My brother and I are looking to buy a scanner. Two questions. First: What is a decent, reliable, affordable scanner to buy? Second: Need frequncies for CP/Soo and UP for the Milwaukee, WI area. Thanks for your help.
IF you plan on carrying the scanner in your vehicle, I would advise checking with local / state law enforcement regarding such. Here in Michigan, it must be turned off & carried in trunk (or glove box in my pickup). If I am caught with it anywhere else, it can be confiscated.
If you haven’t already purchased a scanner, my personal preference is for Bearcat scanners. At the time I purchased both of mine, the Bearcats scanned at a much faster rate than Radio Shack units. I compared mine with a friends R.S. & his would miss parts of transmissions because of slower scan rate.
Local hobby shops have books with RR scanner freqs. I was allowed to just copy the freqs that I needed for my area by a VERY nice counter person at the store near me!
Cam “roadrailer” Hamilton
Thought you could use this Helpful Scanner information. First of all a Uniden Bearcat Scanner is good. or even a Radio Shack brand is good. The road channel for Milwaukee is 160.770
it is good for the mainline from Milwaukee to Chicago. Hope this helps you My Friend.
I purchased a radio shack Pro-91 around last Christmas on sale for $150. It is an excellent scanner. As far as the freq’s, there should be a few web-sites offering railroad frequencies for your area.
Thanks for the help! Christmas shopping will be a lot more fun now!
Thank you. Could you tell me the websites?
I think this is a good starting point:
http://zippy.cso.uiuc.edu:8080/~roma/rr-freqs/
Go to Yahoo and search for railroad scanner frequencies. Good luck!
The scanner I use is a Radio Shack PRO-79. I think I paid somewhere between $70 and $100 about a year ago. It’s a 200 channel scanner with the channels in 10 banks of 20 channels. I use one bank for NS freqs and another for CSX.
I just thought to tell you the Union Pacific Road Channel for the Milwaukee area. Its 160.485. Its called The Milwaukee Subdivision. You may get the Dispatcher saying hes the Northeast train Dispatcher or the Milwaukee Sub Dispatcher. Depends what Dispatcher is on duty at the time. You will still have the right Channel. Check out 161.040 for Trains going to Janesville Wisconsin. I think same Dispatcher controls that Territory also Help this helps My Friend