Autonomous Trains

Recently, there has been public hearings regarding autonomous trains. Several railroads are attempting to get the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to approve the movement of trains without crews on board. The railroads feel that with recent implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) and Trip Optimizer (TO) trains can be run safely with only a single person in the locomotive cab, with the desire to eventually have none.

If you ever have to chance to ask the following questions of those suggesting and possibly approving these actions, here are some suggestions.

1. Ask them if there will be "eyes on board". By this I mean is there someone or something that will be looking outside the cab. And not just forward. Currently, most locomotives have cameras that point forward. Those cameras are used during incident investigations. But they are black and white imagery. Trains run 24 hours a day. Grainy black and white just won't do it on a dark and stormy night.