Union Pacific is a leading transportation company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Union Pacific has over 8,500 locomotives running on 32,100 miles of track across 23 states with over 44,500 employees.

When Union Pacific assigns an engineer or conductor to a new train route, they must learn the new route by riding along on a train with another engineer or conductor who already knows the route. This process can take days for each new train route to be learned, resulting in millions of dollars spent annually as multiple engineers and conductors learn multiple routes.

Our Learning New Train Routes system is an augmented reality software that uses actual video of the train route taken by cameras mounted on engines. Our software overlays this video with important information including mile markers, train speed and important landmarks such as signals and switches.

Engineers and conductors use our companion web app to view an augmented reality video of a new train route. They can view videos from anywhere, at any time, and on any web-browsing device.

A Google Maps display shows the train’s progress along the route. Engineers and conductors can move around in the video by clicking on the map. In particular, they can replay sections of track to ensure that they learn the new train route well.

Our Learning New Train Routes system is written in Python and utilizes OpenCV and Darknet for image recognition. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are used for the web app.