Western Railroad Discussion > Train-dispatcher communications

On the Albany & Eastern Railroad we used a repeater on a hill to talk to crews, dispatcher, etc.  Do the Class I's use transmitters on mountain tops with microlink to the dispatcher, line side towers or a combination of both?  How ddoes the dispatcher know how the detectors are reporting?

Mike Root
Madras, OR

    Radio base stations used by the dispatcher and others to communitcate with train ane MOW crews can be mountain top or lineside towers.   That choice depends on the geography and radio coverage goals.    There are a mixture of different ways that the base radio can be connected back to the dispatch center.    Where the railroad has microwave towers along the route, that's a good common and efficent method.   In some cases bases have UHF links to lower elevations or possibly leased telephone circuits.     There are many optoins and the railroads can be quite creative at finding the best option.
     In the last 10 years there has been a big movement from analog to digital for these backhaul connections between the dispatch center and the base radio.  (Not the same as digital over the air)    This requries some sort of Voice over IP controller at the base station radio.
     One option for a dispatcher get the output from defect detectors is to have them listen to the audio that is transmitted to the train crew.   But most of the detectors I'm aware of  have a digital data connection back to the dispatch office.    This can be done with data radios simiilar to what are used for RF Codeline, cellular modems, or other connections back to the railroad network.
    No one answer on all these questions.   In fact an amazing numbers of different answers are being used on railroads across North America.

Stephen

On the Modoc line they used digital microwave relays for data where possible, and IIRC telephone lines in areas were topography was an issue. But given the line was DTC and was only seeing 2-4 trains/day, that wasn't really an issue.

The UP used to have a transmitter on Mary's Peak, which is not far from the OP's position.

This is a complicated question to answer as it relates to radio signal coverage.  
Basically, the railroads use microwave communications between the dispatcher
and the wayside station.  This "base" station can either be trackside, or on a 
nearby hill to increase signal coverage.  (In the frequency band the railroads 
operate in, everything is line-of-sight.)  As an example, the UP has a tower
in Lisbon, IA, and another tower near Beverly Yard in Cedar Rapids.  The latter
is down in a valley, and overlaps the Lisbon tower's hilltop coverage in the
Cedar Rapids area.  Both towers are trackside.  However, on the BNSF's
Alliance coal corridor, while the tracks are in valleys much of the route, the
towers are sometimes a mile away on a bluff overlooking the valley.  I always
marvel at how well towers along this line were sited for maximum coverage.  

Hopefully, this and other posts have answered your questions.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA