07/26/2015
Perhaps you mean ATCS. That’s Advanced Train Control System.
An explanation of the actual system is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Train_Control_System
From a railfan point of view, it is a system by which traffic on lines which use ATCS can be monitored via data radio. There are various means, including pulling the signal directly off the air and a few websites which have done the hard part (getting the signal off the air) and post the screens on-line.
Not every line uses ATCS. You’ll have to do some research with local railfans to find out what, if any, lines in your area do use ATCS.
ATCS represents the middle of a technology “sandwich.” In the past, all such informati
I’m sure that’s the answer he needed.
ATSC is the current standard for American digital broadcast television. It uses thoroughly sucky 8-VSB modulation, which doesn’t handle multipath at all well, and is not well suited to receivers that move, even at walking pace. If it has application to railroading, other than watching training videos, I don’t see it.
The OP may be trying to find out more about the ATCS Monitor program that runs on Windows.
None of the Kalmbach forums are a good place for this kind of tech support discussion. The Yahoo ATCS Monitor group is both the place to download the program, data files (monitoring kits) and discuss setup issues.
Unfortunately the ATCSMon ‘documentation’ is poorly organized - some is simple and abbreviated for program installation and usage guides, other is very technical for those who develop layout kits, do field monitoring using modified scanners or create monitoring servers that anyone on the Internet can use. All of the work is volunteer which explains this situation.
Since Yahoo Groups post-/neo/ is a user-interface disaster, here is the link to go to if you want to join.
Click on the ‘join group’ button, and correct any buttons on the page that opens. Yahoo may require you to register for a “Yahoo ID”, part of which involves a non-optional demand for a cell phone number (and yes, the Bangalore software checks to see if it is a valid cell number that still works!) The good news is that you can go back and set your e-mail address to something other than the Yahoo ID later.
Note that you will be sent a questionnaire to the email address you specify, and you will have to fill this out before you can join. There may be other e-mails from Yahoo you have to answer, which have an uncanny propensity to wind up in spam folders especially on Yahoo Mail – this makes no sense, but that is true of most of the Bangalore programming in the past couple of years.
You can bypass all the rigmarole with simple majordomo-style e-mail subscribe … but if you do that, you won’t get access to all the Groups-specific features, some of which are valuable. If you find at any point that the Yahoo sign-up process is intolerable, just subscribe using the commands, and then ask on list for advice on how to proceed.
I meant to mention that, but forgot… Thanks for bringing it up.