I think your computer is still in wide-band mode…
I just bet you are using IE-8 or IE-9 and you typed a missive and it dissappeared when you hit “Post”.
Look at the top of the IE window, just below the Title Bar, and between the address textbox and the “Refresh” and “Stop” buttons you will see an icon that looks like a torn piece of paper (or, if you are like me, it looks more like two mountain ranges!). Click on it and the page will refresh and put IE into “Compatibility mode”. You only need to do this once for the Trains dot com web sites to have all the forum pages work in that mode. (If you frequent other web sites that have a similar problem you will need to click that button for those, as well) The icon should be a bit “greener” than it was, indicating the mode that IE is in. If you click it again, then IE will undo the Compatibility Mode and things will be back to the non-working state again.
If you don’t see the icon, you can also get to the function by clicking “Tools” in the menu bar (and if the menu bar is not visible, press and release the “ALT” key) Then select Compatibility Mode in the drop down menu that appears. There is also an entry to bring up a dialog box that shows which web sites are to be treated in Compatibility Mode.
Here are my questions about railroads converting to narrowband radio frequency separations.
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Will the railroads still be permitted to continue to use the 15 KHz separation between their radio transmission frequencies under the FCC mandate?
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Who will be assigned to use the narrow band spaced radio transmission frequencies, i.e., the 7.5 KHz transmission frequencies that fall between transmission frequencies that are separated by 15 KHz?
Thanks to Semper Vaporo for straightening me out.
- Yes and No. When the deadline hits in 2013, all users of designated frequencies (which includes RR) must be narrowband. There are a very few exceptions in VHF-High (148-174 Mhz), none of which are in the RR band.
Currently assigned frequencies will likely not change - they’ll just have to be used narrowband. From a scanner standpoint you may notice a slight reduction in volume.
- Based on my experience with fire radios, the “new” frequencies will be assigned to new users (ie, new RRs), or to RRs who want additional frequencies, much the same as the legacy frequencies were assigned.
I highly doubt they will be assigned to non-RR entities.
Some railroads may decide to go digital when they go narrowband. I’m not so sure that current digital scanners will decode that traffic.
There is also a certain amount of effort to go even narrower - with a frequency between each of the current narrowband allocations.
tree:
So as a scanner fan, what will this mean? New equipment to order?
It seems CSX has changed over and my reception seems to be less than previously, perhaps due to the summer months.
Any suggestions would help.
Ed
That would be possible using single sideband (SSB), with 4 kHz channel spacing. The radios would be more expensive as SSB requires much better frequency stability than FM.
For most scanners, you will see little difference. The present signals do not use the full 25 Khz band allocated to each channel. Most Radios use about 5-10 Khz and will meet the transmitting requirements of the new narrow band signals.The new channels will be spaced every 12.5 Khz.
Check your scanner and see if it has a setting for channel spacing. If so, you should be able to set the spacing to 12.5 Khz and hear all of the new “narrow” channels as you scan.
Personal opinion is that this is a solution looking for a problem. The railroads will eventually notice that the Internet is out there and covers most of their territory for far less money than maintaining a radio system. Soon all of the administrative traffic will be routed to the cell phone/Internet number of the locomotive or on-board computer. Conductors will carry their iPads and login to see Track Authorities, Car Lists, Bulletins and so on. The radio system is jammed up now because it uses an analog system for digital data. (A digital track authority would transmit in 0.5 sec.) They are still 20 years behind in their communication system.
Funny thing is that most HO layouts have more digital control than the railroads.
Yeah, but it still works pretty darn good.
[|)] So true! Here is a link to some information on the transitions (note the plural) to RR radio frequencies.
This is all holdover from the olden days of telegraph operators at each little town. It would be far safer for each train to see the track diagram and where the other trains are and where their authority covers.
I have to sit at a switch for 5 minutes waiting to give a “that is correct” while another train copies an authority. Often we step on each other because I can only hear 1/2 of the conversation.
