ROANOKE RAIL CAM

[Semper Vaporo]

All three methods of getting to the Hotel cam work just fine for me.  But the VMT cam seems to be dead.

[Modelcar]

...Another look in the past minute, and all I got was a green screen.

[Modelcar]

I checked the hotel cam almost an hour ago, and it appeared to be a sunny day there in Roanoke, and I noted 2  N S  engines coming down east on the second track over, so I stayed  to watch them pass.

Yesterday, when checking I saw a train each time {2}.

[Norm48327]

I check the camera at least a couple of times a day. As luck would have it, I don't see many trains.

[j610]

I posted three times and got no response , so i gave up .    RON

[RichardLHight]

It's been eleven days since the last post. 

 

Did the rapture come and I missed the long black train?

 

As of this evening the hotel cam is up and running but the museum cam isn't.

[j610]

Did anyone go to any of the festivities in Roanoke this past weekend ?      RON

[j610]

Anyone going to Star City Motor Madness tomorrow in Roanoke ?     RON

[j610]

Great find . Thank you .    RON

[tcwright973]

Because there are so many folks here who enjoy this railcam, myself included, I thought I would post this link in case someone wasn't aware of it. It's the Fostoria railcam and includes sound. It captures action on both the Norfolk Southern and CSX lines. As I type, a CSX mixed freight is passing and reconstruction of the grade crossing is underway. Tou do have a 30 second ad when first logging on, and one about every 15 thereafter. A Norfolk Southern intermodal is now going by. Tom

http://www.greatlakeslive.com/F-town_CAM_1.html

[Modelcar]

.....A nice sunny morning in Roanoke.  Including a west bound double stack train, including general freight cars in the train behind the double stacks.

Update: 5:15.....Took another peek, and another train stretched out heading east this time.  General freight.  Tanks....and even auto carriers.

[Modelcar]

.....Just a few minutes ago, the spider was working on the web.  Still a bit of daylight left.  Oh, no trains.

[j610]

I am sorry i missed those . I just got in from doing lawn work and this is the first time i have had the cam up today . Oh well , no matter what time you get on , you are going to miss something .   RON

[RichardLHight]

Yee haw!

 

This is a two little red caboose day!

 

On my way home from doing a chore I was stopped by the only rail crossing in Martinsville.  It was the same mystery train I saw a few months ago.... A very tired looking NS GP7 pulling four rusty old UP box cars covered with graffiti and one very faded, oxidized red caboose with a large dirty white NW logo.

 

What do you suppose the chances of seeing the same train, at the same location, heading in the same direction are?

 

When I arrived home, I brought up the hotel cam to see a pair of NS GEs dragging a string of covered hoppers.  I then opened the VMT cam to see the train had already cleared the cam and was passing under the overhead with a red caboose bringing up the rear.  I switched back to the hotel cam and sure enough, a few minuets later the caboose came into view.

 

When most of us were kids, every train had a caboose and now catching one is newsworthy!  Go figure.  

[Modelcar]

Nice day in Roanoke.  Flags are flying, as I thought they would be on this Flag Day.

[AgentKid]

At 8:50 PM I saw an EB with two of the biggest "B" units I have ever seen. They were as big as the single lead unit. Are these wreck rebuilds or is this a whole class NS has?

Bruce

 

[RichardLHight]

Mittelfruh,

 

On June 3 you mentioned that all your other cams were working and I would like to know how to sign onto those cams.  Thank you in advance.

[j610]

Just saw a fairly long MOW train heading west . It`s a bright , clear morning in Roanoke .    RON

[Modelcar]

.....A bright sunshine morning in Roanoke.  Wonder if they have extreme hot weather too.

No trains as I just peeked at it.  But the fence row of cars seem complete, so many must be there working.

[grampaw pettibone]

Thanks SV

[Semper Vaporo]

Scroll back up on this page to my entry of 06-03-2011 11:43 PM... that is where I have listed the 3 methods of getting to the Roanoke Hotel Rail Cam.... (That is, unless this post ends up being the first post on a page, then go back to page 76 tp see them.)

 

[grampaw pettibone]

Thanks SV. Do yo have links for the other web access?

I, too, read the collum in Naval Aviation News and was so taken with the feller that I adopted him as a non de plume... I was navy in the late 60s. BTW, G P came into existence in 1943 and still doing his page.

[Semper Vaporo]

I had some trouble this afternoon keeping the camera going.  it either would just show a black screen or it might run a few seconds and then go to the black screen.  Sometimes it would come back all on its own, but I usually got antsy and click the "Stop" button (the square at the bottom) and then click "Play" (the triangle pointing right in the circle in the middle at the bottom) and it sometimes it would work and sometimes not.

