Railway RFID

Imagine a hulking chassis, a wheeled frame hauling a 20 or 40-foot steel intermodal container with over 24,000kg of cargo. Probably not something that could be easily lost, right?

Well, believe it or not, that was precisely what was happening at CN's intermodal terminal in Brampton, Ontario until the railway company enlisted the help of Bell Canada and Symbol Technologies, to deploy ruggedised radio frequency identification tags on some 2,000 chassis to track their whereabouts.

The RFID tags contained the chassis' serial number. Readers installed at the yard gate recorded the chassis' entry or exit. Information associated with the chassis - such as container number, last known location, and even maintenance records - reside in a database.