If all you've ever known is a radio shack scanner, you have no idea what you are missing. Wizard is right, get yourself nice little amateur ham radio with a couple hundred channels and covers the railroad bands on the receiving side, and you'll be blown away by the range and clarity. For a handheld I would suggest a ICOM IC-V80. The regular version has a rechargeable NiMH battery back, while the sport version just has a 6x AA battery case if you want to use your own rechargeable batteries. Here is a website with the prices at left;

[www.universal-radio.com]

A better option would be a mobile unit you can install in your vehicle with a Railcom tuned antenna (same one you would use with a scanner), then you can get coverage that is a couple of counties wide. The ICOM 2200H would be a good example.

[www.universal-radio.com]

On either radio you program channels for you favorite frequencies and then do a memory channel scan to listen to them. The one little downside is there is no separate lockout key, so you have to do a couple steps to "skip" a channel. I programmed all the ARR channels into my radio and simple skipped all the channels I don't listen to locally. If I go somewhere else I can skip and unskip channels as needed. With 200 channels, there is plenty of reserve for police, fire and whatnot. Narrowband is not a issue with either radio, and they will give you many years of useful life.