Railcams

[C855B]

Oh, it's so much better now:



What can I say? How about, "Introducing the new, improved Centralia rail oil rig cam." Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did, in spades. The guy said it would take a week to drill the 3000 ft.; I actually believe him since he is only renting this equipment and crew, and every day this stuff is on the site costs him a bundle. Only possible snag is if he hits an abandoned coal mine shaft (...it's possible...) in the first 500 feet.

[sigh]

[Smike]

Oh boy, Full on fracking pad and rig. That’s not going away anytime soon, and get your ear plugs out. Also the onsite logistics needed to support one of those is mind boggling.  The ONLY way that makes any sense from a $$$ perspective  is this guy got a rig to come in for dirt cheap as rig counts have falling so dramatically and most are now sitting idle. 

If you have well water get a complete well water test ASAP.  You will need it as a baseline in case this thing goes south (as a few have here in PA)

That sucks..


Why did he bother with putting up a 6' fence? That will be like an ant pissing on a campfire.

[GaryHinshaw]

Ack - what a nightmare!    Isn't that gear on your side of the (pointless) fence?

[C855B]

Yeah, it sucks. He said it'll be gone in a week barring any snags. I'll take him at his word, but since it's obvious he'll be onsite while it's happening, when the week passes I'll be making in-person status checks. More than 10 days... I have the city manager on speed dial. After all, he's the one who OK'ed this crap.

No well water in the area, this is literally downtown. The folks with the field to the right insisted on the fence, and, yes, it's all on my side of the fence. There are promises... we'll see... that any remaining equipment after the drilling operations will be below the fence, and, hopefully, below line-of-sight to the tracks.

Since it's pretty much screwed as a railcam right now, I'm thinking of aiming it to the left slightly to center the frame on the drilling ops. That way I'll have a solid, timestamped record if anything goes wrong or they renege on their promises.

[C855B]

The latest:



Oil guy was true to his word - they were gone in a week. All that's left is a small "Christmas tree" (highlighted), although they have a trench to dig for the pipes to the tanks two blocks to the left of the frame.

The fence will be a "deal with". We're not in the clear, though, since that is city property and the city manager intimated that he's holding that land (and the fence) in reserve for expanding the city yards. Knowing his mood right now for big metal buildings (another project) there may yet be a big shed in that space blocking the view completely. We still may have to move the camera to the museum.

[loyalton]

FYI the Western Pacific Museum camera has been out of action for at least a couple years now. This is in contrast when they, or at least some members, were really big on keeping it running.

[C855B]

Centralia Railcam is still up, but your browser may not be able to view it. It requires the QuickTime plug-in, and Apple very recently withdrew support for it. Not only that, they are deleting the plug-in when upgrading any OSX 10.9+ system. IE users might still be able to view the camera stream, but I don't know how long that's going to last. Follow the instructions about using the VLC viewer app if you're still interested.

This problem is a limitation of the camera hardware/firmware. The 800-pound tech gorillas (MS, Google, Apple) have dictated from on high that HTML5 video is the law of the land now, and legacy modes can go take a hike. I'm not planning on replacing the camera, so there you go.

Being in networked video for several years, this is going to be a problem for a lot of the railcams out there. Since (IMO) railcams were more or less a novelty anyway and not really all that useful for trainwatching, the cost of conversion to supported "universal" formats is probably going to knock most off the air. But we'll see.

[John]

http://www.railroadcity.com/media/live-feed/

[davefoxx]

Thanks for the link, @John!  I just watched a huge eastbound stack train on the Curve.

DFF

[John]

Thanks for the link, @John!  I just watched a huge eastbound stack train on the Curve.

DFF

It's also on YOUTUBE

[Mark5]

John,

Thanks for the horseshoe link! 

[Bob Bufkin]

Railstream just started a new cam this week in El Paso, TX.

[Point353]

Virtual Railfan has just added Strasburg PA to their roster of railcams.
There's up to a 12 hour rewind available, so you can see most of the day's activity even if you can't watch it until the evening.
Sometimes the camera will be panned/zoomed to provide a different view.

[wazzou]

New Railcam attached to former Northern Pacific Chehalis, WA depot.
This is facing South toward Portland, and the location is roughly 1/2 way between Seattle/Portland.
The line is BNSF/UP/Amtrak, formerly NP/GN/UP.
In the direction the camera faces just short of the Interstate 5 overpass, seen in the distance was a MILW junction.

[Jesse6669]

The Cincinnati RR Club has two (nearly identical) live views from their office in CUT, looking north.  Cam 1 has ambient sound, Cam 2 has the local railroad radio feed.  There is talk of possibly adding more cameras in the area once the "proof of concept" is complete.  The cams are PTZ so occasionally there's a different telephoto level or slightly different angle, but the windows face north so there aren't many options.   This is NS and CSX (and Amtrak's Cardinal, at night).

CRRC Cam 1
CRRC Cam 2