There are a lot of people that like listening to the scanner chatter to know whats going on in the video. At least in my experience anyways 
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Welcome Chessie.
For my part, RR or police, I like to listen via scanner to observe good/poor dispatching. regards mike endmrw0604250935
When listening to radio chatter - remember many Engineers āknowā that they can line a path for their train better than the Train Dispatcher that is running the ENTIRE railroad they are operating a single train upon.
Any colorful metaphors thrown in for spice or are there rules against that?
Balt inadvertently omitted the /sarc tag. Though I thought it was easy to detect it.
The FCC frowns on that. However, sometimes the microphone transmit button does stick on.
When done using the radio in a railroad vehicle or crew van, donāt put the microphone in the built-in cup holder.
Jeff
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Jeff, I may be Wrong (Happens Occasionally, but not often 
) it sounds like you learned that through Experience?
Doug
As far as I know, Iāve only been in the listening end. Then for the cup holder incidents, I only have heard casual conversation. Others have heard worse. There was one, from a yardmasters office one timeā¦
Jeff
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While stuck transmit buttons can create embarrassing situations.
Mishandling the āMuteā button on telephone conference calls with high ranking officials can be absolutely career ending.
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I have, numerous times. We often see them on the walkway over the mainline at Utica Union Station.
The pavilions at Deshler, OH and Fostoria, OH both have scanner feeds running all the time.
If you know a little about the local railroad geography, they can be useful as you can plan your photography.
Of course, when Iām working on our tourist line, the handheld radio is always on. And we occasionally have a fan with a scanner.
Thatās trueāthe main difficulty lies in seeing a railfan, which around here is nearly impossible.
ā¦While stuck transmit buttons can create embarrassing situations.
Iāve heard some interesting conversationsā¦ It happens in any industry that uses radios.
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My dad was a bit of a radio ānutā and we lived close enough to the NY Centralās main and Collinwood yard that our family was treated most nights to crew communications in the mid- 1960s through the '70s. Pretty neat stuff, I thought. I had a notion to record some on cassette tapes and now I have a few hours of railroad āchatterā of a vintage variety. No hot box transmitters then. I think they were monitored in manned towers and the operator let the crew know, along with lineside signals.
Back then you could monitor Bell Telephone mobile phone conversations!
Railfans?
Lewis Collection 3278 by John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, on Flickr
Off The Beaten Track excursion on July 12, 1936, here with PRR E6s #1694 at Glenmoore, Pa.
Yeah, they go way back.
Cheers, Ed
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You can tell itās a hot day by all those period railfans have their suit jackets off, and some have even ditched their ties.
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Well they are right at the firebox.
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Was that the excursion where they ran a K4 up to the Wilkes-Barre area over a grade that I recall was something like 5.38%. āOff the Beaten Trackā indeedā¦ in one sense. Perhaps very beaten in another.