First DMR Railroad?

[Kitn1mcc]

I volunteer for the Catskill Mt Railroad, which is a tourist railroad. Do they same rules apply to tourist railroads ? We use 160.3650 for our Road Channel along with 160.5300. The railroad transmits in the clear.

as long as you are narrow band you guys will good to go for a good long time. i did check the license says 25watts i would mod it up to 125watts. Plenty of good used Motorola narrow band stuff around. better than anything icom or kenwood makes

 

[radioman2001]

Quote"ahh here some things to remember. the AAR has never said de facto Digital Format is NXDN it was a rumor started by Icom. Also Motorola would not sit there and let NXDN be made that de facto format without putting up a huge stink. One another thing is Kenwood has signed on with the DMR steering group NXDN/DMR share the same vocoder ."

You information is not valid,I have been doing radio licensing for MNRR for 6 years, and dealing with AAR co-ordinators for at least that long. AAR did in fact pick NXDN as the "de facto" format for the following reasons.
First they were pissed at Mother M for dropping the Astro Spectra and all their support for RR since they considered it a small market. M wants to sell big high cost trunking systems.
Second AAR had big plans to squesh all the Class 1's and others into the lower half of the roughly 2 MHZ of bandwidth and go what they called wide-band or possibly Tetra or some other format on the upper half.. I have some old band plans that show that, and I never really got a definite answer what their end plans were. I do know when I told AAR I was filing for all the splinters as Amtrak did they stopped it and actually got Amtrak to surrender their licenses to ensure that plan at that time.
Third Motorola is not interested in RR since it is a small market .Motorola is mainly interested in flooding the markets other than RR with DMR. AAR cannot stop any RR from using DMR due to the FCC 6.25 equvilant clause and the licensing is related to the center frequency of operation.
Now it's 2015 and a lot has happened in the last 6 or so years. The class 1's have said they are not going 6.25 anytime soon. Frequencies are being released and licensed under conditions that would have never been allowed just 2 or 3 years ago.
My personal opinion is that 12.5 analog is here to stay, especially for RTC, 6.25 digital is going to be relegated to support frequencies, and those RR's that have 12.5 channels that they want to DMR are going to, and the AAR is not going to be able to stop them.

 

[Nasby]

@Radioman2001

Very interesting and informative post!

Thanks for sharing.

 

[burner50]

Not arguing semantics, I am saying a regional railroad company of the magnitude that G&W is, is not a "small shortline" by any stretch, just because they aren't a single "Class 1" common carrier surely doesn't mean they are not a serious contender in the Railroad industry, and they surely are with the amount of radios and such to gain coverage they are going to need to extend the IP-site connect Mototrbo (DMR) coverage to cover their entire network.

And I never claimed or implied any sort of "changing of the guard" in reference to anything, I made a point that not all Railroads are going to NXDN digital format, that there is a major player going to DMR.

Bit there are several major operational factors your missing here...

It is EXTREMELY common for short lines to operate over class 1 tracks, and in class 1 yards.

It doesn't matter how "major" of a player you view them to be, they're not going to change the minds of the rest of the AAR who has already spent billions of dollars deploying NXDN equipment.

Therefore, no NXDN, no trackage rights, and no interchange. Maybe that doesn't matter where you are located, but that train of thought is EXTREMELY short sighted. Where I am, there are entire yards and sections of their own railroad that they would never reach again if they switched to an incompatible system.

It is a simple as that.

That is why I am saying that an organization like the G&W is inconsequential when DMR is concerned, no matter how many short lines they buy up. They will eventually fall in line.

Don't get me wrong... I would love it if I never had to hear G&W crews on the radio again... But sadly, it is simply never going to happen.

 

[burner50]

the MTA is a major RR nothing moves on the new haven line with out them. also nothing moves up the hudson valley

Metra is a full member and they are a Commuter line

https://www.aar.org/Pages/AboutUs.aspx?t=aarmembers

Metra is kind of an odd duck... They really fall into their own category.

Metra runs trains on borrowed tracks, with borrowed crews.


When METRA operates over UPRR track, it is UPRR crews on the train. Same thing when they operate over other railroads property. The conductor's equipment is issued by the host railroad.

This is a stark contrast to Amtrak, which uses freight railroads territory, but their own crews.

 

[radioman2001]

Quote"Metra runs trains on borrowed tracks, with borrowed crews."

Not that unusual, if the conductor and engineer are not qualified for a territory then the RR has to use the hosts personnel.
When MNRR ran some special trains to Giants Stadium from New Haven to the Meadowlands a few years back we used Amtrak and NJT conductors and I think engineers. We were not qualified for the tracks going over the Hell Gate bridge to Sunnyside Queens or in through the tunnels out to New Jersey.
Made for some interesting radio programming for our conductors who went along covering our territory portion of the ride.

There are a few very large RR that only use motorola equipment like the MTA operating units LIRR/MNR/NYCTA .

Quote"all the new kawasaki M8 EMU all have Harris 7100 units the older soup cans has cdm1250 to replace the old micors and mitreks in the cars. the radio is intergrated into cars PA system/Control stand"


I run the largest radio shop for MTA Metro North. Again not correct info, sorry.

