After a long hiatus I recently fired-up a scanner to listen in on the BNSF’s Chillicothe sub (Chan 36, 160.650) here in the Chicago area. Result: hours of total silence; no beeps, chirps, nothing breaking squelch. Noted a similar lack of radio traffic over on the “Q” side on Ch 66, but occasionally some yard traffic does squeak through.
It would appear that there’s something new under the BNSF sun. Anybody got anything on this?
Possibly, the advent of the digital radio’s?
There was some discussion that the older scanners would not be able to work with the digital radios,due to the ‘narrow banding’ of the transmissions(?)
This link might be of interest to you:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,2238331
FTL:"…Author: kk5ol
Yep, the first link posted basically said it’s gonna take a good while for the RR’s to go totally digital. That will give the scanner manufacturers time to size up the market. Naturally they’ll be a new level of expensive to start off with.
Now, the narrow banding of conventional FM is already under way. You too may have noticed some extremely low volume transmissions already! It’s because the signal deviation has already been reduced on locomotive radios used in interchange (run-through / free roaming) service. You now have to find a suitable volume setting to be able to hear all you want as most other radios are still operating in the currently allowed wide band mode.
RailNet802, out…"
The channel was working loud and clear for me in Hodgkins, IL yesterday near the Willow Springs UPS facility.
Scott