# New Tuscarora RR video



## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

In conjunction with my series in _Garden Railways_ on small scale cinema, I finished a new video on the Tuscarora Railroad. 



Cameras used include a GoPro Hero, iPhone 4, Nikon Coolpix S6000, and my old Panasonic palmcorder. 

Enjoy!

K


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Great video Kevin...one of the best GRR videos I've ever seen. Your camera and editing talents are certainly great.

You have a variety of shooting characteristics that make it very interesting to watch. Can you explain how you did some of them?

How did you attach the cameras to the tender top and hopper side? The shot out the back of the caboose is very stable...did you do anything to keep the car from swaying...or is your track really that smooth?

And...till the end...I thought you had the end all of end all sound cards...especially the bell...cheat!!!!


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

...or is your track really that smooth 
Great video. The shots from the tender of the swaying engine were very realistic!


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## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

I sent GR a video specifically for the series that shows how I got some of those shots. When they post it, I'll put a link to it. I'll say this--the GoPro and Nikon cameras are both very small, and I have lots of 6" bar clamps. Just be careful of rocks, bridges, and bushes. I did a test shot with the GoPro stuck inside the cab of my K-27, only to realize I was a bit overzealous on weathering the windows in the cab. I couldn't see out for nothin'! Guess I gotta break out the Windex... 

The caboose (combine, actually--I had to cheat a bit for the shot) has a horrible wobble to it because one of the wheels isn't square to the axle (early Bachmann wheel that I'm too lazy to fix). I loosened up that truck and tightened the other one to mitigate the wobble, but that's pretty much it. I'm surprised it didn't manifest itself more. If you look at my "Morning Passenger Run" video that's shot from the same car with a different camera right behind the tender, it's wobbling like the dickens! 

I went back and forth on the sound on this one. I've got a Phoenix board in the tender with a 4" speaker that sounds really good in person, and I could tweak the bass with the equalizer in the editor to get it to sound pretty close. There are a few places where I did use the Phoenix sound for the underlying chuff, notably the tight shot of the siderods. For the most part, though, there was just too little bass to work with when the loco was more than 4 feet away from the camera, and the GoPro's mic leaves a lot to be desired. It sounded great when the loco was right in front of you, but beyond that it sounded like a really bad AM station. So I dug into my trove of archived train sounds. I didn't get the chuffs synced up as nicely as I had wanted to, but I was using new editing software (Final Cut) that doesn't have the same audio editing capacity as my Avid software does where I can digitally expand and compress sound without changing the pitch. I need to get out to the Colo RR Muesum when they're running steam and just record a bunch and bunch of sounds. I swore up and down I had a coupler clank from the last time I shot out there, but I couldn't find it anywhere. 

Later, 

K


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## jbwilcox (Jan 2, 2008)

Kevin,

the opening overhead shot of the train running under the camer was great. I also really liked the last shot of the caboose rolling off into the distance.

Some of the ground level shots were also really interesting.

I could never make a video like this and I certainly do not want to criticize your work but I thought the transitions from scene to scene were too abrupt.

But I really enjoyed the video. I would die and go to heaven if I could ever get my railroad looking even partly as good as yours does.

John


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## rhyman (Apr 19, 2009)

Kevin,
Outstanding video! Probably the best one I've seen. Any chance on you coming to Marty's in September and showing us amateurs how to do the magic?


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## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

Well, that's it folks. We have just seen the be all, end all garden railway videos. After this, every other effort will look very amateurish. Great job, Kevin. I recognized many of the loco and train sounds, as in my Favorite Places I have a YouTube video of the C&T running a train east from Chama, which has the same whistle, chuff and wheel click sounds. Visually, the use of sepia tones in some scenes lends a vintage touch that's quite nice. 

What some folks may overlook is the fact that your garden railroad looks like a real railroad, with scenery, track, structures, locos, rolling stock et all, that look prototypical. 

Just out of curiosity, which shots were taken with you iPhone? 

BTW, a friend who shoots mostly on location for ABC, used a GoPro mounted on the dash of his Suburban, to document, in about two minutes of time lapse photography, the move he and his wife (West Coast bureau chief for Fox) made from Miami to LA. Fun stuff.


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## Bob in Kalamazoo (Apr 2, 2009)

I have a question, that is probably off topic, but everytime I look at one of these videos I get a very choppy picture. The audio is fine but the video jumps from scene to scene. If I down load it first and play it it acts exactly the same, no improvement. I run Windows XP and I have a DSL line. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of a video it is, sometimes a will get a few seconds of normal operation but it always goes to the choppy video. 
Bob


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## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

My guess would be your video card. My Mac can't play HD video without occasionally stuttering. My wife's Mac and my PC laptop play the same files just fine. 

Joe, the iPhone shots are at 2:49, 6:02 and 6:19. 

Later, 

K


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## pete (Jan 2, 2008)

Kevin great job. The video and sound worked good together how did you get the click and clack of the rail sound. I seen at the end you mentioned the george town loop what sound did you use from there. Having a sound card of just rail sound click and clacking could be intersting. Say put the sound in a box car a couple of cars behind the tender. What does anyone think of a sound like that. Again great job.


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## Phippsburg Eric (Jan 10, 2008)

Wow Ken that is really cool! As has been said before, this is the new "bar" we will have to strive for. 

Great job. I look forward to seeing more of how you did it in GR next month.


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## Gary Woolard (Jan 2, 2008)

Kevin,

Just wanted to add my kudos, with a special 'thumbs-up" for the great sound editing! I don't know how many tracks you put together, but I was too enchanted to notice anything out of sync. And the very different levels of audio presence for the different 'locations' really helped to immerse me in the scene.

I agree -- you've really raised the bar! 
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## Tom Lapointe (Jan 2, 2008)

*WOW, Kevin! *







*Really fantastic job, *both on the videography & editing.







Liked the mix of "vintage B & W"







footage & modern hi-def shots. Audio editing was *fantastic *on "syncing" the full-scale sounds & interesting camera angles. You've definitely set a bar for for the rest of us to shoot for.









The YouTube video I'm embedding here is probably my closest effort to what you did; this was shot quite a few years ago, when I had the mainline of my "Watuppa Railway" completed (but not much else! I think the only structure existing on the railroad at that was an Aristo switch tower.







). The camcorder used was my "old reliable" Sony DCR-PC1 Handycam, a standard-definition Mini-DV tape camcorder *almost *as small as many of the present-day flash-memory based camcorders. The locomotive is my Accucraft 3-cylinder Shay; sound is *just *the natural sound of a small-scale live steamer, since I shot this *@ 12 ~ 2 AM *







on a mild early summer night!











The old Sony Mini-DV cam got retired to a large extent when I got the iPhone 4, which at least gave me the ability to shoot 720P HD. A month ago, I *finally *broke down & bought the *professional-grade HD camcorder *







I'd been dreaming of. I'll start a separate thread on it, with the first YouTube video from it.







*Tom*


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## Tom Lapointe (Jan 2, 2008)

OOps! The YouTube embed bug raised it's nasty head again!







If one of the moderators could correct the unintentional multiple embeds, I'd appreciate it.







Tom


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Just found this thread. 

Kevin your video is one of the best ever posted on MLS in my opinion. 

Loved it


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## FHER_operator (Sep 7, 2012)

Just wow. Kevin, this video is amazing. It just screams "East Broad Top," and that's coming from someone who ran on the Shade Gap Branch less than a year ago (just, not in narrow gauge equipment







) This brings back memories... thanks for that and for setting the bar so high! 


-Steven


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

Wow! Great job! You've really set the bar high with this one!


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