I'm curious to learn if anyone who moves historic rail equipment over class 1s has installed tracking technology so as to know the current location of the equipment? I am considering affixing a tracking system to the Armco B-71 when it makes its way from Minnesota to Ohio as we plan to follow it on its journey eastward.

I found this one offered online that retails for $149.99 and costs $19.99 per month for the tracking service.
http://foxtraxgps.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=32 Works anywhere there is AT&T or T-Mobile coverage, which about covers the entire route.
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/#?type=voice

Anyone have any experience with GPS tracking systems or knows of competing services I should look into?

I have been involved two shipments The first was for a leased locomotive from the Ohio Valley to Southeast Tennessee. The locomotive owner placed the unit on the engine and we were able to follow the movment all the way to the destination city where it stopped and then went on to the next major terminal.

I was later involved in the movement of a five car over size load movement between Ontario and the SE. The cars were to be interchanged in the Detroit Area where they sat even while the shipper was being told the cars were being moved. I had recommended a system be installed on this shipment and the shipper used the same system as the locomotive movement. We were able to track the shipment as it was switched from track to track and with the birds eye view even knew what was track and signal layout. There was one point where we were told that the shipment was on its way to the interchange yard but I was able to say that it had been sitting at a signal for the past several hours. In most cases we knew what was going on before the customer service or computer tracking did. I won't ship anything of value, or out of the ordinary (locos, passenger cars, etc) without a tracking system. Its the next best thing to being there.

The system we used was by Lat-Lon, www.lat-lon.com

Tim Andrews

SS -

Back when l worked for a steel company, I could check on shipments to my customers using the car tracing phone numbers for the railroads handling the shipment. It's been over 10 years now since I used these systems. Are they still in place and if so, does anyone have the phone numbers for the various railroads? The main thing is that these systems were free! And yes, I traced some donated cars shipped to the museum, when such equipment could still run over the railroad system.

Les

Tim,

I just checked the Lat-Lon website. I am going to contact them Monday.

Les,

The car trace systems are still in place and have been upgraded to utilize online tracing as well. However, the railroad tracing systems rely upon the car passing by a trackside AEI reader, and these are usually placed near yards and terminals. It may take several hours or perhaps days to pass the next reader if a shipment is set out as a bad order or stuck in a yard.

Another GPS tracking system that I have found is this one:
http://www.liveviewgps.com/live+trac+pt-10+.html
Click on the View Live Demo near the bottom of the page to watch tagged vehicles in the Houston metro area in motion overlayed on an aerial map. Similar to what Tim was describing.

Another option for a one time move such as this may be to find the local Ham Radio Club. Amatuer Radio has a system in place called Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS). There may be a local ham who would be interested in installing a temporary system on the locomotive. You would then be able to track the shipment in real time on the internet. When the UP first started tracking their steamers they used this system. I think they've gone to a new system now. I set up the system on our caboose over the summer.

While I'm sure a dedicated solution would likely work better you could probably do it for free with an iPhone or other GPS-equipped smart phone (provided someone has one and is willing to be without it for the duration of the move). Just stash a car battery and car charger cord aboard.

There are probably various applications that can do this. One I've noticed (but have not yet tried) is called InstaMapper and is a free app..

Steve

SS,

I have LAT-LON on LV 112 and it paid for itself only a couple of days after to loco left Tennessee en route to NJ.

I watched on my laptop as 112 arrived in Chattanooga and spent 1, then 2, then 3, then 4 days in the same spot at the engine terminal. I contacted NS and they "oh, thanks for letting us know where the loco is because it got deleted out of the system"!!

LAT-LON is an incredibly powerful tool with many features, alerts, and reports. Recommended to me by Eric Levin, which he uses on his locos and is IMHO is a no brainier for its cost.

The main control box and antenna installed with just a cordless drill. Since the loco did not have any batteries I used 4 car batteries in series secured under the cab floor to power the unit. The batteries lasted a little over 3 months before the unit stopped transmitting.

Scott Kwiatkowski

I gave InstaMapper a try and took a drive around the block. Cost was zero.

Steve

You could also use a laptop with a mobile broadband (air) card and GPS installed. Little netbooks with a GPS in them are only around $300 now, and then you have a useable computer after the move. Get the wireless service for a month or two. Hook the laptop up to a few batteries and you should be good to go. You can setup a remote desktop so you can log into the computer and view where it is. You could even stick it in the cab window with the webcam pointing out so you can ride along if you like. Just a thought.

I could just see logging into my home computer one day just in time to see the laptop flying through the cab window as the car is humped and crashes into standing cars in the bowl!

I think one version of the Lat-Lon has a camera in it.

Normally I'd be all in favor of putting together an inexpensive homebrew solution out of PC's. It's cheaper and you can tune it to do exactly what you want, and you can fix it yourself. However, in THIS case... you can't fix it, probably can't even find it. The commercial stuff is both reliable and sanely priced. Go for that.

I wouldn't do anything with a PC that's for sure. That's asking for a Blue Screen of Death the 2nd day out. The phone idea, possibly. Especially if there is enough time to test the concept for the full expected duration to see if it is reliable. Then again, a pro solution may be the way to go.

What were they doing on the 4449 trip to Michigan? They had issues but that may have been just that the website that made the information available to the public could not keep up.

Steve

I agree that a professional solution would probably be more reliable, I feel I need to defend my idea a little at least.


Solution: http://www.debian.org/ (I generally have an uptime of 2-3 months)


Solution: Bailing wire/epoxy/duck tape/etc the laptop to something solid. If you are worried about the impact the machine can take, replace hard drive with solid sate drive or $10 USB memory stick. I run several servers this way when I need a quick and dirty hard disk.


I am not sure the commerical stuff is that much more reliable (at least not the iphone or anything like that). An air card is going to use the same network as the iphone or any other tracking product from a consumer based company. If you get a business class phone/tracker I would expect it to work a little better, but not a consumer market one.
Sorry for my rant, but I do a lot with robots and mobile computers. I felt I had to give home brew a shot.

Technology is somewhat ahead of you guys. Your cell phones are already being tracked by your provider. Information is then sold to Google etc. to generate things like real-time traffic data. Check this article from 2008.
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stor ... 1222056000^1702490
Or giving out your location when you post a photo.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2010/10/07/ ... in-danger/
Find out where you are now.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5549005_track-c ... earth.html

Check with the Trainfest folks, they did real time tracking on the 4449's trip back East and the return. It worked well and was accurate and frequently updated, unlike the one on 844 which frequently lags behind or simply stops updating completely.

I do seem to recall that they overloaded the server when 4449, apparently they under-estimated just how many foamers would be tracking the move.