Back in the good ole days, I believe each dispatcher typically began numbering their authorities beginning with 1 at midnight. There was a very important difference compared to today - the dispatcher typically only dispatched a division or portion of a division, and train crews did not operate outside of that division. Nowadays train crews can operate through several dispatcher territories, time zones and trackage rights are common.

Some railroads would begin numbering slow orders, Form B and other track conditions in a higher number series. I'm not sure all these reset each night, maybe each month since except for Form B these were usually in effect for several days or more.

When I had to get BNSF track warrants a couple summers ago, they all began with a prefix which I assume was different for each dispatcher or division.

In the past, it was assumed that the authority you were releasing was of the same date. Therefor, after midnight you had to remember to state the date of the order, so "SP 5103 releasing track warrant number 23 of September 1st" would indicate it was not of today's date.

While computers may have eliminated much of the paperwork for the dispatcher, it also makes them a slave to what the programming in the computer may or may not allow them to do. I've had dispatchers make 4 or 5 attempts before to issue a warrant not because of overlapping limits but because the computer did not like the format the DS was trying to use.

The amazing thing is how often the railroads insist on changing their dispatching programs and forms, and despite the GCOR that was supposed to standardize rail operations in the west so crews were less likely to become confused in joint or trackage rights territory, each railroad is becoming more and more unique. There is also the issue of how accurate the program code and underlying operating system is. I was just watching a show on the Y2K transition and the federal official in charge mentioned that 7 out of 100 lines of new code contained errors. I don't consider 7% an acceptable error rate in a safety critical program, maybe 99.99% would be acceptable. SO unless there is a radical rules change, why keep changing the dispatching program? (Then again, the underlying operating system is always becoming obsolete.)

The inter-division runs and hub terminals have caused problems too. I heard a story that years ago a train headed to LA Harbor blew through a Form B. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, and it was not the train crew's fault. Seems that after the track bulletins were issued to the crew, it was decided to run the train down a different route. Railroads seem to struggle with being sure that the track bulletins and any authorities match the line the train is actually operating on.

As far as the computer generating a random authority number, is there really an advantage? I would think that having the computer generate a check sum as the final digit would be far more reasonable. I do agree, in this era of "Mother May I" the knee jerk reactions to a stupid mistake or lack of proper attention has resulted in a mutha of a mess.