Railroad Locomotive Radio Photos

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dapaq2

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Hey guys,

With Motorola dropping out of the railroad market recently I beleive there are still at least 3 companies that make the locomotive clean cab radios. GE Harmon R12, JEM, Nexterna, Aerotron, and a couple others I beleive but cant remember who else. Cleaning off my hard drive to make room for new stuff, I have some old photos to share of a Motorola Railroad Spectra.

I am curious to see some photos of radios installed in locomotives, they dont have to be clean cab radios such as the spectra, if you have any photos of radio installs in locomotives especially on short line railroads I would be interested in viewing them! Lets start a thread and see all the different kinds of radios out there and radio installations. How bout it guys?

Doug
 

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dapaq2

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A few more photos of the same radio...
 

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BigLebowski

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icrr_spectra.jpg


Installed in a D&RGW SD40T-2 of all things.
 

timkilbride

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Here are some I found:
 

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DPD1

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Interesting... That 4815 should be a Dash 9. I didn't know they mounted them like that.

Can I save your shots Doug? I collect RR radio shots for my site.
 

dapaq2

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Ok!, Who's photo altered the layout width?! LOL :)

Yes you sure can Dave. I encourage you to archive them.

Here are some service manual photos for the railroad spectra...

Doug
 

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burner50

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Tim, That Nexedge wasnt in a locomotive ;)


That was in a depot.


Anyway... here is another nx-700 installed in a 1972 Jordan Spreader


32309d1304198023-up-sacramento-stockton-uploadfromtaptalk1304197993393.jpg
 

cifn2

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Would love to get a Spectra, but how would you power it at home ? Are they standard 12V or they odd like the locomotives? Might be surplus of them available in the next year or so, might be nice to have for Amateur radio repeaters, could program several channels, keep a channel card and push in the channel sweet.
 

DPD1

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Ok!, Who's photo altered the layout width?! LOL :)

Yes you sure can Dave. I encourage you to archive them.

Here are some service manual photos for the railroad spectra...

Wow... That's a hunk of paper.
 

radioman2001

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Most if not all Spectra CC run on12v and or 36/72 vdc. (I have one on my desk at home) It depends on how the power supply is strapped. We use 12v and 72 v. They are nice radios just big, I mean over designed for the use they get. One thing I love about the Spectra is the power supply, never had a failure. The Spectra CC radio's are now coming down with the same sickness the regular Spectra have, bad electrolitic caps. I had to part out 5 so far, not worth repairing have since we have GE R-12II replacements. The only reason we are keeping them around is for temporarily replacing the 50 or so Mitreks we still have in service, until replacements for them arrive.
On a side note, we did narrow band the TX, and I did find a way to rather cheaply (about $2.00) to make it narrow RX, but the radio doesn't have the type acceptance for full qualification.
 

cifn2

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Most if not all Spectra CC run on12v and or 36/72 vdc. (I have one on my desk at home) It depends on how the power supply is strapped. We use 12v and 72 v. They are nice radios just big, I mean over designed for the use they get. One thing I love about the Spectra is the power supply, never had a failure. The Spectra CC radio's are now coming down with the same sickness the regular Spectra have, bad electrolitic caps. I had to part out 5 so far, not worth repairing have since we have GE R-12II replacements. The only reason we are keeping them around is for temporarily replacing the 50 or so Mitreks we still have in service, until replacements for them arrive.
On a side note, we did narrow band the TX, and I did find a way to rather cheaply (about $2.00) to make it narrow RX, but the radio doesn't have the type acceptance for full qualification.

So essentially, just because a radio claims to be able to be narrowband, unless it was type accepted as such it cannot be used after the deadline. Interesting to know that.
 

dapaq2

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You really wouldn't want a railroad spectra for amateur use. The control head and display is not setup like a traditional radio is with an alphanumeric display. The display is VERY limited and can only show two or three digit AAR numbers depending on the model, and they won't show any other numbers. Only AAR numbers. They were designed specifically for railroad use.

Going back to the original topic of my post, Anyone else have any photos of radios installed in locomotives? Or how about other railroad equipment or buildings? Any photos of railroad repeater system installations showing the inside equipment and not antennas or poles (seen lots of those already) on shortlines or class ones?

Doug
 

timkilbride

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You really wouldn't want a railroad spectra for amateur use. The control head and display is not setup like a traditional radio is with an alphanumeric display. The display is VERY limited and can only show two or three digit AAR numbers depending on the model, and they won't show any other numbers. Only AAR numbers. They were designed specifically for railroad use.

Going back to the original topic of my post, Anyone else have any photos of radios installed in locomotives? Or how about other railroad equipment or buildings? Any photos of railroad repeater system installations showing the inside equipment and not antennas or poles (seen lots of those already) on shortlines or class ones?

Doug

I have used one for ham radio use. If you use the Home Channels, you can have alpha tags.

4 years ago I was working on a shortline. We had two locomotives and one radio to share between the engines. I took the radio home one night and added some ham radio repeaters to it! We didn't have a dispatcher so no need to monitor the road channel.

Tim K.
 

cifn2

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My idea for ham radio was assigning local repeaters each a number and keeping a list of the channel numbers. I was thinking the higher power radios would be nice.
 
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Anyone Have a Locomotive Radio for sale or if you have a web site post a link . I had on but my sister put a glass of water on it when i was not home and she fried it . thanks hunter.
 

Railham_CJ

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I have the Icom F5061D but how in the heck do they interface the radio with the control head on the JEM radio controls.
 

Nasby

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Here's one from an old Conrail GP-9 in 1983.
 

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