AI is coming to real trains (but I hope that it is not Alister)

[pware]

The very first remotely controlled ("robotic") freight train has just delivered a load of 28,000 tonnes of iron ore a distance of 280km from the mine to the port in the remote Pilbara region of NW Australia. The "driver" was located in the city of Perth, about 2,000km south. The delivery was the first full scale test run for the $AU940 million AutoHaul system which is expected to be in full operation by the end of this year.

 

[pware]

... and yet things can still go wrong.

Out of Control Driverless Train Deliberately Derailed. Two pedestrians injured.

Now this is not, as far as I know, a driverless train controlled from some distant remote location by a human driver assisted by a bank of computers and onboard sensors. The TGR does not have that type of remote control over its locos. The report does not make it clear but this is either:-

1. a train under the control of a shunter (yardsman) using a portable remote control box and it somehow "got away", or
2. a normal train that, somehow, "started itself up" and "took off" (like in the movie "Unstoppable").

In either case it was stopped, after a hair raising chase of 20 kms into a major port town, by sending it into a dead end siding. Interesting reading.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-21/train-derails-in-devonport/10289726