TMS - the Traffic Monitoring System

 

TMS leaflet NZ Railways

Traffic Monitoring System leaflet NZR

In the final years of the NZ Railways Department, one of the innovations of which it was most proud was the TMS. The Traffic Monitoring System was essentially a form of fleet management to enable NZR to computerise the identities of all locomotives and rolling stock, so it would know where it all was on the network at any one time.  Legends abounded of freight wagons occasionally being "lost" on the network and freight consignors driving to sidings to eventually find the wagon upon which (it was hoped) their consignment would remain.  Manual systems of reporting rolling stock were highly unreliable.  TMS effectively worked by having rolling stock information allocated to trains entered into the system in advance.