The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 03, 2002
Filed:
Dec. 29, 2000
John R. Doner, Melbourne, FL (US);
GE Harris Railway Electronics, Inc., Melbourne, FL (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for managing locomotives is provided. The apparatus includes an on-board tracking system including a locomotive interface, a computer, a GPS receiver, and a communicator, the computer programmed to determine a position of the locomotive and to transmit the position via the communicator, the computer further programmed to obtain locomotive discretes and to transmit the locomotive discretes via the communicator. The method includes the steps of operating each on-board system to determine when its respective locomotive departs a locomotive assignment point, operating the on-board systems to determine a departure condition, to send a locomotive position message to a data center at a time corresponding to the locomotive assignment point, to simultaneously collect GPS location data for each respective locomotive and at the data center, collecting locomotive position messages corresponding to the locomotive assignment point to determine localized groups of locomotives, identifying candidate consists and lead locomotives.