I started out as a child and have railroading in my blood. At least that is what Mom says. I was adopted and Mom thought that my biological parents were railroaders as I always have gotten up before the crack of dawn. I don't know if the above is true or not but I still am up before the chickens!

I am probably the typical rail fan and modeler as Dad built me a S gauge layout on the ping-pong table for me while I was still at a young age. I also had a Brio set that would blow your socks off. Got my first MR in 1965 and still have it along with most that were published up to this date. Had a basement to play in and built various HO scale layouts. Have been an 'arm chair' model railroader up until 2008 when I started a small room N scale layout. It is progressing slow as life seems to get in the way. About 1987 I found camera's, got me a Pentax K1000 and have been taking pix of the railroad ever since. I met a fellow railran at the Cascade Tunnel and she introduced me to scanners. Got my first BC200xlt just after that and went on listening to the rails ever since.

I somehow ran across ATCSMonitor about 2005. I don't remember exactly how I found it, but immediately jumped on that band wagon. Have a electronics degree so modifying scanners is not a problem. Drop me a line if you have need! Somebody in the ATCSMon group said something like "Well, you live in Libby, so why don't you run a server?" a couple of years ago and here I am! "Our Washington neighbor" reworked the Kootenai Sub ( Boyer East ) and pretty much showed me how to deal with it. I have stood on both ends of all of the BNSF sidings on my end of the sub at one time or another and am working my way towards Spokane to encompas the whole sub. Its funny, but I still find decoding errors and fix'm. East Yakt is one of my problem childs as it seems to change on what is reported. Oh well, I will figure it out on morning when I am there! I also need to visit CP 1366.3 as I think that it is labeled wrong and have yet to catch a movement on the cross-over to check that portion of stuff.

New stuff! Gary told me ( and showed me ) about using an audio cable on a long run. We were having problems with the Spokane site as we couldn't bring power up to the antenna because of an elevator shaft/stairway which would make the FD cringe. So we were looking at about a 150ft RG6 cable run because of the 'public area' that was between the radio and the server. Enter the audio cable run. We have the radio at the base of the beam and a 150ft run to the server. We have 12V running up to the radio, data bursts runing down; two wire cable with ground! Well I told you that to get to this.... Hmmm, thought I, we are using about 60ft of RG6 for the DT Libby antenna and thought that if we shortened it, we would see more MCP's. Gary thought that too so he sent me to the local electrical house to get a NEMA ( watertight outside plastic box ) that we could put the radio in and then mount the thing at the base of the antenna ( ground plane ) which would loose about 50 feet of cable. I was standing there looking at this 12 x 12 x 8 inch box that they wanted $45.00 for. Geesh, just for a radio. There happened to be some PVC stuff sitting there and the light came on. Total for 2 ends and about 18 inches of 4 inch pipe came to $6.00. I didn't tell Gary about this, but showed it to him when he got here from Lind, Wa. He gave it a look and said "cool". He then decided to put it on top of the antenna as it shouldn't have much wind resistance. So here ya go, pix of the new green thing...

Anyway, having ATCSMonitor has really boosted my enjoyment of railroads. Below are some pix of the stuff I have or have worked on.

Todd Hackett
POBox 1168
Libby, MT 59923 

Look at the blue sky!

Not much wind resistance up there...

Cheap! Not much to it.

Pop in a radio and you are good to go.

The original antenna - CB'r at that! Only got 5 MCP's with that one.!

5/8 cut at 161.485 with RG6 for the transmission line.

On my bench with the radio's Voice, data and EOT

This works as good as a store bought..... So why NOT try to build your own?

Nasty looking thing isn't it?

Ahhh, looks better when elevated!