I saw a work train of sorts go east (right to left) on the closest track (track 1?) on Sunday. It was an engine and a crane on what appeared to be a very short flatcar or a single truck under the crane, followed by another close coupled flat car with some supports on it, (like for the crane boom to rest on but it was not on them) followed by two more empty flat cars. I am GUESSING that the switch track panels and that work train are associated and they are doing some work to the east of the camera, but I have no idea how far east. I doubt if the track panels would have been stored there if the work were a great distance east, so I am again guessing that the work is near the Depot and the O. Winston Link Museum.
I figure they will take out the gravel/sand put down for the loading platform, but there is no telling when. (I wonder just how firm a footing that loading area really is… did ladies in high-heels have trouble standing?)
I have my 2 .75 hours of video pared down to just 30 minutes… 30 minutes of extreme boredom! That train moved REALLY SLOW when moving within the view of the camera. Long periods of just sitting and them move at 1 MPH a car length or two. I have cut out all the “sitting” except for some time where the Locomotive “whished some steam” (to borrow a term from Thomas). And I have removed those scenes where the train is at the west end of the scene. But it passes the camera EIGHT times and that adds up to a long video of a very slow moving train. I think I will have to split it into 8 segments to upload to YouTube and let the individual viewers decide how much time to waste watching them.
The black tank cars are probably carrying ethanol to the new bulk unloading facility the other side of the East End Shops. This is near Norfolk Ave and Hollins RD NE and is labelled on Goggle maps.
It’s fairly common to see short trains with a caboose turning at the WYE or headed to the transloading facility.
Switch sections are stored along the tracks at the west end of the shops near the expressway overpass. More switches and and overhead signal sections are stored near the Henry Street bridge.
I work in the building across the street from the web cam.
[quote user=“Semper Vaporo”]
Watched two cabeese go by this morning;
At 11:36 AM (Roanoke time – I THINK! The clock showing in the images are CST) the pale red caboose in desperate need of a paint job and still labeled as “NW” went east on what I call track 4 (furthest from the camera). The train was black tank cars.
Then at 12:22 PM the better looking red caboose labeled with the NS “racehorse” logo went east on track 3 with covered hopper cars.
Not long after that my connection to the camera “went to lunch” and I could not get it to come back and stay (then I went to lunch) so I don’t know if I missed them returning. Did anyone happen to see them return (today - 2/22/2013)?
I have been trying to figure out where they go and knowing how long it takes might improve my chances of figuring that out.
I have followed the various tracks using Google Earth and found that using the Street View feature o
I knew there was another word for what I wrote!.. Just could not get it to the conscious mind to drive the fingers on the keyboard! Thanks! [D)]
The word dynamo (from the Greek word dynamis; meaning power) was originally another name for a DC electrical generator, and the word is still used to mean that in some disciplines. Bicycles sometimes have what is called a hub dynamo built into the wheel hub, but they usually produce AC. It is an old word, but since we are talkin’ Steam Locomotives, it is the appropriate word to use!
Thank you for the link to the news article. Good info on what is happening and what will probably be in the view of the camera this summer.
There was one paragraph in the news article that really bothered me…
Perkins waited his turn to pick up ethanol. Once his tanks were full, he drove across the street to the Kinder Morgan Energy Partners petroleum products terminal, where ethanol was unloaded for blending.
“DROVE ACROSS THE STREET” ??? I surely do not wish Mr. Perkins to lose work, but I certainly hope the track upgrades eliminate the intermediate use of a truck to move a liquid across the street! [W][W][W]
I have not been able to access the full motion large image railcam server all weekend. The only access I can get is the 1 second update rate small image link. Can anybody else get to the better servers links?
I was getting the “stop action” video for about 10 seconds after which it would freeze. I would reboot the site and it would just repeat the same scene and freeze. Now it just shows a black screen with no connection. You would think that after being offline for over a month in late winter for improvements that it would be running. Now I habe nothing to do but do some work around the house! .
A note appeared under the thumb for the camera view yesterday or the day before saying it would be down for the foreseeable future for some reason I can’t recall, but that it would return in time. Sounded to me like a couple of weeks or so.
