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Re: (erielack) Speaking of radios...

- ---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Henry W Jarusik" <hwjpa_@_fastem.com>
Date:  Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:55:36 -0400

From: "Henry W Jarusik" <hwjpa_@_fastem.com> 
To: "R.M.Rich Tubbs" <rtubbs_@_acc-net.com>, "Erie Lackawanna List"<erielack@lists.railfan.net>, "Paul (at work) Tupaczewski"<paultup@lucent.com>
CC: 
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:55:36 -0400
Subject: Re: (erielack) Speaking of radios... 


Henry asked:


>Rich: 

>Why did it fail in Marion, and was it used for a long period at 
>Hoboken/Chicago? 



Henry and listers,

Let me set the stage, so to speak, about the radio system in Marion. Everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY was using 161.400, which was also the primary road channel. Yard crews, car inspectors, MOW department, hump crews,not to mention the mainline trains. Also, be aware that all the road engines and most of the yard engines used a reverting style radio control head. That meaning that no matter what channel position the radio selector was manually placed in, as soon as the handset was replaced into the hangup box, the radio automatically reverted back to the mainline channel. OK, that was one item. Also keep in mind that the crews working in and coming into Marion were for the most part not used to having to change channels. Only the Chicago guys had delt with that aspect. So this meant LOTS of radio traffic in Marion. A boon for anybody having a scanner back in those days! BUT the upside to this was that everybody knew what was happening. For example, if I, in AC tower, heard the NY100 making his air test, I knew that I had about 15 minutes to clear my plant for his departure. If the inbound West Yard heard me talking to CX99 coming through Martel, they knew they had to be ready with a clear main for this hot train. Again, everybody knew what was going on and we just delt with the amount of radio traffic.  So along comes a company official who thinks there is just too much traffic and makes an arbitrary decision that all traffic except mainline traffic will be switched to 161.520. There was one base station radio which served all the offices and AC tower. They were all interconnected through remote controls. Cleveland told my dad (who was the radio communications technician for the Marion Division) to LOCK the radio into the 161.520 position. "OK" the question was asked "How is anybody going to communicate with mainline traffic??" Hmmmmmmm...... Cleveland decides they will just put out a general order to the effect that trains desiring communication with AC or the Yard Offices will have to switch to chann!
 el 2. Th

ey never made it an "official" G.O. but just started including it on the daily recap of slow orders. Well, it didn't go over too well. Train crews weren't used to doing this and it was just plain unhandy. Some mainfest trains incurred substantial delays for "lack of communication". It was frustrating to say the least. Since I knew somebody in the radio shop (Dad), I "borrowed" one of the high powered lunchbox walkie talkies and kept it in the tower with me on channel 1 (161.400) so I could keep track of what was happening. The experiment only lasted a couple of weeks and we went back to normal operations. 

I don't know how long 161.520 was used in Hoboken but as for Chicago, it was used there as long as I can remember. I recall Dad saying that the main (and possibly only) reason was that another railroad also used 161.400 (AT&SF if I remember correctly). We (the EL) also had a microwave repeater system in the Chicago area which allowed 51st Street and the Marion Dispatcher to talk with Chicago trains. It was necessary that our trains be the only ones who could access the repeater so 161.520 was utilized there. I never have discussed this with any Chicago crews but I imagine that it was just a common practice to change to channel 2 after leaving EL rails at maybe StateLine Tower?? Or maybe the crews just knew that if they wanted to talk to anybody, they had to use channel 2.

Hope this answered your questions.


Rich Tubbs
Marion, OH
ELHS #1226
EHH&TS #25 




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