I just moved and I live literally window to a freight train line, unfortunately it scares the crap out of my cats and so I’m trying to find out what the schedule is so that I can close the windows for them, and maybe put a little raspberry pi display screen saying something like “next train arriving in…” Next to my window
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I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but as rule, who knows? There are scheduled trains which are notoriously unreliable, but also unscheduled trains. Basically whenever there is enough cargo to justify a train it gets put out on the tracks and they move it when they can. Caveat: this is for Canada and is largely based on info from some former neighbors who were conductors and brakemen.
My sympathy to your cats.
So real shit they don’t track freight trains? That seems kind of inefficient if I’m honest.
Then again I’m not a train professional so what do I know
They track them, but they’re not all scheduled. If there is enough cargo there they put on a “special” and they will move it between the scheduled trains. Train scheduling and tracking is an art unto itself.
There’s a facebook group for that line, perhaps they could help you: https://www.facebook.com/groups/upbelvideresub/
There are groups out there that monitor train routes. And some publish to the Web.
In theory you could hook up an software defined radio and listen to train transponders yourself and give yourself a warning if one is nearby.
Hey coding nerds, I know you’re nearby, do you think I’d be able to use tensorflow or something to identify an incoming train with this view?
You could, but if this is taken from another window in the same building you’ll likely only get ~10 seconds of warning.
If you could put a couple cameras a mile or so down each direction on the track you could get an earlier warning system
This is taken from my window, and I’m not sure how I feel about leaving expensive equipment out in a suburban area for anyone to pick up and run off with
I’m a freight conductor. There is no schedule, unless you notice them happening at around the same time every day, you won’t find a pattern. We pretty much get a call and hour and a half before we need to go in at any random time of day or night and that’s when the train moves.
