ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,746,957, issued on Sept. 29, was assigned to Progress Rail Locomotive Inc. (LaGrange, Ill.).
"Train consist build optimization" was invented by Thomas Wade Goforth (Springfield, Va.) and Rodrigo Almeida Goncalves (Campinas, Brazil).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Combining a rail yard management system with an energy management system and health management system for optimizing a train consist build is provided. The rail yard management system determines railway cars and locomotives currently available at the rail yard. If there are not enough railway cars and/or locomotives available at the rail yard, the rail yard management system pred...