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ROANOKE RAIL CAM

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  • Member since
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  • From: morganton north carolina
  • 515 posts
Posted by j610 on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 10:42 AM

Both cams are working great for now . NS may have to start shipping by boat if the rains don`t let up soon .   RON

J610
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Posted by Modelcar on Monday, March 7, 2011 8:50 AM

Nice surprise, cam up and running and nice and sunny morning.  But right now, no trains.  Not complaining, as I know there are plenty in general during the day.

Quentin

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Posted by kolechovski on Monday, March 7, 2011 8:17 AM

Wow.  I saw another caboose this morning on that CN train that I hadn't seen before.  It looks to be mixtures of red and orange sections, with some white zigzag logo and some lettering on the middle part of it.  The VMT cam lagged, so I missed the best view of it, but I did get a snapshot of it from the live feed when it came by.  I also later saw NS locos 3561 and 7564 go by that had been sitting and waiting on the other end.

The bandwidth issues will be common-usually when the cam blacks out, it will be in the afternoon, and no method of trying to reach it will work, but so far, all 3 methods work okay (not including the VMT cam, which constantly changes its update rates).  I also notice the Rochelle cam has been having occasional problems loading, but I don't understand why, though it matters little.

And now I see the streetlights have turned on now for some bizarre reason.  Well, 3 of 4 of them have : )

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Posted by jlrc47 on Monday, March 7, 2011 8:00 AM

Both cameras are up and running again.

 

Joe

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Posted by conductor14 on Monday, March 7, 2011 7:12 AM

I checked at 8:10 am today and it is up and running again

  • Member since
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Posted by j610 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 6:41 PM

Time to go back to watching the netherlands cam again .    RON

J610
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  • From: Iowa
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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Sunday, March 6, 2011 6:30 PM

The Trains dot com service for the hotel cam is back working... still a small image and only updates once per second.

The other two access methods are still down.  not much difference from last week.

 

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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Posted by Norm48327 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 3:40 PM

Still not working on my end.

Norm


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Posted by Modelcar on Sunday, March 6, 2011 2:02 PM

Just a bit before 3 pm, and Hotel cam is black.  Guess we'll just have to lower our expectations from it....

Too bad when  a cam is installed, there must not be any regular checking on it....to maintain it.

Quentin

  • Member since
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  • From: morganton north carolina
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Posted by j610 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 12:27 PM

If someone would put up a good,high quality cam and maintain it , i would be willing to pay a reasonable fee each month .   RON

J610
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  • From: Southeast Michigan
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Posted by Norm48327 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 12:07 PM

j610,

You may well be right there. Although the camera is situated on Roanoke Hotel's property it is not their responsibility but that of the U of Virginia. That being said, I'm sure there is not someone there to monitor it 24/7. i guess we have to expect some downtime even though it can be frustrating/painful.

Norm


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  • From: morganton north carolina
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Posted by j610 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 11:44 AM

I think this cam is always going to be a problem because it is not a top priority for repair .   RON

J610
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  • From: Southeast Michigan
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Posted by Norm48327 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 10:34 AM

It went down again about 10:30 this morning.

Norm


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Posted by j610 on Sunday, March 6, 2011 8:21 AM

Rainy , wet , and cold here and in roanoke today . Good day to be inside watching the cam .    RON

J610
  • Member since
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  • From: Southeast Michigan
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Posted by Norm48327 on Friday, March 4, 2011 5:32 PM

6:30 EST, and coal empties moving west. Withdrawal pangs are easing.Smile

Norm


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Posted by j610 on Friday, March 4, 2011 5:18 PM

Finally got the full screen hotel cam back . You don`t know how much you miss something until it is gone .   RON

J610
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  • From: Muncie, Indiana...Orig. from Pennsylvania
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Posted by Modelcar on Friday, March 4, 2011 2:25 PM

Wow........1st time on here today, and bingo....Hotel cam up and running and an eastbound train of coal cars passing by.   Thanks to whomever responsbile.

Quentin

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Posted by Norm48327 on Friday, March 4, 2011 8:31 AM

Big Smile I was going through withdrawl.

Norm


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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, March 4, 2011 8:20 AM

Indeed, all cams are restored, and RRCmov is back up and running!  Yay!