While the M-8's have a combination of Harris M7100 and 7200 radios. M-2,M-4,M-6 now have replacement M7300 packages identical to the M-3 Orion/M7100/M7200 package, and the M7 has it's own version of Orion/Harris package. All other trains that do not have GE/MACOM/HARRIS radios are using GE Trans/Quest Rail 12RII and now the new 12RIIID packages. (We just go in 25) Whether they are Clean Cab or a special built for us AAR tray connected packages.
There are NO CDM-1250 radios in any rail car, only support vehicles(cars,trucks,hi-rail). Even though I did redesign the analog Spectra AAR version package to run with the CDM-1250 inside. It worked quite good actually.

 

[RRR]

delete

 

[PJH]

The Motorola clean cabs are programmable to allow custom channels and names beyond the standard plan. These were accessed by using the HOME key aka presets. Pressing HOME 1 (or 01) on the UP took you to channel 27/27, etc. We had some preprogrammed for weather channels. Conrail preprogrammed in a specific PL tone that was transmitted by the defect detectors. One PL would cause the display (preprogrammed) to display NODEFECT and another DEFECT if a different PL was transmitted.

I believe the JEM radios can also be preprogrammed the same way. The JEM radios have a "head" and "radio" programming port to allow some custom stuff. The radio itself only has one channel preprogrammed in the Kenwood and the head reprograms that channel on the fly on a channel change.

As I understand the "Clean Cab" radios and those that followed that standard, the radio operator could select any of the 97 AAR channels for receive and any of the 97 AAR channels for transmit. The "window" or display would show "46 46" or something like that if the operator had selected channel 46 for both receive and transmit (I may have Rx and Tx reversed). It wasn't a VFO. It was memories that were identified using AAR channel numbers. The operator did not see the frequency or a local channel name, i.e. "Road 1" or "Yard 2". Just AAR channel numbers.

 

[PJH]

GE 12's... ewwww

I had a RITRON in the cab the other day. That's actually a nice sounding radio. The large display is bright, but not overwhelming - its just right.

Can't stand the GE's, sound off, never want to change the channel correctly.

The JEMs with the ICOM based radios seem to sound ok, the Kenwood based ones are ok, but not as great. This includes the speaker on the conductors side - the passed audio almost sounds the same.

You can always tell when there is a Motorola one in there, the audio is just nice and crisp.

 

[INDY72]

The only experience I ever had with RR radios was an ride along with an relative back in the ICG days... And that Motorola sounded sweet .

 

[slapshot0017]

I will agree that Motorola sounds nice, but my Kenwoods sound just as great maybe even better sometimes.

 

[PJH]

Its not comparing apples with apples. The Spectra Clean Cab was a true analog radio. The ASTRO Spectra Clean Cab - and basically most radios since then from Motorola - run analog audio through a DSP. Depending on your hearing ability, you can hear a difference between both.

Most manufactures are doing this - even with analog only radios - running audio thru DSP's for audio quality purposes.

 

[burner50]

Quote"Metra runs trains on borrowed tracks, with borrowed crews."

Not that unusual, if the conductor and engineer are not qualified for a territory then the RR has to use the hosts personnel.
When MNRR ran some special trains to Giants Stadium from New Haven to the Meadowlands a few years back we used Amtrak and NJT conductors and I think engineers. We were not qualified for the tracks going over the Hell Gate bridge to Sunnyside Queens or in through the tunnels out to New Jersey.
Made for some interesting radio programming for our conductors who went along covering our territory portion of the ride.

I'm not referring to a special, or a detour... I'm referring to daily operations. If it METRA trains on UP tracks, it's UP crews, and the same on BNSF.

UP has an entire service unit for Chicago Commuter Operations .

 

[ki4gyw]

Trainmaster XD

Here she is! Trainmaster XD DMR Clean Cab Radio, By Railcom.

 

[ki4gyw]

Control Head

That pic is of the old prototype control head testing. I'll get some better photos when I get the chance.

 

[PJH]

As I said on another forum, needs real keys. Glass based or membrane keys do not last and are a pain (literally) on the fingers when you use them all the time. This is why they fell out of favor in the two way industry years ago.

ATSF was the last? railroad (radios lasted well into the BNSF days) Colt radio heads that had these. Everyone hated these and were useless and painful. They got rid of them as fast as possible.

I'd also test the displays to see how they stand up to repeated use to the alcohol wipes that are supplied in the crew packs and see how long the plastic/glass/lettering lasts without getting marred up.

 

[com501]

I give the membranes less than a year before replacement. Better stock up on spare front panels!

 

[karldotcom]

What if they called the Major RR DS on the phone and received a track warrant for movement?

Or why cant these DMR radios have the AAR channels in narrowband,/analog (whatever the host is using) and their shortline channel in DMR.

Therefore, no NXDN, no trackage rights, and no interchange. Maybe that doesn't matter where you are located, but that train of thought is EXTREMELY short sighted. Where I am, there are entire yards and sections of their own railroad that they would never reach again if they switched to an incompatible system.

It is a simple as that. .

 

[PJH]

It's the matter of day UP crews going into a G&W yard and unable to communicate with the G&W crews. It is impractical for an entire yard to the. Switxh back to analog while the UP crew is working then switch back to their DMR after they leave. All must be in the same channel for safety reasons.

 

[RRR]

Therefore, no NXDN, no trackage rights, and no interchange.

Are you not familiar with "VHF analog narrowband"?

That's what everyone I know of interchanges on, and there is no push to change this anytime soon......