High speed rail receiving and ship loading

Location:
Port of Grays, Oregon

Project:
New rail receiving and ship loading
Automated equipment load out

CompuWeigh Control Systems:
GMS-4000 bulkweighing control system
SmartRead rail car RF ID system
SmartLink accounting system interface

This ‘just in time’ export facility works without any storage bins! Unit train arrival is coordinated with an ocean going ship.

When the unit train arrives our SmartRead rail car RF ID system checks off each car against the Pre-Advise List sent electronically from Head Office. Cars not on the list are immediately flagged as are cars with missing tags. Our wheel sensor system counts the car axles to ensure that for every four axles we also read a tag.

To further improve the integrity of the system, there is an axle scale just beyond the dump pit. This also has a SmartRead rail car RF ID system and when the car is identified we look up its official tare weight and compare it to the weight on the axle scale. If we find a deviation, the car is manually inspected to ensure that it is completely empty. Also for cars that were not on the Pre-Advise List we ensure that the axle weight shows the full gross weight and that the car has not accidentally been emptied into the dump pit.

The GMS Wizard Reporting system provides a number of drill-down reports that show the distribution of the grain on the ship and reconciles each ship hold back to the batch and rail car.

SmartLink accounting interface is responsible for intpreting the Pre-Advise rail car data to create the In-Transit List and for providing completed transactions in both Excel and accounting format.