The video quality is excellent! What model of drone is it? I might have to get a New Years present...

DJI Phantom III Standard. The video quality is rated at 2.7K. They also have a full 4K model, but it costs like twice as much.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Thanks for posting the video links. It is a different prospective from most rail videos.

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Great videos, really amazed at the stability.
It looked as if it was a pretty still day, any ideas what its like when there is a bit more of a breeze?
One shot I'd love to see is a train drift busting from a higher angle.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Those are £600 each in the UK, bit of an expensive hobby!

The going price is around $700. With shipping, I got mine for about $690 on eBay. The same day it arrived, I also received an email from a local store offering it for $700 minus a $100 coupon for various brands/models, plus a free carrying case that sells for over $100. Oh well.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Great videos, really amazed at the stability.
It looked as if it was a pretty still day, any ideas what its like when there is a bit more of a breeze?
One shot I'd love to see is a train drift busting from a higher angle.

They tell you not to fly it in winds above 22 MPH.

I'd like to see some drift busting too, but most lines around here are busy enough that that happens in the dark.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Whilst I would love to fly a drone over the lines near me, as every mile is fenced here in the UK, I suspect I would be breaking one rule or another!!

Onto the 1st of the 1st!!

Well not too much happening, 582 put in another appearance with an IPH car I have not noticed before.



Yesterday afternoon quite by surprise these two appeared.



GP38-2 BNSF 2295 towing Amtrak 47. Now I haven't seen 47 go past the cam in a long while so no idea what happened there. It was several hours later when 2295 returned



Now a little conundrum. It takes the City of New Orleans around 17 hours from New Orleans to Chicago and the same to return.

Here it is backing into Chicago on the 30th December



And here it is on the 31st December



And here it is today



Now the sharp eyed amongst you may have noted that the P42 at the head of the train is in fact #5, all three times, now either Amtrak has a P42 cloning machine or something else is afoot. I am guessing that the locos are being switched over so at some point but where and why I have no idea. Also somewhere it can be turned. However I don't see the outward bound City of New Orleans as it leaves at 2.05am GMT, so I have no idea if it is 5!!

Finally a couple of unusual shots.

Because there are only 15 of the P40's in service they are quite rare, to see two on one train is unusual.




This was The Lakeshore 49 on the 30th.

This is also quite rare, the Southwest Chief 3 yesterday



Three different types together, P42 22, P40 822 and original P32 500.

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You don't necessarily have to fly over the tracks. Fly up on adjacent property and shoot over the fence.

Pullman car appears to be Pontchartrain Club. IIRC, it's been getting work done lately. BTW, you won't see any IPH cars other than the Hoosier State around Chicago for at least a couple of months. They're having a contract dispute with Amtrak -- Amtrak is saying they run so much, they need their own contract, I{H is saying that under the rules Amtrak set forth a few months ago, they don't need one. One car will be deadheading up from Texas on 4, but everything that's been stored in the Chicago yard has been or will be moved out to the Chicago Terminal in Bensenville for long term storage. Other cars that were sent to various locations for Polar Express use will stay where they are for now.

As I was typing, I just got word that it is P Club. It's been at IPH's facility in Indianapolis and is heading for Boston. Did you shoot that today? He says it left yesterday.

47 must have broken down somewhere and been unable to even deadhead on an Amtrak train, so BNSF had to move it in freight service.

As for the CONO, I haven't heard anything specific, but my bet would be that it's being truncated due to flooding somewhere on the Mississippi River, or maybe a messy derailment, and coming back to Chicago soon enough to go out again the next day.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Well The City of New Orleans puzzle is as David suggested due to flooding

From the discuss.amtraktrains.com website.

Apparently both trains 58 and 59 operate as normal to Memphis and Carbondale. 58 passengers would detrain in Memphis and be bused to Carbodale where they will board the 59 equipment and continue to Chicago as train 58. The reverse would happen for train 59 passengers from Carbondale to Memphis where the 58 equipment would return to New Orleans as train 59.

It is interesting that the overnight schedules of both trains coincide so that this process works well time wise with both trains operating pretty well close to on time.

However there is no mention of any problems on the Amtrak website.

Odd.

Apparently likely to continue to the 5th.

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WBBM Channel 2 - It's Worth Knowing with Mary Jane Hayes (Opening, 1980)
(Video >almost 3 1/2 Minutes long<)

Here's the opening moments for the discussion show It's Worth Knowing on WBBM Channel 2, hosted by Mary Jane Hayes.

The subject was Chicago's long association with railroads, dating back to 1848, and the guests were freelance transportation writer Fritz Plous; Evanston, IL radio broadcaster Roy Arpan, and photographer Bill Fahrenwald - all members of the 20th Century Railroad Club.

Includes:
Station ID/promo for Noonbreak with Lee Phillip and Harry Porterfield, with preview of look at Equal Rights Amendment (voiceover by Bob Carrington)
Opening moments, with vintage pictures of old locomotive railroads (and Chicago's history in the building of railroad cars, such as the famous "Pullman car") as Ms. Hayes sets up the premise of this edition, followed by opening title sequence.

Mary Jane then segues into a photo montage of the numerous railroad stations Chicago housed over the years (accompanied, of course, by sounds of railroad cars), before introducing her guests; recording cuts out as they are about to begin their discussion.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Monday, May 12th 1980.

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WBBM Channel 2 - It's Worth Knowing with Mary Jane Hayes (Opening, 1980)
(Video >almost 3 1/2 Minutes long<)

Here's the opening moments for the discussion show It's Worth Knowing on WBBM Channel 2, hosted by Mary Jane Hayes.

