A few months ago I received a tip off from a friend who alerted me to the possibility that Amiga's were in use throughout railway network in Sydney, Australia. Recently the New Zealand Railway's purchased 1200 Amiga's for an unknown usage. Sound a little interesting?
My source informs me that the device which is not immediately distinguishable as an Amiga is used to announce the arrival and departure of trains over the Public Address System. The device reportedly uses hacked A1200 motherboards and is controlled through a keypad interface. The device also has an LCD screen. It works by each train route being assigned a certain code. When the relevant train arrives the user need only enter the code and the system will announce the arrival of the train including the route it will travel over the public address system. Apparently this is acheived by sampling the voice and storing it on the systems hard drive and using specially designed software to control the system.
I have been informed that the system at least in Australia is still in pilot testing but it is quickly being taken up by Sydney railway stations. Australian Amiga distributor Megatron who have a large presence in the industrial market have refused to confirm or deny the story. It is rumoured that they are involved in delicate negotiations at the moment and a Non Disclosure Agreement may be in place.
By Paul Morabito.
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