Satellites to Watch Trains in Move to Lessen Accidents

Burlington Northern Railroad will use U.S. Air Force navigation satellites to pinpoint freight trains to try to reduce accidents, a company spokesman said Friday.

“Right now, a single person can cause an accident by making a mistake,” said Steven Ditmeyer, director of research and development for the railroad. “This is basically avionics technology being applied to railroads.”

The new system, called Advanced Railroad Electronics System, or ARES, could greatly reduce accidents caused by an engineer’s falling asleep at the controls or a dispatcher’s giving wrong orders.

Head-on Collision

An erroneous order by a dispatcher was partly to blame for the 1984 head-on collision of two Burlington Northern coal trains that killed three crew members near Motley, Minn., Ditmeyer said. The order permitted two trains to be on the same track simultaneously, he said.

But Ditmeyer and Pat Hiatte, a railroad spokesman, said ideas for ARES were first formulated in 1982, before the accident.

In operation, the on-board avionics packages pick up radio signals from four navigational satellites in space, Ditmeyer said. The satellites belong to the Air Force, and the railroad receives the signals at no cost under a 1984 pact between the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Defense Department, he said.

Computers Figure Speed

Using the signals, computers in the locomotives will figure the train’s position within 150 feet and speed within a mile an hour, Ditmeyer said. This information is radioed to a dispatcher, who can send instructions to the train crew.

At a cost of more than $2 million, St. Paul-based Burlington Northern is equipping 17 locomotives in northeastern Minnesota’s Iron Range this fall and winter with electronic receivers and computers. A yearlong test that ended early this year determined that the equipment can withstand the conditions on a moving freight train, Hiatte said.

Further tests will be used to judge “who the system will help and how it will help,” he said. Besides reducing accident risks, the system could save fuel by tightening freight schedules and reducing stop-and-go traffic on the line, Hiatte said.

Norfolk Southern also is testing ARES, Ditmeyer said.