Iron Highway wins tech award

TORONTO — The Canadian Pacific Railway’s “Iron Highway” service won honors at the sixth-annual Canadian Information Productivity Awards (CIPA) this week for a reservation system that lets freight shippers schedule highway trailers onto trains as easily as they book airline tickets for themselves.

CPR’s system automates administrative procedures associated with the movement of highway trailers on and off a continuous-platform train currently operating between Toronto and Montreal. Nicknamed Iron Highway, the service is operated by the CPR’s eastern subsidiary, the St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway.

Customers use an automated reservation system by Internet, phone, or fax to reserve a guaranteed slot on a train. Shipment data gathered by the reservation system drives the efficiency of business and terminal procedures. Terminal staff use hand-held portable computers to control all operations from the time a highway trailer arrives at the terminal to train departure.

Canadian Pacific Railway won a CIPA Award of Excellence in 1997 for its Automatic Equipment Identification, Plus (AEI) system which enhances the reporting of train movements and helps customers to trace shipments.