SEPTA channel chart

[kh11]

Nothing really surprising here, but I thought it worth posting anyway - this is scanned straight from the cab of a Silverliner IV:

 

[trentbob]

Yep I was a SEPTA engineer in the mid-eighties but then moved to rail operations. Nothing has changed. Same set up. Amtrak Northeast Corridor is 160.92 from Zoo until you get to Morris which is about a mile north of Bristol station and then you switch to Amtrak North Road which is Amtrak Trenton in the radio 161.01.

There is a couple of supervisory channels that aren't used very often for Road Foreman but they would not be in the train radios.

I only stayed in SEPTA for a little under five years because I didn't want to go into Railroad Retirement and I had another career.

It's odd how very little has changed on that Railroad other than there are no more Tower operators it's all remotely done by the dispatcher from the regional rail operations center or the Rock.

 

[Swipesy]

It's odd how very little has changed on that Railroad other than there are no more Tower operators it's all remotely done by the dispatcher from the regional rail operations center or the Rock.

I guess the railroad subscribes to "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

 

[trentbob]

Actually John that was a railroad that when it WAS broke they didn't fix it LOL. I can always remember running on flat wheels then. I really don't know how it is now. Car inspectors would measure the wheels and say you're good to go

One thing's for sure I always swapped out equipment in the summertime if the air conditioners were not working.

I guess they did the best they could but were always having funding issues.

We always tried to be on time, we never were, but we tried. LOL

 

[cbehr91]

Wasn't the SEPTA South Conductor channel (AAR 16/160.350 mHz) the original Reading road channel?

 

[trentbob]

Wasn't the SEPTA South Conductor channel (AAR 16/160.350 mHz) the original Reading road channel?

That frequency certainly sounds familiar to me, I believe that was the South Road Channel when I was running.

Honestly, then and I do believe now conductors are just on the road Channel. They're so low power that it doesn't interfere with operations per se

A typical transmission you would hear would be... "Conductor to the front end", a lot of times it's maybe a handicap person in a wheelchair who knocked on the engineers door as that is their assigned area and they do exit through the front end (we are talking the GE silverliners) and the conductor needs to bridge the gap with the ramp. The need to notify the conductor of an extended period of time delay due to stop signal or malfunctioning signal that maintainers are actively working on. Stuff like that.

It's amazing but little has changed since SEPTA Regional Rail was organized from the former reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad. It's a bit of a pain that you have two different types of signals depending which side of the railroad you are on.

For example if you're on the Trenton line you are on the old Penzey Railroad with a certain type of signal and if you are on West Trenton line or the Reading side you have an entirely different signal set up.

Again, it's amazing how little has changed in many many years. I personally enjoyed running the old Budd cars.

They are phased out now of course but were originally built in the early 60s. People called them slop but I liked them. LOL.

 

[kh11]

You can see from the channel chart that the 'conductor' channels are just talk-around simplex of the corresponding road channel.

 

[trentbob]

So are they repeater channels now? I always thought the system was simplex and on one frequency. I didn't really study the chart but are they repeaters?

I know the Amtrak Road channels are simplex.

I haven't worked on the railroad since the late 80s.

 

[kh11]

I was under the impression the road channels were repeated. Otherwise why split TX/RX? Update: the RRDB even refers to them as repeater channels.

 

[trentbob]

Well that is a change. I've heard some people here on this forum say that railroad frequencies are never on repeaters but here's a prime example.

There were a lot of times on simplex that you would have dead spots but one thing people don't think about, every manual crossover where a switch had to be physically thrown... had a phone. Just crank the handle and it went right to the dispatcher. Hahaha.

 

[n2nov]

It is not a repeater but a split duplex. Talk on one frequency and listen on the other.

 

[trentbob]

It is not a repeater but a split duplex. Talk on one frequency and listen on the other.

So now I'm familiar with that where you literally need to scan two frequencies to get both sides of the conversation and it is simplex, when we put in the North Road frequency for example which is 160.59 we hear both sides of the conversation. That has been the North Road frequency as long as I can remember. Wouldn't we need to be scanning two different frequencies and it would just be line-of-sight simplex?

As I said I haven't worked on the railroad since the late 80s. I do monitor SEPTA when I ride on the train and all the frequencies are the same as always and you always hear both sides on one frequency. My programming has not changed.

I do monitor Amtrak Northeast Corridor as it is a half a mile from me. That is definitely one frequency simplex. SEPTA appears to have made some changes here but my programming has not changed since the 80s. Same frequencies get the same stuff, both sides.

I've got to check this out more using the list provided. I live on the Pennsylvania Railroad side which is mostly Amtrak now with SEPTA using their property. They use Amtrak dispatchers and Amtrak radio. That has not changed in a long time.

I never ride the Reading side anymore so I never listen. That would be SEPTA North Road.

A close friend just lost her father at age 91 and he was a retired maintainer on the Pennsylvania Railroad but he lived on the Reading Railroad. She has an old Crystal scanner where he would listen to both railroads.

For shts and giggles I think I will get a pair of needlenose pliers and take a look at those 10 crystals in that radio if we can find it and someone didn't throw it away. LOL.

 

[scannerrmn]

Nothing really surprising here, but I thought it worth posting anyway - this is scanned straight from the cab of a Silverliner IV:
View attachment 78971

 

[scannerrmn]

Thank you, I‘ve had a copy of the SEPTA Channel Chart.

 

[kh11]

It is not a repeater but a split duplex. Talk on one frequency and listen on the other.

They sure sound like repeaters, complete with squelch tail. 'North' for sure, as I listen to it quite often. I'm hearing both mobiles and base on the same (output) frequency. if it were duplex, you would hear base on one freq, mobiles on another, would you not?

Taking a look at the license for the M of W channel - there are bases of class FB2, which is repeater:

FCC DB entry

However I will say that the FCC info for their other channels isn't showing FB2 for their bases (The M of W one above has the newest expiration date, so I'm wondering if they realized the mistake and are correcting it on future renewals.)

​

 

[HM1529]

North Road, City Road, South Road.
They are repeaters. I’ve been listening for years.

 

[tvengr]

For example if you're on the Trenton line you are on the old Penzey Railroad

I thought it was The Pennsy. My father was a Pennsylvania Railroad man.

 

[trentbob]

I thought it was The Pennsy. My father was a Pennsylvania Railroad man.

You are indeed correct in your nitpicking unless you are kidding but I don't see an indication of that. It was an auto spell correct error that I missed. I too have several family members who worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I was only an engineer for SEPTA from 85 to 88 before being promoted into rail operations and worked at the regional rail Operation Center at Suburban Station known as The Rock. Sorry for the typo.

 

[trentbob]

Sorry Jim, I just saw it was your post and I do think you're kidding LOL. Sorry I didn't look at your user name when I responded. I haven't been on RR for a while, a little fed Up.

Again sorry for my comments

 

[tvengr]

He started out as a brakeman and worked as a conductor and yardmaster. He was a Superintendent of Rail Traffic at the Dundalk Marine Terminal in Baltimore when he retired. When I was a kid, he put me on a diesel switcher at the Canton yard. The engineman had me sit down in the engineer's seat and operate the locomotive. What a thrill for a kid! Even then, I knew how dangerous railroad equipment is and I was very careful. You could be fired for doing that now.