Integration of IC in MPS

Integration of the IC (Illinois Central) Railroad into MPS (the Motive Power, or locomotive management, System)

In 1999, the CN (Canadian National Railway) merged with the IC (Illinois Central Railroad). For that reason, several computer systems had to be modified to take into account the new information from IC.

Picture 1. CN and IC Merging.

I was an expert with IRIX, X Window, and GL. So, my tasks at that time were to:

• Install IRIX on the workstations with NFS and the development kit.
• To modify the graphic system display.

Souvenirs

Prior to MPS, the motive power directors were working in a room. There was a metallic white board representing the country, from Halifax to Vancouver, and little magnets were used to represent and locate the locomotives on that board (cf. picture 2).

Picture 2. Motive Power Directors before MPS.

Eventually, the MPS system was developed. MPS was able to receive messages from the field, because detectors are placed along the rail network and when a locomotive passes near a detector, a message is sent to the mainframe computer so that the system knows in real-time were are located every locomotive on the rail network.

So, MPS was able to display in real-time the locomotive locations on a graphic display.

The MPS directors were then able to send to the field orders about what locomotives to assign to train consists.

This was the MPS control room in Montreal a long time ago, sometimes referred to as the "Star Trek Room" (cf. picture 3):

Picture 3. The MPS Start Trek Control Room.

The Results

This section shows graphically the display before and after the modifications I have done in MPS and I also explains the new functionality of the new display.