Citizens Of Antiford Rail inventory was once done with hand-written lists of eyeballed serial numbers - a tedious, slow process.
A new standard was created, transitioning from 1891 and completed in 1894, which is done automatically without slowing the train to a halt.
Trains may slow to a standard reading-station speed and have each car in order read and recorded and then pick back up to traveling speeds. In this way, the rail system can track the progress of each and every piece of cargo on the rail safely and most importantly, quickly.
Companies must pay for the privilege of identified cars, and can pay extra for travel logs detailing the whole journey or progress updates.
The mechanics of this system are likened to a flat, Morse code music box.
Identity Plaque
Rail-cars must now have a lower, exterior plaque along both sides at an exact distance from the wheels. On these plaques are a four-track identifier, duplicates of each other.
The first track is simply a single, straight groove.
The second track contains pins for the delimiter.
The third and forth tracks contain pins for dots and dashes of Morse code, respectively.
Reading
A spring-arm extends which contains a roller at the top, followed by 3 spring-steel prongs. The roller ensures that the prongs are kept at a consistent distance from the pins of the identity plaque.
The reader device records the three lower tracks like a seismograph or polygraph, as a three-track waveform etch. This can then be translated into alphanumeric characters by a trained human or automaton inventory operator.
Code Standard
The first section of each car’s code is letters-only, and represents the company. This company code must be registered with the Association of Arazian Railroads.
The second section must be numbers-only, and represents the serial of the car itself. These numbers are unique only among other cars with the same company code, e.g. each company may have a car “1”. Numbers may be transferred from one train car to another only if an AAR agent personally signs a witness of cart destruction form.
For the delimiter pins, they represent the pause between letters in the code. Two pins in a row denote the beginning, and three in a row, the ending of the information. This ensures the code is read in the correct order (train is not moving backwards).
For example, the “Buford Automaton, Co.” is registered as “BA”, They may have their 25th rail car attached to this train, so the identity plaque would have the following pins:
˙˙-...˙.-˙..---˙.....˙˙˙ (start-b-space-a-space-2-space-5-end)