Railworks America

If you don't know about this site, you should.

http://www.railroadradio.net/

I like to play a stream from this while playing...why put up with fake looped radio chatter when you can have real railroad chatter?

Found out about this about 2 or 3 weeks ago and now I can't play an American route without it.

You can also go to alabamarailfan.com and listen to this guy's scanner feed. I live in north Alabama and we have 35 -40 CSX trains and 15 - 20 NS trains coming through town and getting across the Tennessee River a day. This is about 4 miles from my house and gets pretty interesting at times.

Might check that out. Earlier this evening on the BNSF Staples Sub, the dispatcher's computer was down so he was holding trains until they came back up (not more than 5 minutes, if I understood correctly their IT people were doing something), and as quick as they were back he was reading out track warrants one after another.

It's a drawbridge across the river here, so they have to coordinate with 2 railroads and barge traffic. We also have a fair sized yard on the CSX called Oakworth. Lots of set outs and pick ups for the industries here on the river. NS has a smaller yard but they switch and serve quite a few industries as well around here, mostly steel. A lot more going on than someone would think in a town of 52,000. The plant I work in generates about 30- 40 cars of incoming and out going a week itself. The BP next to us generates about that much a day at least. With the expansion going on at our plant, ours will double at least. With the one new unit, we can supply our plant with resin pellets and Greenville SC in more or less an idle state. That is just 2 plants. I can give more info on the cars loads generated in the area, but I think it would be boring to most of you I am afraid. My plant is located on the "A Line". A lot of out of town railfans think it is an NS line from somewhere else. 75- 100 car trains with 6 axle power is the norm coming out from all the plants.

Sounds like fun. What does your plant produce?

It is 3M Decatur Operations. We are actually 2 different corporate divisions on one site. The Film plant(s) make specialty optical grade films for TV, cell phone, computer monitors, etc. I work fro the Material Resource Division (MRD). We what is known as the chemical plant. Most people do not think of 3M as being in the chemical making business. My plant(s) make everything from Scothguard that is used in your carpet, to glues & adhesive on tapes, to the coating on gelcaps like Advil uses. We make the compound that is put on drag strips and race tracks to give the track traction. We make an oil well stimulator to produce more oil from wells and a coal dust inhibitor sprayed on coal trains to keep coal dust down. We also make the powder that is in the air bag in your vehicle that explodes and deploys your air bags. A form of that is used my the military as reactive armor and a different version of it is used as chaffe. Then there is the fluoroelastamer side of it as well. It is made up as rubber or plastic. Every footprint on the moon was made by 3M Decatur. We also make PVDF and VDF gas. We make a lot more materials but that is what most people would recognize, with a few others thrown in.