What type of handheld scanner do you use?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I think scanner signals here went digital. What handheld scanners do you use? I want to hear the towers and the voices coming from the cab. How do you get those channels? If I buy a digital scanner will it automatically pick up the channels? And also police.

Thanks

MIKE

2

Mike,

The rail industry has ‘talked’ about going digital(and with encryption) for some time. I do not think that has happened yet. The same basic 97 channels are still around. What has happened is that the frequency guard bands have been tightened up(to allow more space for other uses). Existing scanners sometimes do not pick up the rail chatter as well due to this. If they do go digital, I suspect it will be industry wide and very well may be encrypted while they are at it.

Jim

3

Jim,

Thanks. Right now I have a Radio Shack 1000 channel duel trunking HH scanner. How do you get the channels I am looking for? I can still here on it “track ** no defects” It must be by a hot box detector.

Mike

4

I use my iPhone and stream railroadradio.net for my handheld scanner when I’m trackside [8-|]

Chris Palomarez

5

Mike,

This site is about all you need to monitor RR radio traffic:

http://www.radioreference.com/

The RR stuff:

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?aid=7747

If you have one of the newer digital radios, the downloads are well worth the subscription cost. For just RRs and other simple stuff what’s free is really all you need. Look up your local freqs and you’ll likely find everything you need.

With a 1,000 channel scanner, you can enter every RR freq in the assigned bandplan around 160 mHz. You might want to check the manual, as many scanners have a “service search” feature that automatically brings up various services, like police fire, etc and sometimes RRs.

Scanners made in the last decade should all cover the new narrowband freqs when they come into use.