The Runaway Train

I came back to consciousness quite slowly. My head felt as if it was being beaten by a thousand rods of iron. The steel floor beneath me was rocking to and fro. My whole body ached. Where in God’s name was I?

I pulled myself to my feet, and immediately recognized my surroundings. I was alone in the cab of a General Electric Model AC6000CW diesel electric locomotive. Six thousand, two hundred and fifty throbbing horsepower, now only too evidently in full action.

I am not a train driver and I have no union ticket. I am a software engineer, employed by the Blackshoe Mining Company. My normal workplace was at head office, but I remembered coming up to the Easter Creek mine site to install revised software and hardware on the automatic train system. I had been part of a team working on this software for three years. It was a state-of-the-art automation package. It controlled trains transporting more than a hundred million tons of high-grade iron ore each year from the mine to the port. The ore was shipped to steel companies around the globe.

I searched my memory. How had I ended up on board a moving train and where the hell was it going?

I looked out through the window. We were travelling across the endless spinifex country of the Pilbara in Western Australia. While I watched, a huge flock of bright green budgerigars passed by. Three kangaroos bolted away from the train. The red soil was dotted with the bush like clumps of spinifex and in the distance were low red hills, bathed in the bright tropical sunlight.

Blackshoe is one of five huge iron ore mining companies in the Pilbara. Each company has its own privately run railroad. In my estimation the other companies were not as technically advanced as us in train automation, but they were catching up.

I could remember sleeping in that morning at the mine camp. I had been woken by frantic banging on my door. I would have just two hours to install the software on one of the trains, and I was already late. The train had been loaded with ore and the mine was impatient to dispatch it as a ship was waiting at Port Hedland harbor. There was no time for breakfast in the canteen. I grabbed a coffee and a packed lunch and it was out to the train.

But what had happened next? I was groggy and I couldn’t recall any details.

And where was the lunch that I had got from the canteen? I was starving hungry and my stomach was competing with the throbbing pain in my head to get the attention of my brain.

I felt my head. There was a large swelling on the left side. I saw blood on the corner of the control panel. I must have fallen against it, and that was why I had been out cold. But why? Had I just fainted from hunger, or had the train moved unexpectedly?

There was no sign of my lunch. Had I eaten it, or was it still in the vehicle that had brought me to the train yard?

And much more important, why was I on a moving train? Somebody should have come and got me before the train left the mine.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. But there was no signal. The train must have come well away from the mine.

My laptop was lying in the corner of the cab. The screen was cracked but otherwise it seemed OK. I held my breath and pressed the power button. Thankfully it powered up.

I connected the laptop into the train system and typed in my ID and password. Immediately the screen flashed “Access Denied”. What? Had I forgotten my password? Impossible, I’m an IT professional – I don’t forget passwords. I have a system of using places I have visited and the dates of the visit. Perhaps I had changed the password before passing out? I tried a whole series of different passwords – but to no avail. All I got was “Access Denied”.

I looked over the locomotive control panel. Although I had worked on the hardware and software necessary for automatic and remote control, I was not really familiar with the manual controls. However, on the upper right was a large lever. It was set to “Automatic”. I pulled it down to “Manual”.

There was another lever on the control panel that appeared to be the engine throttle. I pulled it right back to zero. Immediately there was cessation of the engine noise. But the train slowed only a little and then gained speed again. These trains are two miles long and carry thirty thousand tons of iron ore. There are six locomotives, three at the front and three in the middle. I had cut off power on one, but there were still five others behind me with a combined thirty-one thousand horsepower.

Thousands of tons of iron ore, powered by thousands of horsepower and me right on the front end, like a fly on the front of a speeding bullet. It was a scary thought.

And why couldn’t I log into the train control system? Something was very wrong.

I searched the locomotive cab more closely. There was a radio voice communication set in the far-left corner. It was turned off of course. Computers don’t talk to each other in English.

After some difficulty, I found the power switch and turned it on.

Over the static, I could hear my name being called.

“Calling Rob Sandiford. Calling Rob Sandiford. Come in Rob. Over.”

I pressed the talk button. “This is Rob. This is Rob. Over”.

Back came the reply. I could hear that it was my boss Trevor in Perth.

“Rob, where are you?”

“I’m on an ore train and it’s bloody moving like the clappers.”

“Why? Why didn’t you get off, for Pete’s sake?”

“It must have damn well taken off with me on board. Why didn’t someone come and get me before you ordered it to go?”

“Rob , we didn’t order it to go. It’s been hacked. But when it passed the control station, they said they couldn’t see anyone in the cab.”

