This is an issue I have discussed before with my friends, and it maybe has been brought up here before; but how well are we prepared for in another 15-20 years or so to preserve post 1990's (or even 1980's onwards) diesels and onward with their heavy software focus? While I certainly don't know if EMD/Progress Rail or GE/WABTEC locomotive software is built to be user friendly or not since I have no personal hands on experience, this video about McDonald's ice cream machines highlights the risks of when major corporations design software to intentionally cause an industrial product to fail for the purpose of forcing the user to call an expensive repair technician.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4&t=4s

So lets say the year in 2041, and your a railroad museum with a SD70ACe that was just donated by one of the Class One railroads to you. We can even imagine it as a high profile engine, like one of the UP or NS Heritage Units that would have a large railfan demand to see operational still. What happens when the engine throws a software error code? Would Progress Rail (or its successor) still have a service department for that engine type? Would it be prohibitively expensive for a railroad to call a registered technician? Or will the software be considered abandonware, and preservation will need the aid of skilled hackers to bypass the issues to get the engine running? How would rail preservation tackle this issue, and are we ready for the digital skill that may be required to preserve these locomotives in the future? Will there be open source code in the future that hackers and preservationists will have written to bypass original factory code?

I know it might be easy to point to say time honored GP7's or GP9's as a solution, to rely on older pre-digital tech that his not nearly as finicky. So do we plan to focus on mid-20th century tech just for its solely mechanical focus and exclude the digital/mechanical combined era from preservation? Or do we just plinth the digital engines to avoid the issue of digital code entirely?

I would think that you could get a backup copy of the software and tools with the locomotive. What I seem to recall is that you’d need a computer of some type with the proper interface cable to diagnose or install software, kinda like plugging into the OBD port on your car. Can’t imagine it being much different. I could be full of hooey, though.

I gotta say - not looking forward to this at all. However, we live in a day and age where many more people know even basic coding as compared to when the first SD70s and dash-9s hit the rails; so i'd believe that in time this could become easier

.

I bet you can still buy French fries. And you better have a concession stand after your patrons smell the exhaust....

The electronics specialist for our local transit agency tells me there are more that two dozen software packages in use on their locomotives and cars. He keeps a variety of older computers on hand to service these systems. There is a very active business in Windows 98SE computers based around more modern hardware for people who work with older software.

PC

Railroading isn't rocket science. The locomotives that broke down least, and were easiest to fix, had the best service records in the real world. They are still going to give the best service in preservation, and in the future. The models that caused trouble most in revenue service, when supported by a full line of spares, people in every craft that were used to working on them, and active tech support from their builders, are still going to cause the most trouble in a preservation setting.

Likewise, the models that did the best job tended to be ordered in the largest numbers, stayed in service the longest, and there are more people that know how to work on them. There are more derelict units to canabalize, and parts tend to be easier to find. So, it is a lot more practical to preserve a common model as opposed to an oddball one in most cases. You also stand a better chance of getting one that has been rebuilt and rewired to begin with.

So, that means I vote for paragraph three of the first post in this thread. In addition, pretty much any EMD up through the dash twos would be a good choice, except those with 20 cylinder motors. The early GE switchers, 70 tons and smaller are as well. And, while my experience with ALCOs is very limited, I have to say that the RS-2 may be prehistoric, but it's one tough customer. You could do a lot worse.

Locomotives that require a rocket scientist to work on them are going to end up as expensive computer games on wheels... just wait and see.

This discussion reminds me of back in the early era of desk-top and personal computers when I was a member of the Society of California Archivists and at one of the conferences/programs computers and electronic data files were discussed.

It was stated that archivists had a concern about changing software and the ability to read files produced by programs that would be out-of-date in the future. Also they were also concerned with the stability of electronic storage. They knew about preserving paper and how some early microfilm was deteriorating.

This was back when the portable-sewing-machine-size Compact computer was latest thing -- remember those?

Not railroad-related, but until I retired in 2003, I had the last known "IBM" card reader at UC Berkeley. Made a few interesting acquaintenances who had found decks of cards which had to be saved, the data ended up on floppy disks.

