Hey all,

I understand that railroad two-way radios will need to be upgraded to all digital at some point in the future.

A few questions:
* Has a firm date ever been set mandating all digital operation?
* Will NXDN be required for DMR? Motorola doesn't seem to offer NXDN; only Kenwood and Icom.

Thanks!

Eventually

Nxdn or idas was chosen by aar, now a few railroads notably Genesee and Wyoming are doing dmr, in their case motorrbo

You do see limited nxdn usage on yards, car shops, coal piers, police, etc

Your more likely to see gradual adaptation as nxdn isn't too good on DTMF signaling for example

I worked as engineer on a UP yard engine up until I retired in 23.

I don't know if everything has to be "digital", but they do have to be Narrow Band capable.

We had a "communications" office in our yard office. I don't remember when it actually started, but guessing 10 years ago we were informed that they were changing the digits we used to change channels on the older locomotive radios... big old Motorola's. To program on them, we'd just key in "74-74" and it'd go to that channel. New instructions were to key in "074-074" to speak on the exact same freq.
They started putting out some digital radios, but I can't remember what the name of them was.

Anyhow, they also issued new digital walkie talkies and instructed everyone to turn in the soon to be obsolete Motorola HT-1000's, and anything older.
The older radios weren't "narrow band" capable.
I had 2 16 channel HT-1000's (1 RR issue, and one of my own) and an ancient 6 channel HT-600 that I still used. Those 16 channel walkies I had were narrow band capable, the 600 wasn't... I had the radio man program 6 of the 1000's channels to railroad frequencies, but the other 10 channels~ I had him program them as "receive only".... all the local police/sheriff/EMS channels in our county. I could talk on the railroad freqs, and monitor/scan the police.
I never did get a digital walkie, kept the 1000's til I retired... the 600 battery crapped out and was no longer available so I junked it.
I use the walkies as police scanners to this day...

Here's an interesting report on how the SP 9010 crew hid a modern radio inside an older radio case to maintain the appearance of the original 1960's radio in the cab (scroll to the bottom of the page): https://sp9010.ncry.org/electrical1.htm

I know Retevis has VHF analog/digital radios https://www.retevis.com/products/rt81v- ... r-radio-us don't know if it can do NXDN.

Specifically says dmr.