15_the_circle | Saturday week: Tower of Power

[OT from cottage renovations]

a certain large yellow western railroad leaves me alternately amused and annoyed, confused and confounded, over its preference for transaction- rather than state-based protocols for its control system. compared to reasonable protocols (i.e., ATCS, with basic features such as error checking and a decent address scheme) the SCS-128 and [de]Genisys RFL one finds out here are an utter nuisance to decode and monitor, but worse than that they just don't have any sense of elegance about them. somebody else makes these decisions, though, so it's up to the rest of us to take things the way they are.

(click through this thumbnail for higher resolution image)

Roseville, California

when out there with data radio and laptop sniffing for packets, the signals are transmitted by these:

BCP Roseville

what is it about towers? the second volume of the Lord of the Rings is named for the towers of Orthanc and the Barad-Dur (though it could just as well have been for Minas ~~Arnor~~ Tirith and Minas ~~Ithil~~ Morgul, take your pick). places of wizardry. and evil, though in this case it's nothing worse than degenerate protocols implemented by the new owners, unworthy heirs to the legacy of their betters.

click through the thumbnail and what do you see?

a control point in the foreground, sitting literally in the shadow of the BCP. its Eastward absolute signal is to the R and the single switch it controls is in the foreground.
its antenna is a horizontally polarised Yagi, shrouded and pointed waaay up. at first glance it looked more like the housing for a video camera.
talk about a short haul link ...
the tower in the background is festooned with antennas, different styles at different heights.
many miles of railroad fall under its control.
around its base are support structures including a backup electrical generator.

this is absolutely guaranteed to be more than you ever wanted to read about a completely boring subject. that's why it's behind the cut -- don't say you weren't warned.