TOPS

Total Operations Processing System ( TOPS ) is a computer system for the management of the vehicles ( locomotives and wagons) a railway company. The system was originally developed by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Many railway companies took over the system. In Europe TOPS is in use in the UK.

Development

The Southern Pacific Railroad began in the early 1960s along with the Stanford University and IBM to develop the Total Operations Processing System. The aim was to replace the entire connected with the management of the vehicles correspondence through a computerized system. So until then, the individual maintenance operations, the stationing in each division and in each depot, the services carried out, the current status, location, and much more were quoted more. The updating of existing data was very complicated and coordination between the different services were always associated with telephone queries.

As part of the development is already calculated resale to other companies in order to amortize the development costs partially. The system was introduced in 1968. Thus, it was the Southern Pacific possible relatively close in time to make all information available to a vehicle. This could inform inter alia, the consignor on the current location of their freight good. The introduction of standardized data interfaces, the information could be shared with other railway companies.

The system was eventually sold to some U.S. tracks and worldwide.

Takeover by British Railways

In the late 1960s British Railways was looking for ways to increase the profitability of the operation. The Canadian National Railway was learned TOPS know and recognize the opportunities lying therein. You bought the system, consisting of source code and the necessary IBM 360 mainframe. The purchase of TOPS had to be approved by the Cabinet, since at that time was in the UK for the government a " Buy British " policy. The conversion into the use operation went on for several years.

The introduction of the system necessitated the development of a new designation scheme necessary because the previous scheme was not suitable. The redrawing of the vehicles began in 1972 and lasted until the late 1970s. Internally, however, was already settled with the new name.

Development

TOPS is now considered outdated. The mainframe system with text terminals is user unfriendly, requires cryptic entries and results due to the difficult operation to frequent errors. Add to that the TOPSTRAN own programming language, which complicates the maintenance due to lack of developers.

The system is still in use in the UK today, although it was never designed for the needs of several railway companies. Some companies use the system only when absolutely necessary matters.

Attempts to provide the program with a user-friendly interface (TOPS 2000) or build new parallel systems, have failed so far.

Example printout

This is a typical expression as he can be generated by TOPS. The train has 25 cars with a load of 888 tons and travels from Over & Wharton, in Winsford to Reading West Junction. The train started at 15:20 clock on with a delay of 2 hours and 20 minutes. Train locomotives were 25901 and 25908th

K383400 0010 2837 10/22/86 U483 N199 ON BY KO TRAIN ENQUIRY FOR RESPONSE 377Z380 22 TFA - 9KJ ACTUAL TRAIN ID 377Z380 22 BOOKED 7Z380 DEP OVER & WHAR 1520 22 2 HRS 20 MINS LATE FOR REASON L CAT B SECTOR 5 LOCO 25901 LOCO 25908    25 LDS 0 MTYS 888 TONNES 799 T / FT 418 VAC POTENTIAL BRAKE FORCE STATION CONSIST ARR DEP LDS MTYS SCHEDULE 37015 OVER & WHAR 1520 025 000 7121 2 65700 BESCOTYD NRP 1707 EST 1709 EST 025 000 74260 READINGWJ DETAIL EST 2007 025 000 END References

• ERP Software
• Railway engineering