VE6AB Mobile Ops
Trains and Such
Early morning finds me hanging out along the CP rail line near Carsland AB, where one of CP's (Canadian Pacific) rail line service crews were about to depart with multiple pieces of service equipment, headed down the track to do some serious work involving changing out tie's.
At least I believe that is what they would be doing, having seen it done in the past.
Its impressive to see mechanical tie handlers in action, and this equipment can both remove and replace tie's in minutes flat, whether the tie's are made of wood or concrete.
Amazing collection of track servicing equipment regardless, some of the equipment present on this morning not in my photo.
While the goings on were taking place outside my mobile, and as this rail service crew prepared to get underway while waiting for a westbound freight to pass on the second track located on the far side, I was monitering the various frequencies used by both CP Rail and CN (Canadian National) locally and nation wide.
In fact if your interested in checking out the action happening with all things railroad, the railroads of North America are assigned a group of 97 frequencies in the VHF band.
These frequencies are in the range of 160.110 MHz to 161.565 MHz, in 15 KHz increments. The frequency assignment within this frequency range is managed by the Association of American Railroads (AAR), which is an industry association composed of the various railroads of the United States and Canada.
With the increasing use of run-through trains and leased motive power, many of North America's railroads are equipping locomotives with radio transceivers capable of using all 97 railroad frequencies.
For simplicity, the frequencies are assigned channel numbers that are used to select the proper frequency on any AAR 97-channel locomotive radio, and if you use a scanner similar to my GRE PSR 800 (or pretty much any analog scanner), and because I loaded all the rail frequencies from the included data bank that is located on the internal SD card of the scanner, the railroad channel numbers are shown on the display of the scanner when traffic is captured.
Being a rail fan, I enjoy listening to the chatter happening while I'm chasing trains. If you are like myself, you probably already have a scanner or some other communications receiver capable of monitoring rail line frequencies.
Check it out, you may enjoy it as well, especially when the chatter relates to the train traffic you see near you.
Expand the photo for a closer look.....
Shot nearby as lead locomotive CP 8563 passes by my location with a string of double stacked containers bound for Calgary......
http://www.jerryclement.ca/Outdoor-Pursuits/DawnThreader/i-9CHN8wv
