Kartrak Video

Just watched a great 20 minute video on the early development of automatic rail car tracking and thought some of you may like it too so here's the link.

 

It's always interesting to see how we got there to here. Type of stories I like. History that most people don't care for. This is what I look for. Thanks for posting.

 

I always like material - books, videos, etc. - that makes me say "So that's how it all started!". Especially when it goes into details other than dates and places and names.

It tickles my neurons and adds to my knowledge.

That's why I like this hobby because it's so much more than just playing with trains. I learn new stuff every day. And play with my trains.

 

That was a very interesting and well done video. I have always wondered about the how and why of the bar codes.
Thanks for posting, Brad.

 

Such an excellent video @nscalestation ! Thank you for posting it.

I worked a summer for the Santa Fe in the late '70s and one of the Supervisors I worked with said that the industry lost its commitment to ACI and wanted the system to fail so that they could be done with it. This was affirmed in the video. He said that in some cases, mud was thrown onto ACI bar codes so that scanning failures would result and could be pointed to as examples of ongoing ACI deficiencies.

 

I just recalled too that during the 1980s that simple video technology was used to stand in for ACI. In a lot of photos from this period you can see housings containing a video camera at yards and junctions, along with an array of spotlights. The video feed was piped to a VCR at an office where a clerk would watch and write down car numbers. We used this "technology" at the large manufacturing firm I worked at. Each morning, a clerk would drive out to our shack with our video gear and in-motion scale, retrieve the VHS tape, return to the office and commence to jot down the car numbers.

 

...and I imagine had to be cleaned periodically as well. That'd be a big job in itself.