Scanners 101

Uniden's BearCat 125AT

If you got a scanner for Christmas, or have one but don't know how to use it, there's a couple of resources you should know about. First stop might be the site RadioReference.com. It has a "101" guide that's easy enough to understand. You also need to know the frequencies you can access. The same site has a comprehensive listing of the frequencies used by Colorado's railroad subdivisions, including yard frequencies. Have a look!

If reading's not your thing or you like a walk-through person-to-person, there's also a number of YouTube videos I've found.

Also, if anyone has some tips or ideas for scanners and their use, don't be shy about sharing it below. A novice like me could use the input!◊

Reader Poll On The Colorado Railroad Museum

The results are in with the reader poll. This was one of the longest running polls in CR history, running 200 days or 6 months, 2 weeks, 3 days (half a year, half a month and half a week!). The question was: If you had $5 Million to spend on the Colorado Railroad Museum, which options would you pick? While voters could pick more than one, they did weigh in with a majority. Here are the options ranked by total votes.

Rank	Option	Votes
1	Build a train shed, covered pavilion or super roundhouse to shelter a significant percentage of the museum's collection from the ravages of weather and exposure, preserving your collection and saving money in the long term.	57 (53%)
2	Purchase additional land to expand the museum grounds (GP30, SD40T-2 and others await restoration and display).	49 (46%)
3	Purchase right of way and build a spur to connect the BNSF Coors branch directly with the museum grounds.	39 (36%)
4	Restore a long tenured locomotive to life, such as D&RG 583, D&RGW 491, CB&Q 5629 or D&RGW 318	27 (25%)
5	Finance several main line steam excursions throughout the state to help generate awareness for the museum by showcasing some of its rail-worthy collection and hosting key donors on board.	13 (12%)
6	Fund the construction of a small satellite campus of the museum in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Montrose, Grand Junction or another city	8 (7%)

Thank you to everyone who voted!◊

Denver Union Station Set To Re-open Spring 2014

For nearly a century, Denver's Union Station, situated at 17th and Wynkoop Streets in LoDo (map), served as Denver's gateway. After suffering neglect in the 60s and 70s, a group called Save Our Station came forward to save Denver's landmark and stood in the gap until LoDo's redevelopment in the 90s. Today, with FasTracks and a "project authority," Denver Union Station is primed to become the city's transportation star once again, juiced with hospitality and shopping opportunities that Denver's founders would dismiss as flights of fancy.

ColoRail, Colorado's primary passenger rail advocacy group, reports that Denver Union Station's project under DUSPA is nearing completion of several steps in its renovation. For approximately 30 months the historic building, parts of which date from the 19th century, has been gutted, busted up, and besieged by earth-movers and construction cranes, but not for much longer. From ColoRail's latest brief,

While an exact date has not been announced, Amtrak trains, ticketing and baggage handling are expected to be back at the historic Denver Union Station building by mid-February 2014. Here is the line-up of events as it appears today:

⊗ Mid-February 2014, in a blizzard of track-work, the "cut-over" will take place, re-connecting Tracks 4 and 5 with the national railway network. Amtrak trains currently use Track 8. Station activities will be moved into the historic building. This will begin a new period of awkwardness, due to the surrounding construction activities, with special efforts needed to define safe pedestrian routes.

While RTD is mainly concentrating on the next step, national interest is focused on the Amtrak move, after relocations in both Miami and St. Paul were fouled up. One ColoRail member riding on the Southwest Chief found himself being grilled by his sleeping car attendant as to whether Denver would be able to handle this in a timely manner or not. ColoRail board members receive many questions along the same lines.

At this phase, customers should have access between the 16th Street FREE MallRide and the Wynkoop entrance to the historic building, or a 3-block walk up 17th Street for Market Street Station connections with skyRide and Boulder-Longmont buses. Thruway buses will have to park along Wynkoop Street during this stage of the project.

⊗ On May 9th, a big grand opening ceremony will be held for the Bus Concourse, which is to link the thousand foot walk between the historic building and the relocated light rail platform.

