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Semi-official Rochelle webcam discussion thread

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Posted by Rambo2 on Monday, September 23, 2019 12:13 PM
112pm down
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Posted by IC Dispatcher on Monday, September 23, 2019 12:33 PM

I'm in TX and I get a gray screen saying, among other things, Viewing this HD camera requires high speed broadband...which I've always had and it worked yesterday.

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Posted by IC Dispatcher on Monday, September 23, 2019 12:43 PM
I'm in TX and it isn't working here either.
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Posted by blhanel on Monday, September 23, 2019 2:30 PM

//crosses fingers

Maybe they're replacing it with a better camera?

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Posted by Steve Sweeney on Monday, September 23, 2019 3:08 PM

ALL: It appears the Rochelle Cam is down. We're asking about the cause and will do our best to have it up and going ASAP. 


~Steve 

Steve Sweeney
Digital Editor, Hobby 

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Posted by Steve Sweeney on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 9:14 AM

Folks:

I've received word from our IT department this morning, that they think the problem is with the City of Rochelle. We're trying to get ahold of the *right* person. The contact we had appears to no longer work for the city. 

Please bear with us during this outage.

-Steve S.

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Posted by straight-track on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 9:22 AM

Steve Sweeney

Folks:

I've received word from our IT department this morning, that they think the problem is with the City of Rochelle. We're trying to get ahold of the *right* person. The contact we had appears to no longer work for the city. 

Please bear with us during this outage.

-Steve S.

 

Steve, If they have to physically touch the camera perhaps they can adjust the view to center the crossing, so we can see the new west bound signal heads !  That would be awesome !

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Posted by Mark F on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 10:31 AM

I sent the City of Rochelle an email and they responded within four minutes that they were not aware that the camera was not working. They said to contact:

Jenny Thompson

Director of Marketing, Public Relations & Tourism

City of Rochelle | Rochelle Municipal Utilities

420 North 6th Street

Rochelle, IL 61068

Office: 815.561.2006

Cell: 815.440.6304

Fax: 815.562.3888

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Posted by David1005 on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 11:01 PM

i emailed Jenny today, 9-24, and got this reply,

”Hi David,


So glad you enjoy it!  Today was actually the first I’ve heard of it not working so tomorrow morning one of our IT staffers is headed over to see what is going on. Hopefully it will be back up tomorrow!

Jenny

Jenny Thompson
Director of Marketing, Public Relations & Tourism
City of Rochelle | Rochelle Municipal Utilities
420 North 6th Street
Rochelle, IL 61068
Office: 815.561.2006
Cell: 815.440.6304
Fax: 815.562.3888



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Posted by Steve Sweeney on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 3:27 PM

David1005

i emailed Jenny today, 9-24, and got this reply,

”Hi David,

So glad you enjoy it!  Today was actually the first I’ve heard of it not working so tomorrow morning one of our IT staffers is headed over to see what is going on. Hopefully it will be back up tomorrow!

Jenny

Jenny Thompson
Director of Marketing, Public Relations & Tourism
City of Rochelle | Rochelle Municipal Utilities
420 North 6th Street
Rochelle, IL 61068
Office: 815.561.2006
Cell: 815.440.6304
Fax: 815.562.3888

Hi, All:

As most of you who watch the Rochelle Cam know by now — it's up and running. The official cause, as relayed to me by Kalmbach IT, is that there was a tripped circuit breaker that, once reset, enabled the camera to operate again.

Thank you, all, for your concern.

As a post-script, I must ask each of you to not contact the City of Rochelle on our behalf for Webcam questions, concerns, or comments. The live feed relationship is ours to maintain and, largely, to pay for. Rochelle officials are friendly, as you've noticed, but we never want their good humor to wear thin with multiple inquiries from the public. Please go through Kalmbach.

Best,

Steve S.

Steve Sweeney
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Posted by Mark F on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 3:30 PM

Camera is back up. How much would it cost to upgrade the camera? Something that is higher def with a wider field of vision to pick up the westbound signals. A night vision and/or pan feature would be nice too. Seems like a small GoFundMe campaign would fund something like this pretty quickly. I'd chip in. 

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Posted by BaltACD on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 4:40 PM

Steve Sweeney
As a post-script, I must ask each of you to not contact the City of Rochelle on our behalf for Webcam questions, concerns, or comments. The live feed relationship is ours to maintain and, largely, to pay for. Rochelle officials are friendly, as you've noticed, but we never want their good humor to wear thin with multiple inquiries from the public. Please go through Kalmbach.

Best,

Steve S.

What actions did Kalmbach take upon being notified or observing that the camera was down?  Was a Kalmbach representitive dispatched to the scene to investigate or did Kalmbach call City of Rochelle to investigate?

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by cefinkjr on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:06 PM

Mark F

Camera is back up. How much would it cost to upgrade the camera? Something that is higher def with a wider field of vision to pick up the westbound signals. A night vision and/or pan feature would be nice too. Seems like a small GoFundMe campaign would fund something like this pretty quickly. I'd chip in. 

That upgrade ought to include, if nothing else, permanent removal of the resident spider and/or making the camera lens a bad place to spin a web.

Chuck
Allen, TX

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Posted by Mark F on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 5:10 PM

BaltACD

In addition, why does it appear that the members of this board seem to have much more success in contacting the City of Rochelle than the Kalmbach IT department? I'm happy to let them do their job but the camera had been down for close to 24 hours. I was apparently the first to notify Rochelle and it only took four minutes to receive a response from them. Any plans to eventually upgrade the camera? I'd be happy to chip in.

