Western Railroad Discussion > Fiber optic train

Is this train still floating around? It was lettered SP Construction Services and was used in the laying of the fiber optics line through Dunsmuir a few years back.

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Photobob:

The locomotives were sold to the Wichita Tillman and Jackson Rairoad a couple of weeks ago. The ballast cars (all but one) sold to the DeQueen and Eastern a few months ago and the rest of the train is in storage on Farmrail in western Oklahoma. (Assuming they had only one train.) I know the 500,501,502,503,504,505 were sold to the WTJR. I think Qwest would like to sell additional parts of the train if they can find a buyer.

Plowboy

This photo proves your comment about non-dynamic brake geeps on the Shasta Sub. I guess everytime they needed additional braking they just lowered the trenching device.

does anyone install fiber optic networks anymore? Didn't this whole "wireless" thing just about negate all this investment in fiber optic?

fiber optic isn't dead, it's just overbuilt. There's a lot more been installed than we need.

Fiber is the way to go for distance or capacity, very secure, low maintainance, long service life. It has limitations for mobility but has a huge capacity and when that is reached you have to lay more fiber or buy the competition's fiber. The wireless thing has all sorts of leaks and exposure, expensive to make secure and easy to make out of date, justifying more replacement costs. Of course one gopher in the right place can cause all sorts of grief to a fiber network.

Bob the only fiber you should be worried about is in the toilet bowl.

Sam,
Bob gets all his Fiber from CHEE-TOES.

dmaffei wrote:

> Sam,
> Bob gets all his Fiber from CHEE-TOES.
>
Hot dog -- I KNEW there was a good reason for eating those things, other than creating my own permanently-attached personal-flotation-device.....

lowwater

lowwater wrote:

> dmaffei wrote:
>
> > Sam,
> > Bob gets all his Fiber from CHEE-TOES.
> >

Flourescent orange turds, haha.

I watched them plow in three plastic conduits through Creswell OR and other places. As far as I know, these were to be long haul backbones, something wireless cannot come close to in performance. What I do not know is if they ever pulled fiber through these conduits. Bob, did you ever see the fiber crew go through? I never saw the fiber crew any where from Redding to Portland.

Swift

This power may reside in Clinton, Okla on the FarmRail system. Some of it was there a year ago.

When they dug the trench for the conduit they followed the rail line up the canyon including around Cantara Loop and back up the wall of the canyon to sawmill. Some genius later realized they could have just ran the conduit up a pole line route from about midway at Small siding directly up the hill to Mott saving a few miles and probably a million bucks. They dug through solid rock for a few miles for no reason at all. I was up at Cantara the other day and the conduit they laid is just sticking out of the ground were they left it.

Here in City of Industry, the are getting ready for the Valley Blvd - UP Alhambra Sub - Nogalas St grade seperation project. As part of that, they put in Fiber optic cable along the RR by using sending a pipe under ground under Nogalas and backup.

For the conduit, they were using what looked like 12" diamater black PLASITIC conduit. I thought that was odd. They are going to pull and twist that through the hole.

Sure enough, it did not work. You can still see the mess along the ROW just West of Nogalas. They had to redrill and used a 12" diameter metal conduit the second time.

So, 1000' of Fiber Optic cable times 6 into the trash.