What is Umler? U. M. L.
E. R. stands for Universal Machine Language Equipment Register.
This is a computer program, created by the Association of American
Railroads and administered by a company called Railinc, that
maintains a database of information on essentially all rail cars
and locomotives moving on the General Railway System in North
America. If your car/loco is in Umler, railroads anywhere can
access the database and find out more about it, including handling
restrictions, etc.
What are reporting marks?
Reporting marks are the letters preceding a car's numbers that
are stenciled on the side of each rail car. They consist of two,
three or four letters. In order to be legitimate, reporting
marks must be assigned by Railinc / AAR. This requires an
application process and fees, and signing the AAR Interchange
Agreement. Private car owners that are not railroads have reporting
marks ending in the letter "X".
Why do they need to be registered?
Rolling stock, when registered in Umler, help provide data on
car(s)/loco(s) handling restrictions, tracking characteristics,
ownership and history. The Class 1 Railroads (BNSF, CN, CP, CSX,
KCS, NS and UP) have mandated that all rolling stock offered
for movement on the Class 1 portion of the General Railway System
of North America must be in Umler. This inlcudes all cars and
all locomotives of any type or configuration moving on their
own wheels. Illegitimate reporting marks could duplicate legitimate
marks, causing cars to become misrouted or lost, or otherwise
mis-handled.
What is an AEI tag? An
AEI tag is a small plastic box containing electronic equipment.
It is mounted in a specific location, one
on each side of every car/loco. When the car/loco passes
a special scanner, the tag broadcasts the car's identity and
orientation to the scanner. This has become the principal means
of reporting car/loco locations and movement on the General Railway
System of North America.
How do I get them? New
and used tags are available from the railroads themselves and
from a variety of other companies. Secondhand tags, including
programming, are available for about $20 per tag. GLR can help
you get tags.
How do I mount them? Location
of the tag is very specific, and is defined in AAR Field Manual
Rule 63. As a rough guideline, if you mount the tag as lowest
possible on the car body, directly above the inboard wheel of
the right truck (as you face the car) you should be within the
window prescribed for the tag mounting. A bracket can be welded
or screwed to the car body if in the case of passenger cars,
the owner does not want to damage the car body, or the tag can
be pop riveted/screwed directly to the car body (paint will not
affect tag performance.)
Can I have an AEI tag without registering
in Umler? Not on a class 1 railroad. You may be able
obtain the tag, have it programmed with real or imaginary reporting
marks, and mount it on your car. This will give you the benefit
of making the car "trackable" by AEI scanners, and
may still be acceptable by some railroads. However, the reporting
mark and car number the tag responds with will be checked by
the computers against Umler, and will be found to not be there,
or incorrect. This can cause problems with car movements until
resolved. It is much easier to get caught with illegitimate marks
this way.
What about the reverse?
Not on a class 1 railroad. You can have a car registered in Umler
and not have AEI tags applied. Some owners and operators have
been doing this for some time. This allows a car to move if the
carrier requires only Umler registration, but it does not enhance
the tracking ability because the car is not automatically reporting
its location without tags. All class 1 railroads now require
BOTH tags and Umler.
How long does registration take? You need to plan on giving our staff about
a week to get your car or loco properly registered. The Railinc
system does batch upload from the input file that we access.
Any fatal errors will bounce the rolling stock out and not upload
it, meaning that the rolling stock is not there if any fatal
errors exist. Corrections cannot go in before the next batch
upload. So far, no matter how carefull our staff has been on
inputting the data, the computer has not accepted the first submission
of some specialty equipment at times. It seems to get confused
by the physical characteristics of some of the specialty rolling
stock, especially unique MoW and passenger cars, and some first
generation diesel locos. Please provide full information to help
this process go as smoothly as possible. The data marked as mandatory
on the data sheet and instructions are so marked for a reason.
If this data is not provided, it will be a fatal upload error.
Therefore it is useless to try to upload without that data.
What if I buy a car that
was previously registered in Umler?
The AAR requires documentation that the reporting mark change
is legal for any inter-entity (company or person selling to another
company or person) change of ownership. To comply with this,
there are two ways of doing it. The straight up legal way is
to send a missive to Railinc showing the old reporting mark and
number and the new reporting mark and number. This process can
take about 30 days. The second way is for the seller to delete
the rolling stock from their Umler file, and we will load it
in as new equipment in the buyer's Umler
file. Either way, the seller will need to provide to the buyer
a signed authorization stating that the reporting mark change
is authorized (see example below), which is sent to either Railinc
in the first example, or GLR in the second. That way, if GLR
is audited, we have the record on file. If this is not available,
you need at the very least to send us a copy of the bill of sale.
If you are only changing the mark and not ownership, i.e.
an intra-company transfer, or moving a car/loco from one assigned
reporting mark to another assigned reporting mark within the
same entity, you need to provide a letter of authorization (see
example below). Don't forget that the AEI tags require reprogramming
or must be replaced!
A NOTE ON CAR DATA:
Most of the car and
loco data is available on typical AAR approved designs, including
in Umler itself. The seller should have data available. If not,
we may be able to capture it from Umler if the seller has not already
deleted it, or we can identify a "sister" (identical)
car or loco still active in Umler.
Locos, MoW equipment
and passenger cars can be problematic at times. There is much
more information required for locos, MoW equipment quite often
gets modified, and passenger cars can be very unique. If you have a passenger car(s)
not used as MoW equipment, these still are uploaded under MoW
rolling stock codes unfortunately. We may have information on
your specific rolling stock in our extensive library, but that
can not be counted on. There are very many unique cars and locos
out there for which there is little published information, and
rebuilds by various owners over the years may have changed it
significantly from what was published if we do have anything
on it. You can also receive a large amount of good information
on passenger cars by joining the Railroad Passenger Car Alliance
(www.rpca.com).
If you are measuring the
rolling stock yourself, you will not do this correctly with a
3 foot yard stick and a 3 step kitchen stool! If in doubt, GET
HELP! There are many contractors and consultants out there that
can help as well as GLR.
