Today I took advantage of a break in my schedule to film and produce a new video of my HO scale White River Southern Railroad. This video follows extra train 404 Eastbound over the layout from White River Junction, Vermont, to West Formanek, New Hampshire. I didn’t include the yard proper, as the scenery there is of the “absence thereof” style at the moment. For this video I commited myself to filling the frame with finished scenery, which is an improvement over some of my previous videos. The power today consists of WRS 1701, a Walthers Trainline GP9m that was painted and detailed by my friend who goes by the handle GuilfordGuy here. Rolling stock includes some equipment that was a gift from DonZ (thanks!), and some rolling stock that was already on the layout. Anyway, I thought I’d share it with everybody here. Here is a link:
Cool! Enjoyed that Ty. You did a fine job on the shooting, I’m glad you opted for leaving the camera absolutely still and letting the train doing the moving, saves the viewer eye fatigue. Great job of dubbing in the sounds also.
Nicely done! The train speed in some of the early shots is a bit fast, especially through the terminal! But you’ve put together some great scenes. The last few are the best. Good use of sound, there, too.
Enjoyed the video VERY much! I particularly liked some of the camera angles you chose–and the layout looks mighty nice. Were the sound effects built into the loco or pre-recorded? I really liked the quality of the sound. Between you and Lee It’s been a great day for videos on the Forum.
Thanks for the kind words all! I’ll try to answer some of your questions.
Antonio: The track is Atlas Code 100, mostly flextrack but with a bit of sectional track thrown in.
Jarrell: I used a tripod for all of the shots except one, where the camera rested on the layout. I learned that a tripod really helps with making the videos look more realistic, both as the bumps aren’t HO scale ([:D]) and also you avoid seeing the fascia and/or top of the backdrop.
Lee: I’ll agree that some of the train speeds are a bit fast in some areas. I was trying to overcome the problems caused by both bad electrical pickup (I still need to solder a lot of rail joints and add feeders) and a locomotive with only one lighter flywheel. The shots of it passing the engine terminal should be slower, but some of the others are appropriate. The WRS once hosted passenger service, and the heavy rail and clean ballast (both funded by the state of New Hampshire) raised passenger speeds to 60 MPH. The (relatively) high speeds are a carry-over from when the Montrealer (an actual Amtrak train, but it operated on a different route and has been replaced with the Vermonter) operated on this route.
Tom: The entire WRS roster is DCC equipped with no sound. The audio is dubbed from my various prototype videos (which you can find on my Youtube account) using Windows Movie Maker. Maybe I’ll make a video detailing the various steps I use to make a movie…
That was a very nice video, I think you did yourself proud! One thing though, and just a thought here. If it had some bell and horn sounds, it would have been really great. It was good though, thanks for posting the link.