Variety is the Spice of Life

Jeff Jorgensen was the speaker at the Optimist Club on July 3.  He graduated from Audubon High School in 1972 and joined the Marine Corps for two years.  Then he went to Iowa Central College in Fort Dodge for two years before working on his Father’s farm.  In 1993 he went to work for Farmland Foods as a driver for five years.  He went to IWCC and then UNO, majoring in Electronics Engineering.  He then worked for five years before starting at Union Pacific (UP).

Jeff is a communications specialist in the IT department at Union Pacific.  It is the largest communications company in the US.  Spring was a spinoff from UP.

UP uses a communications based train control, using the 160 MHz spectrum.  They use 97 channels and 6 emergency channels.  There are very few dead areas for communications and they use cell phones there.

Trains are issued a warrant to operate on a piece of track at a certain time.  Different railroads do not interoperate.  By 2015 all railroads must interoperate.