Sunday: fieldwork
[OT from cottage renovations]
the ATCS Monitor allows one to pick up control system data packets by radio and interpret their contents. it's a nifty tool but to get it to work there are more than a few steps of preparation to complete, the first of which are to find out what frequencies and protocols are in use and where the transmitters are located.
much of this can be done through research and by consulting reference sources, but there's no substitute for going out into the field to see what's going on. so on Sunday we set off to head up the (former) Southern Pacific from Roseville to a place called Binney Junction where it crosses the (former) Western Pacific main line in Marysville, stopping at control points along the way.
(click through these thumbnails for higher resolution images)
N Ostrom control point, MP 134.36
how does one find the transmitters?
it turns out to be completely trivial. just look.
X marks the spot
I have no idea why this huge X doesn't show up on the Google and Microsoft online maps. it would make things so much easier ...
S Ostrom control point, MP 132.65
finding the control point is a good first start, but to make any sense of the data there has to be some data, and the SCS-128 protocols used out there don't have anything to say unless a train shows up. as it happens, one did, and it went into the siding and stopped to change crews.
crew change
it was a real monster, about 130 cars long with four high horsepower locomotives on the head end and three more as a swing helper, cut in about two thirds of the way back. the siding is a bit less than 1¾ miles long and the train just barely fit. while stopped it was overtaken by another, equally large train.
next: incidental images