catfish wrote:
"Much changed in the late '90's and early '00's to convert plants (and pipelines for that matter) to advanced computer controls for manpower reduction. Back then these were based on internal controls, but I do remember at the end, the push to network these processes for remote access and operation."
It's gone like that on the railroads, too.
After Metro-North closed all the towers on the New Haven line and moved to digital controls from a single location (2nd floor Grand Central), if the "computers went down", the whole railroad signal system would "go dark", and the trains would stop. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Not like "the old days" when the towers were "islands unto themselves" and the blocks in between were automatic with signal power supplied by batteries. Trains could keep running at almost all times, and did. The New Haven line was still up-and-running even during the great blackout of 1965, because the railroad had its own power generating station for overhead and signal power...