⊗ On May 11th at 2:00 a.m., the Market Street Station will close forever and the Union Station Bus Concourse will open for business. The significance for rail travelers is that it will be possible to walk under cover from the Amtrak facilities to the plaza at the Millenium Bridge light rail station. This change will also bring numerous bus connections closer to Amtrak trains, including:

• Amtrak Thruway bus connections for Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Walsenburg, Trinidad, and Raton.
• CDOT sponsored bus connections for US 40 points including Winter Park-Fraser and Granby
• CDOT sponsored bus connections for US 285 points including Salida, Gunnison and Alamosa
• RTD FREE MetroRide bus connections for Civic Center Station and the Denver Bus Center
• RTD Regional bus connections for US 36 and North I-25 points, including Boulder and Longmont
• RTD skyRide bus connections for DIA
• A variety of Local, Express and Regional RTD routes

For the future, at least two other bus companies have expressed interest in serving the station. On the other hand, residents of Lower Downtown, recipients of millions of tax dollars in the form of a landscaped plaza in front of the historic building that replaces the taxi and bus loop, are objecting to "increased" bus traffic. Actually, there is no LoDo increase, but the project changes which streets are used, as buses would no longer be going to Market Street Station.

⊗ On or about October 1st, CDOT expects to begin interdistrict commuter bus service between Fort Collins, Denver and Colorado Springs, with stops at Union Station.

⊗ In 2016, three commuter rail lines are due to begin service, including the DIA/East Line, the Westminster Line, and the Gold Line (Arvada - Wheat Ridge). These would replace several Express bus routes in Union Station, as well as the Rte AF skyRide coaches. Also improved would be connections to Aurora, via the I-225 light rail extension. Aurora stops will be accessible either via an East Line transfer at Peoria/Smith Station or via a C/E-Line to H-Line transfer at I-25 & Broadway Station.

⊗ In 2017, it is possible that commuter rail service to Thornton will begin.♦

With the completion of the West line earlier this year, Denver Union Station already ties the Light Rail lines together. Once Amtrak and the commuter lines are active, it truly will be the regional hub envisioned by FasTracks.◊

Museum Poll Reminder

Only hours remain for you to vote in the Colorado Railroad Museum poll "What would you do with $5 Million at the museum?" Take a look at the top of the right-hand column and voice your opinion!◊

Railfans Hope For A Little Coal In Their Stockings

If you're a railfan, you've likely dreamed of firing up a steam engine and highballing it on the main line. Christmas brings those dreams especially close. To all my railfan readers and friends, enjoy this for your personal use.

Denver & Rio Grande engine 168 sits under a fresh blanket
of snow in Antlers Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
2100 px PNG file, right click and choose "Save link as" to save it to your wallpapers folder

1600 px PNG file

Have a warm, safe and blessed Christmas, and a happy new year!◊

Hovercams Growing From Toy To Tool

I get a little excited about a new technology on occasion, or an old technology that suddenly made the leap into an affordable price bracket. Since yesterday, I've been contemplating the Parrot AR Drone 2.0. Yes, you read that right: a drone.

Looking more like an insect than a camera, is a drone
the next step in railroad photography and video? 

Like a model helicopter, it flies using rotating blades. Like some copters, the drone takes pictures or video in HD. Unlike a helicopter, it has software and a hi-tech control suite that keeps the drone from crashing as easily. Notice I didn't stop at the word crashing, because I'm sure it's possible to crash these. Yet how many potential photographers have shied at the prospect of model aircraft or rotorcraft due to the likely prospect of turning a $1,500 work of art into a decorative bench ornament or worse, that eyesore sticking out of a neighbor's roof.

Head gear? Guards give the drone a
more visible if ungainly appearance

Is a Parrot Drone or any of its competitor's creations just a toy or is it a valuable tool that photographers can use to check out locations or even use to produce an image? Could this toy/tool be used to photograph trains, or capture video of sufficient quality? One store is already quite willing to let serious photographers find out.

Imagine a dolly shot starting on one side, going up and over a moving intermodal and down the other side moving against the trains direction of travel ...without the dolly or the time and effort it takes to build such a rig and put it in place. What about programming a course to fly via GPS when the train comes by, hitting "Go" as the train passes a certain spot and, while the drone does it's thing, you rip as many frames as your dSLR will let you, just like before?