The subject was Chicago's long association with railroads, dating back to 1848, and the guests were freelance transportation writer Fritz Plous; Evanston, IL radio broadcaster Roy Arpan, and photographer Bill Fahrenwald - all members of the 20th Century Railroad Club.

Includes:
Station ID/promo for Noonbreak with Lee Phillip and Harry Porterfield, with preview of look at Equal Rights Amendment (voiceover by Bob Carrington)
Opening moments, with vintage pictures of old locomotive railroads (and Chicago's history in the building of railroad cars, such as the famous "Pullman car") as Ms. Hayes sets up the premise of this edition, followed by opening title sequence.

Mary Jane then segues into a photo montage of the numerous railroad stations Chicago housed over the years (accompanied, of course, by sounds of railroad cars), before introducing her guests; recording cuts out as they are about to begin their discussion.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Monday, May 12th 1980.

Wow! Neat.

I don't remember the show or the host, but the theme music is a jazzed-up version of the music WBBM has used to open its newscasts for longer than I can remember.

More importantly, it would have been around that time that my father also joined TCRC. I joined a few years later, so I remember Fritz and Bill (not sure about Roy, although I heard his name mentioned a lot).

Off the top of my head, I can't name every station shown, but the last one (with the clock tower at its corner) was Grand Central Station (not to be confused with Grand Central Terminal in New York).

Unfortunately, two more stations were lost after the date of the show, La Salle St. Station (sold to the Chicago Board Options Exchange by the Rock Island's bankruptcy trustee, replaced by a building that looks like a station but isn't, containing a small ticket office and waiting room for tracks that end one block south of where they used to) and North Western Station (sold to Citibank and replaced by a Helmut Jahn glass and steel monstrosity).

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Here's another drone video, my first shot on a sunny day. I went out along BNSF's Aurora Sub and parked west of Hinckley at the east end of Mored siding. I arrived too late to set up for the first train that came along, but my computer showed two more coming that would meet here.

Calibrating the drone's compass requires spinning it around the vertical axis, then turning it to point down and spinning it around the vertical again. This is most easily done by just spinning myself, but this time I kept spinning a couple more times before I could stop myself!

I got up in the air just as the westbound stack train approached and followed it west to where I thought the head of the eastbound oil train would pull up to. I didn't expect it to stop short of the farmer's driveway until it had a signal to proceed out of the siding. I followed it back east and was going to record the whole train going by, but the SD card got full. From now on, there will be a 64GB card in it.

Unfortunately, when it returned to me, it wasn't very accurate and I tried to override it. First, it kept going in different directions than I wanted. Then it landed much harder than it ever has before. This still would have been okay, but I was also slewing it sideways rather quickly and it flipped over, breaking a blade. This would not be a major problem, but I can't find the extra set of props and the removal tool that came with it. I tried flying it again, but it immediately flipped over due to lack of lift on one corner. I'll have to run over to Microcenter and buy another set.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

David beside taking excellent movies you are having way too much fun with your drone.

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Great videos, really amazed at the stability.

Mesmerizingly surreal.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

David beside taking excellent movies you are having way too much fun with your drone.

Excellent movies will require more practice. More practice will require a new propeller. Breaking propellers is not fun.

But thanks.

Actually, it's a good thing it wouldn't fly at the place where I tried it again. Afterwards, I realized I was within 5 miles of an airport, which is a no-no.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Here's an interesting picture that was brought to my attention.





BNSF 3533. Word is it's been sitting at Corwith Yard for over a year. The company computer lists it as laid up, for sale. It was originally an NP unit. Looks like it may have been changed from BNSF to GN to get it off the official BNSF roster because it's out of service and not going to be repaired.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Excellent video David.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Not been posting here too much, but just saw something interesting.

You may or may not remember back in November I posted this pic



That is P32AC-DM #704 a long way from it's home turf which is the east coast, usually on trains out of New York Penn station as it is a "dual mode" loco meaning it can run on the third rail.

Well Thursdays as I have discovered is when the "special" from the Amtrak workshop at Beech Grove arrives in Chicago and turns on the wye.

So today on the train was.



#704 decked out in a heritage paint job (phase 3 I believe) not sure what the badge is about.

Interesting.

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Can anyone point me to a site where I can find the working timetable for January 23, please? I might mosey up the road to somewhere like Hellifield junction and try for a piccy. Depending on weather.

#704 decked out in a heritage paint job (phase 3 I believe) not sure what the badge is about.

Interesting.

MH took some pictures and posted them to Facebook. Apparently, New York State DOT requested the special paint job (I don't remember now if they will be getting more of them done). From what I can make out, the badge has the current Amtrak "3 sheets to the wind" logo at the bottom, the yellow banner says EMPIRE SERVICE (state supported trains running from NYC to points upstate), and the upper right is the head of the Statue of Liberty. I can't make out what the upper left is.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Apparently, New York State DOT requested the special paint job (I don't remember now if they will be getting more of them done). From what I can make out, the badge has the current Amtrak "3 sheets to the wind" logo at the bottom, the yellow banner says EMPIRE SERVICE (state supported trains running from NYC to points upstate), and the upper right is the head of the Statue of Liberty. I can't make out what the upper left is.

Yes I found out the info later.

Also I informed the Heritage Units website and sent them that pic.

He added it to their roster and I got "first spot" :-).

They still need a proper pic as they wont accept web cam ones, so perhaps MH should send them one of his!!

PS, there is now a rumour that all the P32AC-DM's will be repainted to Phase III!

Followed by all the P42's as they are repainted.

First seems possible however as the P42's only seem to get repainted when it is accident insurance that pays, it seems unlikely.

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