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ROANOKE RAIL CAM

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Posted by grampaw pettibone on Thursday, December 9, 2010 8:54 PM

HLCX is Helms Leasing.

Hoppers in Va could be corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts plus a bunch of other stuff

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)

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Posted by j610 on Thursday, December 9, 2010 12:32 PM

Just saw a train with the lead unit marked HLCX. Who does that belong to . I don`t know about virginia , but there are a lot of soybeans grown here in north carolina .    RON

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Thursday, December 9, 2010 10:22 AM

Saw a train late last night that was lead by 3 Diesels and expected to see a long consist... but is was only about dozen double bottom covered hoppers.  That got me to wondering... around here in the deepest, darkest Midwest, a unit train of hoppers is probably soy beans, corn or wheat; what kinds of product might have been in those hoppers in Virginia?

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by j610 on Thursday, December 9, 2010 1:19 AM

Not too much action today , at least when i was watching. I have seen a lot of foreign power lately.    RON

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Posted by j610 on Saturday, December 4, 2010 4:40 PM

Just saw santa come in at 5:35 riding on the back of a caboose pulled by three engines. Still snowing in roanoke.   RON

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Posted by Modelcar on Saturday, December 4, 2010 2:25 PM

.....Yes, it's snowing in Roanoke now.  Looks like a real wet snow as it's sticking to nowhere except the coal was white on a passing EB train just a few min. ago.

We too have snow here in Muncie today...Right now it appears to be maybe 2.5" so far....It's to let up this evening, an as I just peeked out my window here it's pretty light  now.  31.1 degrees here.

Web site might have loaded a bit slow...but part of it might have been this computer, as i happen to be dealing with a slow running unit here now.

Quentin

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Posted by j610 on Saturday, December 4, 2010 2:07 PM

I haven`t been able to load the hotel cam at all today . Every time i try,a window pops up trying to get me to install something called wmv-9 vcm rtw. Has anyone else had this problem. I have never had a problem loading it before . I have mozilla firefox. If i go to it in internet explorer , it loads but very slowly . It is snowing very hard in roanoke right now . perfect for santas arrival at 4:30.      RON

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Posted by j610 on Thursday, December 2, 2010 4:47 PM

I was wrong . Santa arrives saturday evening 4:30 til 8:00 pm.   RON

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Posted by jlrc47 on Thursday, December 2, 2010 3:54 PM

Has Santa arrived yet or did I miss the train. It's 4:55pm est

Joe

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Posted by j610 on Thursday, December 2, 2010 2:07 PM

Should start to see some more action as it gets closer to the holidays .  My daughter and son-in-law work for the post office and the holiday shipping has already kicked in , should be an increase in rail freight also.    RON

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Posted by j610 on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 10:39 PM

You may be right . That makes sense as more and more people are finding out about the vmt cam. I would really like to see a live streaming cam at the museum , but what we have is better than nothing.  .   RON

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Posted by kolechovski on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:39 PM

The live feed cam has been dropping quite a bit, too.  i think with word of recent foreign power getting around, there's more demand for the feed and more bandwidth getting used.

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Posted by j610 on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 3:19 PM

Well the rain finally stopped and the sun is back out. Back to clear cam views again . VMT  cam is still off and on   RON

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Posted by kolechovski on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7:32 AM

It stayed in beautiful color for all the last time I was on...I also thought it had been daylight triggered.  maybe they found out we dislike it and turned off the feature.  I also saw a UP engien this morning,a long with a very interesting high nose jobby.  Lotsa good stuff will parade by...I just know it.

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Posted by j610 on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 9:11 PM

Same here . It seems every time i log on , i am just a little too late . Santa comes to the link museum saturday on a caboose .       RON

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 6:04 PM

Yes the VMT cam keeps blanking out on me.  And the hotel cam has been staying color for longer hours than before.  I thought it went to B&W based on the brightness of the scene, but I have seen it change when the sun was just going down and now is it still color a couple of hours after sundown.

I did see a lot of the tail end of several trains... I just didn't connect soon enough to see the engines. Sad

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by Norm48327 on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 6:01 PM

kolechovski

I didn't realize Poor Mountain was so far back.

 

I didn't either until the question about the dancing lights was asked. I am one who loves to solve a puzzle and now have the time to do so. I used the FCC's website to locate towers in the Roanoke area, then used Google Earth to pinpoint them. Poor Mountain is an 'antenna farm'. Several stations have their antennas located there.

From an engineering standpoint it makes sense.  Poor Mountain's elevation is much higher than the surrounding territory. That means stations can broadcast over the same area with shorter, and less expensive, towers To cover the same area from lower ground would likely require a 2,000 ft tower.

The fact they can be viewed at night reflects the high standards of tower lighting required by the FAA. They would be white strobes during daylight but are red at night. Of course we can't tell that when the camera in in the B/W mode.

