You would think someone would have thought about it or missed it by now . Strange situation . RON
People will leave a car in a parking lot for MONTHS just because for some odd reason they got a ride from the spouse/neighbor/co-worker/etc. and it is still more inconvenient to go get the car than to continue to rideshare with spouse/neighbor/co-worker/etc. When the owner gets inconvenienced enough that car will go... assumming it can be started and does not have more than one flat tire (and the spare is good, too!).
Sometimes cars get left in public places when the owner goes on vacation just because the public parking place is less likely to be vandal prone than their own neighborhood!
One of my kids used to meet his wife after work at my house then go to diner with her and then go home, using just one of their cars, leaving the other in front of my place for a couple of weeks until it was needed for some errand they needed to do after work one night or the next day, then they'd get it.
I didn't mind because it made the neighbor park their old clunker in front of their own house instead of mine!
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
....Snow just about melted in Roanoke. People back to work with lots of parked cars....To my surprise: Some cars are backed into the fence line instead of pulling in. More than I remembered.
But the white van / sta. wgn. still there, and just witnessed an E B mixed freight passing by.....Everything appears normal in operations for now.
Quentin
Been wonderin' about that car for a couple of weeks. Could be owned by someone away on a business trip whose company provided transportation to the airport. OTOH, the latent cop in me says it could be parked there to avoid the repo man who would most likely be expecting to show up at the owners home address.
Pure speculation on my part. We will probably never know the answer.
Norm
AH HA ! I didn`t think about the repo man . Could very well be . Could also be stolen and abandoned . RON
In Detroit that van would have been striped down to nothin in 48 hours.
\
Kurt
Freight going through town right now east to west with 5 units on the point . 4 NS units and 1 Conrail blue .I guess there are still a lot of the conrail units still in original paint . RON
Clutch Cargo In Detroit that van would have been striped down to nothin in 48 hours.
They'd have to be working awfully slow. It'd take them an hour at most.
Just checked out the cam.....An E B coal train was passing with 3 NS on point for power.
Still not a full crew back at the work place, re: the parked cars in view.
But the white vehicle is still there. Boy, I agree, many places a person would leave a late model vehicle vacant for that amount of time....not much of value would be remaining.
But I really don't know what "kind" of area this really is. Perhaps safer than we might think, even being so close to a railroad area of town.
The coal train had snow on top of the loaded cars, so still plenty of snow someplace where it was coming from.
Where I come from, I agree, the car would be just a frame within hours of being left on the street at night.
I have watched this webcam at all kinds of different hours in the day and the area seems to have a busy and well behaved night life. There are pedestrians on both streets on each side of the tracks at all hours of the day.
The first few times I saw people at 2 or 3 AM (EST) I figured they were up to no good (based on my experiences with late night shadowy figures where I used to live). The first group I saw were seemingly randomly running around playing (not exercise jogging) and I immediately figured they were gang members harassing each other or other gangs or the hapless citizen that had to be in the area for some reason. But after watching them a few minutes (contemplating how to call the Roanoke police from 1000 miles away and how to explain the gang war that was about to erupt or the mugging in process), I noticed the first 3 or 4 individuals meet another 4 and stop to talk, then one of them changed groups and they all waved to each other and went on their way. One group got in a car in the parking lot in the center of the view and the others walked east out of view. I now think it was a family picking up their kid from another family.
I also think that there are often large meetings in that building in the upper left area. I think that is the Wachovia building and it must have convention and other meeting rooms for weddings / receptions / etc. I often see a stretch limo (or 2 or 3 of them) in the area late at night or early AM hours and many groups of people that seem to be well dressed going to and from cars in the parking lots in the area (except the most prominent one adjacent to the tracks, where the minivan is now) and on the street directly below the camera.
After these few months watching the rail cam, I think, at least this area of, Roanoke is a safe place to be at any hour.
I am beginning to think that white minivan has a flat driver's side front tire?
Sure has been busy on the rail lines lately. Last night there were nearly a dozen trains in a couple of hours and late this morning there have been another bunch.
Roanoke ,for the most part is a fairly safe town . There are a few bad areas , but not many.. I was born and raised there but haven`t been back for several years . Would like to make it up there this spring to see the museums again. RON
Seems to be more traffic than usual today . Maybe the economy is actually starting to get a little better . I sure hope so . RON
....Just took a strained closer look at the white SUV / Van parked for several weeks now....I am about to agree with poster Semper, the drivers side front tire might be flat.
I wish for a happy and prosperous new year to all of you..... RON
It looks like our van has a flat front tyre.
Watched several coal trains go through today . Slow orders are definitely lifted . Normal speeds on all tracks . RON
j610 Watched several coal trains go through today . Slow orders are definitely lifted . Normal speeds on all tracks . RON
Thanks for the segue to something I have been working on...
I have wanted to know how fast the trains go in that area. At first I thought they were doing 30 MPH or maybe more, but I know I am a lousy estimator of speed.
So I have been trying to find ways of actually measuring the speed. I started by trying to find the length of various railcars and timing them passing a point in the scene. But I found I am also a lousy estimator of which cars I am seeing! And Boxcars, Tankards and Coal hoppers seem to have several "standard" lengths and I can't really tell the difference sometimes.
So again I turned to Google Earth to measure the 4 tracks that can be seen. First, I drew a line from where I figure the camera is to a point on the Wachovia building that is on the left edge of the scene and noted where that line crosses the tracks. Then I drew a line from the camera position to, and straight through, the triple light tower next to the closest track at the right of the scene just past the "T" street intersection. I then noted where that extended line crosses the 4 tracks. I then used the measure function in Google Earth to measure along the tracks, following the curves, between my two lines.
