RailPulse, the consortium effort to develop a remote monitoring system for freight railcars, has entered a 10-year agreement with Railinc Corp. to develop, maintain, and operate RailPulse’s technology platform.
RailPulse says the agreement with Railinc, the rail-data affiliate of the Association of American Railroads, will allow it to deploy its monitoring system later this year.
“Railinc and RailPulse have joined forces to deliver telematics and sensor technology to the North American freight rail industry,” Mike McClellan, executive vice president of strategic planning at Norfolk Southern, said in a press release. NS is one of the five founding members of the coalition of railroads, railcar builders, and car-leasing firms [see “Norfolk Southern, partners tout Rail Pulse …,” Trains News Wire, Nov. 20, 2020]. “Railinc has over 20 years of experience managing software and data applications for the industry, with best-in-class security and tools that enable robust data sharing and access policies.”
The agreement will draw on Railinc’s experience managing large volumes of data and with 24-hour customer support, and will see Railinc help with data management protocols, including data security, and with integrating telematics data into RailPulse’s backend systems. There is also a data-sharing agreement that will allow RailPulse to enhance its telematics data, including the ability to map data to all parties on a car’s waybill route.