Railroads Test Satellite Positioning In Effort to Improve Safety, Efficiency

As a Union Pacific freight -- three locomotives pulling 83 cars -- rumbled through a foggy night near Seattle, the engineer was startled to see a Burlington Northern freight coming head-on. The BN train had run a red signal.

The Union Pacific engineer hit the brakes, but it was too late. In the head-on collision, locomotives and cars smashed together and burst into flames, killing the UP engineer, his conductor and three Burlington Northern crewmen.

Fast-forward from that Nov. 11, 1993, accident to this June 3 near Seattle, where another train, belonging to what is now Burlington Northern Santa Fe, is operating under the guidance of global-positioning satellites. Engineer Dax Riddle will try to pass Milepost 110, which for test purposes represents a red signal.

Automatic Brakes

"We're trying to go right through," he says, gunning three locomotives and a string of cars to 45 miles an hour. But the global-positioning satellites, linked to computers in the locomotive, sense that the train is nearing a forbidden zone. A warning siren screams in the cab, and when Mr. Riddle doesn't slow down, the brakes go on automatically. The train stops just short of Milepost 110.

"If there had been another train beyond that "red signal," the system would have prevented a collision," says Larry Milhon, a BNSF official riding in the locomotive.

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