There are 5 routes through the 4 tracks in the area between my lines. I have arbitrarily numbered the tracks 1 through 4, with 1 being the closest to the camera (on the north side of the passenger platform) and 4 being the farthest away. The 4 tracks account for 4 of the routes, and there is a switch connecting tracks 2 and 3 which produces the 5th possible route.
To the west there are other switches which tie the tracks together to allow tracks 1 and 2 to combine and 3 and 4 to combine, but they are outside of the area bounded by my initial lines.
I measured the distances several times, getting slightly different values each time due to my inability to get my mouse cursor on the exact same places each time, but the values were within a foot or two of each other for each route). I settled on the following values:
Route Distance
1 356 ft
2 398 ft
2>3 393 ft
3 434 ft
4 470 ft
If I pick a point on a train of cars and time how long it takes that point to traverse from the left edge of the scene to being "behind" the signal pole on the right (or vice versa) I can plug the time value into the following formula to determine the speed.
S = D / T * 0.68181818
Where "D" is the Distance listed above for the route the train is on and "T" is the Time it took in seconds.
The value "0.68181818 is the result of multiplying 60 times 60 to get hours and divided by 5280 to get miles so the result ("S") is the Speed in Miles Per Hour.
I also noted that I could tell the length of COFC containers fairly easily, knowing they are 20, 40, 45, 48 and 53 ft long. I am also fairly certain that automobile carriers are 86 ft long.
Knowing this I can plug the values into the same formula using the length of the container for "D". This is not quite as accurate, since it is harder to get precise time measurements on such a short distance... Not that I am all that precise when measuring the time across the whole screen, but the longer distance reduces the effect of imprecision in the time measurement.
I think my formula is correct, but I hope someone will verify it for me.
Another problem I have is that my stopwatch is a program on the computer that I wrote many years ago and it is presently limited to 1 second resolution so I cannot do fractional measurements. I am working to change my program to give tenth second resolution, but haven't gotten it debugged yet.
I made a spreadsheet of the values for times from 3 seconds to 100 seconds for the long distances and from 0.3 to 10 seconds for the car lengths and will publish it here AFTER I am sure I have the values right.
What has surprised me is that the speeds are so SLOW. The fastest train I have seen so far is about 11 MPH.
Does that sound about right?
EDIT! Fixed typo in the number in the formula... added an 8 after the 6... just a fumble fingers mistake!
That sounds about right . I was guessing ten to fifteen miles per hour . Occasionally one will come through quite a bit faster . But then again , that was just a guess . RON
C & O steam engine 614 is coming to roanoke soon . I am trying to find out the exact date and times. Will post as soon as i find out . RON
Would certainly like to see that....and hear it, but no, we can't do so here. Appreciate if the data can be listed.
Rich
Those that desire, find a way..... Those that don't, find an excuse.
I grabbed a screenshot of the smoker. Too bad there was a delay in bringing up the program, and I got it late. Still was neat to see.
i know there are at least 2 cabeese in the area and suspect there may be one more. I don't have a screen shot of the possible 3rd one. I have only seen it once or twice when the hotel cam was in B&W mode and I just could not make out any distinct features to know for sure if it was different than the others, but is sure looked different in the short glimpse I got. Post your screen shots and we can compare features.
As for the "black bars"... I am not sure what you mean. Maybe it is because your Windows Media Player window is not set to the same aspect ratio as the image, so the black bars are there to "fill" the space available in the window. There is an option in the WMP setup to set the window to fit the size/shape of the video automatically... maybe that will help you. In my version (Win 7) I right-click the small arrow in the upper left corner and hover the mouse arrow over the "Video >" entry, then click the "Fit player to video" option.
I studied THAT radio tower for quite some time, trying to figure out where it was. I finally found it on Google Earth and it is just a few blocks away, not way off in the distance. Note there are no warning lights on it! It is not tall enough to require them! It is on the west side of the county court house (at least that is what I THINK I remember what the building is).
kolechovski RichardLHight replied on 12-21-2010 10:00 AM I can also see a radio tower in the far distance on that mountain that I can't recall seeing before. It's just off the left side of the parking garage. The height of the tower constantly changes due to the clarity of the cam, but it looks at some moments as if it is quite tall, though I can't grab a good screenshot of the tall times. It seems as if the top of the tower matches the visible height of the top of the building off to the left, though most of the time, it only seems to stretch to that building's main roof, not the white thing on top. I'm also not sure, but does it look like there's a second antenna just slightly to the left of that one?
Richard,
I do believe that tower is within the city limits of Roanoke, on top of a building, and not subject to FAA requirements to be lighted or painted. Some understanding of aviation regulations are in order. Airplanes have minimum enroute altitudes and are bound to stay above them. till within certain distances of the airport they are approaching. I think the tower you are seeing is much closer to downtown than it may seem on camera. The towers on Poor Mountain are 13 miles distant and are much higher than surrounding terrain. They are probably in the neighborhood of 250 to 300 ft above ground level but because of the mountain they are on they require lighting. We can only see them when visibility is good, and the eastern US is noted for haze.The FAA has regulations on lighting and painting, but I don't think the antenna you are seeing falls under their jurisdiction.
I've seen the 'tower' in question, but haven't been able to find it listed on the FCC's website.
If someone can PM me their email address, I can send a few Zip files of some of the shots I've been saving. You guys can then compare the pics that way (or host them on this site from whatever means you use).
What did NS do with the gray caboose.
Russell
Thanks Richard, the last i was told it is still in Roanoke.Was not it used on the back of coal trains to see how much coal dust was comeing off.
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