7:50 pm, cam working {?}, still in color, but the motion was stopping every few seconds.
Quentin
Rich
Those that desire, find a way..... Those that don't, find an excuse.
....Just checked on the cam, seems we have a good pic. this morning.
And just for clarity: 10:02 am....EDT.
Boy, looking at the nice pic this morning and wondering if a train is just about there, out of camera range....Wouldn't it be great if we had audio to hear the city sounds and train operations. When working correctly, this is a real nice display of RR property, and rather active. I really catch quite a few trains as I occasionally take a look.
Well, a few things. I do remember seeign what appears to be a couple lights that, as I mentioned before, go on and off every once in a while. Perhaps these are the streetlights people mentioned going. I think I had seen that incedible brightness with them. Also, while mentioning flickering lights, I had seen the sparkly ones off in the distance. I also had seena number of flashing lights from paramedic units on the far end of that camera on a few occasions. I wonder if that building is some type of residence, and if someone there has chronic medical issues.
Today, on teh camera, at 1:11, in a train passing on the far side of a single Conrail loco on the closer track, I saw a white car I hadn't seen before. It is gondola-sized, but it was mainly a flatcar, with several large rods sticking up from it goign down the center. What type of car is this, and what is it used for?
Also, I had saved previous notes from sightings, but I can't remember the details of them. Maybe somebody else saw these?
Sep 14: 5:1=empty rail train
Sep 11: UP loco # 59?? (last digits unknown, standard size loco)NS # 6742 with blue and white striped seen, but still no other info known about it-still doesn't seem to have completed its paint process
I forgot to mention, the camera has been really sporadic over the past few weeks. It will be okay for a while, then it will die (often on "buffering"), and then after a while, it will be okay again. I guess everybody else has been experiencing these oddities, so I guess it's the connection itself that has issues.
Must be foggy over that area. I can barely see them at this hour (12MidNight EDT).
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
I have watched the cam at various times of the night and early morning and have yet to see the lights you are all talking about. Has anyone figured it out yet ? RON.
Ron,
See my earlier post. They are lights on broadcast towers atop Poor Mountain. That is almost thirteen miles distant, and atmospherics come into play. If visibility is not good you will not see them. I was there a few minutes ago, and they were not showing.
Norm
Wait a couple more weeks for a new moon, and they should become visible. I'd like to see it the moment the camera goes B&W. While I'm posting this, I noticed that the second locomotive of an SN train on the cam, NS 7379, was a high-nose. I rarely get to see those around anymore. It was in the conists if several tank cars, and that lovely red caboose.
j610 I have watched the cam at various times of the night and early morning and have yet to see the lights you are all talking about. Has anyone figured it out yet ? RON.
Ron....If you still have not located the "lights" many on here have been talking about....Just a few pointers to help.
Location: Find 2nd from right verticle support post at parking garage. Follow that upwards to the distant ridge on the horizon. Believe a poster on here indicates that location is 12 plus mi. distant.
Atmospheric conditions must be good enough to see it during the dark hours. The distance and atmospheric conditions are such that the cluster of tower lights appear to be blinking, and perhaps some of them are.
You must look close, as the intensity of these lights is much lower than most other visible lights in the cam scene.
I believe they are easier to find / see, when cam is on B&W function.
It must be a "hot" spot to locate antennes, as it appears to be a cluster of them, but the light lumens are rather faint to find and see, but look steadily and close....and when weather conditions allows one to see the far ridge, the lights should be visible. {Twinkling & blinking like}.
There is an antenna farm atop Poor Mpuntain.
Follow this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Mountain
Thanks,guys. I will check it out again tonight. RON
Maybe you won't. The camera is suddenly dying again. It was fine earlier, but now it's black, and refreshing it simply leads to it quickly dying again.
Nothing new .That is typical for this cam . It seems like it is down more than it is up . RON
....The cam is working now...4:41 EDT, in fact a train is stopped there now...Believe it's west bound. Can see the end of it. Other movements, so cam is working right now.
Some type of parade of sorts seems to have just passed on the opposite side of the tracks, at 2:20 PM, in the rain, although I could be wrong, as I had just loaded the camera and just saw a ton of people walking with their umbrellas and raincoats. What's that all about?
addition-Talk about an "epic" movement. A train just went by on the closest track with a number of cars that had 3 containers each, each labeled "EPIC", part of a mixed freight. Anyone know what that stuff is, or why those cars are shipped in 3s?
GIANT BUG ATTACKS TRAIN IN ROANOKE!
