Curious if there is an easy way to discern that an engine has PTC antennas. At a train show I noticed a vendors engine that said it was PTC equipped. Looked like an add on plastic roof piece with an array of jutting antennas simulating PTC equipment. So wondered if you saw a bulge on an engine roof would that be the PTC equipped give away?
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rrman posted:Curious if there is an easy way to discern that an engine has PTC antennas. At a train show I noticed a vendors engine that said it was PTC equipped. Looked like an add on plastic roof piece with an array of jutting antennas simulating PTC equipment. So wondered if you saw a bulge on an engine roof would that be the PTC equipped give away?
The antennas are pretty much the main "give away". Any "bulge on the engine roof" would not really be associated with the electronics related to PTC equipment.
Many locomotives built between 1995 and 2010 had a plastic cover over the radio and GPS antennas. The radio antennas were for voice, for DPS, for event recorder downloading, and for onboard reporting of locomotive functions to the Mechanical Department. The GPS antenna was used in reporting the location of the locomotive to its owning company.
Maybe that's what you were referring to. These were pre-PTC antenna arrays.
I have seen a few UP locomotives with a 220MHZ RADIO on a box cover on the nose of the locomotive. They seemed to be ex SP GP60's. I was thinking that was part of the PTC system. I did not see many.
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