Eastern Railroad Discussion > PBX Question

This may be a dumb question. I have noticed in some listings of radio frequencies that some railroads are assigned frequencies for PBX input and PBX output. What exactly is PBX and is this something that a railfan would or should find helpful to monitor?

PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange. It is an internal telephone system that, in railroad applications, often involves radio links. The most common use I have experienced for it is for communications between track and signal maintainers and dispatchers using wayside telephones. It can be useful to know if a track has been taken out of service, and for how long, based on communications on these frequencies. Sometimes train lineups are communicated to the maintenance forces as well.

Thank you for the useful information. I\'ll program those channels into the scanner and start listening.

Here\'s some of the frequencies that CSX&NS use for PBX. NS uses 160.515&160.275 the last I had seen but it may be changed or more. CSX uses 161.265. Hope this helps!!


Have a Safe CSX Day!!

It sure does help. Thank you very much.

Conrail\'s PBX in the Indy area was on 160.445...and believe me, it was valuable. Trainmasters, yardmasters, etc. used this channel to dial out, so one would hear important info such as delays, wrecks, special moves and so forth.

MidFan