....The lens needs a windshield wiper. A week or so ago, I witnessed a fairly large spider walking all over the lens. He stayed there a while too.
I have seen two trains of those epic marked containers loaded 3 to a flat, and always with the high ends together, in the past two days. One was EB, the second WB, all on the third track from the cam. Strange way of doing things....
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)
grampaw pettibone I have seen two trains of those epic marked containers loaded 3 to a flat, and always with the high ends together, in the past two days. One was EB, the second WB, all on the third track from the cam. Strange way of doing things....
I too caught at least one of those 3 containers to each car recently Tom....I wondered what that "loading" was all about.
I would believe the togetherness of the third cars was for stability reasons, but how odd not to just have 4 containers (or if unstable like that, have the third in the middle).
Hey, how'd you get the screenshot, or were you one of the lucky ones who has the video load in some non-WMP window, where you can just PrintScreen it?
I just saw 2 trains at the same time on the cam, catching them mid-train, both mixed freights. One train went to the right on the near track, the other one left on the far track. I noticed a couple different strings of coal cars on the leftward-moving one on the far track. It seems the cars must already have been sorted, with several different cuts going to different places. Is there a humping yard nearby? I'm just curious where the sorting happened.
While I'm talking about it, right after those trains, the beautiful red caboose came into view from the left side of the screen on a reverse shove on the middle track. 2 locos were heading that cut, and after it cleared the signal bridge, it stopped, then went back down on the second track from the left side. Both locos were NS 3xxx series, with the second being a high-nose, which I've seen before, commonly on this caboose run.
ADDITION-lots of activity right now! Anyone reading this might want to jump on. For the time being, there's a good parade with good variety. A also saw NS 5079, a high-nose loco, come down the middle track from right to left. I wonder where it's headed. Various freights and loco moves...good stuff!
kolechovski I would believe the togetherness of the third cars was for stability reasons, but how odd not to just have 4 containers (or if unstable like that, have the third in the middle). Hey, how'd you get the screenshot, or were you one of the lucky ones who has the video load in some non-WMP window, where you can just PrintScreen it?
Oops! Missed your question about the screen shot... I have tried mightily to get the video feed to be saved on my PC and cannot do it... so I use my digital camera.
When I see an image I like in the video feed, I click pause on Windows Media Player so the image freezes (really hard to decide when the bug was in the "best" position to make an interesting photograph). Then I set the camera for "Macro" (close up mode) and I start taking photos with various positionings of the screen, camera, room lighting, and my shaking hands until I get one that looks kind of decent. Often I have to aim the camera at the screen to get the framing I want, then aim it at a dark place in the room at about the same distance as the camera was from the screen, then press the shutter button about 1/2 way down to lock the camera's auto- exposure and focus, then holding the button at that 1/2 way spot, move it to view the screen again to take the photo.
I usually take a dozen different photos at different settings on the camera (it has a "Text" mode that seems to work well), I have to do lots of photos because even if it looks good on the camera's display it may not look good on the computer screen, and if it looks poor on the camera, it may look real good on the PC (after some enhancement work!). If I were doing this more often, I guess I would build some sort of fixture to hold the camera and computer screen in a fixed relationship (and use a removable piece of paper/cardboard in front of the screen when doing the exposure and focus locking step).
Then I copy the photos to the computer and use various photo enhancing programs (none of them do all the things I want [in a way I can figure out how]) to sharpen, color enhance, rotate, crop, resize, fold, spindle, and/or mutilate it to my acceptance.
That is the only way to capture a screen shot of a video feed that I have found yet, If anyone knows of a way that is simpler, I'd like to know about it!
I always wondered why camera manufacturers haven't yet come up with a common "screen" setting for taking pictures of screens, for the types of reasons you just mentioned. It seems like something in enough demand to warrant that design. Indeed, I recommend a tripod, or at least some steady platform.
HA! I just found a way to do it in the cornpewter!
I just acquired Windows 7 and just now accidentally found a new utility built-in called "Snipping Tool" that can capture an image from the video feed. Still have to "Guess" when to grab the frame, but it works.
The program is in the windows\System32 directory, but I can't find it in the Start Programs list. I just accidentally found it in the list of recently run programs, but "I" did NOT recently run it before I found it in that list so I have no idea how it got to that list! I am going to drag that link to my desktop so I can get to it quicker from there. Gonna have to play with it a while to see what all it can do and what is the quickest/best/easiest way to use it.
Just an observation on the Roanoke rail cam. Seems to be a bunch of Coke addicts in town. There is a plethora of Coke trucks, but I've never seen one delivering Pepsi.
Do they know Peps exists?
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