This could all be done with existing on-line tools and you could see the location and velocity of all the other trains in your area.
There is no reason a train couldn’t dispatch itself in dark territory with a simple google maps application.
Internet and Cell coverage in rural areas are no where near adequate for what you are suggesting. PTC will eliminate the problems you mention, at a greater cost, for those lines with either TIH/PIH or passenger trains. Look for a cheaper version to come for the remaining lines that need a TWC like system.
From the above post:
“Conductors will carry their iPads and login to see Track Authorities, Car Lists, Bulletins and so on.”
How will this square with new FRA rules BANNING personal electronic devices in locomotive cabs?
The keyword in your posting is PERSONAL, company issued devices for a specific purpose are exempt. Note that it will be the Conductor doing the checking, just as it must be the Conductor who transcribes the Track Warrant. Personally I don’t think it will be an Ipad unless it is modified to operate on different frequencies and with firmware encryption.
MOW vehicles already carry computers that display bulletins and warrants/authorities. Soon they will put that technology in the locomotives. And I am using iPads generically for those sorts of things. They already include wide area networking and encryption.
That is why I say that these new radio frequencies will not be needed as they transfer all of this communication to commercial wide area networks. (Military calls that COTS Commercial Off the Shelf). The networking systems used by railroads have long been developed in house and very expensive to maintain.
That may be true for administrative matters, but how is the conductor going to direct the engineer when they’re making a joint 50 cars back from the locomotives? Send him a PM? Hope that there’s WiFi available?
I don’t see radios going away for operations any time soon.
The narrowbanding mandate isn’t limited to railroads. Everyone in the affected bands has to change - police, fire, construction, schools, buses, you name it.
As mentioned, your scanner will likely still work just fine, particularly if it’s been built after narrowband became a known requirement.
The reason for going narrowband is because we’re out of frequencies in our assigned bands (as a country). Railroad radio is a very narrow (pun intended) piece of that pie.
Again, I say a solution looking for a problem. We were out of radio channels 20 years ago, but most businesses have shifted to cell phones (try to find a business band radio shop these days)… The mandate to shift all emergency services to some other radio system is also bogus as this is a matter of centralized coordination and not radio frequencies.More frequencies is not going to make coordinating fire/police/ambulance any easier. Now you will have twice as many people screaming at the dispatcher over twice as many frequencies.
How will doubling the number of RR channels get me to the dispatcher any quicker?
This is a nice plot to sell more radios. For a while, radios were made here in the U.S. but now this will just expand our already bloated import imbalance.
And as for the conductor making up a train, of course that needs a radio. But most cell phone systems have a walkie-talkie system and that would keep “3 cars to a joint” off the wide area radio network.
How will all of this go over for folks like myself who are still using crystal-based scanners? (Mine is a Bearcat BC Four Six)
You will still be able to receive the original frequencies/channels, but you may experience two problems;
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you will find the volume (loudness) to be about 1/2 of what it was before, and
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if someone starts using one of the newly defined channels that are between the old channels then you will experience severe cross talk. Example, if you monitoring Channel 50 and someone transmits on the new Channel between 50 and 51 you will hear that transmission too. This happens now to some extent if the radio receiver has a poor notch filter to exclude frequencies outside of the desired channel and someone transmitts on the adjacent channel. With the new allocations and narrower channels the problem will be worse for the older receivers.
My scanners never had much ability to make the audio loud in the first place and so I suspect I will have trouble hearing transmissions. Also my scanners already experience lots of crosstalk or stopping on the wrong frequency when scanning all the channels, so I will have more problem with the new in-between channels.
If someone starts using one of the new channels you may be able to hear it on both the old channel below the new one and old channel above the new one. It might sound better on one or the other, depending on how good the notch filter is in the receiver, how accurate it is in selecting the center frequency and how close the transmitter is to the intended center frequency.