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Short Line Data Systems ROCS Update – May 2009 Website: www.sdsrocs.com Steven’s Blog: www.railresource.com Greetings: We have recovered from the ASLRRA Annual Convention in Las Vegas as well as the TransAction Conference in Atlantic City, and are now ready to move on with business as usual. We are going to release Version 12 of ROCS, and we will start the upgrade process amongst the users in June. In this update we are going to look back at both of the meetings that we attended and look forward to the changes in the release of Version 12. Finally, we will start to lay out our travel schedule for the summer. Travels Completed We had a great time at the ASLRRA Annual Convention at the Red Rock Resort in Summerlin, Nevada at the end of April. Convention Chair Jalene Forbis did a spectacular job organizing and planning one of the major events of this industry. We were honored to be able to help with the execution of the event, and huge kudos are due to Kathy Cassidy, Rich Timmons, Jenny McKinney, Steve Sullivan, and the rest of the ASLRRA staff on another extremely successful event. The exhibit hall was the largest ever, and we had a lot of traffic at our booth. If anyone wanted an Elvis bear and didn’t get one, send us an email and we’ll send one out to you. It was great to see everyone during the meeting, and we hope that we will be doing business with all of you in the near future. We just returned from the New Jersey transportation conference, or TransAction, at the Tropicana hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. TransAction has been going on for over 30 years, and Frank Reilly has been organizing it for 27 of those years. It is a different type of conference than the ASLRRA meeting, as it is for all types of transportation for both people and goods, and focuses on transport in the Garden State. I was a speaker on a panel discussing the need for more trackage in New Jersey being capable of handling 286,000 rail cars, and this was one of about eight panels involving rail freight in New Jersey. One other highlight of the meeting was the annual presentation of the NJ Short Line Railroad Association’s Benjamin J Friedland Award to Bob Bailey of the Port Jersey Railroad. As many of you know, Bob is one of my best friends in this industry, and a truly deserving recipient of the award, which is named for my late father. Bob has been a fighter for the railroads both in New Jersey and nationally, working tirelessly to help everyone, and taking very little credit himself. I am proud to call Bob a friend, and my father would have been proud of what Bob has accomplished for our industry. Release of Version 12 We are ready to release Version 12 of the classic ROCS system to our users. This new version has been under development for over six months, and incorporates both newly developed features and improvements that we have made for our users since the release of Version 11. The biggest improvement that we have made in the system is to the speed of processing. The creation of Waybills/Bills of Lading and Advance Consists is five to seven times faster than before, and the system has some self correcting features that improve system stability. The CHDX car hire processing has a number of reclaim developments and additions that we have added for some users of Version 11, and we are now distributing to everyone. We have also made improvements to the car count reports, and added a new history report. We are going to start the distribution of Version 12 with the installation of a new customer, the Canton Railroad. We will then start to upgrade the current users. The upgrades will take place over the summer and fall, dependent on our travel schedule. We don’t want to do an upgrade and then be on the road for a week and not immediately available for the user if needed. We really believe that Version 12 is another big improvement to the classic ROCS system and will continue to show why ROCS is the easiest to use and most cost effective traffic management solution in the industry today. Travel Schedule Our travel schedule for the summer is starting to fill up, and we thought that it would be appropriate to bring everyone up to speed. Most of these dates are tentative, but are in the general area of when they should happen. May 27-29 – Washington DC for an ASLRRA meeting Week of June 15 – Canton RR, Baltimore, MD Week of July 13 – California SL meeting August 15-28 – ASLRRA Central/Pacific Regional meeting and Vacation There will be other dates added, and we’ll update you when they become available. Well, that is all for now. We’ll be back in June with updates on the deployment of Version 12, some news on TRACCURATE, and all of the rest of the latest and greatest. Stay safe, Steven Friedland President
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