Tom et al, on the subject of the repeaters.. I'm still not entirely sure what is going on, but 011 is broadcasting well east of Portsmouth.. I heard it yesterday in Williamson, and even further east from there, so there must be multiple transmitters active and linked through the microwave network. Most of it was Portsmouth Yard traffic but I heard other spritzes of traffic mixed in. Bluefield is not included, they're still operating on 076 as best as I can tell. Williamson area still also uses 064 but I don't think there's a yardmaster actually controlling it now.
Also, one of what I assume to be the ARN channels is being used as a repeater as well on 027. I heard MOW talking on the Guyandot River Branch on that channel, and have heard them at other places as well. Not sure if they are using the MOW channel input or something else, will have to dig through licenses.
027 would be ARN9. ARN9 has been around Columbus for decades and interesting listening sometimes; in the pre-cellphone days the guys in white hard hats would use it to contact the DS or other white hats to talk about stuff they didn't want to put on the road channel.
And dopey me, I just put 2+2 together and realized what we've been listening to at Portsmouth and Williamson was ARN8 (takes me awhile sometimes). I still scan the ARN channels in my scanners and real radios just in case but haven't got them in my Icom RR radio yet, which is why it escaped me.
There are notes in several older ETTs I have around here instructing use of the ARN channels to contact Central Yard Operations (CYO). As of 2008, they were assigned as follows on the Pokey (apparently, crews in Andover, Carbo, Norton and St. Charles had to tone up CYO on the road channel):
Kenova/Portsmouth - ARN9 and ARN8
Williamson - ARN8
Poca District - ARN9 and ARN8
Buchanan Branch - ARN9 and ARN8
Clinch Valley - ARN9 and ARN7
Elmore - ARN9 and ARN7
Seems like having multiple yards doing switching on the same linked repeater would be a serious safety issue. Maybe it's going to be a way for yard crews to contact the lone yardmaster, and use a separate simplex channel for switching moves?
I'm personally hoping the two-channel scheme (road and DS) gets going around here sooner rather than later; 072 is so clogged most days with road trains, defect detectors, switching moves, DS communications, and people calling the PTC desk it's hard for anyone to get a word in edgewise. Why they don't use ARN for contacting the PTC desk is a head-scratcher; when they get going no one can use the channel for a pretty long time.
PS - 194 is going by my office right now in case you're interested. . .