Breaker Breaker
August 21, 2005 12:20 PM   Subscribe

Listen to Railroad Radio! Frequencies scanned are listed, as well as background information on the areas. Shoutcast streams for your favorite player. Hobos optional.
posted by angry modem (15 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Hobos are never optional.
posted by maxsparber at 1:46 PM on August 21, 2005


This is so esoteric...I LOVE IT!
posted by ParisParamus at 1:51 PM on August 21, 2005


I'm not sure why I find this so fascinating since I honestly don't know what they're saying half the time but I can't stop listening. It reminds me of being a kid. My father would keep his police scanner on all the time and it became a comforting sort of background noise. Thanks, angry modem.
posted by LeeJay at 2:26 PM on August 21, 2005


I love stuff like this. I can't remember the airline that I was on (American maybe?), but at one time they allowed you to listen to the cockpit radio transmissions on your headphones if you plugged them in to the arm rest thingy. Those were awesome flights from Raleigh to San Francisco and back to Raleigh. It was easy to gauge where you were in the US by what airport's tower the pilots were communicating with. Also, you could hear other pilots in the area bitching about turbulence at their altitude and suggesting others to request an altitude change to avoid that turbulence.
posted by NoMich at 2:27 PM on August 21, 2005


I wish someone would set up a shoutcast of some numbers stations.
posted by angry modem at 2:29 PM on August 21, 2005


Thanks, angry modem! My railfan son is going to love it.
posted by maggieb at 2:32 PM on August 21, 2005


I can't remember the airline that I was on (American maybe?)

Probably United -- they still have cockpit radio on Channel 9. Some pilots turn it off, though. According to the United flyers I've talked to, if you ask nicely, they'll often turn it back on -- often, it was turned off by a previous flightcrew.

American, on the DC-10s, used to have a camera pointed forward that they would then send to the cabin during takeoff and landings. Pretty cool -- until the 1979 DC-10 crash at O'Hare. When AA realized that the passengers almost certainly were watching the ground come up to hit them, AA turned the camera off fleet-wide.

Can't honestly say I blame them, after that day, but I think the cameras would be cool.
posted by eriko at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2005


United! That's was it. Thanks eriko.
Along these same lines, remember that one Website that had different cities' police communications? I used to listen to the Chicago stream night and day.
posted by NoMich at 4:59 PM on August 21, 2005


I put a number of the channels into my iTunes. Relative speaking, at least, this is probably most interesting at night when the engineers feel lonely.
posted by ParisParamus at 5:08 PM on August 21, 2005


Anyone know any programs that can play multiple streams at once?
posted by angry modem at 5:12 PM on August 21, 2005


Angry modem, if I remember correctly Virtual DJ Studio is a "mixing console" program that can actually take multiple Shoutcast streams as input.
posted by Jimbob at 5:19 PM on August 21, 2005


What is a Shoutcast?
posted by ParisParamus at 6:24 PM on August 21, 2005


Oh. Nevuh mind.
posted by ParisParamus at 6:39 PM on August 21, 2005


Outstanding and i'd like to add if you prefer things with wings
posted by cmfletcher at 12:45 PM on August 22, 2005


This is why the internet still gives me hope -- this is RAD! Just got back from camping along the BNSF Gateway line near enough that we wanted to go check it out. Neat stuff...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:39 PM on August 26, 2005


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