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......
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)
Going to look for the sparklies tonight. Hopefully one of us can figure it out soon . 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.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
That is definitely strange . I will have to look for the lights tonight . RON
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!
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.
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.
Quentin
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.
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.
Just came in to the computer, and clicked on the Roanoke site, and bingo....a general merchandise train { W B}, passing.
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
Rich
Those that desire, find a way..... Those that don't, find an excuse.
It's working O.K here in the UK... Train went through about four minutes ago
Heiter
.....Just checked, it's up and running at 1:03, and a west bound empty coal train was passing.....
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.
RichardLHight BTW, have any of you folks noticed the white car that is parked across from the Jefferson street intersection? It's been parked there for at least five days since I first noticed it sitting by itself at night, and still there each day since. I wonder if it's been stolen and abandoned right under the cop's nose? Stranger things have happened! Rich
Well, it probably ain't a stolen car... I just watched a white SUV of some sort come from the east and park about 3 or 4 slots to the east of it (all other cars were gone by then). The driver got out, opened the rear hatch/door of the SUV and did some rearranging of something back there for a while. Then he walked to the parked car in question (why'd he park so far away???) and opened the passenger door. I could not tell if he used a key or not, but he didn't spend much time at the door before it opened. He then went back to the rear of the SUV and carried what looked like a suit coat to the car and put whatever it was in the passenger side. He returned to the SUV, did something at the passenger door of it, then closed the rear hatch, got in the driver's side and drove away.
EDIT: after posting the above I went back to check the webcam and the white car is gone.
I too have had occasion to see the little red caboose with white NW letters. I pulled up to the only grade crossing in Martinsville, Virginia and to my surprise a weather beaten old Norfolk & Western high nose GP7 or GP9 crossed in front of me with several very old box cars and that rare caboose bringing up the rear. Recently I caught a glimps of it sitting on the closest track to the Roanoke Rail Cam but the screen went black and by the time it came back on line, the engine was just pulling out of sight.
By the way, I've read that some would like to have a snapshot of the action and I've found a way to do so. My wife bought me a new DELL 23 inch monitor for my birthday. I bought a mini tripod at the local Dollar Tree and set up my Kodak ditigial camera and bingo, I can turn the lights out and record the action on video or settle for individual snap shots that I can then enlarge as desired. The larger the shot, the grainer and fuzzier it gets.
1:45 PM, and I just saw the pretty red caboose go back and forth on a cut of several cars on the webcam. Even though the weather is rainy, the caboose showed up well, along with the 2 guys riding its rear. In front of it was also a CP Rail car. And I see the 2 NS units on the head had some white box on top of each of them...not sure what that's for. I still want that snapshot feature so badly...
3:20 pm....That is a weird looking piece of equipment. The front end actually appears to be similar to a large truck....Looks like I see the radiator shell. And then we have the white piece of equipment a bit west on the same track.......??
Edit:
At 3:22....both pieces of equipment started to move {at the same time}, and maintaining similar distance between them, west to near that first bridge...
3 PM here..."What's THAT!?"
Behind a utility high rail truck on the far rail is a weird-looking major utility truck/machine of some sort, coupled with a flatcar with more utility-lifty-stuff. I haven't seen anything like that before.
EDIT-3:12 PM-Did anything see that red thing at the end of that train? What was that? It had railings around it...
I would like to see some amtrak action in the rockies. I haven`t been able to find any passenger action in the u.s. Lots of it in other countries though . RON.
Just watched what appeared to be an empty unit coal train W B @ 5:05.
I seem to "catch" quite a few of these trains each day on this cam.
Wish we had some passenger train traffic thru here, and better yet, stopping within view of cam. Sure looks like that is what it was layed out for in the past....
Does anyone know of a web cam that shows Amtrak activity with streaming video action.....and available full screen as this one is.....?
Edit: Another at 5:24 E bound, mixed freight.
That is one of the reasons I like this cam. There always seems to be a variety. RON
On either Monday or Tuesday (was to busy to post), I had seen a UP loco, the caboose at night (just before the B&W switchover, so around 9:30 PM EDT), high-nose locos, and on one train was 3 cars with ballast, one of them appearing to be a side-dumper (just a bit smaller than a gondola). I wondered where that train was headed to and if some lucky railfan would be there to snap the side-dumper in action. I forget what other goodies there were...nice variety though.
Now that I think of that, I also like how there's plenty of mixed freight, instead of constant double stacks or coal trains, with widecab locos, which is about all that comes through Rochelle anymore.
I guess I haven`t been paying attention. I have never noticed one before. It just surprised me to see it sitting there when I went to the site this morning. RON
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