Rochelle railcam is PATHETIC!!

[grampaw pettibone]

I have spent the past few days spending time on various railcams. Most are very well done with streaming video, audio and a fairly large screen to watch. The fact that they are advertiser supported is a nuisance that can be tolerated.

Then, there is the Rochelle cam. This is certainly a poor excuse for a webcam, postage stamp sized, silent and with non streaming jerky video. This is exacerbated by the fact that it is put up by the premier railfan magazine in the country You would think that TRAINS would be more cognizant of the image that the site is projecting.

End of soap box.

[Murphy Siding]

     If I were you, I'd ask for my money back.

[tree68]

Bandwidth has always been cited as the constraining issue, but that reason has been floated for years - and times have changed.  Bandwidth is much more reasonable (used to be a 1.5Mb line was around $1500 a month), and cameras have improved.

When the Rochelle cam was about all there was, it was fantastic.  Now there are a number of sites that do, indeed, make it look like a piker.

The Netherlands site, before they suffered an unrelated fire, was great - full screen image in real-time streaming, with sound.  While neither Roanoke cam has sound, they are still large images.

[eolafan]

Murphy Siding

     If I were you, I'd ask for my money back.

L.M.A.O.!!!!!

[squeeze]

Speaking of Roanoke rail cam, what are they installing on the near tracks? I believe those rails lead to Ohio maybe. Anyway, it looks like a shoo fly, but looking a short distance down the way, there is a signal that would be blocked for any traffic using the second set of rails. Am I missing something?

[Semper Vaporo]

squeeze

Speaking of Roanoke rail cam, what are they installing on the near tracks? I believe those rails lead to Ohio maybe. Anyway, it looks like a shoo fly, but looking a short distance down the way, there is a signal that would be blocked for any traffic using the second set of rails. Am I missing something?

I have read elsewhere that they are making some massive changes in the area... I am supposing that this is just the 1st step (that is visible on camera) and there will be more changes to the other tracks (as well as a possible 5 set between the near and next track).

I too wonder just where that switch is to lead to!  It seems silly to connect to the 2nd track over, since the two tracks join into one just a few hundred yards to the west.

 

But, if you look at the trackage in the area using Google Earth, it is quite a hodpodge of tracks with a few redundant crossovers in random places.  Probably the result of random updates that were done mainly for expedience sake and now is the time to "correct" it all.  It seems there is a lot more work being done to the east (left off camera) and some of it is associated with the museum/depot east of the camera.

 

[squeeze]

My first thought was something similar to what they did at the curve in Altoona. There was talk of refurbishing a "J" steam engine and since they are into the nostalgia bit, they might put an older power unit there for the foamers. They almost would have to relocate that signal tower to a bridge or something. Thanks for the reply.

[Geared Steam]

How about going outside and watching a real train somewhere? Fresh air is good for the attitude.

[Union Pacific fan]

ok 1st thing rochelle does have sound turn your comps or your tablets sound up and 2nd i love the rochelle cam its my fav cam i watch it for hours and 3rd back off my fav cam please

[blhanel]

Um, UP Fan, did you bother to look at the dates of the posts in this thread?  Three years ago, the Rochelle webcam WAS somewhat pathetic compared to the current cam...