Very, very happy to see the cam up and running last night when we returned home. I log on a number of times every day and miss it when it’s down. Thanks to those who take care of and see to the best railroad cam on the net.
It looks like the majority of the track changes are complete in front of the Roanoke Railcam and the VMT camera. In all that work they went from 3 tracks at the west end and 4 tracks at the east end and after adding a fifth track between the first two, they then removed the 4th track and ended up with the same 3 tracks at the west end and just 4 tracks at the east end. And work often had to stop so that trains could be run on tracks that were in the middle of the work and even temporarily connected to new track that later went away. Logistics nightmare to do all that rearranging of tracks and keep the railroad in operation. Well done!
But there are now more crossovers between the various tracks and they are MUCH straighter.
I have lost the majority of the landmarks I was using to measure the speed of trains (two tall light poles that were on the former passenger platform and the signal towers and bridges that were just right of center). But relying on the lengths of certain types of cars I can tell that the maximum speeds through the area have gone from 15 MPH to over 20 MPH (I clocked 1 WB train at 25 MPH, but it slowed quickly). When Google Earth updates their images to include this new trackwork I will pick some new landmarks and measure the distances on the new track to get better estimates of speeds.
They apparently have some more work to do, as evidenced by the two portable toilets moved in last week and the office trailer is still there, as well as some construction equipment is still being parked in the area overnights.
There is one thing that has me wondering, though… In the last week 13 black ‘items’ have been lined up between the city street (Shenandoah Ave.) and the new electrical shanty, that look similar to an automotive service station’s “free air” terminals. They seem to be about 4-feet tall and maybe a couple of feet square at the base, with some sort of elongated ‘hood’ at the top.&
The browser version has not worked for me for a long time… but I thought it was because I have added a couple of Do-Not-Track add-ons to my browser and that has killed a lot of websites and confused many more that embed some YouTube videos in either NEW or Non-standard ways (some I can see, and some I can’t !)
I just tried the small, lower frame rate Media Player connection and it won’t complete the connection either… seems only the original set up works on my PC.
It took a crew of 5 men and a stake-bed truck with a boom crane nearly 2 hours to move one of the 13 black items from in front of the hotel cam to in view of the VMT cam… it is now sitting on the “street side” of some concrete traffic barricades just left of center in the VMT cam view.
I’m hoping some signaling will be put in. W/o signaling, it is tough to predict the arrival of a train. I hate just sitting there with no trains and not knowing IF there will be a train.
I was never able to see the signals during the day time, and even at night only the ones at the very west end were partially visible, but, yes, they did help too anticipate when a train might be coming from the east.
I note this morning that another of the “items” is missing from the Hotel cam view, but I can’t see where it went. 11 left.
An another gone this AM. Four men picked it up and put it the bucket of the loader,and took it to where the first one is,only closer to the tracks.Interesting.
I look at the web cam two or three times each day. I was intrigued by the track alterations and was puzzled by the extra fifth line and then its disappearance. I understand that Amtrak will arrive in 2017 - looking forward to seeing a passenger train for a change - so I guessed the new alignments and longer switch overs were all towards preparation for that. I also believe there is a lot more work to be done between Roanoke and Washington DC but we wont be able to watch any of that. [;)]
Now the ‘curiosities’ sitting by the shed. They were reminiscent of the statues of Easter Island. [:D] but I am grateful for the suggestion that they are signal post bases. There were thirteen, now ten. So ten green bottles comes to mind…[:)]
Them thingys are a lot taller than I had estimated… I have finally seen several men around the ten that are left, and now I estimate them to be closer to 7-ft tall (or all those guys were midgets).
I have to say I still don’t understand the mentality of these workers. They spend 99% of their time “wandering” aimlessly in random directions or standing someplace with their arms folded for several minutes and then they will saunter off in a random direction, only to stop in mid stride to turn and go some other direction. And nobody seems to move with any intent or purpose to their motion, just a slow, lazy, summer-day stroll. I don’t mean to be insulting, but, for gosh sake’s fella’s, get some gumption to at least look like you are earning your pay.