About 6 weeks back, my trust scanner stopped receiving the railroad signals it had been bringing in.
I am in Ontario and get mostly CN chatter, and local hot box detectors.
I thought maybe something was wrong with my scanner, even though I could still get the wx channel.
So today, I go to Circit City / Radio Shack to look into getting a new scanner. I tell the guy I want it for railroad scanning. He tells me they do not handle scanners that pick up RRs and longer, cause RRs have gone to digital. And the previous type of scanners used will not pick up the digital stuff.
Uh… I have no idea what he’s talking about. RR is still primarily the same old analog it has always been. There’s a few small places where they have tried out digital, but that’s just mainly for support services, not the actual rail lines. Unless they are doing something new in Canada, but I don’t think so, because it would have to be a fleet wide change. My guess is they just changed the freq they use near you is all. Put it on search in the RR band and see what you hear. It’s probably there somewhere.
Not sure how much training a 19 year old, college bound selling electronics would know about scanners and frequencies, if he even knew what a train was, now if you asked about the latest Duke Nukem game I would trust his input [;)]
I highly doubt CN when digital or to a trunking/SMR format, how would they communicate on foriegn tracks, whow would a leased unit in the lead contact the dispatcher for a track warrant? I am betting they have just changed freq. Is it possible your scanner is having problems? Even though you can get the weather may not be an inducator, the WX is a very strong signal, many on 200+ foot towers, many RR radio towers may be only 100 feet, in a valley etc. Can you get any local police or fire?
Also dual trunking is probably a scanner that can do the Motorola trunking and possibly doing GE/Johnson trunking protocols. The way trunking works is either a control channel that tells the radio what channel to use, or some of the newer types will use all channels as control with a sub-carrier/or digital burts to the controller base radio. They work similar to a Nextel cell phone.