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2003-
  
Issue 2  September 2003

Canadian Pacific Railway Employee Communications
Room 500 401-9th Ave S.W. Calgary AB T2P 4Z4

 
 WHERE'S FRED?

For the folks in CPR's Locomotive & End-of-Train Management Team, it's a daily challenge to monitor the more than 100 locations across the system where vital safety devices are distributed. Those items, variously known as End-of-Train units or - at CPR - Sensing Braking Units ( SBU's ), are an integral part of safe railroading, monitoring vital data on freight trains, and sending the information to head-end crews.
 
Among the tasks facing the End-of-Train ( EOT ) group are ensuring an adequate supply of SBU's, planning their cost effective and timely distribution, monitoring the repair of bad order units, and tracking SBU's handed off between CPR and other railways, while managing battery supply and allocation. "It takes an inter-departmental, cross-functional effort to tackle all aspects of SBU control", said Serdar Bilgin, manager of locomotive interline & end of train. "We greatly appreciate the involvement and support of people in the field. It's the only way to achieve success".
 
What remains the biggest challenge, however, is keeping a handle on the wherabouts of every SBU out there, and the EOT group is calling on all employees in the field to keep up the good work and fill in those reports on a regular basis. In addition, it is very important to manage the SBU's properly in the Common Yards application and watch how surplus SBU's are removed from local inventories. "We can now give clear instructions on what should be done in Common Yards to clean up the inventory without inadvertently causing false data to be transmitted to other CPR applications and to the AAR", said Kathy Mottershead, CPR's locomotive & EOT analyst who provides critical data analysis and handles foreign SBU accounting.
 
And, oh yes, there's yet another name for these elusive devices that we haven't mentioned yet; that's FRED. All are in agreement that the "R-E-D" part of the acronym stands for rear-end-device, but depending on whether you look fondly or not upon these devices that have all but replaced the caboose, the "F" either stands for flashing, or another, more colourful adjective.

© 2005 William C. Slim       http://www.okthepk.ca