moves." commented Tasha Romanov of CSX. "Check out our website for the offer, U--- sorry C S X dot com."

Don't forget to meet Tier 4 by installing the smoke module.

What, no quotes from Anthony Quill or Phil Jarvis? ;)

In other news, the BLET is apparently complaining that DCC technology is being adopted in part to remove the traditional role of the engineer entirely. "We have observed an increasing, and alarming, trend in scale railroading toward the use of remote devices -- transformers or programmers -- for train control. In conjunction with announced use of drone technology (for example the BNSF octocopter experiments) we are concerned that an increasing use of virtualization will be taking place, at the clear expense of safety and convenience."

A source at a major think tank, however, mentioned that the adoption of DCC technology clearly led to potential advantages for more cost-effective electrification of American mainlines. Preston "Cookie" Button said "We observe that many DCC locomotives operate effectively from power supplied to the rails without requiring modulation of the voltage directly. Leveraging this effect to produce operational optimixation will lead to potential gains with high current levels of power utilization." (Or something like that; there was static on the connection that made it hard to understand exactly what he was saying.) He continued, or attempted to, "There will also be a potential effect on incentives for reduced trespassing, particularly if we can impose a square-wave overlay at audio frequencies to induce signal directly in headphones or other audio apparatus, for example radios or even speaker wiring in automobiles. We are experimenting now with the modulation of two frequencies, for example 853 and 960 Hertz that has been proven by the Government to work as an effective Attention Signal."