Here in my terminal, the three base radios in use throughout the yard office are now Kenwood NX-700, all three having been placed into service in the last 6 months.
The local managers all now have NX-700 mobiles in their vehicles. Every one of our locomotives that I encounter as I swap out with the inbound crews now has a JEM Communications "tri-mode" clean cab radio on board, with the exception of my switch engine. The JEM radio is a "shell" of sorts with a, in my company's case, Kenwood NX-700 hiding inside of it. ( See the description here=
JEM Radio )
Meanwhile, I have been "testing", as my trainmaster put it, a Kenwood TK-290 handheld for about the last two years now, supposedly to see if it would be a viable candidate to use on the ground. Personally, I loved it; very good radio. However, I guess the test failed, as I was apparently the only guy around here that had one. My batteries finally gave up last week and when I went looking for replacements, the boss had none. The only Kenwood batteries available in my terminal were those that were compatible with TK-2180 handhelds, which a few managers and yard clerks are packing around.
So I went to the comm guy to get a new handheld. While waiting for him to decide what to give me, we talked about his recent trips to the local mountain tops and the pile of now empty Kenwood NXR-700 boxes laying around his office. He has been replacing all the sites with the new NXR-700s. He then teased me with the Kenwood NX-210 portable he had sitting on a charger on his desk. He only had that single one, which he has been using to test the mountain top installs.
He then dug out a still new in the box Motorola MT-2000 for my replacement, but promised, knowing my radio geekness, that as soon as more NX-210s started showing up, he would make a point to demand the new MT-2000 back from me in exchange for a NX-210.
So the big change is coming. All the new Kenwoods I have mentioned (NX-700 including the guts of the JEM radios, NX-210, and NXR-700) function three ways, as the "tri-mode" moniker on the JEM radio suggests=
1- Wideband FM, the nice big, fat, 25Khz spacing, analog voice signals, which I having been using in my 13 years playing trains now and railfans have enjoyed listening to.
2- Narrowband FM, the 12.5Khz spaced frequencies, still analog voice, that railroads are required to begin using by 2013, and railfans will still be able to hear, except that they will have to crank up the volume on their scanners or reprogram their radios to make out what is being said.
and 3- Digital FM, the 6.25Khz spaced, digital NXDN transmissions, that the railroads are required to start using by 2018, and that, as of today May 2010, railfans would have to have their own NXDN radio to be able to hear.
Talk is abundant on the net that the RR's are looking at just going straight from the current 25Khz method to the 6.25Khz digital NXDN by 2013, skipping a step and saving the $$$ of having to change twice. That dollar savings is fairly minor, though, seeing as the "change" will mostly mean that us working stiffs will need to remember to use the right channel on the radio. That being said, the infrastructure, at least on my RR, is in place right now in my area, to operate on all three of the above described modes. It is just a matter of changing the current "channel" on the radio. The only exception being that there is only ONE portable that can do it all, and the comms guy has it. Hopefully I will get the next one if and when it shows up.
The extra wild card thrown into this is that, now that PTC is becoming a reality thanks to the Chatsworth Metrolink crash, more emphasis (READ= MONEY!) is being placed on the comm gear that will be needed to make it work. That alone may mean the RR's will delay as long as they can on the narrowbanding issue.
So, the reality is, who knows for sure when, and even if, the RR's will actually go digital. The Feds demand it by 2018. The Feds also demanded that broadcast television be digital by February 17, 2009, but that didn't happen till June 11, 2009, now, did it? And the RR's have lotsa pull in the halls of the Feds. So things can change really quick.
One thing is for sure. If the RR's DO go digital finally, railfans will know it real quick when their listening gear goes silent.
P.S.- Please keep off the tracks. There are many great places to watch me work, take a shortcut to your destination, show the world what a stud you are, etc., without being on the tracks. I can only go one way, and that is on the tracks. I'm way bigger and I will win. Period.
Just an FYI... I think it was at this time last year that somebody posted RR monitoring was over, because digital was going to start any day. And I think there was one the year before that and the year before that as well. 
