As some of you know, I’ve been making major progress on my HO scale White River Southern Railroad, and several of you have helped guide my way with major projects, such as reliability (a really big problem until recently), the staging yard and lift bridge, the operating plan, and a lot of you have expressed interest in the layout.
Too many people have helped out to thank each one individually, but here are the ones I can name off the top of my head. Thank you to (in no paticular order) 4merroad4man, DonZ, GuilfordGuy, Railroadyoshi, and Packer, among many others.
Here is a major layout update so all of you can see what has been going on, and see how the projects many of you helped plan have turned out. It is a narrated video tour of the layout, following Train 402 from the White River Junction staging yard, through classification (at time warp speed) in the Lebanon, NH, yard, over the length of the railroad, and terminating in the Concord staging yard.
Photos from a trip I took along the railroad I’m modeling (now a bike trail) are compared with the model scene from the same point of view. The layout has sort of been backtracked to the mock-up stage (from a point where most areas had scenery, and I ripped up basically the entire layout surface to model the prototype towns) so I’m not concentrating on making the video look “real” per se, although I have dubbed in the usual sound effects.
So without further ado, here is the video! (link) EDIT: I have just added captions to the bottom of the video.
Questions and comments are more than welcome! I look forward to seeing your reactions and hopefully hearing some more advice while the layout’s scenery is still destroyed…er…non-existent enough to make changes!
One question and one comment, though, if it’s okay with you:
Question: The sound effects–are they programmed into the locomotive or under the table speakers? I was quite impressed, however they were done. And out of curiosity, what kind of video camera did you use?
Comment: Slow down your narration. Speak a little slower and more directly into the microphone you’re using and be a little more conscious of your ‘consonants’. I had a little trouble understanding some of your comments because of the rapidity of your speech. Relax. [:)] I can imagine that shooting a video is kinda/sorta intense because of everything going on, but if the narration is ‘nervous’, it can make it a little hard to concentrate on the visuals (which I liked a lot, BTW).
Don’t want to sound like an Old Fart Teacher, but I work with high school choruses, and one thing I have to instill is that the words be clear and crisp and understood. Just ease up a little, take your time with the narration and you’ll be fine.
I really LIKED the video! You’ve got a good looking MR there and some awfully good control of the locos. [swg]
Pff, I’m like what 3rd on the list, after I designed AND funded your yard… Geez, the thanks I get! It looks good though. I do like the early geeps, and when you do get bigger road power, you might want to consider the standard cab GP40-2s over the widecab ones. Like I’ve said before, concentrate on fascia, because once that’s out of the way its smooth sailing in regards to scenery.
Not to burst your bubble, but I believe that the sounds are recordings spliced into the video. Either way, that takes a lot of skill, time, and patience to do, because the donor video/audio has to bee free of background noise or people talking. Overall, A 10+ video! [bow][bow]
Nik.n is correct, the audio is real railroad sounds that I dubbed (with plenty of sound mixing to time it correctly and get the right sounds at the right time) on top of the muted audio from the model railroad footage. I use a Panasonic PS-GV80 camcorder on a tripod.
Tom: Thank you for the comment. I do have a habit of talking too fast while recording myself or speaking in front of a large audience (which a YouTube video represents; as of this writing, 138 people have watched the video) and while I did try hard to slow it down, I know it could be much slower.
I’ve had a natural lisp all my life, and I recorded the audio seperate from the video shooting so I could get as many tries at the audio as I liked. Almost every sentence was from a different take than the one before it; since I did not record in real time, I could cut up and splice the narration freely to get the best sound.
I hate the sound of my own voice in video or audio, and talking to a microphone when there is nobody else around takes a while to get used to… Hopefully I can work on your points for the future!
Alex: The “in no paticular order” part was important… I was writing them in the order I thought of them, trying not to forget anybody! You know how much your help and advice are appreciated, and I’m not going to forget anytime soon. My railroad was a wreck until you came along…
Ty, it’s looking very good. Your sound dubbing is excellent. While watching the video I was struck by how much the sound of a ‘real’ train adds to the scene.
Ty, I have 3 grandchildren… ages 13 to 20… and they all speak in the same manner as you… very rapidly, clipping their words. I constantly have to tell them to slow down so that I can understand them. They tell me their friends understand them just fine and they can’t understand why I don’t. Actually, I can… most of the time… if I concentrate hard on what their saying. But the listener shouldn’t have to do that. [:)]
I know that’s something you’re going to work on, especially for your videos ! [;)]
Good progress. However, two comments. At the beginning you have a train running between cardboard forms, I assume a future tunnel or rock cut, but the trackwork looked pretty bad. Could be distortion from the camera angle. The other was the train running around a curve with a blue engine house on the right side. That track the train was on looks way too close to the building especially for a mainline.
hehe, I know the feeling of speaking too fast; have a habit of stuttering when I’m stressed (been doing it at school this week). Excellent shots of the railroad, love the smooth operation!
Thanks for the kind words, questions, and comments all!
Since the narration seems to be an issue, I’ll be adding subtitles to the video to make it easier to understand. EDIT: Just finished that now.
Terry: On all of my other videos, I only show the layout by itself, and only the sections with finished scenery. Unfortunately, this is not possible with this video because a lot of the scene gets cut out and you can’t see the comparison.
Bob: That’s the staging yard, which runs against the wall opposite the layout on the other side of the aisle. No scenery is planned for that; the wall you are seeing on the right of the frame is the safety fence (painted black on the other side, which people see it from) in case of derailments, since on the other side is a straight drop to the floor.
The track is not all that straight there because I laid it at night when it was cold and did not spike all the holes to allow for the track to move at a larger scale (as compared to sharp heat kinks that would create problems. The staging yard shelf expands with heat, and I’d rather have slightly wavy track than track pulled out of place with loosened joints causing derailments.
The camera angle - less than 2 inches above the railhead and far away at the end of a 20’ staging yard - creates an extreme telephoto effect that makes the track look much worse than it is. I’ve never had any problems with the track in the entire staging yard even with exhaustive testing shoving 20 car trains at track speed into and out of the staging yard.
And yes, the Lebanon shop facility is a bit close to the tracks, perhaps unprototypically so. I origanally had the mainline further away from it, but I realigned it to widen the curve, putting it closer to the engine house. I can live with that problem if it means that I have broader curves.