Radio use question

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Yesterday I was poking around by the port area in Wilmington NC. I could hear talk on the scanner; it was on an AAR frequency. But I could never hear any sounds of switching. No diesel noise, no sound of coupling. I saw nothing moving, but the majority of the facility is blocked from view by cuts of cars or other things.

I had noticed trackmobiles (if that’s the right term for the small vehicles that industries can use to move a car or two) here and there. It made me wonder if non-railroad employees using a trackmobile communicate on the regular RR frequencies. Could that have been what I was hearing?

2

It’s entirely possible.

There are almost 200 AAR channels/frequencies, the number having doubled with narrow-banding. If the plant operates a railroad, they may have requested and been assigned a channel.

Interoperability with their serving railroad would be a plus.

According to RadioReference.com, Wilmington Terminal operates on 160.320 MHz. Perhaps they service the plant.

3

I believe that frequency is used by CSX. You may have been hearing radio transmissions that carried farther than the physical sounds of the activity.

4

Aliens, gotta be aliens