Rich
Those that desire, find a way..... Those that don't, find an excuse.
RichardLHightBut I'm going to get serious about showing you folks some of the great backgrounds that Martinsville and Henry County have to offer.
I've been thru Martinville some years ago and remember driving past the speedway. Is that a NS main along near the speedway track. Believe it was moved back from the track a few years ago for racefan's safety.
I'm a watcher of the web cam there in Roanoke as well.....See a generous amount of traffic pass for the times I check in to it.....
Seems the web cam performance has been spotty last few days.
Quentin
.....Just checked, it's up and running at 1:03, and a west bound empty coal train was passing.....
It's working O.K here in the UK... Train went through about four minutes ago
Heiter
j610This website is is almost worthless. It is down more than it is up. Should have known with the previous problems that it would be this way. RON
I find just the opposite. It has been very reliable the past week or two, and the big problem seems to be the screen goes black from time to time. I think one night, it was down for about 4 hours, but other than that, it's usually up when I go looking
Tom
COAST LINE FOREVER
It is better to dwell in the corner of a roof than to share a house with a contentious woman! (Solomon)
A contentious woman is like a constant dripping! (Solomon)
Just came in to the computer, and clicked on the Roanoke site, and bingo....a general merchandise train { W B}, passing.
This has nothin' to do with trains, but last night about 9:00 or 9:30 (EDT) I was watching the webcam in Roanoke. The camera had changed to the B/W mode and not much was going on. Just before I terminated the view for lack of interest, I noted some "sparkley" lights of some sort right at the horizon above the parking garage in the background and seemingly farther away than the tan buildings behind it.
At first I thought it was some sort of fireworks finale with lots of star bursts concentrated in a small area. But it went on and on and on and on and on and on... Five to ten minutes --. much too long for a fireworks display -- before I decided to investigate it further.
I called a friend and had him look. It took a while to get him to a point where he could get to the webcam to view it (like an additional 5 minutes) and since it was still occuring, he could see the sparkleys also. He thought it must be a flag waiving in the breeze and maybe it had a reflective surface and the sparkles were some lights shining on the wrinkles of the flag as it fluttered in the breeze.
I could not remember what was at that position in the view, but I certainly did not remember any flagpoles at a place where the flag would be big enough to be the size it was on screen at the distance I remembered the buildings behind the parking ramp were/are.
I have looked this morning and there is nothing back there that would account for the size of the sparkles I saw last night (even as small as the area was). Granted the area was not large, but at that distance a flag would have to have been the size of a large building and there is nothing between the place I saw the sparkles and the foreground buildings, and nothing on the buildings that could hold a flag.
SO...
Anybody else see this last night? (Or maybe previous nights?)
Anybody from the Roanoke area that can shed some light on what it was I saw? I am wondering if maybe there was a large fire on the hills to the southwest of Roanoke and maybe I was either seeing the fire itself or maybe a whole slew of firetrucks and other emergency vehicles with lots of flashing lights. Because the camera was in the B&W mode, all I could see was bright white (though very tiny) flashes of light, no color information being available.
I will be watching again tonight to see if the lights are there again; If so them maybe it is a car dealership with lots of parking lot lights that twinkle due to intervening trees blowing in the wind, but I am not really thinking that is what it was.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Me thimks I figur'd it out! The Roanoke Times website reports an explosion and fire at a house in the 2700 block of Tillett Road in Grandin Court. (No injuries, but 3 people displaced and being cared for by the Red Cross).
Running Google Earth and drawing a line from the camera location to the 2700 block of Tillett Rd crosses the place on the parking ramp where I saw the "fireworks" above it. (The angle of the line was about 243 degrees, if'n yer interested.) I am fairly certain now that the sparkleys were the flashing of Emergencey vehicle lights. Thus I am certain that there will be no lights tonight in that place.
Interesting stuff you can see from these webcams.
Just checked for any flashing lights at the web site. Strangly enough, I did see sort of a flashing light at the left end of the parking garage. But it looked like it might be coming from street level, maybe even a light flashing on a patrol police car....