 

At any rate, it is working for me now as I type this (just watched an eastbound on track 1)  it is still in color and looks like a nice evening in Roanoke.  Lights changed to yellow on the tower between tracks one and two and the far signal bridge the rightmost signal is showing a diagonal yellow, so I suspect a west bound on either tracks 2 or 3 (switching to track 2 in mid screen).

 

Gramps: Have you read the posts on this page about trying the other web access to the camera?

 

P.S. Are you related to the find gentleman that wrote the Grampa Pettibone articles in that Naval Avation magazine many years ago... I used to laugh myself silly reading them!

 

[grampaw pettibone]

Is it just me, or is the railcam gone? I have been getting a notice that the website is not availabe or cannot be found. Been that way for the past 4 or 5 days.

[mittelfruh1]

Semper, you are a scholar and a gentleman;-). Sometimes the obvious "fix" is right in front of my nose. I just finished re-installing Media Player 11 for WinXP (after putting in a system restore point). Everything seems to work like a charm now. I owe you a beer or 2, tall coffee if you don't drink.

Thanks again for your time and efforts, and to the others that posted as well.

Paul Cummings

[Semper Vaporo]

You don't say whether the 2nd method works.  but since it also utilizes Windows Media Player I doubt if it will work for you either.

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The 2nd method is to hover the mouse arrow over the word "Interactive" in the line of text below the banner at the top of this page (the one you are reading now), then select "WebCams" from the menu that drops down and follow the appropriate link shown on the webcams page that will appear.

This method will also, like the 1st method, open a new tab/window, then open Windows Media Player and then close the new tab/window, but it uses considerably less bandwidth from your ISP, because the image is smaller and the frame rate is so low (one per second). But, because of the low frame rate, trains "jerk" along the track (and automobiles "jump" down the street) and that can be disconcerting..

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The 2nd method you listed is a totally different camera, associated with the Virginia Museum of Transportation (VMT), and is not technically related to the Hotel Roanoke camera.  (It is only somewhat related in that it views the same tracks, but from the other end.)  It is a good diagnostic that it works (such as it is!) on your system, so thanks for that info.

Your 3rd listed method should NOT open a seperate Windows Media Player window!  So I am confused at this point.  It should remain as an open tab with the video in that window of the browser.

 

At any rate, my best guess at this point is that you updated (deliberately or unknowingly!) your video CODECs somehow and lost the one for decoding this particular video stream.  It could have been caused by a behind the scenes update that you know pretty much nothing about or it could be you installed a new program and it, having been written by a conceited programmer, decided to change your system such as to render it unable to do what it used to (HEY! if you installed a program then you must really, really, really want to use that program to the total exclusion of absolutely any and everything else, right!?!?!?!  Ain't that the way it seems some programmers seem to think? ... Sorry, I am off on a tangent soapbox because I just ran into it again myself!)

I suggest that you go to Microsoft dot com and search for a download of Windows Media Player and re-install it to see if that will undo whatever the change was. (And hopefully doing so won't break any new program that you installed that caused this problem in the 1st place!)

 

[mittelfruh1]

Have you tried all three methods of accessing the camera image?

For the largest image and most frames per second use:

http://128.173.197.94:443/RRCmov

That's the one I've always been using, until it stopped on me about a month ago now. I also tried your second method, same black windows media player. It keeps telling me "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file." Just to reiterate, it has worked fine ever since I started viewing it (Roanoke cam) about a year ago.

I can get http://www.nwhs.org/cam/vmt/ , but of course it's choppy as it refreshes every 5 seconds or so.

The third site I can't get to load is http://128.173.197.94/railcamax.htm. Again I just get a black screen within media player.

Thanks for any info/hints anyone might know.

Paul Cummings

 

[Modelcar]

....Just checked in and found a beautiful morning in Roanoke.  That's a nicer view than I received last evening when I checked.  Just saw a green screen.  Never have seen that before.

Now as I did check, a NS engine was passing {east}, at a decent rate of speed using the far track.

[Modelcar]

.....Oh, a beautiful day in Roanoke....pretty clear with sunshine.

No trains as I just checked though....That's ok, I'm sure if one stays with it for a while, one will be seen.

[AgentKid]

mittelfruh1

Maybe it's because I'm up here in Canada?

I am receiving it using the first link S.V. specified with no difficulty tonight. My ISP is Telus. There was a problem earlier in the week when the camera loaded but the image was frozen. I tried several times and the image stayed frozen. But as I say it works fine now.

Bruce