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Short Line Data Systems ROCS Update – February 2003
Website – www.sdsrocs.com
Greetings –
This month brings a major announcement. We are in the final stages of building and testing the LCS Car Hire system, and we should be starting to install it in user systems before the month is over. As has been mentioned in earlier updates, the system is completely transparent to the user on a day to day basis, and at the end of a service month, all the user needs to do is print out the reports.
It is probably best to give you a full description of what is going on in the background to explain how the system works. The whole process starts when a car is interchanged inbound to the user’s railroad. The system first sends a request (QUERY87 Q21) to Railinc for the Car Hire rates. These rates are specific to the user’s railroad for deprescription purposes. Also, the TRAIN03 message automatically generated upon receipt serves as the user’s report to the LCS system. Shortly after the rate request is sent, the rates are received for the car (REPLY87 Q21). About six days after the inbound interchange, Railinc sends out the TRAIN69 message with the official inbound interchange date and time. The next event occurs when the car is interchanged out, with a TRAIN69 message received six days later giving the official outbound interchange time. About ten days after the end of the month, the user can print out the individual reports to be sent with payment to the respective payees, and a summary report for accounting purposes. While this sounds somewhat complex (and to some extent it is), it really is transparent to the user, and simple to use.
It is also our plan to use the LCS records to see how your reported interchanges compares to the LCS events, which could identify a potential reporting problem with your interchange partner, which could lead to reduced car hire bills.
The addition of the LCS Car Hire system adds another powerful tool to ROCS. With this addition, any size railroad can report TRAINII, manage its traffic, do settlements, compute demurrage, and prepare their own car hire statements on their own computer with minimal internet connection time and at a low cost to the user. All of your internal data remains on your computer, with no outside company holding on to your data.
An additional new feature in Version 6 will be a new Switch List/Work Report. This new report is being used at the M&E to replace a hand written report that at times has been a little difficult to read. The report includes all cars a customer has on line, and the work they are to perform. Areas are provided for the crew to enter movement times and new locations for cars, if needed. A copy of the report will be available on the website shortly. We installed a pre-release copy of Version 6 at the Housatonic RR last week, and they are working through the transition and training process, and should be switching over to the fully operational ROCS system at the beginning of March. The Southern RR of NJ and the other users will also be upgrading to V6 as soon as the release is finalized. We will also be announcing a couple of new users in the coming weeks.
As has been stated above, the release of Version 6 creates a low-cost set of tools that is comparable to any of the other systems available today, and if anyone would like a demonstration or price quote, we are available for a demonstration, or we can send you an information packet.
Stay warm,
Steven Friedland President |
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