RailRoadFan.com

CSX_CO wrote:

MQT3001 wrote:

~Z~ wrote:Strange, when i was trying to connect a 2nd stream, said we were at max listeners.. had it set at 8 streams. Upped it to 12, rebooted server, and now i can connect 2 at once.. give it a whirl mqt3001, and when it works, disconnect and go back to listening to your teachers while at school.

Sweet...it works now! Thanks Zack!

No school today or tomorrow...two days off for Professional Development today and Election Day tomorrow.

Now I've gotta listen for the Railgrinder!

Election day is a school Holiday now? Good lord, no wonder out education system in this country sucks. It isn't that its underfunded, it is because they seemingly are never in school...

Schools around here just had a week off last week for "Fall Break". Next Month Thanksgiving Break, then Christmas Break. No wonder the work ethic of people in their 20's sucks, they've never been required to work any length of time without feeling like they are entitled to a 'break'.

Practice Safe CSX

Many schools have Election Day off not because they need a school holiday, but because the school buildings are in use as polling places. That's the way it is here in Lansing.

Are links available for MQT, GDLK and GRE channel feed?

MQT1223 wrote:Are links available for MQT, GDLK and GRE channel feed?

They're all included in the feed, assuming he has those channels turned on. His scanner is scanning all of those bands.

Channels being scanned:
160.230 - CSX road
160.320 - CSX dispatcher on the east side of Grand Rapids
160.635 - CSX dispatcher west of Grand Rapids
160.590 - CN Chan 2 dispatcher
160.530 - CN Chan 1 Road
160.440 - Marquette Rail road
160.335 - Grand Elk Road
161.535 - Grand Elk Yard
161.235 - Grand Rapids Eastern

However, a couple of these might be turned off now, static issues and interference. I know it is hard for Zack to pick up the GRE and MQT due to distance and geography anyways. CN is too far away.

CSX Road you can usually hear from at least DD19.1 (Zeeland Defect Detector) to Elmdale and up to Turner Street (and often farther...I've picked up trains at Fennville and Woodbury before). You can hear the Dispatcher's towers in Holland and Lako? as well, hence you might not be able to hear the trains, but you can hear the dispatcher.

When trains are working, and handsets are in use, they never get good range due to their very nature of not being designed to transmit over distance. This is a lot of why you won't pick up the GRE or MQT on the feed, if those channels are even on. This is why when you're actually railfanning you can hear the Amtrak conductors reply to the engineer calling signals if they're close to you, but more than a couple miles and on Zack's feed you can't hear those at all - because the conductors only have weak handsets while the locomotive has a powerful radio. Same goes for three-stepping on the feed...usually you can only hear the engineer's remarks.

You can hear the Dispatcher's towers in Holland and Lako?

Where are all the towers located along the Grand Rapids Sub?

MQT3001 wrote:

MQT1223 wrote:Are links available for MQT, GDLK and GRE channel feed?

They're all included in the feed, assuming he has those channels turned on. His scanner is scanning all of those bands.

Channels being scanned:
160.230 - CSX road
160.320 - CSX dispatcher on the east side of Grand Rapids
160.635 - CSX dispatcher west of Grand Rapids
160.590 - CN Chan 2 dispatcher
160.530 - CN Chan 1 Road
160.440 - Marquette Rail road
160.335 - Grand Elk Road
161.535 - Grand Elk Yard
161.235 - Grand Rapids Eastern

However, a couple of these might be turned off now, static issues and interference. I know it is hard for Zack to pick up the GRE and MQT due to distance and geography anyways. CN is too far away.

CSX Road you can usually hear from at least DD19.1 (Zeeland Defect Detector) to Elmdale and up to Turner Street (and often farther...I've picked up trains at Fennville and Woodbury before). You can hear the Dispatcher's towers in Holland and Lako? as well, hence you might not be able to hear the trains, but you can hear the dispatcher.

When trains are working, and handsets are in use, they never get good range due to their very nature of not being designed to transmit over distance. This is a lot of why you won't pick up the GRE or MQT on the feed, if those channels are even on. This is why when you're actually railfanning you can hear the Amtrak conductors reply to the engineer calling signals if they're close to you, but more than a couple miles and on Zack's feed you can't hear those at all - because the conductors only have weak handsets while the locomotive has a powerful radio. Same goes for three-stepping on the feed...usually you can only hear the engineer's remarks.

So the most likely way you are gonna hear the GRE or MQT is with a portable scanner tuned in to that specific channel?

