[joekansas]

I work for the UP, and I wish they'd stick with motorolas'. They have taken a beating and I have no problems with them. Plenty of volume and about indestructable. The railroads biggest problem is with antennas. If someone is having radio problems, it is because the antenna coax has had the pl259 pulled off and jammed back on, or the coax has been crushed in a cabinet door . That is the only radio trouble I ever witness.

Most of the hand microphones are in bad shape, and guys get mad when the don't work, so they just take a knife and cut the cord and throw the thing out the window. No one around to fix them, anyway. Lots of the conductors carry a known good mic if they want to actually use one and take it off at the end of the trip.
There is a rule out there stating the company is required to provide a mic for the conductors side of the cab on each and every train. That rule lasted about as long as it took the ink to dry on it.

When there are problems on an engine, you are on your own. They have no one left on the property who gives a crap about if your having radio trouble or not. Those days are over. Use your damn cell phone if you need to call the dispatcher.

Sometimes we get an engine with a new radio in it, it isn't motorola- I know it starts with an "N"- Nextel or Nex something. They have adjustable squelch- which we don't need. My biggest problem with that brand of radio is that when you have been listening to some broadcast from a person who talks quietly and you've turned the volume up wide open so you can hear them in your noisy engine cab, then the next person who talks is way louder- You scramble to turn the volume back down because it is blowing your eardrums out but unfortunately the volume up/down function is disabled while the radio is receiving a transmission. Just frickin great. In my estimation, that makes those radios a Piece-o-Shi±.

Seems like this companies motto, as far as radios go, is "If it's not broke, we'll fix it til it is".

As far as handhelds go, they had motorola ht600, then mt1000, and finally the ht1000's. When you got hired and got your radio, you had to have the radio man be sure the radio you got was programmed with all the freq's that you'd possibly need for the areas you were required to cover. He's got this ancient desktop computer (looks like it would be a few steps above a Commodor 64 computer!!!) with a programming cable he hooks it to, and he plods along asking what you wanna talk on.... you tell him we switch on channel 38- he's got all the freq's memorized, so he just types in.....160.680 tx.......160.680 rx.... and off you go!
Now, the motorola is vanishing. They are giving out some sort of little Kenwood now, with all railroad frequencies programmed in I am told. It has a small screen on the front which tells you what channel you are on. All you have to do is be smarter than the radio to figure out how to get it to that channel. On an average trip over the road in this part of the country, we talk on at least 3 different channels.
I am an engineer so I don't rate a walkie anymore, but I can tell you that Kenwoods seem to be a P.O.S. radio- the battery doesn't hold a charge long, and they have a piss poor transmit range. I don't know exactly what the radio model numbers are. This is just my two cents for all you RR railroad fans