Railroad Com's & The Future

[AK9R]

Then you've got Wabtec doing Motorola refurbs, and JEM doing the ones with Kenwood/Icom guts.

Back in the late 1970's when I worked for Conrail, I remember some of the handhelds bore the Wabco name. Wabco is short for Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Were they just re-branding someone else's radios or did they have a radio division?

 

[N_Jay]

I would bet by the '70's they were OEMed by someone else.

There are many degrees of OEM, from simple re-branding to full custom product.

Westinghouse was in the radio business in the '50's but out by then. (I think)

 

[timkilbride]

Interesting.
I wonder who builds them for GE, or who's RF deck is inside.
I would not think that GE would spin-up a radio group after selling the Lynchburg operation.

I heard from another railroader they have the guts of a Kenwook TK radio. I don't recall the specific model number. It has plenty of bells and whistles. Two AUX keys, scan, groups up and down, AAR Ch key, DTMF. About the only that works on them is the group is Aux 1(Monitor), group up/down, AAR ch, PTT, and channel up/down. The numeric keys work as DTMF, but the DTMF send doesn't.

 

[burner50]

If an engineer or conductor is not qualified on a particular territory, they will be assigned an engineer or conductor pilot who is qualified. Sometimes, the Road Foreman responsible for that territory will serve as a pilot.

When derailments happen, sometimes trains are re-routed to avoid the derailment. Those re-routes sometimes put crews on unfamiliar territory, thus requiring pilots.

When CSX took over Avon Yard after the Conrail break-up, CSX started running trains between Evansville and Avon using crews that were qualified between Evansville and Terre Haute, but not between Terre Haute and Avon. Those crews got former Conrail pilots until they were qualified.

On the UP a "pilot" could also be a conductor who signals trains through a single track where the signals are either not operable, or trains are running on the "wrong main". In both of these situations the train crews would be running blind and they run in an "absolute block" where they have clearance from point "A" to point "B".

The Pilots communicate when trains have cleared the absolute block and they can allow another train in.

 

[DODGEIT]

It is my understanding that CSX is already in the process of going digital, however it will take quite some time to completely convert over to it. They are going to use a commercial Kenwood digital system. Now it will not be encrypted but will require one to purchase equipment that can monitor digital signals. I know UP and possibly other class 1's will use some of it to a degree since they will have to conform to the narrowband rules in a couple of years. It only make sense to buy equipment that will do both digital and analog narrowbanding. I guess we will all have to wait and see how fast this all happens.