And right away I saw a car sitting just past the far STOP sign for about 20 seconds...I take it it stalled out.  I've seen a few vehicles do that before.

EDIT-The Rochelle cam is still kinda iffy.  It's working some of the time.  Now sure what's with it, though it's not the important one anyhow.

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Posted by tcwright973 on Friday, March 4, 2011 8:15 AM

It's 9:14 in the morning here in Pittsburgh and the web cam is back up as of a minute or two ago. Thanks to whoever is responsible for getting this most interesting web site back up.

Tom

Tom

Pittsburgh, PA

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Posted by kolechovski on Friday, March 4, 2011 7:20 AM

Interesting...even the Rochelle cam is down!  As for the bandwidth hog issue, for a university, it really isn't THAT big in comparison with anything else, really.  If, though, there is some cost of bandwidth that they're worried about, there were ideas to handle that.  Really, the main problem is a complete refusal to communicate.  I mean, I understand how maintenence is and stuff, but they could at least talk to us and let us know what all is going on and what to expect.  But the fact that right now, both cams are down would seem to be a server issue (but I think still shots are still being obtained from the Rochelle cam), likely intentional changes.  I wonder how hard people are hitting the VMT cam?  I guess we should try to find out.

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Posted by Norm48327 on Friday, March 4, 2011 5:13 AM

This morning it is not available on either the direct link or the Trains magazine link.

Norm


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Posted by j610 on Friday, March 4, 2011 2:57 AM

If the hotel cam does come back online the first person to find out should post in this thread . Thanks .   RON

J610
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Posted by j610 on Thursday, March 3, 2011 3:43 PM

Oh well , as the old saying goes " all good things must come to an end".    RON

J610
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Posted by Norm48327 on Thursday, March 3, 2011 2:10 PM

All,

Hang in there. The camera is on the site of The Roanoke  but is hosted by the University of Virginia according to my previous electronic research. I do feel it will be back, but we must be patient. They may have to make adjustments on their server, and I hope they do.

Like most of you, I feel deprived but hope better days are coming.

With respect and sympathy for all. I am going through the same withdrawal symptoms and hope the fast version is back on line soon.

Norm


  • Member since
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  • From: Chicopee , Ma.
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Posted by jlrc47 on Thursday, March 3, 2011 6:25 AM

  Ron, I don't think they are going to fix the "good" TV like web cam. It is a bandwidth hog.

Here is the other URL for the hotel web cam,(if you don't have it) it sucks but it works better than the museum cam

http://128.173.197.94:443/RRCtrainsDOTcom

JoeSigh

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  • From: morganton north carolina
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Posted by j610 on Thursday, March 3, 2011 2:06 AM

Why is it always the good cam that we lose ? Why did they install the cam if they have no intention of maintaining it ?  RON

J610
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Posted by kolechovski on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 11:01 PM

And now the competition for the VMT cam seems evident, as it is updating about every 1/2 minute.  I doubt many of us will be willing to tolerate such slowness for long.  Alas, it seems we've essentially lost our Roanoke cam with this.

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Posted by kolechovski on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 7:35 PM

Crap.  You're right.  It does seem that they removed the old means entirely to enforce this new means.  What a shame.  I guess the VMT is all we really have to rely on now.  I mean this feed from the hotel cam now just sucks, too much to really bother with anymore.  Of course, the VMT cam isn't exactly what I'd call reliable (and it failed a number of times today).  The only last chance might be that secondary link to the live feed, but I'm pretty sure it's done.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 1:41 PM

Well, the Hotel cam DOES work through the Trains . com connection. 

Hover your mouse over the word "Interactive" in the line of links right belowthe Trains masthead at the top of any page.  A dropdown menu will appear that has a link named "Web Cams"; click on it.  Then in the new page that appears, scroll about 1/2 way down and click on the link "Visit the Roanoke, VA Web Cam"  This should open the media player to a smaller (than the other methods) view of the webcam that only updates once per second.  (Bummer, but it kinda works and is better than the Rochelle cam!)

I fear this may mean that the owner has altered the server to only feed certain intermediary servers to cut down on usage (like I mentioned in a previous post)... I surely do hope not, but only time will tell.

Doing speed timings was iffy before with my poor button clicking uniformity, but with the 1-second update rate it is just barely worth doing at all.

 

 

 

 

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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