The miner Rio Tinto uses driverless trains on many of its minesites in Australia, and they are currently planning use of driverless trains on the Pilbara Railway, which links some of its minesites with the port of Dampier. This would involved journeys of hundreds of kilometres.
There are dozens of automated metro lines around the world.
Freight railroads are unlikely to have completely unattended train operation because of the risk at grade crossings or other track blockages. I thought there was an automated line linking some coal mine and power plant in the American Southwest, but I can’t find any reference to it. As mentioned, there are plans to automate some mining railways in Western Australia, but I’m not sure automated operations have yet begun.
The Yurikamome Line in Tokyo is a pretty good example of this. It’s a fully automated line, but to make it work it’s been completed isolated: no crossings and nothing a pedestrian could reach even by climbing a fence (it’s elevated along the whole route), and no open platforms (platforms have walls with doorways that only open after the train has stopped, and close before the train leaves). It’s still not impossible for an idiot to get hit, but they have to be a really determined idiot.
These facts are related.
Any chance you’re thinking of the Rail Veyor system? It’s sort of a hybrid between a conveyor belt and a railroad.
The DLR has run in London’s east end since 1987. Carrying billions of people over that time. No drivers are on the train and the only accidents I’m aware of involved manual operation.
Hopefully the same technology will spread to the wider tube system and we can remove the at least one element of disruptive industrial action.
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Isn’t the Vancouver Skytrain automated?
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Yes it is. I think the BART system in the San Francisco Bay area is also automated but has a driver on board to take over if something goes wrong.
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The SkyTrain is fully automated, at what’s called Grade of Automation 4, but BART is only GoA2. BART’s computers (and passengers!) misbehave often enough that human oversight and intervention is often needed, reducing the automation to little more than the schedule saying “You should leave the station now!” and then managing the acceleration, cruising speed and braking between stations once the doors are closed.
Mr Downtown:
You are probably thinking of the Black Mesa and Lake Powell, a private system connecting a Navaho owned mine with a Navaho electric power station. It was originally a driverless system, big E60CP electric (not diesel) moving unit trains of coal from ine to plant, with automated loading and emptying at the ends of the line (which is a big 60 mile loop) .
Apparently there were issues, and the line now has attendants on each locomotive, which are now in their second generation.
Thanks. I did the maps for Jim Shaw’s book Shortlines of the Desert Southwest last year, so I looked at that before posting. Oddly, he makes no mention of automation in his descriptions of the BLKM.
Yes, while the sources I have (books!) indicate it was originally automated, it appears that is no longer the case, although I haven’t yet found anything definitive other than they have bought used diesels (!) from NdeM of Mexico.
They probably haven’t been automated in several years, thus no mention of that in Shaw’s book.