And the other site was: The receding flashing light of {fred} W B almost out of site. Black & white pic.
Well I am a bit confused tonight. I still see some sparkleys in that same area, but not nearly as many as the previous night. Don't know what to make of it, unless that street is well traveled and those are car headlights.
@Modelcar - Yes, I see that same flashing to the left of the parking garage close to street level, but it has been there for a really long time. Maybe a traffic warning of some sort?
Also, on the top of the parking garage there is what appears might be an elevator house for people to get to the top level. On the outside of this structure is a single street light of some sort. Tonight there was a very bright light at that point that would dim and then rebrighten and sometimes it appeared as though someone was walking in front of it. But there would also be a VERY BRIGHT FLASH (like a high power flash bulb) from that area randomly every 5 to 45 seconds. After about 30 minutes of this the bright (relatively steady) light moved off and it was apparent that it was the headlights of a car on the top of the parking garage.
But then the bright flashes continued! I think that maybe the street light on the elevator room is at the end of its life and it goes out and then comes back on, but since the camera is in its B&W mode maybe there are bright infrared or ultraviolet flashes that the camera is picking up, but people don't normally see.
I just looked again tonight (1:00 AM CDT) and the parking garage street light (if that is what it was) has gone out completely, but there are still periodic sparkleys on the horizon where I saw LOTS of them the night before.
I did see a couple of trains go by, 1 EB freight and 1 WB engine only consist. The west bound second engine I thought at first was a "Calf" type, it being about 1/2 the height of the others, but it appeared to have a pantograph on it about 1/3 of the way from the leading end. It was too dark to make much sense of the whole thing, but there were about 8 cars and all but that one appeared to be large road engines.
I noted those sparklies last winter. They are there practically every night with the size or number varying from a lot to practically none. In the daylight, the location seems to correspond to the ridgeline of the distant mountains. Fascinating place, Roanoke. Plenty of anomalies to investigate, most of which will never be answered!
That is definitely strange . I will have to look for the lights tonight . RON
It was too foggy to see any of the sparklies early last night, but at 1:00 AM (EDT) the rain and fog had cleared a bit and they were back. Not quite as vivid as the first time I noticed them but unless there was yet another fire in that general area, my research about what happened over that way was not as fruitful as I thought.
Using Google Earth, I see no large parking lots or anything that would produce that kind of light in that area, but I am not sure just how far away those two ridges are. I think the sparklies are on the closer ridge that starts about mid scene and extends to the right.
Anybody here from the Roakoke area that could say about how far that ridge is from the camera? Name any streets that are on it or townships or something that could identify it on Google Earth so I could know an area to look for lights to determine what it is?
I suppose it could be just a busy street and the sparklies are headlights flashing through trees and such. Or maybe just looking at streetlight down a long street lengthwise so they appear to be close together.
Oh well, right now there is just a train stopped on the far tracks... and someone riding a bicycle around and around on the top floor of the parking garage.
Going to look for the sparklies tonight. Hopefully one of us can figure it out soon . RON
Tonight, the sparklies are very bright and sharp. Best I have seen them in a while. I think they are strobe lights of some sort, one level, maybe 2 but not more. The size of the thing must be huge since it is a good distance away but still appears large. My guess at present is a car lot or club of some kind using strobes to call the folks in......
I put a piece of paper over the screen and traced the outlines of some of the buildings in the background during the day and then placed that outline over the screen after dark to see just where the lights are. Then I went back to Google Earth and again drew a line from my best estimate of the location of the camera in the walkway over the street and tracks and passed the line over the parking garage at where I figure the lights are directly above and then followed that line for 30 miles.
There are no places that I can see that have large sets of lights like a parking lot, car sales lot, sports stadium, airport, etc. Nuttin but residential streets.
In a previous post I wrote that maybe Grandin Court, a street that runs parallel to the angle of the line I drew, might be the source of the light if the view were along that line and seeing the streetlights seemingly all bunched together, but I now think that Grandin Court is on the closest ridge and well below the peak.
