Wow...this morning I'm getting Chester County, PA's fire/ems dispatch on 160.1850 here in Jefferson County, WV. Interestingly enough, I thought that frequency was allocated to the AAR.
Receiving Chester Co, PA Fire Dispatch in Jefferson County, WV
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Some railroad frequencies can be assigned to a non-railroad user in areas where the frequency is not in use; that particular frequency (AAR 005) is only used by railroad trucking services in the US. Chester County has been using that one as long as I can remember; their usage may predate the creation of the AAR standard channel plan.
In addition, for a few years the frequency coordinators were assigning unused regular railroad frequencies to non-railroad users, but that was rare and I believe has mostly been discontinued due to interference caused to the railroads (which mostly use carrier squelch).
I believe the railroad frequencies in North America are now handled pretty much the same way as the VHF maritime frequencies; since they're part of international channel plans they're not assigned to any other services unless there's no other choice and the proposed user is at least X distance away from a potential railroad user.
JDrisc3480
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The fire department I was with a few years ago had something similar. We used Minitor 5 pagers in Hoke County NC and every once in a while we would pick up the signal from Myrtle Beach SC. Have you checked to see how close the Chester County PA fire/ems dispatch frequency is to the 160.1850 frequency you monitor? I bring it up because when it happened to us I was curious as to how close the frequencies for Hoke County NC and Myrtle Beach were and it turned out they were pretty close and the atmospheric conditions must have been just right for the signal to travel.
The Chester Co frequency actually is 160.185.
I actually had dumped in all the AAR frequencies into one of my spare scanners and that particular morning is when I caught it. Atmosphere was perfect for the long distance reception early that morning because by about 9am, it was gone. When I lived in Baltimore (1980's/Early 90's), I could receive the City of Philadelphia's VHF fire dispatch pretty much all the time.
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