JACKSON, Ga. — Norfolk Southern hopes some of their new technology will lead to safer railways.
On Friday, they unveiled their newest fully automated train inspection portal near Jackson. When a train comes through, lights flash on and cameras start rolling from all angles, scanning each car.
It's like a toll plaza that scans your plate and sends you a bill, but instead, this system sends notes to maintenance.
Just 15 miles south sits the small community of Juliette. It was built by the railroad, and inside the original railroad depot, Mary Beth Odom built her business.
"Going on six years here. Absolutely love being here and all the people that I meet," she said.
Odom caters to the town and especially tourists. They flock to Juliette to experience the 1991 movie, "Fried Green Tomatoes." Then, they flock to see one of the many trains that pass by daily.
"At this point, I kind of tune them out. It's pretty much constant. Which is actually kind of nice because the tourists come here, and they get so excited when they hear the trains," Odom said.
Norfolk Southern's portal is designed to keep all that train traffic running on time. It scans for problems — from cracks, to missing parts, or other signs of possible trouble. The company says their cameras take 1,000 pictures per car.
"We have created a set of 40 very robust AI algorithms that look at that imagery and analyze them for emerging conditions," Mabby Amouie, a Norfolk Southern data scientist, said.
If a problem is severe enough, those algorithms send maintenance an alert within minutes, telling them to fix the problem when the train gets to its destination.
"It's stuff that's often hard for an individual to see, sometimes impossible for a person to see," John Fleps, the company's vice president of safety, said. "It's very impressive, and it does its job."
Norfolk Southern installed their first portal in East Palestine, Ohio, the site of last year's derailment. Fleps says they chose Jackson because of all the trains running between hubs in Macon and Atlanta.
They're set to have six portals running by the end of the year, and 17 by 2026 — so tourists visiting Mary Beth Odom in Juliette can keep getting their train fix.
"I'm kind of blown away by it. I've never seen anything like that. I've never even thought about something like that being possible, but I think it's great," Odom said.