 

 
Steve Sweeney
As a post-script, I must ask each of you to not contact the City of Rochelle on our behalf for Webcam questions, concerns, or comments. The live feed relationship is ours to maintain and, largely, to pay for. Rochelle officials are friendly, as you've noticed, but we never want their good humor to wear thin with multiple inquiries from the public. Please go through Kalmbach.

Best,

Steve S.

 

What actions did Kalmbach take upon being notified or observing that the camera was down?  Was a Kalmbach representitive dispatched to the scene to investigate or did Kalmbach call City of Rochelle to investigate?

 

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Posted by MKT Dave on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 9:45 AM

FYI: Crews yesterday and again today are removing the telephone/power poles, and are in the process laying underground lines. You can see the lines to be buried along side the tracks. Center of the picture, the pole was pulled either yesterday or today, and crews are removing the overhead lines on the remaining poles.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15158681@N00/48866027791/in/album-72157681635041062/

 

...
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Posted by MKT Dave on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 10:03 AM

My bust, what I thought were lines to be buried were actually poles laying on the ground.

...
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Posted by rdamon on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 10:34 AM

What a change of view.

 

Quite a difference to the static picture below the feed

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Posted by rdettmer on Thursday, October 10, 2019 5:11 PM

love the new view

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Posted by cefinkjr on Sunday, October 13, 2019 10:21 PM

.Sounded nice but all I saw of the new view at this time of night was a FRED disappearing in the distance.Smile

Chuck
Allen, TX

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Posted by MikeF90 on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 7:45 PM

I don't check in on the camera much but just noticed that it has no significant night vision!  Not sure if it has in the past or if the camera has infrared capability like some do.

Perhaps the host can mount a low power consuming LED floodlight that illuminates the area at night.

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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 7:49 PM

MikeF90
Perhaps the host can mount a low power consuming LED floodlight that illuminates the area at night.

Depending on the camera, a little light can go a long way.

I've sat at the pavilion (and around the fire pit) in Deshler and wondered how what appears to be not a lot of light can look so bright on the camera.

I do get that the neighbors don't want their yards floodlit from the park in Rochelle, but even a relatively small LED flood would brighten things up substantially, and at minimal cost.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by blhanel on Tuesday, October 15, 2019 11:41 PM

If you look at railstream.net's Stream of the Week right now, it's their Rochelle camera; you'll notice that there are already a couple of street lights behind the pavilion.  You'd think that some of that light would help illuminate the ground in front of the Trains camera, but no.  They really need a better camera.  The pole that was just removed would have made a good spot for another street light.

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Posted by Ed Kyle on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 2:39 PM

Westbound UP manifest just sat on the crossing for 32 minutes!  Was on Track 2.  Anyone know why?   It had followed a stack+manifest train on the same track.  Both trains crawled.

I will note that things seem to be busy this week.  I counted 41 UP and 25 BNSF trains through Rochelle during 20 hours of monitoring the past couple of days.  Intermodal accounted for 22 UP and 10 BNSF trains.  The UP stacks, especially, came in waves.  On October 24, for example, four UP eastbound stack trains passed between 15:50 and 16:22.  That doesn't include an eastbound manifest at 15:59! 

 - Ed Kyle

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Posted by alpinemike on Thursday, November 7, 2019 11:37 AM
anyone know if rail scanner traffic from there is streamed on line anywhere? never seen them on any of the live radio stream sites
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Posted by rdamon on Thursday, November 7, 2019 11:57 AM

https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/11742/?rl=rr

 

This worked for me in the past

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Posted by blhanel on Wednesday, November 27, 2019 7:51 AM

Looks like today the diamond will be a bottleneck for both railroads, as they've got red flags out on both Track #1s.

EDIT: Curious, looking at ATCS, UP Track #2 is marked as OOS, and an eastbound train is apparently approaching the diamond on #1- no green for him yet, though.  MOW is working the UP #2/BNSF #1 diamond, and eastbound hi-railers are creeping in on BNSF #1.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Wednesday, January 1, 2020 12:43 PM

Rochelle cam seems to be down again.  Black screen and the little daisy reappears every 10 to 15 seconds, goes roundy-round a couple of times and then goes away.  Still black screen and no sound.

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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Posted by ChuckCobleigh on Wednesday, January 1, 2020 7:28 PM

Semper Vaporo

Rochelle cam seems to be down again.  Black screen and the little daisy reappears every 10 to 15 seconds, goes roundy-round a couple of times and then goes away.  Still black screen and no sound.

 

It was fine this afternoon for me, though the "action" was a UP string of auto racks just sitting there with neighborhood dogs barking a bit. I just checked it now and it was very dark, but there were some flickering lights, which is probably what the Tehachapi Loop cam is showing about now.

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Wednesday, January 1, 2020 8:35 PM

Got it to work in Microsoft Edge (have to log-in to Trains dot com first using Edge) after I refreshed the web page.  Before the refresh all I got was the black screen and a chasing balls display in the lower left corner.  It did show the temperature, just no video or audio.  After the refresh I could see streetlights and automobile headlights and taillights in the distance on the left.  (The camera having a terrible time maintaining focus.)

It still won't connect using MS IExplorer.

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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Posted by Brian Schmidt on Thursday, January 2, 2020 10:46 AM

As always, we recommend updating the Adobe Flash Player plugin regularly and using a modern web browser, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, to view the webcam.

Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine

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