Rail-cams

The Roanoke Rail-cam. (Screenshot by BobbaLew.)

Yrs Trly has been viewing railroad web-cams at least the past five years, maybe more.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two — I’m 68.

Screenshot by BobbaLew.

At the Mighty Curve. (This is probably a westbound train of empty coal-hoppers going up The Hill.)

The first I was watching was at world-famous Horseshoe Curve just west of Altoona, PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”). Horseshoe Curve is the grading trick Pennsylvania Railroad used back in 1854 to breach the Allegheny mountain-barrier without steep grades or switchbacks.
The railroad was looped around a mountain valley to ease the grade.
The Allegheny mountains had previously been a barrier to west-east commerce.
Pennsy’s breaching the Alleghenies was so successful it unleashed a tidal-wave of west-east commerce.
Even more than the phenomenally successful Erie Canal which proceeded it by 15-20 years.
The main thing is a railroad could operate during winter, whereas a canal froze.
Pennsy was so successful it had to expand its Allegheny crossing. Tracks were added, plus additional tunnels.
The railroad was two tracks at first (maybe only one), but eventually a third track was added, then a fourth.
An existing tunnel of a state-funded competitor at the top, that Pennsy put out of business, was incorporated; and a third tunnel was added later.
Allegheny-crossing is now back to three tracks and two tunnels, although the original Pennsy tunnel was expanded in 1995 to clear doublestacks and two tracks.
The Horseshoe Curve web-cam, which no longer works, was aimed out across the valley the curve looped.
You could watch a train slowly climb or descend the grade, (I think the speed-limit is 30 mph.)
And Horseshoe Curve is part of a grade, part of The Hill crossing the Alleghenies.
The camera refreshed every half-second or so. Nice, but irksome after a while.
That’s not movie-speed, which I think is 1/15th of a second or shorter between frames.
Depending on the speed of the train, it might advance 30 feet or more between refreshes.
Not too bad, but irksome after a while.
I discovered other rail-cams.
One was actually a traffic-cam that happened to include a railroad highway overpass.
The guy who led me to that also led me to the Roanoke Rail-cam (at top), by far the best I’ve ever seen.
The Roanoke Rail-cam is set up on an upper floor of the Hotel Roanoke in downtown Roanoke, VA.
The tracks of the old Norfolk & Western Railway go right through downtown Roanoke, and the rail-cam views that.
It’s fabulous, like watching television.
The refresh is fast enough to make it like watching the real world.
Automobiles advance down the street, and pedestrians walk on the sidewalk.
They don’t hopscotch, like the Curve web-cam did.
I have discovered another rail-cam.

Screenshot by BobbaLew.

Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian blasts by Station Inn.

It’s the view from the front porch of Station Inn in Cresson (“KRESS-in”), PA.
Station Inn is a bed-and-breakfast for railfans. It overlooks the old Pennsy main through Cresson. The railroad is now Norfolk Southern.
The web-cam is fairly good, although it makes you watch an ad every 15 minutes or so.
It also has sound. The Roanoke Rail-cam doesn’t. Neither did the Curve web-cam.
Although that can be distracting. A lot of the time all I hear is cars driving the street in front of Station Inn.
Station Inn also does an online railroad scanner-feed, the same stuff I get on my railroad-radio scanner down there.
I often run the two together on my computer, but it’s distracting. I can’t key in on this computer if something interesting sounds on the scanner-feed.
It used to be every time I fired up the Roanoke Rail-cam I got a message demanding I restart my Internet-browser, FireFox, in 32-bit mode.
There was a button to click.
The other day I got an additional entreaty to update my “Flip4Mac” WMV player (Windows media-files).
Okay, Flip4Mac is a mystery, but let ‘er rip. I’ve updated players before.
Now, for whatever reason, when I fire up the Roanoke Rail-cam, I get a “Flip4Mac” display, and no requirement I fire up in 32-bit mode.
I have no idea what happened, but who am I to ask technical questions if it works?