“That’s cuz I was flat out cold on the floor. I must have banged my head on the control panel when it friggin took off. Can you stop it now and send someone to get me?”

“Rob, we can’t get into the system. The hackers have us locked out.”

“What do the bastards want?”

“There’s been no contact. But they’ve also hacked a train from Bandycoogina Mine. It looks like they’re planning to smash them together at Yandina where the two lines cross.”

Great! So now I was going to be the fly mashed between sixty thousand tons of speeding iron ore. Bandycoogina was owned by one of our competitors, Split Mountain Mining Company. I knew that they had also been working on automation.

I couldn’t control the shaking in my voice. “What are you going to do about it?” I said.

“Rob, there’s not a lot we can do. Of course, we have the whole team working on trying to get control back. We are trying several lines of attack. It might work, but I’m not confident. There’s a team from the mine racing to the Yarrie siding. They hope to divert our train onto the siding.”

I groaned. “What good is that going to do. If you can’t stop the train, it will crash off the end of the siding anyway.”

“Well at least it won’t be a two-train smash up. Split Mountain is working on a similar siding on the other side of Yandina And we can’t take the risk of either train making it all the way to Port Hedland. That would cause enormous damage.”

“Bugger the damage. What about me? I’m right in the middle. Why aren’t you thinking about that?”

Then Trevor said, “Could you could jump off?”

“Are you nuts? We’re going at least seventy kilometers per hour; it would be suicide. I think I would rather take my chances on the siding. The loco might survive.”

Then something occurred to me. A memory from two years earlier when I had worked with Diane Stansfield and her team building the system. . .

I pressed the transmit button again. “Trevor, how long have I got before this bundle of joy gets to the siding.”

“At the rate you’re going, just over an hour”.

“Great, I’ve got an idea. Please don’t switch me onto the siding until I’ve had a chance to work at it.”

“OK”, said Trevor “go for it. We’ll keep trying to get in. Maybe we can find a way.”

The threat of imminent death had concentrated my mind. My pounding headache and the protests from all my other body parts were still there but diminished into the background as I set about my new task.

When Diane had designed the system, she had put in a little backdoor entry into the code. Strictly against programmer ethics of course – not to mention company IT policy. But she had told me “We may need this one day”, and I blessed her prescience.

Now what was the password entry code she used? I needed to work in the underlying machine code – not the Linux script that most of the software was controlled from.

I looked at my watch. Fifty-five minutes to go.

I looked out the window. Our five remaining locos were still hurling us across the spinifex plain at a steady seventy kilometres per hour, all under the control of who? I felt a spurt of anger against these unknown hackers endangering my life; for what purpose?

Then I got into the intricacies of trying to enter the backdoor. I needed to remember the code that Diane had used. My first attempts failed. Was it an ampersand or an exclamation mark in the password? After struggling for twenty-five minutes, all of a sudden, I was in.

Thirty minutes to go. Now I needed to shut out the hackers. It took me a while to figure out where they had entered the system. If I was to control the train, I needed to make sure that they could not countermand my orders. My advantage was that I had worked on this system for three years. I knew the details. They had uncovered a weakness in the code that we knew about but hadn’t got around to fixing.

Fifteen minutes to go and I felt confident. I was able the throttle the engines back on each of the locos, one by one. The train slowed appreciably, but then entered a downhill stretch and speeded up again. Now I needed the brakes. The two lines ran pretty close at this point and I could see the Split Mountain train. The hackers were still in full control of that train, and they were trying to match my speed. If I didn’t take drastic action, we would still have a collision. Where were the brake controls?

I found them at last and jammed on all brakes. There was a terrific squealing noise, but I knew it took a lot to stop thirty thousand tons. Was I going to be in time? I looked across at the other train. It was pulling ahead off me.

What were they doing in Perth? They must be able to see that it was going to be a very close thing. I needed them to take the gamble. I got on the radio and called Trevor. “Tell your guys, I’ve got full control” I said. “Keep me on the main line. I am going to miss the other train.” I prayed that I was right.

Looking ahead, I could see the Split Mountain train enter the crossover. I calculated it would take about four minutes to get completely across. My train had slowed appreciably but I was still moving. There is a lot of momentum in thirty thousand tons of ore.

The minutes passed and finally the Split Mountain train was over the crossover and my way ahead was clear. I missed hitting the last ore truck by a good hundred meters. I got back on my laptop and worked to release all the brakes and ramp the locos back up.

I watched the Split Mountain train. It ran onto the siding and then ran out of siding and smashed into the desert. One end of the train snaked around and destroyed a bridge on their main line. There was a tremendous smashing sound. That could have been my fate.

