Welcome to the world of scanner listening. Nobody in Massachusetts is running digital for any road channels, but the commuter rail does have a couple of digital channels in use for non road use, mostly BET facilities and the communications department. Since you're listening in the Waltham area only road channel in use on the Fitchburg Mainline is AAR 032 (160.590 MHz) CSQ which is dispatched by Fitchburg line dispatcher Monday-Friday 7am-10pm and then by Boston West all other times . The AAR 032 is only used up to the willows then the line becomes Pan Am. Norfolk Southern only runs out to Ayer in conjunction with Pan Am as part of Pan Am Southern. The channels they use out on all Pan Am territory AAR 094/070 Pan Am Dispatch and AAR 070/094 which is Pan Am Head End channel.
The listening range of your antenna is dependent on many factors, such as environmental, type and length of cabling. Reasonably you should be able to hear a couple of the Pan Am radio sites ( Paxton, Goffstown, and Billerica). As for commuter rail radio sites, you should be able to hear Waltham 032, Woburn 032, South Acton 032, Mystic 014, Terminal 087, CP-11 020, Boston 020, Hill 092 and Readville 054 from Waltham. I'm basing this on our own internal coverage testing we did of the system a couple of years ago. As for trains you should be able to hear those fairly well, the MOW crews and conductors not so much because they are usually on portables inside and around equipement which generally kills their signals beyond the immediate area.
I Live in Waltham, and would like to Add that the Worcester Main line can be heard as well 160.4100. You will also notice that the Fitchburg line shares the frequency with I believe the Lowell line, so you have to take note when listening.
I seem to be able to hear many of the other lines as well, some to a greater or lessor degree depending on my setup, yours will differ, but as mentioned above, you will mostly only hear the dispatcher except when the trains are in town or just plain close enough. That goes for maintenance crews as well.
As far as antenna, you can make your own!
A simple dipole set up vertically will work very well. All you need is some wire. What I did, was take a piece of Romex electric cable (you know the stuff, it's in the walls connected to your wall outlets). get a piece, (you can find scraps at construction site.) Strip off the sheathing to get at the solid copper wires.
Old-timers trick to straighten out solid copper wire:
Place one end in a vise, the other end in the chuck of your cordless drill. While pulling on the wire, pulse the drill (direction doesn't matter), you will be absolutely amazed at the results; how straight it comes out!
Now get yourself a piece of coax with a connector on one end (the type used on your radio) and now your ready to make a dipole antenna.
I like to listen to the Worcester main line on 160.4100 so the math goes like this:
468 divided by the frequency you want which gives you the half wave antenna length, cut your antenna wire to this length.
Now divide by two and cut it in half.
solder one half to the center conductor an the other half to the sheathing. (I attached mine to a piece of thin wood strapping to hold it all in place. it should resemble the letter "T".
Hang it up whatever way you can on the wall or whatever, but orient the antenna vertically and coax horizontally.
Example 468 / 160.4100 = 2.917 feet.
2.917 X 12= 35.010"
35.010 / 2 = 17.505" or 17.6 inches.
There you go, just insert the Frequency you most want to hear or maybe something in the middle of two frequencies you like to listen to.
The antenna will pick up best for the frequency you cut it for, but will work pretty good for the rest of the Railroad Spectrum
Hope this helps!