I'm beginning to wonder about other uses. How could Union Pacific or BNSF, or even San Luis & Rio Grande use this? Railroad police could use it to inspect those areas of the yard that aren't as accessible or safe as they'd like it to be. What about using one with a track crew to survey ahead of a boulder that's blocking their high rail vehicle or getting access to see if the string of coal cars are all empty and not just the first three? Some benefits might just be worth the expense, especially if a company smartphone or tablet can control it with no special training for the employee. There are applications that may only present themselves after they spend a few weeks out there. I wonder if there's a division or sub already using these.

What about you? Would you buy one or rent one?

Thanks to B&H for letting me steal the photos of their fine product.◊

POTD: Once and Future Glory

Our last POTD this week is from ...drum roll plea--nah, nevermind. It's Chris May again. But the theme has been a new way to look a things. Chris is good at making you look at things in a new way. He's not content to merely log photos as a scribe of the way things are; he's looking for ways to challenge himself creatively. That's what makes me a fan of his work.

The rusting cab of Denver & Rio Grande Western GP30 engine 3011 sits near the museum's
restoration roundhouse awaiting the day when she will be brought back to life again.
Photo: Christopher May

For today's photo, we return to the Colorado Railroad Museum on a different day, November 11, 2006. There is no title for it, but for me it speaks to the "once and future glory" that I believe in. Personal disclosure ahead, which may make you uncomfortable. You can skip to the next paragraph if you choose. A year to the day before Chris made this photograph, I was standing in front of over 1,000 people telling them about my young son's friendship with a six year-old girl, sharing the fun little things kids of that age do as a way of comforting them because that beautiful, vibrant and imaginative girl had passed away due to a freak medical condition that no one could have anticipated or avoided. She died 8 years ago today. Like the rusted locomotive hulk, her body was inanimate, decaying and breaking down even as we mourned that day. 

EMD GP30 illustration by Tom Fawell

Engine 3011 was a GP-30, a beautiful, vibrant and strong engine, one of the class that inspired the art of EMD's illustrator Tom Fawell. See how the power flows from it, the angular lines of the locomotive charging forward? That's the once part of the glory. The future part is when we see 3011 perched again on standard gauge rails shining with new paint and number boards looking for all the world like the day in 1961 when it rolled out of the plant. Or maybe, just maybe even hauling a passenger special for the museum. It's a picture of what my faith tells me is real.◊

POTD: Ghost Echoes of Steam Whistles Where Sunsets and Aspen Leaves Fall

You never know where you're going to run into a railroad. On the west side of Boreas Pass, not far from the roadbed of the Denver, South Park & Pacific narrow gauge railroad, Chris May took this beautiful sunset photograph of fall aspens and what I suspect to be Mount Lincoln, if not Quandary Peak, both 14ers above the fine resort town of Breckenridge.

Very little could seem to have changed from this sunset over Boreas Pass
to the time when the first steam whistles echoed over the Blue River Valley.
Photo: Christopher J. May

It could seem that the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, later the Denver Leadville & Gunnison and then Colorado & Southern, is one of the "other" Colorado narrow gauge railroads, meaning not Denver & Rio Grande Western or Rio Grande Southern, two of the longest lived, most spectacular and most expansive narrow gauge railroads in America. But to think that they're the only roads would seem ...well, narrow minded.

The South Park, as it's called familiar, was considered a rival railroad to the Rio Grande for many years. Departing Denver for Waterton Canyon, it wended its way into its eponymous park by Kenosha Pass, where it built a roundhouse that still stands in Como. From there, a branch sprung across the Continental Divide over Boreas Pass to tap the mining towns of Breckenridge, Dillon, and a small mining hamlet called Keystone in Summit County.◊

Further Information

DSP&P Historical Society
DSP&P on Wikipedia
DSP&P for modelers

 

POTD - A New Way To See Things

It's been a while now since I've done some Photos of the Day, and it hasn't really been for lack of good photographs. I'm finding more, not less out there. Keep shooting and I'll keep posting!

D&RGW #683, the only standard gauge Rio Grande steam engine known to survive is
preserved at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado. The first outdoor
exhibit most encounter at the museum, the engine is quite popular with the young (and
young at heart) who want to ring the engine's bell.
Photo: Christopher J. May

Chris May takes today's Photo of the Day with this half-portrait of Rio Grande engine 683. For me, the vertical lines of the stack and horizontal lines of the top of the pilot combine with the half-circles of the headlight and boiler to make it interesting. While the foreground is almost completely monochrome and in focus, the background is awash with soft colors of every natural hue. The engine has been photographed by May "countless times" but this shot just occurred to him on the way to the car. Proof that "there's always a new way to see things..." ◊

Product Review: Porcelain Herald

Like a lot of folks, I tend like a specific herald from my favorite railroad. But is it worth buying a version of it to keep? If so, how many are enough?

