Transportation Review: Specials magazine

Railroads operate on margins measured in seconds, gallons of fuel and available locomotive hours. A freight train may span miles while moving through changing grades, restrictions and operating conditions, leaving little room for inefficient decisions. Digital technology is shifting those decisions from manual judgment toward systems that can interpret conditions and respond in real time. Wabtec Corporation [NYSE: WAB] has built its locomotive digital strategy around that shift, combining train control, energy management, analytics and automation to help railroads extract more performance from assets already moving across their networks. The strength of Wabtec's digital locomotive portfolio starts with a practical premise. Software must work within the physical realities of a train, not sit apart from them. Its Trip Optimizer system considers terrain, train composition, speed restrictions and operating conditions before calculating an optimal speed profile. It then controls locomotive throttle and dynamic brakes to help maintain that plan. Trip Optimizer's closed-loop approach gives railroads a digital layer capable of influencing how a locomotive actually moves. The system can integrate with LOCOTROL distributed power and Positive Train Control or other Advanced Train Protection systems. Its Zero-to-Zero functionality adds automatic starting and stopping while SmartHPT optimizes locomotive performance against a specified horsepower-per-ton target. Software architecture also matters when digital controls need to operate across locomotive platforms. Wabtec has separated Trip Optimizer from the locomotive control software so the application can operate through an independent high-performance environment and communicate through an AAR-compliant message-based interface. The design allows deployment across different locomotive platforms while supporting faster product updates and a common user experience across fleets.

Moving requires customers to coordinate logistics while entrusting a company with their belongings. International Van Lines has built its business around making that process more transparent, reliable and straightforward. The company provides out-of-state and international moving services for residential and commercial customers, along with packing, storage and auto transport solutions. It is among a limited number of moving companies approved to handle relocations for the U.S. Department of Defense and holds a FEDAI accreditation, one of the industry's most rigorous credentials. The accreditation requires an independent Ernst & Young audit of the company’s processes and operations. "We don't want to be a component in this process that brings more stress to the consumer. Everything that we do is based around that," says Josh Morales, President..