So this isn't about your FRA compliant CFR Part 90 units. I am wondering what smaller organizations, use or with the bigger organizations use in addition to the railroad communication radios. Even organizations such as the Adirondack Railroad could benefit from having non railroad radios so "three cars to a hitch" doesn't get interrupted by "do we have four empty seats to fit a family." The Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum used to utilize FRS radios (the kind you buy at Wal-Mart) And while they worked we would sometimes be interrupted by families or other individuals in town who also had FRS radios. One of our members who is a HAM radio operator (I eventually became one myself) changed us over to MURS (no license required to use) using old Motorola's, I also added two Retevis RT27V as they are much lighter and are licensed
for MURS, And they have worked great with no interference. I've also looked into license-free 900MHz as apparently that frequency has a lot of penetrating power
And not very many radios can tune to those frequencies and they can be digitalized and encrypted, however they're expensive and don't travel as far.

I suppose it depends on how urban an area your operation is in, but the live steam clubs and private layouts I've seen (not that many) have success with the FRS radios. The higher you go on the band channels, the less they are used, and the ones that have sub-channels can pretty much be exclusive. The major limiting factor is range, but if all you want to do is be able to talk over about 5 cars and the station office they would probably be fine. I would borrow a set from someone and walk around the area you want to use them in and see how well they work for your circumstances. Of course the other solution is to license an additional AAR VHF channel for your non-train service communications, and designate it as such for the onboard service and mechanical crews.

Depending on what era your equipment is from, radios are a total mood-killer. Everyone uses them, because in this era we want instant communication. But it gives it a real amusement park ride type of atmosphere when your "motorman" or "engineer" has a walkie talkie blaring idle chit-chat such as the aforementioned "how many seats are open."

If you are a tourist railroad with a diseasel at the front, fine. But how many railroads used radios during the steam era? Or for that matter, trolley museums.

That's what ear pieces are for.

Question #1 I would ask is: what is your train length? If 3-4 cars long the cheap radios sold in the camping section of Wal-Mart will work. If a 20-car excursion train, they won't. I suggest finding the Motorola radios that work on the business frequencies in the 151.xxx range - they have a colored dot on the bottom, such as red for (as I recall) 151.725, and they aren't used by loads of other businesses. And get a license to use that frequency. Today in the Ebay era these are easily found and sold - even if you aren't supposed to use them without a license, so get one. And they will work well on a 25-car excursion train if you ever run one.

You might also consider a UHF commercial frequency. Requires FCC license. Works best with good line of sight between radios. Terrain and structures will decrease range to a mile or less. TMNY has used a UHF frequency for decades and recently added a base station with a small yagi antenna at the museum site to give more reliable reception to radios at the end-of-line about a mile away.

I personally would stay away from those "Walmart" FRS radios, I'd rather not bother with dot and star frequencies as most of them require a license with a local coordinator and are shared with tons of retail establishments, even with subchannels all that means is somebody using your frequency won't have their radio queue up when you talk and vice versa but if you're both talking at once you'll both be able to hear each other. Motorola's tend to be overpriced was preparatory software some of which requires old DOS computers to run. If you don't want to deal with licensing or interference I would highly recommend MURS was the exception of some Walmarts and Sam's Clubs those frequencies are relatively unused and being in the VHF spectrum can travel quite a bit. Retevis sells low cost FCC licensed MURS radios (You radio needs to be approved by the FCC to use MURS) with FREE (hear that Motorola?) programming software, also while I have good experiences with the Retevis RT27V I would steer clear of their Rb38v model.

I have never listened to RR radio. Does an Amtrak conductor get on the RR radio and start asking about seats or sleeper space for passengers? It seems inappropriate to me to mix operational communications with customer service communications.

It's been almost 25 years since I left Amtrak OBS, but sometimes a conductor or assistant conductor would have to get into passenger accommodation issues. They are in-charge of the entire train after all.

Modern equipment has a wired intercom in the cars and engines for on-train communication. NEC MU cars still use buzzers with the traditional conductor's signals (two to go, etc.) I believe push-pulls do that too.

Going the opposite way, Red Arrow had radios in their 1949 St. Louis trolleys. A two-car train used buzzers between cars, though. Operator used radio for comm with DS and other trains.

Phil Mulligan

Not cheap, but we use Motorola CP200 radios with licenses for three frequencies in the commercial/industrial band in case we get stepped on. These are 5W radios and work extremely well.

From a purely safety standpoint, this is where we have to somewhat diverge from history depending on the operation.

Hand signals can't always be seen.

Shouted warnings can't always be heard.

A mile or two away from the station, emergencies are hard to communicate and a response coordinated without them.

And on and on... I've only ever seen radio communications used in conjunction with hand signals rather than exclusively eliminating the later. In interpretation I think that it is fairly easy to explain to and the layman understand that handheld radios did not exist in the 1920s, and demonstrate the difference between the two, and see how the advent made railroading that much safer and efficient- and that the same applies to tourist/heritage/museum operations.

Radios have various channels - The FRA has issued certain channels to carriers for their operations to keep crosstalk between carriers and/or crafts at a minimum.

When I was working on CSX, each subdivision would be assigned a specific channel as the Road Channel. Each terminal area would get a specific channel as the Yard Channel. The MofW would be assigned a channel for their communications on the subdivision. The Train Dispatcher would have an assigned channel for his/her communications. The same Road/Dispatcher channels were assigned for all subdivisions that the Train Dispatcher supervised.

Along each of these territories transmitters would be installed for use on the Road and Dispatcher channels. When Train crews want to access the Train Dispatcher, they initiate a 'tone' on their radio which will activate the nearest transmitter and activate a signal on the Train Dispatchers radio console - indicating the transmitter and channel. The Train Dispatcher will answer, if there will be some form of extended communication between the crew and the Dispatcher - the crew will be instructed to go to the Dispatcher's Channel to further the conversation, thus leaving the Road Channel free for other communications. All personnel operating on the subdivision with radios are required to monitor the Road Channel at all times when they are not actively transacting communications on other channels.

Multiple conversations taking place on a common radio channel are DANGEROUS for all the parties involved in such a conversation.

mmi16 is correct in that sharing a frequency can be dangerous. I was involved in a contract switching operation some years ago, switching cars at a large East Coast chemical plant. At startup, we were offered the use of some of the plant's radios. Aside from not being reliable- some might have made better wheel chocks- there was a problem with some of the not-too-bright plant employees. On several occasions, an unknown voice would come on the radio and give directions to make a move, calling out our engine's number. We all knew each others voices, and of course didn't make any moves when we were not sure of who was directing those moves. We soon got our own radios, on a legitimate railroad frequency, and we were very careful to not let anyone in the plant know what our assigned frequency was.

Born of a life of excruciating exactitude working in the communications industry I'd like to offer a few salient details.

The FRA does not issue licenses for use of radio channels, that is the FCC.

The FRA does not coordinate or assign radio channels.

The FCC has designated blocks of frequencies for all uses, most licensed and a few that are not. Governing channel assignment within those blocks of frequencies (such as the railroad frequencies) is handled by one or more Frequency Coordinators who receive their authority from the FCC. In the railroad block, one of the Frequency Coordinators is the AAR.

The FCC licensing procedure is that the organization must go to the appropriate Frequency Coordinator and obtain approval for use of a channel or set of channels before the license application can be processed. It is up to the Frequency Coordinator to keep track of what channel is being used in what area to minimize interference............mld