The other issue is preserving the programs needed to read the data, or (probably better) archiving the data in stable formats which will survive well (we hope).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/clim ... epair.html
https://dawsoncountyjournal.com/blog/20 ... gislature/
A former employer dumped all of their Volvo semi trucks because of the proprietary software that continually stranded drivers, required them to be towed and prevented freight from being delivered. Most of the time it would say that the DEF/aftertreatment system was malfunctioning but it almost always wasn't, and Penske or regular truck stops didn't have the diagnostics to get the truck running again, so it had to be towed hundreds of miles to a Volvo/Mack dealer. I actually think that the reason the Class Is have been so resistant to using DEF in locomotives is not the cost of DEF or difficulties with supply but because they know about the problems semis have with the electronics.

Just my opinion, but the chances that a museum will be able to understand, modify, repair the software inside modern locomotives in 20 years approaches zero.

I have worked on complex software controlled systems from just 10 years ago where my employer controlled the "source code" (the basic wiring of a computer program) and the problem is there are many other "bits" and "pieces" like compilers, linkers, dynamic libraries, etc. that become obsolete in well less than a decade.

Think of a special wrench to adjust a fuel injector, you can probably find a drawing or an example to copy. With software libraries (usually a mashup of binary digits in a computer file) unless you have EXACTLY the library (version) used to create the computer program controlling the locomotive you can be shite out of luck.

So even if you got the EMD source code unless you have ALL the other parts (in exactly the versions used to create the final code) you will probably have no luck getting it to work.

Even changing the temperature where a computer controlled diesel decides it is too warm and shuts down to protect itself could be a nightmare.

I hate computers, and I used to design control systems using the industrial versions of them. Way too many details to attend to.

Compaq Computer company (founded in 1982, one year after the IBM PC was introduced) was the second company to successfully reverse engineer the IBM PC "BIOS" (Basic Input Output System).



The BIOS was the very first software that started running after you powered up the computer. It is stored in ROM (read only memory) and handled such simple tasks as allowing the operator to command the computer with the keyboard. The Control Alt Delete command is actually a bit of code in the BIOS that watches the keyboard input for that string of characters. That is how the Control Alt Delete string of keystrokes can cause a reboot of the system if DOS (showing my age) or Windows "hangs".

I would bet that it is nearly impossible to get all the software "bits" and "pieces" needed to compile and run a program on an original Compaq computer today. And that was a widely available (in it's day) computer.

Getting all the tools to debug/repair/modify the software in a small number of computers (counting computer controlled loco's) made by manufacturers that considered the software a "trade secret" in going to be very very painful.

Might be easier to get a steam engine running to run as a protection engine to keep the excursion train moving when the "modern" diesel loco computer decides to reboot half way to the destination.

About 2 years ago a grad student at Berkeley had to use the data in a large botanical database. The data (only copy, of course) was stored on over 300 floppy disks. Some computer consultants who had not retired referred him to me. I was unable to help him, the disks were 8-inch floppies which I had never seen or used, biggest ones I've used are 5.5".

Someone referred him to the Computer Museum in San Jose, CA. Fortunately, they found some on-call computer enthusiasts who were able to cobble together a system to read the floppies and transfer them to modern media. Apparently the data files were in a standard format.

This is an example of what can happen to old data and computers unless one is vigilant.

It's only going to get worse.

I remember seeing 8" floppies. 40-42 years ago is when I remember them. The water company was using a time-share computer for flow analysis and the data was prepared on such disks. I think this was prior to the first desk-top computer appeared in the office.

Collect as much of the source code and documentation as you can. Manage these artifacts as you would any other digital artifact like images, etc., hopefully not on the provided (eg: 8-inch floppy) storage environment.

Do not rule out in the future a smart person might come along and with the help of the documentation and source code that they use a hardware emulator, something akin to an Arduino, and use their own software to emulate unsupported or broken hardware in the locomotive to get it running. This makes your mission today to collect as much information and data as you can so that this can be done in the future.

Bob