Short Line Data Systems Inc. ROCS Update – July 2006

Website: www.sdsrocs.com

Greetings:

Summer is fully upon on us, even though for a while there I thought we were going to need the Ark here in the east.  We have been quite busy, with meetings and signing up new customers, and in this update we’ll bring you up to date on what has been going on with us, including new customers, program updates, and a new product on the way.  With all that, let’s get on our way.

PET ROCS

PET ROCS is in full operation at the Maine Eastern, including a new ticket printing module.  The ticket printing module was installed last week in time for the start of the passenger season, and allows the user to print out double sided tickets that are customized to their needs.  In the Maine Eastern’s case, we have set up a customized ticket back with a full set of legaleze (refund policy, etc.) on it.  The front of the ticket has logos, train and customer numbers, origin and destination, train dates, and whether the ticket is for a round trip or one way fare.  The ticket stock is a custom perforated card stock from perforatedpapers.com.  So far we have seen no issues with the new system, and as the passenger season moves on in Maine, we will add new features as there is a need for them.

New ROCS Customers

It is our great pleasure to welcome three new railroads to the Short Line Data Systems family.  The Seminole Gulf, Bay Colony, and Everett Railroads have all signed on to use the classic ROCS system for EDI and event reporting.  We have started the setup process with all three companies, and anticipate implementation sometime next month, after we have finished implementation of ROCSDispatch at the Arkansas & Missouri and Farmrail.  We welcome the three railroads to the SDS family and look forward to getting ROCS up and running there as soon as possible.

ROCSDispatch

As we mentioned above, we will be implementing ROCSDispatch at the Arkansas & Missouri and Farmrail this month.  These will be the first installations of the GCOR version of Dispatch, and while we have created as strong a product as our NORAC version of the system, we know that there will be some tweaks to cover the items we might have missed.  Our schedule calls for us to go to the A&M next week, and Farmrail at the end of the month.

New Product

In case we didn’t have enough to keep us busy, we have started the development of a track and grade crossing inspection record keeping system.  This product will have two parts, a PC side and a PDA side.  The PC side will maintain all records, keep track of due dates for performing the next inspection, print inspection and test reports, and provide forms for entering the inspection and test results while in the office.  The PDA side will provide those same forms for field input of inspections and tests, the ability for the user to view inspection reports that have defects recorded on them and allow for entry of the remedial action, and record the location of defects with GPS, if the PDA being used has it installed.  We are not going to pin the system to a specific PDA, the only real constraint would be that it would be a Windows Mobile device, and not a Palm device.  While final features, name of the product, and pricing are not set yet, it is our intention to price the system in the same range as the other SDS products, and make it affordable to just about any railroad.

Best Practices

Last month we attended the Short Line Integration Team (SLIT) meeting in Cary, NC.  For those of you who don’t know what the SLIT is, it is the industry group consisting of Class 1, EDI provider, ASLRRA, and short line representatives who work on improving the quality and amount of event reporting coming from the short lines.  The group is responsible for the report cards that come out each month, and as many of you have seen, there is a new card showing the new reporting standards for all short lines, which lower the time frame for event reporting in most cases to six hours, and in the case of interchanges drops the time frame down to four hours.  One new caveat is that you only need to get a percentage of your events within the windows, but the days of waiting for your crew to come back to start entering events are over, and each railroad should implement procedures to try to drop their event reporting gap as much as possible.

Some possible procedures are:

• Have you crews report work completed as soon as they do it.  Make it a policy for them to call in and report their completed work.  It will allow you to enter events in a timely manner, and you can communicate the completed work to your customers faster, keeping them more in the loop.
• If your crews can’t get in touch with you, ask your customers to report when the crew is done with their work at their site.
• Work with your Class 1 partner on an Interline Service Agreement.  These allow both sides to measure interchange performance, and can serve as a tool to adjust your procedures to cut down the reporting window and improve accuracy.
• If you are a very small company that does not have the office personnel to do real time reporting, look into the new wireless broadband service being offered by the cell phone companies.  These internet services are not that expensive, and can be used with a laptop computer by your train crew to have them enter the events.  You can sell this with the crew as a way to cut down on the amount of paperwork that they have to do.

The above are only a couple of ideas, but ones that work.  If you have any ideas or practices that work for your company, please send them in and we’ll put them in a future update.

Well, once again we have run out of things to bring you up to date on.  Stay safe, and we’ll see you again in August.

Steven Friedland

President

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Last modified: 09/03/06