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Short Line Data Systems Inc. ROCS Update – March 2007 Website: www.sdsrocs.com Greetings – Hopefully the heavy part of winter is past for all of us, and spring is not far away. The CSX Short Line Conference has past, and Railroad Day on the Hill is coming up this week. Not to be forgotten, registration is open for the ASLRRA Annual Meeting in Baltimore ( www.aslrra.org ), and I can’t start to tell you how excited I am about the program, which has over 40 educational breakout sessions, a sold out exhibition hall packed to the brim with the newest and best products and services available to the small railroad industry, and a slate of social events at some of the top sites that Baltimore has to offer. For railroaders, this is a bargain, with registration costing only $250, and the program is designed to appeal to both the executive and the operating person, from the CEO to the middle manager. If you haven’t registered yet, please do. If you are on the fence about going, don’t miss this event. This is going to be the Annual Meeting that people are going to be talking about for a long time. Now that I have finished with our commercial message, let’s get on with the ROCS Update.
CSX Short Line Meeting What can I say, is these guys know how to put on an informative, productive, meeting. We were treated to presentations from all of the top people at CSX (hopefully Mr. Ward has recovered from the illness that prevented him from addressing us at dinner), bringing all of the attending a clear picture of what CSX is doing now, and the direction they are taking in the future. The Trade Show was a great opportunity for us to speak with everyone about our products, and it was very exciting for us to debut the SLT-100 AEI tag reader, which is the hardware portion of the TRACCURATE AEI tag reading system.
ROCSDispatch We have been working on new features to the dispatching system, some for the GCOR system and some for the NORAC system. One that will be useful for both systems will be GPS integration. Right now we are concentrating our efforts on importing the data into the dispatch system. Then we are going to determine what to do with it. Herein lies one of the balances that we have to deal with in presenting information to a user. Too little, and the user does not have the tools they need to make the correct decision. Too much, and the user is so overloaded they can’t or won’t use the tools in front of them. Our initial idea is to use the data for limited geo-fencing, which can provide the user with useful information for time and delay of train movements, presence in out of service areas, and an automatic “bread crumb” trail for trains and high-rail vehicles on the rails. As always, if anyone has a suggestion on how we can better use this feature, or any of the features in our product line, please let us know. A new feature under development for the NORAC versions of ROCSDispatch is an improved way to mark inaccessible track. We have a very simple system that was built as part of the original system, but the new version will have a more visible indication of the inaccessible track, and a better listing of the track on the summary report. We are completing development of the new feature right now, and hope to have it deployed to the NORAC users in the next few weeks. In GCOR system news, the Arkansas & Missouri has decided to purchase and install an additional GCOR ROCSDispatch system for the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad. A&M has been performing the dispatching operations for the SLRG for the last year or so.
PET ROCS 2007 We have deployed version 2 of PET ROCS at the Maine Eastern, so that they can prepare for the upcoming passenger season. The revised system is has a large number of updates that improve the ergonomics of the system screens, and we have added additional flexibility into the system in the areas of ticketing and pricing. The streamlined main screen has a new train schedule display that provides the user with an instantaneous update on the train schedule for a selected date, the seats available and seats sold. By putting this information on the main screen, your reservation agents know how much space is available on a train without having to dig deeper into the system. We are also adding new reports for how customers heard about the train so that you can see how your advertising is penetrating, and improved train crew reports to simplify their paperwork. In other PET ROCS news, we will hopefully be announcing a new PET ROCS customer next month.
TRACCURATE Many of you saw the reader portion of the TRACCURATE system at the CSX Short Line Conference. We are continuing with the development of the system, and will have a comprehensive preview of ROCSScan, which is the software portion of TRACCURATE, in next month’s update.
Well, that is all for now. We look forward to seeing everyone at Railroad Day on the Hill in Washington DC next week. Next month we will be continuing our updates on the road to Baltimore, and previewing our booth at the show. Stay safe, Steven Friedland President
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