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Does anyone carry a GPS on the train with them? I recently bought a Gamin Nuvi 200. As I was learning about GPS uints, I discovered a sizeable user community that shares POI (point of interest files) for GPS, noteably poi-factory.com. Someone there (maybe he's a member here too?) setup files for all Amtrak stations, as well as route specific stations (i.e. Empire Builder, Lakeshore Limited, etc.). So I'm planning on using these when I go to Albany next spring.
Granted, the unit won't route for a train, but I will be able to follow the route and know how far from the next station I am, as well as know the speed of the train. Of course, all this is dependant on if I can get sattelite aquisisiton. It might kind of fun though. When we took the Chief this past summer, we often wondered where we were and had to guestimate based on the last station we were at.
George Harris Member # 2077
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Yes. This has been discussed by several people here.
For the Southwest Chief or empire builder, if you want to know where you are on the railroad, you can go to bnsf's web site and locate their division maps. These are large, in every sense, pdf files. You can download these files. Then you can print the whole thing or zoom in to see the details and print these small segments to your heart's content.
Henry Kisor Member # 4776
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A GPS hooked to a laptop with software using topographical charts would be a great way to follow along, comparing the charts with printouts from the BNSF .pdfs. The topo maps usually show railroad lines.
amtraksupporter Member # 5619
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I heard someone say once that the tinting of the glass in some dome cars contains metal that completely blocks GPS satellite reception underneath the glass.
TwinStarRocket Member # 2142
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My experience is that my GPS receiver worked most of the time anywhere on the train by a window. This included a lower level roomette, upper and lower levels in the lounge, and in coach. Sometimes it took awhile to get it to work, but I think it was more a factor of where satellites were at the time, rather than where I was on the train. The best reception was in the upper level lounge.
RRRICH Member # 1418
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Of course, I use my own detailed topographic route maps, and I can usually figure out where we are on any route within a few minutes.........
(sorry, my maps are too memory-intensive to put on my web site)
royaltrain Member # 622
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quote:Originally posted by amtraksupporter: I heard someone say once that the tinting of the glass in some dome cars contains metal that completely blocks GPS satellite reception underneath the glass.
That's true with the newer glass used on Via Rail dome cars. When I tried to use my GPS on The Canadian last year, it could not receive a signal at all in the dome. Yet earlier this year on The Chaleur where they still had the older glass, it was no problem.
Kiernan Member # 3828
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The new Garmins are quite good, the receivers are more sensitive and have a lower noise figure. The software locks onto the satellites more quickly than the older receivers. The major problem in a train is mass of metal that you have overhead.
If your receiver has street-level maps it will probably include some railroad lines at the 200-meter scale level. The rail lines don't appear at smaller scales. That's actually kind of useless. The Garmins have a feature called "lock on road" that is set to "yes" by default. Go into the map setup menu and turn this off. If you don't, the receiver will jump over to nearby roads instead of following the tracks. With the road lock feature set to off, at large scales the screen will probably show a small circle around your location to indicte uncertainty.
The Garmin City Navigator maps don't include all the rail lines. For example, the cutoff from Albuquerque to Dalies that the Southwest Chief takes is not on the map.
Have fun.
-Jamie- Member # 4404
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I've used Microsoft Streets & Trips 2007 on my laptop which included a USB GPS receiver and that worked quite well from our sleeper. I'm looking into getting a Garmin Nuvi 760 before our next trip (25 days and counting). It's a little pricy, but seems to be the only one I've found that has all the features I want. We;ll see how well it works.
Mike Smith Member # 447
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I've used my hand-held Magellan Meridian Gold on numerous Amtrak trips.It will show the tracks we are on and it will hook up to my Streets & Trips program on my laptop.
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