Railfan "Auto-Patch"

[kc9fsh]

I was looking at WI database tonight and noticed they have a few "railfan frequencies" listed, most of them are either ham or MURS. One entry really caught my attention though.


161.41500 AAR CH 87 Railfan Repeater Autopatch to Railroad Police


Does anyone know what this is? I highly doubt it is what the description says.

Railroads Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

[KC2OBW]

A auto patch is a phone line that is tied into the repeater, so the repater has a phone number where the police can answer phone calls on, The mall I used to work at, at night we would flip the emergency line over to the patch so if any one would call it would ring over the radio and the radio would be come a phone when needed.

[kc9fsh]

I know what an auto-patch is, but what I don't understand/find unlikely is that the AAR has a frequency set aside for railfans to use an autopatch to connect to RR police.

[KC2OBW]

idk maybe to report suspicious activity

[mciupa]

In Canada, that is the Mainline End-to-End frequency for Canadian National (CN), it seems preposterous to have non-employees using it.

[stateboy]

It was covered here before, last year sometime...search it out and you should find the thread. I don't remember where it is.

[burner50]

I vaguely remember this topic coming up....


http://www.radioreference.com/forums...-question.html

[seligman]

My personal opinion is that it's bogus. Even if it is "legitimate" (use your own definition here) there is nothing advantageous about publishing it here. Somebody is bound to get in trouble using this information the wrong way.

That said, I know of railroad radio shops doing some, shall we say, unorthodox things. I've seen railroad paksets programmed with both AAR channels and ham frequencies because the user is also a ham. Another time (this was funny) a radio shop reprogrammed management's radios one night and manipulated the PL tones for encode / decode so they could only talk to themselves. Everybody else could hear their chatter. I've also seen HF ham antennas mounted on railroad towers just in time for Field Day. LOL

Common sense should prevail in this case...

[ecps92]

There is nothing wrong with having Amateur frequencies in the Radio, if the Operator is licensed for them. If they are programmed in ALL Radios, then that is a different story.

Originally Posted by seligman

My personal opinion is that it's bogus. Even if it is "legitimate" (use your own definition here) there is nothing advantageous about publishing it here. Somebody is bound to get in trouble using this information the wrong way.

That said, I know of railroad radio shops doing some, shall we say, unorthodox things. I've seen railroad paksets programmed with both AAR channels and ham frequencies because the user is also a ham. Another time (this was funny) a radio shop reprogrammed management's radios one night and manipulated the PL tones for encode / decode so they could only talk to themselves. Everybody else could hear their chatter. I've also seen HF ham antennas mounted on railroad towers just in time for Field Day. LOL

Common sense should prevail in this case...

[icom1020]

Go back to the original submission and see whats up or modify it to say autopatch and leave out the railfan part.

[seligman]

Originally Posted by ecps92

There is nothing wrong with having Amateur frequencies in the Radio, if the Operator is licensed for them. If they are programmed in ALL Radios, then that is a different story.

It's against railroad policy. That's why it was considered a no-no.

[Don_Burke]

This is probably the thread from some time ago:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums...-question.html

[ecps92]

Guess it depends on the RailRoad [ Line by Line Policy ]

Originally Posted by seligman

It's against railroad policy. That's why it was considered a no-no.

[icom1020]

Originally Posted by Don_Burke

This is probably the thread from some time ago:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums...-question.html

Ah, so it's been ongoing. The submitter knows enough about the background to post probably because it requires the correct DTMF to access it so listening wasn't a problem. It's only direct if a special agent is nearby, otherwise they have to be paged out by the RR command center. I guess the concern would be someone who sees it as an invite to report via 146.xxx or direct on 87 which would be a problem. By the time one did the interconnect, a cell phone would probably beat all this. I'm thinking it was a novelty set up by a couple of railhams as an experiment to see how effective it would be. I would still want a cell phone for privacy.

[burner50]

Originally Posted by Don_Burke

This is probably the thread from some time ago:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums...-question.html

is there an echo?