Code Story episode
S11 Bonus: The Autonomous Railroad Revolution: Replacing Time-Consuming Visual Audits with Computer Vision Wayside Tracks at 120 km/h via KinetiX with Alan Fisher, Group VP at Wabtec Corporation
Sep 4, 2025 · Season 11 · 31 min
Inspection automation for trains in the yard and elsewhere
Alan Fisher started his career as a computer programmer. Early on, he was hired by the 1st or 2nd largest freight railroad in the world, Union Pacific. He describes their technology group as having a punk rock spirit, leaning towards building their own solutions over buying them, which he found great value in. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years, and has 3 kids. He is an avid runner, landing someplace between a marathon runner and a mile in the morning kinda guy. He also loves to read the classics, drawing inspiration from them, along with restoring old homes.
Given his rich history in the rail industry, Alan has led the charge in growth, innovation, and most recently, logistics, analytics, and digital mine. As his company started to look to the future in how to solve the industry's most pressing problems, his team executed the acquisition of a portfolio of companies and products - driving by automated inspection.
This is a creation story of KinetiX at Wabtec Corporation.
Sponsors
Paddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchMailtrap.TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Links
https://www.wabteccorp.com/https://www.wabteccorp.com/digital-intelligence/condition-monitoring/kinetix-inspection-technologieshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alanjamiefisher/
Checkout our episode stacks on Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
More episodes
Keep listening
Topics
Explore related conversations
Technical due diligence checklist for startups
A technical due diligence checklist for founders and investors: what reviewers examine across architecture, security, team and process, and how to prepare before a raise.
Engineering metrics that matter (and the ones that don't)
Which engineering metrics to track at a startup: DORA metrics, quality and reliability signals, what they tell you, and why measuring individual output backfires.