A long engagement – railways, data and the information age

Gwynne, Robert

A long engagement – railways, data and the information age

Download

Name

2023-11-16_ALongEngagementRGwynne_FINAL.pdf

Description

visibility:open

Size

1.15 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (CRC64NVME)

iHngYqNCiZo=

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Gwynne, Robert

Date published

November 2, 2021

Abstract

The history of the use of computer and data driven technologies by the railways is largely unknown and is very much overshadowed by a deep fascination with the steam railway. However, it was a willingness to embrace and develop these technologies that laid the foundations for the railway that we have today. This paper aims to show the history of the railway’s ‘long engagement’ with these forms of communication and control technologies. This history forms the background to the increasing adoption of internet-based technology on today’s railway, and thus provides a thread connecting the past, present and future of the rail system. A central argument here is that railway management of necessity focuses on control to ensure the safe operation and efficient running of trains and the management of a large and scattered workforce.[1] Control of revenue and costs, including wages and pensions,[2] as well as control of trains on heavily used lines, generated the need for control of data from an early stage. Consequently, UK railways were pioneer adopters of a succession of control technologies including the electric telegraph, ‘Hollerith’ tabulating machines and digital computers.