With my overlay I now see that the lights are well above BOTH ridges on the horizon.
There are two towns in that general direction that I am now wondering if it is their downtown streetlights! One is Shawsville at 18.8 miles and the other is Christiansburg at 27.5 miles (straight line 'as the crow flies', not road distance).
Shawsville is not really big enough (in my thinking) to account for the size of the area that is sparkling, but it looks like Christiansburg is possibly 'over the ridge' and down in a valley and would thus be too low to see.
Tis a mystery.
Wish someone could take a telephoto shot from the camera location aimed directly over the elevator house of the parking garage, high enough to see over that farthest ridge.
I may have to get up REALLY early in the AM to see what it looks like with the sun coming up.
Trying to conjure up relative distances from a 2-D image is difficult at best. And although Google Earth has some elevation information I can't seem to get enough of a feel of it to know exactly where those two ridges are.
I am still working on a way to get a screen capture of the railcam image. PrtScreen just gets a blank screen. I found a program named PicPick (which does some neat stuff) and it has managed to get a BitMap (.BMP) image, but the image in the bitmap is "live" when I call it back using the Winders Paint program. I never knew that a bitmap image could contain a live web link! If I display the bitmap file with Paint and then unplug the network cable the image disappears! (I shore does larn sumpin everday!) If I terminate the Windows Media connection and restart it, the bitmap file link is still broken then.
When I made my overlay drawings yesterday I did not include the ridge lines (thinking the lights would be on the near ridge). Last night the sparklies were very vivid and large. When I shut down last night I left a Post-It note on the screen with an outline of the sparkly area drawn on it. The ridges are not at all visible at night and the sparklies are not visible durring the day.
This morning when looking at the scene, I see that the sparkly lights area is well above the FAR ridge. It is roughly a semicircular area (flat on the bottom, coinciding with the top of the far ridge) just to the left of the higest peak on the right of the far ridge. But since it extends above the ridge, I can't believe it is actually ON that ridge, it must be well beyond it on land that is just too far away to see, except the lights from it at night.
This may be a bit of a long shot, considering the mountainous area, but what about the strobes in the flight path for an airport..... A smaller lesser used field could have the strobes, but seldom have a landing after dark. That's the way it is locally
....Just took a look in daylight re: flashing lights. {Did see a standing freight stretched across the screen, and in a minute, it started to move out...W B.
From description of flashing lights location on recent post, that seems to line up with the nearest RR signal on the right....and straight up on the ridge line from there. The RR signal that has a tree in view just above it. So now I believe I know where to look for it tonight. I have not seen these lights yet....
Just so you'll have an idea where to look:
Oh, I was looking at the wrong ridge peak. You are showing the one a bit to the left that I thought was it. I have it now.....Right above the parking gar. elevator.
I'll check and see if we can ID anything tonight.
Well gentelmen, I think it's safe to say that we have a bonofied UFO on our hands! That's as in a Unidentified Flashing Object. I just checked in on the Roanoke cam and was surprised to see how active the lights were sparkling like a black and white telecast from the 1960's
I was going to suggest two posibilities to explain the lights, the first being that Highway 220 North is in that general direction, which is passing through a night construction job and second is the fact that the Blue Ridge Regional Airport lays in the same general direction, but those are intellectual suggestions that in no way explain what I was looking at a few minuets ago!
I wasn't able to check on the lights this evening before the cam turned B&W, but I'm sure that you all have determined it the lights can be seen befoe the web change over takes place.
On another subject, I was at a fle market today and noticed a set of N&W Conductor's gold buttons in a presnetation box. It didn't occure to me that J610 identifies with the N&W and might be interested in having me go back this weekend to see if I can run across them again.
.....It's now 12:30 am....and checked over on the rail cam. Yes, I finally see the flashing lights. And no, I don't have any answer to what they might be. They do seem to me to be distant.....Perhaps a mile or more. And, as I was taking a look, a double stack train was passing by W B. So a small bonus.
