Boeing announcement.....
Apparently Boeing does not realize that they are back in railroads again, having dabbled in them during the '60s.


Boeing Phantom Works' Advanced Network & Tactical Systems division has been awarded a $750,000 first-phase contract called Positive Train Location to develop a navigation system to accurately monitor the movement of trains throughout the United States.
"We proposed a robust system that leverages our Iridium augmented GPS technology to allow the railroads to locate and track locomotives with greater precision," said Bart Ferrell, Boeing Positive Train Location program director. "The need for reliable railroad tracking is essential to reduce train accidents on our national railway system. It can also be used to quickly move passengers and freight around the country in a more cost efficient manner."
Monitoring U.S. locomotives across an estimated 140,000 miles (225,000 km) of tracks has become a requirement for the nation's rail network. Additionally, in 2008, the U.S. Congress passed the Rail Safety Act requiring the rail industry to develop and implement a system to track and protect train movement on all U.S. railroads.
"Essentially, the Precision Train Location system does for railroads what inertial navigation, GPS and augmentation systems do for aircraft. Railroads operate in environments that are more obstructed and constricted than those of aircraft, and our system is designed to address these more difficult environments," said Dick Cervisi, director of Boeing AN&TS. "With our design, the industry will have much greater situational awareness to monitor the nation's railway system."
The Boeing system will be evaluated at the Transportation Technology Center Inc., near Pueblo, Colo., this fall. A second phase contract competition worth $1.2 million to provide 10 to 20 railroad location systems is scheduled this year. Those systems will be tested by the four major U.S. rail industries on their own rail networks.
"This is a great opportunity to move into an area that we haven't been in before," said Ferrell. "It represents an adjacency for Boeing where we can potentially use other technologies to assist the railroads to help improve their operations and effectiveness."
By Randy Jackson