The Muskingum Electric Railroad
The Muskingum Electric was a coal-powerplant electric railroad operating in Ohio. It began operations in the late 1960s and is unique for using fully automatic, driverless trains. Its two robot trains trains shuttled back and forth 30 miles between a strip mine and a large powerplant at Beverly, Ohio. Sensors placed in the track controlled the trains movements and horns at crossings and slowed it down at the coal loading and unloading points. The railroad had specially built hopper cars to put on the back of the train with headlights and horns built into them so that the trains could legally run backwards without needing an engine on the front.
The MERR remained in operation until 2002, when the coal mine ran out of economically recoverable coal. Its two rare General Electric E-50 locomotives, the only two ever built, were both scrapped, unfortunately. To this day, there has never been another fully automatically robot freight train in the United States, so for that reason alone the MERR should get cool points.