A railroad herald identifies the railroad company just like logos do today. They are a seal and a promise, if the railroad is run with precision and pride; a warning and a refusal if not. But for those who remember the railroads of yesterday, they're a way of recalling those memories, a symbol of what they miss and appreciate.

When shopping online, there are a lot of variables one can't really account for unless one knows the product or at least knows the retailer well enough to hazard a purchase. Everyone I know has at least one story of ordering something that just didn't turn out as advertised. I make use of product reviews now almost without exception. But in shopping for railroad gear, finding the reviews are sometimes futile and almost always don't tell you what you want to know. That's brings me to a very direct point. If you ever want to ask about a product I've reviewed or anything else, comment in and ask. I allow anonymous comments to make it easy for you. If nothing else, email me directly and I'll do my best to find it in my inbox and answer.

So, I like my railroad, and I wanted to add some personality to my home and possibly my future layout. A herald can do that. I also wanted to signal friends and acquaintances that might like the railroad as well. I kept my eyes peeled and, although I had found one at a museum, it was a particleboard back and I wanted something more durable.

In 2001, I took advantage of a last minute invitation Memorial Day weekend to drive with my then-5 year-old daughter to Durango to ride the Silverton train. Very good memories from that trip still warm my heart. The day before our trip, we hit the gift shop and I found the Rio Grande Main Line Thru the Rockies sign hanging above the checkout. It surprises me to admit it, but it meant something to be able to buy that sign in the same building that had doubtless held General Palmer and so many other railroad men and women over the years.

I was surprised when I took it down to feel how heavy it was. The sign was not aluminum or wood. It was a gauge of steel much heavier than the ventilation ducts and other materials I'd handled over the years. The grommets were mounted in holes that would accommodate most fasteners, and the porcelain meant to me that it would last for years without worrying about fading ink from sunlight or expanding particle board from water. It's held up this far and will likely outlast my lifetime, as far as I can tell. If you're a fan of a special railroad, it's worth showing off a little. You never know when you'll meet another railfan!

I wrote a review a year ago at Schrader's railroadcatalog.com site. It isn't the only place you can get the same porcelain herald, but it's one place I trust. My only wish is to be able to get more than one size. Between 150 - 200% larger would fit nicely as a centerpiece to some photographs.

As far as how many are enough, I know I won't get sick of looking at it anytime soon. So as many as you--or your family--can stand!◊

Video Vault: Colorado Steam Mecca

Time to blow some dust off this video from the crypt vault. While I've not seen this recently, I have no doubt in my mind that this video used to be available on VHS, and trained eyes will be able to spot significant differences between the railroads captured on this DVD and their present state (like #346), which are improvements, for the most part.



Seeing the Colorado Railroad Museum as it was in the 80s brought back some memories from my visits and volunteer work. For those with the ability, volunteering there can change your world.◊

Colorado Railroad Museum Vlog Debuts, Builds Following

I just found something very encouraging being done at the Colorado Railroad Museum. For many, many years, the museum has produced a periodical called the Iron Horse News, started by their founder, Robert W. Richardson. They now have turned it into a video blog (Vlog) or video magazine. Take a look at the latest [YT] to see the improvement, then visit their channel on YouTube and subscribe to the museum to get new updates!



I was gratified to hear that Rio Grande K-37 Mikado #491 is finally, officially part of the museum. Long has the lonely example of the fabled narrow gauge 2-8-2 class suffered like her sisters from the weather while the smaller, lighter, and more versatile K-36 engines (480 - 489) remain in top condition because of their usefulness to narrow gauge circle, heritage railroads like the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. The heavy, rigid frame of the K-37 engines tend to put more wear and tear on the bridges and curves. While the 491 is not slated for full restoration, this change in ownership was the first step in that direction. Here's hoping!

Great work, Donald and all the staff at the museum, especially the volunteers!◊