I have seen the change over to B&W and the lights cannot be seen in color mode before the change over but will be quite bright and very noticable when the B&W starts. The camera switched over early tonight and the horizon was still very bright, but last night it changed over much later when it was much darker and the sparklies were not visible in the Color mode.
When I first noticed them I assumed they were actually blinking lights, hence my search of the newspaper for fires in that area (and what a coincidence that there was one right in the line of sight that night!), it is possible that the blinking is caused by intervening trees blowing in the wind, but I think it is more likely caused by atmospheric disturbance (heat waves).
Stars twinkle because they are so distant that the eye is seeing a point of light that is smaller in the eye than just one rod or cone nerve ending sensor and when the light waves from the star pass through the atmosphere the lightwaves are bent and impinge on different nerves and sometimes strike the retina at a place where there is no nerve ending at all, thus he light is alternately seen to move slightly and periodically "goes out".
I think the same is occuring here... The lights are so far away (at least 17 miles, maybe more) that heat waves off the ground are bending the very tiny light beams to sometimes miss the camera pixel sensors.
As to why we cannot see them when in color mode... I think the B&W mode is in the near infrared and is much more sensitive to those frequencies. Somehow the lights on the horizon are bright in that range. Remember when I reported the bright flashes coming from the elevator light on the car park roof. It would go dim and then give a brilliant flash, almost like a flash grenade. It would even illuminate a large area on the roof of the parking garage. I have seen these types of lights when on their last legs and they do dim and then re-ignite to come back on and although there is often a bit of a flash it is nowhere near as bright as what I saw from the webcam that night... I was wondering what kind of mischief was being perpetrated on that roof!
I notice the same effect in the sparkeling of these lights... Sometimes some of them look to be a larger flash. It is reminiscent of a full scale war battle on the horizon! I realize that the news media would much rather report on what starlett was caught with drugs last night, but I think if there was a battle of the size these flashing lights suggest, it might have been reported, at least as an afterthough of some sort in the days since I first noticed them!
Did anybody see the train (EB) with all the large covered grain type hopper cars followed by the one tiny little tank car... that tank car was about 1/4 the size of the hoppers. I suppose it was a standard car of some sort, but being the last car after all those hoppers I wasn't sure what it was going to be until it got close to the left edge of the screen where the lighting was better. Nearly 1/2 the height and less than 1/2 the length of the rest of the cars in the train. Looked kind'a cute trundling along on the rear.
Semper Vaporo Did anybody see the train (EB) with all the large covered grain type hopper cars followed by the one tiny little tank car... that tank car was about 1/4 the size of the hoppers. I suppose it was a standard car of some sort, but being the last car after all those hoppers I wasn't sure what it was going to be until it got close to the left edge of the screen where the lighting was better. Nearly 1/2 the height and less than 1/2 the length of the rest of the cars in the train. Looked kind'a cute trundling along on the rear. Semper: Now you have done it. You really opened a can of worms for me. Down here on the CSX I have observed 2 different grain trains with a single tank car at the end. Thought maybe it was a bad order car but for this to happen at an entirely different location and RR has me puzzled?
Semper: Now you have done it. You really opened a can of worms for me. Down here on the CSX I have observed 2 different grain trains with a single tank car at the end. Thought maybe it was a bad order car but for this to happen at an entirely different location and RR has me puzzled?
I sent an email to the local newspaper in Roanoke to see if they can help. If I get a reply, I will post it here. I watched them dim out this morning long before they streetlights turned off. They must be either a long way off or not at all bright to the naked eye. When the color kicked in, they disappeared completely.
.....In view of recent posts, including mine....I now have a thought that the light sourse is very distant....Many miles. And if so, perhaps they really are permanent lights on some business, public or similar location. Blinking caused by {explained well on previous posts}, the distance phenomenon.
I haven't looked at the satellite vision of the area if a distance is visable from the camera location, but it certainly appears to be very distant.
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