What would I hear?

[n5usr]

I'm curious, what sort of traffic does one generally hear on railroad frequencies? And is it a lot / very little? What sort of range do they have? (I.e. just enough power for around the yard, or 100W to talk 50 miles down the line?)

My office building is maybe 80 feet from the two BNSF lines that run N-S through downtown OKC. Needless to say, we *know* when the trains go by! We are also about a mile south of the yard that's just southeast of downtown. Recently I plugged all the OKC frequencies I could find in the database into my scanner, and listened for a while. I heard very little, and understood even less!

On a side note, they are doing a lot of work on the lines in my area, and the trucks parked alongside the tracks have a 2-way radio that's blaring almost non-stop at times. Am I just not listening at the right times? (I work in the field a lot, so can't listen every day.) Or are there some other frequencies the work crews are using?

Thanks!
Joe

[Saint]

Originally Posted by n5usr

I'm curious, what sort of traffic does one generally hear on railroad frequencies? And is it a lot / very little? What sort of range do they have? (I.e. just enough power for around the yard, or 100W to talk 50 miles down the line?)

My office building is maybe 80 feet from the two BNSF lines that run N-S through downtown OKC. Needless to say, we *know* when the trains go by! We are also about a mile south of the yard that's just southeast of downtown. Recently I plugged all the OKC frequencies I could find in the database into my scanner, and listened for a while. I heard very little, and understood even less!

On a side note, they are doing a lot of work on the lines in my area, and the trucks parked alongside the tracks have a 2-way radio that's blaring almost non-stop at times. Am I just not listening at the right times? (I work in the field a lot, so can't listen every day.) Or are there some other frequencies the work crews are using?

Thanks!
Joe

Depending on your scanner is there a service search in the scanner to search the railroad band, if not do a search between 160.00 mhz and 162.00 mhz and see what frequencies are active and what frequencies you can hear from your location, it will depend on the scanner, the antenna, the location your in on what your going to hear, Trains coming and going, trains being put together in order, work crews, maintenance workers, yard workers, train dispatchers and crew members, and many other things to hear. Do a search with Google on the subject and lots of information will be found in your area.
Steve

[n4voxgill]

What i hear most of the time is local trains calling the dispatcher asking for permission to make a movement along a certain area of track. The dispatcher anwers and gives them a description of what is permitted and the engineer must repeat it back exactly. I also hear track side detectors giving the axle count on trains passing them and if any defects were detected.

[gewecke]

At times they will use an itinerant,or dot channel such as 151.625
for maint. purposes also so they don't tie up the "road channel".

[JESSERABBIT]

It really gets interesting when an air hose blows out between the cars. The train will go into an emergency stop. The crew will notify the dispatcher and walk the train to find it.

[burner50]

What you will hear....


That is a very broad question. It depends on the territory, what channel you are listening to (see below for some tips), and most all how busy the line is. You will hear all aspects of railroad operations Movements, chatter, problems, maintenance of way (maintenance in the way) performing track work and clearing trains thru form b track bulletins etc. You will quickly find out that there are specific things that must be said in a specific order for many things.

As far as distances, Conductors, Brakemen, and switchmen use portables that are usually 5W. AFAIK Train Defect Detectors are also around 5W. Locomotive mounted radios are usually around 50W and DO NOT use repeaters. The Dispatchers have a LARGE network of towers and high power transmitters with microwave dishes. You will be able to hear the dispatcher talking to a train possibly hundreds of miles away and there is no way you will hear the train.

The best way to hear all the action is to program all 97 AAR channels in your radio. The list is in the RR Wiki http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Railroad

the channels can be used in simplex (ch 7171) or full duplex (ch 2376) but there is always 2 sets of 2 digit numbers. Those correspond with the AAR chart. It is not common to hear Full Duplex.

Back in the day railroad portables were limited to 8-16 channels so some old heads are still hooked on that channel plan. Where i work Channel 1 is 5252, channel 4 is 7171 etc.

If you have any other questions about listening or what you heard (railroads have their own languages/lingo) post here or send me a PM

[SCANdal]

Gentlemen,

Don't forget that many railroad police agencies also operate on the AAR channels.

SCANdal

[burner50]

only a little bit, they ususally use cell phones anymore

[banjojim]

i'm with the original poster, sort of. i never heard anything on the radio freqs, ok one brief transmission while taking a trip to chicago. i'm about 1/2 mile up a hill from the depot here in ann arbor, got various radios with rr capacity to hear them, but never do. i'm gonna load the freqs mentioned in the wiki and see what happens but i'm not optimistic. i've heard the vatican on sw, the space shuttle, and many stake outs, so i know how to operate a radio. just not the real hard stuff like rr!

[Gooser]

I've been a scanerd for about 33 years...first scanner was a Realistic four crystal/LED gizmo with toggles for lockout. Yesterday was my first time ever listening to choo-choo freqs. I auto loaded all the 160MHz AAR freqs into my 97.

And that is all I have been listening to all last night and today. If ya like trains, "cool beans" is what I say.

I hear the crew yakking about their destination and that they're ready to go...then about a half hour later I hear the train rolling about a 1/4 mile away from my house. Problems with schedules and having to do some manual switching, yada, yada...

Fun stuff. And that's what scanning should be...at least to me.
73's...

BTW, here is a link with some explanation of what to expect and the AAR freqs: http://www.norcalscan.org/railroad/radio.html

.