But now I was in control of my train. I released the brakes and played around with the throttles. I shifted the control on my locomotive back to automatic so that I could control all of them from my laptop. I wanted to get to the port as soon as possible.

Driving a 30,000-ton train is fun. And not that hard. After all, there is no steering wheel.

I called Trevor on the radio and explained how I had got into the system. He soon had his team back in too. “We’ll take it from here,” he said, “we’ll get someone to pick you up in Hedland.”

Damn, already I had lost control of my toy. Still, I felt happy about what I had done to outwit the hackers. I couldn’t help singing as the train powered on across the desert:

The Runaway train came down the track and she blew, she blew

The runaway train came down the track and she blew, she blew

She blew, blew, blew, blew, blew

There were still some manual controls I could use. I sounded the klaxon on the train —something I’ve always wanted to do, just like Doc in the movie Back to the Future. Except the klaxon didn’t have quite the same resonance as a steam engine whistle.

I was enjoying the ride and watching the Pilbara scenery slip by.

Then I got a shock. My screen flashed “Not so smart Rob!!”, and the train speeded up.

I called Trevor. He groaned “The hackers are back in control. We don’t know how they did it. And your little backdoor isn’t working anymore.”

“How far to go” I replied.

“About two hours to Port Hedland. If we can’t get control back the train will probably crash into the harbor. It’ll take months before we can ship again.”

“Shit, who cares about the shipping. It’s me that’s going to be in the harbor.”

I was angry, angry at the hackers for their murderous intent, angry at Trevor for his lack of concern for my welfare, angry at myself for my previous euphoria. Then I calmed down and took some deep breaths.

The hackers wanted me to be angry. That was why they had used my name, to rile me up so that I wouldn’t think clearly.

How had they managed to get back into the system? How had they been able to shut Diane’s back door so quickly? And just how the hell had they got hold of my name? There was only one answer to those questions. They must have someone on the inside. Someone in the team in Perth. An insider traitor. But who?

I thought about each of the team members. It couldn’t be Ann, Michael or Peter. They were my friends. Louise was new, but no, couldn’t be her. The new Russian guy, Alexander – might be him. And what about Trevor. He had taken over when Diane left. A smarmy bastard, good at ingratiating himself with management. But was he capable of deliberately crashing a train? Who would do such a thing? I realized it could be any of them.

I felt my anger rising again, but with it a grim determination that I was going to survive this ordeal and nail the jerks who were trying to kill me. What was their motive anyway?

I had come up with another idea about how I could bypass the hackers and get back on the system. But it wouldn’t be any good if my every move was frustrated by the traitorous homicidal maniac or maniacs in Perth. What could I do to neutralize them?

I looked at my cell phone again. I had two bars! We must be getting closer to the coast.

I called the Perth office. Julie Samson answered the phone from the switch board. She and I were good friends. “Rob,” she said “you’re on the TV, they’ve got a helicopter tracking you. What’s happening? Are you going to be all right?”

“Julie,” I said “please put me through to Jeff Rawcliffe. It’s really important that I talk to him right now.”

Rawcliffe was the company CEO. A big, bluff Canadian engineer who had run the company for the past eight years. I had talked to him occasionally when he came around the office.

Rawcliffe was on the line immediately. “Rob,” he said, “we’re doing everything we can to get control back.”

“Mr. Rawcliffe,” I said “there is a problem. A member of our team is helping the hackers. You’ve got to shut the Perth team down and cut all their external communications.”

There was shocked silence for a moment.

“That’s a very serious allegation, Rob. Are you sure? And suppose you’re wrong? That might stop the group here solving the problem. I have the future of the company to consider.”

“Sir,” I replied “with all due respect I have an even bigger stake in this than you. It’s my life on the line. Please listen.”

I explained why I thought there must be an internal leaker, and that my plan to save the situation could be frustrated by the traitor.

Finally, he said ”OK Rob I’ll do what you say. Get on it, and don’t worry about this end.”

What was my plan? It was a little hazy even to me, but I needed to work quickly.

New environmental regulations were coming in a few months’ time. These would require trains to shut down if something called PM10 particles in the exhaust emissions exceeded a certain level. The sensors had not yet been added to the exhausts, and I had no idea what PM10s actually are, but I had already written and installed the software. And it was a separate module but connected to the train control software. I hadn’t told Trevor how far I had progressed and I didn’t think the hackers would know about it.

First, I repeated my previous action and switched my own locomotive back to manual and throttled it right back. Once again, back to “only” 31,250 horses driving me to my doom.

I got on my laptop and connected to the environmental system in locomotive 2. After some fiddling, I was able to convince the software that the PM10s were at a very high level indeed. The engine shut down. Then I repeated the procedure for locomotives 3, 4, 5 and 6.