Yes and yes. Howeve, I generally scan all of railroad band at once, so I can hear everything near me all the time.

MQT3001 wrote:Yes and yes. Howeve, I generally scan all of railroad band at once, so I can hear everything near me all the time.

That's one way to do it. However in a busy area or if you have a specific interest, the full band scan isn't going to be your friend. I have the same Yeasu 1900r in my truck, and I have different scan banks depending on where I am to ensure I only hear the traffic that I want to. No point in hearing the CSX line a few miles away when i'm foaming just the NS at chesterton for example.

amtrak1007 wrote:

MQT3001 wrote:Yes and yes. Howeve, I generally scan all of railroad band at once, so I can hear everything near me all the time.

That's one way to do it. However in a busy area or if you have a specific interest, the full band scan isn't going to be your friend. I have the same Yeasu 1900r in my truck, and I have different scan banks depending on where I am to ensure I only hear the traffic that I want to. No point in hearing the CSX line a few miles away when i'm foaming just the NS at chesterton for example.

True, but I think given the context a full band scan is the way to go for Max.

Even when I go to Porter, I just lock-out channels as needed if they get annoying...can't lock out 14 because that is the Porter Branch, IIRC, or 08 because that's road for the GRS.

justin_gram wrote:

You can hear the Dispatcher's towers in Holland and Lako?

Where are all the towers located along the Grand Rapids Sub?

You should be able to find this info on the FCC website. They have actual copies of the FCC licenses issued to the railroads and they give you the exact geographic coordinates of there the towers are located. I have a really old copy (from the 80's) and I know some of these towers have been moved or removed all together.

scanner down?

amtrak1007 wrote:scanner down?

Was for a few minutes yes, server wasn't doing well, had to reboot, back up about noon. I'm also working on migrating it to a new server. Having some issues configuring icecast/oddcast/winamp plugin, but working on it.
Old box was pentium4, XP. new is dual core, Win 7.

~Z~ wrote: Was for a few minutes yes, server wasn't doing well, had to reboot, back up about noon. I'm also working on migrating it to a new server. Having some issues configuring icecast/oddcast/winamp plugin, but working on it.
Old box was pentium4, XP. new is dual core, Win 7.

Thanks Zackmaster. Remind me at the next dinner I owe you some money for the things you do.

Feed is on a new server at home. Also moved hosting from having it broadcast from here, to have it changed to shoot the feed over to broadcastify.com and you can listen in from there. http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/19206
Updated the details on the first post about it. Let me know if anyone has issues connecting to the new feed.

Just did a little test when updating my links in Winamp on on my phone in Scanner Radio. The mobile feed is about 20-30 behind the web feed via my Comcast connection. Sound is good. The little "repeating noise" I've heard on the mobile feed does seem to still be there with Broadcastify. Must be something to due with the mobile connection.

Bit of downtime tonight; replacing router this evening.

Have had various issues with a lot of static on the line lately, and hope to get that resolved. Tested it in various aspects the last few days and the static issue seems to follow me when i use the same scanner and power transformer... moved the scanner and power upstairs, hooked up a different coax and different antenna, away from the router/PC/ext hard drive/cabling and issue continued. Plugged in my car's scanner into the main antenna, no static issues.
Turned up the squelch more and so far, but not sure if that'll resolve it. Monitoring it today to see if range has been impacted at all. Turned back on 160.320. If you hear a lot of static, let me know.. and if listening in, let me know what kind of range you are hearing. At least hearing MOW at Grandville and dispatcher fine so far this morning.
Lots of static still I'm hearing..different from yesterday, but annoying. Think I'll try to hook up the radio to my car's 12V battery and see if the static is still produced. Going to do a factory reset to the radio as well. Dargh....

afternoon edit: No static in the past hour, but had lots this morning. Just got the dispatcher talking to MOW at Wells, so getting a good range still.

FYI, scanner is offline. PC had to be replaced. Plan is to move the scanner over to a new location and to amtrak1007's awesome antenna. Will update when we've made some progress to get the scanner online at the new location.

Zack's equipment is now mounted at the antenna site and streamed here <http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/24338>.

Channels currently scanned
1515 - 160.335 - Grand Elk
2222 - 160.440 - Maquette Rail
7575 - 161.235 - Grand Rapids Eastern
9595 - 161.550 - Grand Elk

Is this no longer working?

discussion has moved to:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=33614

All three feeds are online as of 4 minutes ago.