The Washington, Idaho & Montana Ry. History Preservation Group, a non-profit railroad historical society, needs help with our website.  I am posting this here because I believe a number of MRH readers are quite tech/web-savvy and may be in a position to help us out.

Having recently spend 3 hours speed matching 2 SD70s of different brands, I started wondering how they do it on the prototype when they MU engines, whether of same or different types. I found surprisingly little information on the subject. Anyone knows?

Do the MU cables provide only notch level or actual speed information?

Hi there, I have the two Walthers cantilever crossing signals for my grade crossing. The idea is manual operation via an on/off switch. No train detection in either direction and across three tracks operated. 

Here is the grade crossing in question:

Does anybody here know anything about the UP branch that runs south from DeKalb Illinois? I know that it runs to LaSalle to service a quarry but that's about all. What else do it serve? Where do trains originate (I'm presuming Proviso). It doesn't seem worth modelling if it only serves one industry.