So now there was no power driving the train. But I had no way to control the brakes. They were still controlled by the hackers.

We were only a few kilometres from Port Hedland, but the track here was flat and level and the train was slowing. Would it slow enough?

Then another thought occurred to me. I might not be able to control the brakes through the automatic system, but the brakes on this one lead locomotive were under my manual control. I searched the control panel and finally located the control. I applied the brakes. With all the weight of the whole train behind, one set of brakes was pathetically inadequate, but they might just be enough to avoid a watery end. The wheels squealed under me as the brakes locked.

Looking out the window I could see the first houses on the outskirts of Port Hedland. The train had slowed enough that I could jump off now if I needed to. But I decided to see it through.

We were going through the town and slowing. We passed into the port area and the train finally came to a stop.

I could breathe again. My hands were shaking, and now I could feel the bump on my head throbbing madly. And I desperately needed to pee. Now that the threat of impending doom had been removed all these other pains and problems asserted themselves.

With some difficulty I climbed down from the locomotive, and with shaking hands unzipped and urinated against the wheels. The liquid hissed and steamed as it hit the hot wheels.

As I was doing so, a car pulled up. It was Des Morris, the port manager.

He let me finish and then came around. “Thank God you stopped it!” he said. “How are you feeling.”

“Shaky!”. And indeed, I was. We got in the car and drove to first aid station. They put a cold compress on my head.

The paramedics said, “We should get you to the hospital and check you out.”

I had visions of hanging round a hospital and rebelled. “I would rather just go to the hotel, although I don’t know if I can sleep.”

“Why don’t you come with me?” said Des.

He took me to the control tower, where we had a view of the entire harbor. I could see exactly where I would have ended up if I had failed to stop the train in time.

And there was the train — my train. They had already hooked a new set of locomotives to the it and they were pulling it through the unloader. The bottom doors on each truck in turn opened and dumped the ore onto a conveyer, which was taking it straight to a ship.

Des noted my surprise. “Yours was the last load we needed for the Ōryoku Maru. She’ll sail tonight and we’ll avoid $12,000 per day in demurrage. Just think, in a few weeks those thirty thousand tons of iron ore that you just delivered will be transformed into twenty thousand Toyotas.”

“If I hadn’t stopped that train, it would now be at the bottom of the harbor and the fish would be having me for dinner. You’d have more to worry about than a little bit of demurrage.”

The TV monitor was on. It was showing a helicopter view of the crashed Split Mountain train. It had wrecked the rail bridge and there was iron ore and mangled railroad trucks strewn everywhere. Then the view switched to a different helicopter above the port watching the train unload. I could see the control tower where we were standing.

Looking down to the port gates, I could see TV vans and a whole pack of people.

“You’re going to be famous,” said Des. “You’d better get used to it”.

“All I want right now is a hotel room”. I was suddenly feeling very tired, and my head was busy reminding me of my injuries.

A few minutes later I was in a car, being driven to the hotel. Some of the press got there before me. They shouted words of encouragement and questions. “What happened, how are you going?”

“I am still alive,” I shouted back — it was a solid achievement.

In the room, I had a shower and collapsed on the bed. Finally, I had a chance to think about all that had happened.

Then my cell phone rang. It was Julie Samson, the receptionist from head office in Perth.

“I just saw you leaving the port. It’s amazing you’re still alive. You’re truly invincible, Rob. That Split Mountain train crash is terrible. How did you manage to avoid it? There is a huge kerfuffle going on here. They have taken the entire software development team and locked them each in separate rooms. The police are here, assisting in the interrogations. The TV cameras are all outside, but they are not allowed in. I’ve been asked to stay until midnight and run the switch. Uh-oh, Jeff Rawcliffe’s line is calling. I’ll talk to you later.”

After a few seconds, my cell phone rang again. It was our CEO, Jeff Rawcliffe.

“You were quite right, Rob, I’m sorry I doubted you. It really was an inside job. Trevor Wilkins and Alexander Tsvetkov were in it together. We think they were working with a Russian syndicate, but we haven’t tracked down those details yet. The police have seized their home computers. Apparently, they were heavily invested in Red River Mining Company stock. With us and Split Mountain out of action for months, Red River shares would have gone through the roof. Anyway, how are you feeling?”

“I’m very tired and sleepy,” was all I could manage. What did he think I would be feeling?

“OK, I’ll let you sleep. We will send the Lear jet up tomorrow and bring you home.”

I turned off my cell phone, leaned back on the pillow and fell into a deep sleep.