Norm


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Posted by j610 on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 5:04 PM

It seems like there is no specific time for the webcam to go from color to black & white. The vmt cam has been messing up lately,but maybe it is due to the bad weather. Not much traffic today or at least not at the times i chose to view the cams.    RON

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Posted by kolechovski on Monday, November 29, 2010 8:07 PM

I didn't realize Poor Mountain was so far back.  It looked just a few miles to me.  I'd hate to have to try to go there on foot from Roanoke.  The webcam is still in color right now, but it's failing a lot.  It sucks, as I was about to grab a nice shot with some red FRED flashes in it with some light engines.  Oh well.  Feel free to grab snaps of the foreign power, too!

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Posted by j610 on Monday, November 29, 2010 4:51 PM

I have seen some of those unmarked ones also .  RON

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Monday, November 29, 2010 4:49 PM

I agree, a lot of U.P. engines.  it started with the one that has a red line (racing stripe?) painted through the "UNION PACIFIC" on the side of the engine compartment.  Recently I saw 3 U.P. engines in one group of 5 pulling a unit coal train, the lead was a black N.S., but the 5th had no markings that I could see.

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by j610 on Monday, November 29, 2010 2:57 PM

I have been seeing a lot of non ns engines lately . what is up with that  ? Is ns short on power ? I also see a lot more union pacific power than i would expect .  RON

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Posted by j610 on Monday, November 29, 2010 6:17 AM

I am having windows xp put in it before i even turn it on .   RON

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Monday, November 29, 2010 12:10 AM

Yeah, that'll scream right along.  And with that big screen display.  Nice.

Now for the shock of Winders 7!  Geeked

 

It is not all that bad.  At least not as bad as Vista! Big Smile

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by j610 on Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:58 PM

I think the one i am going to go with is a dell . It has a 5GHz processor and a dvd burner .   RON

J610
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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Sunday, November 28, 2010 9:58 PM

Any computer on the retail shelf right now should handle webcam viewing with no problems and have plenty of power to play solitaire between trains.

The biggest bottle neck you will run into the the internet connection bandwidth to/from your ISP.

I am a bit partial to "MORE POWER" so I bought a bit more than I really need.  I happen to like laptop PCs,  Keyboard, display and mainframe all in one package.  If i go someplace I have all my software, photos, and correspondence with me. WiFi capable with a wired connection built-in, too.  The only thing I don't like is the touchpad, so I have a small wireless mouse that works just fine and the particular touchpad on my present PC disables itself if a mouse is detected (so it does not infuriate me when I drag my thumbs while typing and thus move the insertion cursor all over the place).

A year or so ago, I began to play with a video surveilance system that does motion detection and found I needed a much more powerful PC to handle more than two cameras, so I bought  a laptop PC with a triple-core computer processor.  But since it is not on the internet (intentionally!) I needed a PC for me to use and I just could not purchase something for my personal use that is less than that PC; so I bought an identical PC for me.  It is overkill for just surfing the web or playing solitaire, but it sure is NICE.

The triple core processor, huge memory, and so on would be put to better use if I were not retired but what little programming in Visual Basic I still do and the few Excel spreadsheets I play with are sure a pleasure on this machine.  Drawing with Google SketchUp is a lot more fun with this one, too!

I have had a photo editor open as well as SketchUp, drawing my son's house in 3-D and using a photo of it to add texture to the drawing, while I was viewing Google Earth where his house is, and I had the Roanoke Hotel rail cam open in the corner, as well as Internet explorer open to my e-mail and this forum (and two or three others) all at the same time and nothing bogs down.

They both have the same video display hardware and 4 gb of memory. but they are not quite identical.  I got one at Best Buy and the other at Wal*Mart.  The Wal*Mart one has two 340GB drives and the Best Buy one has one 500 GB drive. 

The Wal*Mart one is a Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv-7-4069mw

The Best Buy one is a Hewlett Packard pavilion dv7-4065dx

They both run Windows 7 (64-bit).  The video surveilance system has all the anti-malware software disabled since the only things that run on it are vetted before installation... besides there is nothing on it but months of video out my house windows... squirrels, birds, people walking dogs, the meter readers and mailman.

Also, I bet Wal*Mart sells a lot of that PC model, but I also bet most people never know that they have to manually "enable" that second drive and thus never use it!  And never know it!

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by j610 on Sunday, November 28, 2010 8:37 PM

Still trying to decide what computer to buy. It has to be something that lets me watch the webcams without such a hassle .    RON

J610
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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:40 AM

22 INCH!  WOWsers!  I remember when a 21-inch TV was a "big screen"!  You'll have to turn your head to read a line of text.  Readin' a paragraph will be like watching a tennis match. (hee hee hee) I am sure you will love it.  I have a 19-in monitor on my LapTop PC and I like it.

 

Semper Vaporo

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Posted by j610 on Sunday, November 28, 2010 2:07 AM

I tried the CCleaner . Works great . I have already ordered a 22 inch flat screen lcd moniter . Still trying to decide between three different computers . Thanks .   RON

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Sunday, November 28, 2010 1:13 AM

hee hee hee... After I posted that I thought about adding that it could also be an excellent excuse to get a new machine!Whistling

 

 

Semper Vaporo

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