ARA Radio Channels

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

My commuter railroad has signs advisig crews that switch setting # whatever on the radio turns to ARA channel #. How do I convert ARA channel numbers to a frequency sych as 161.010 mHz so I can monitor the talk

2

You need an employee timetable…for that particular road.

My railroads channel 1 is a certain frequency, which also happens to be the road frequency for BNSF over in part of … we can hear their broadcast sometimes.

There are no fixed settings, not all railroads have the same frequency for their channel 3 as another…it just depends on what the FCC assigned that railroad.

Ed

3

Welcome to the forum.

AAR# x .015 + 160.110 = actual frequency

4

[yeah]Great Info Chad…do you know how many AAR channels there are total? I’d like to set up my scanner…havent had much need up here in NE New mexico, but after moving to Montana in a couple of weeks, the information might be usefull!

5

According to my “Police Call/Frequency Guide”,there should be 100;starting at 160.215; going up
in .015 increments to161.565.

6

Here’s the list.

Many times the channel will be shown as four digits: “6464”. That means that transmit and receive are on the same channel, and that is usually the case. Unfortunately I don’t know which number is which, but if you encounter a situation where two are given, ie “6472,” you’ll probably want to put both in your scanner anyhow.

While some railroad radios are set up to show “CSX Channel 1,” “CSX Channel 2,” etc, others display the four digit code. Pretty safe bet that if that is the case, you’ll probably find a cheat sheet posted somewhere in the cab…

Adirondack RR trains may use as many as three channels on one of the runs - That of the host RR, then switch to their road channel when on home rails, and finally to another channel in Rule 98 territory.

7

I dont know what kind of scanner you have,but when you enter the frequencies in numerical oder using all the ara channels(100) they will be in line with what ever railroad your listening to…So, whatever ch. their on you will here it…Does that make since? The Cchannel 6464 for instance cant be on your ch 64 unless it just comes out that way,but you will herar both sides of the conversation on that freq.If they talk on 2 diff. freqs you will still hear both sides if your w/in range…Sometime the trains are hard to hear because of the locale or whatever…Hope this helps…Danny

8

There are actually only 90 AAR channels, starting with #7 160.215 and ending with #97 161.565