That's what I call a lot of train action. I liked the way you interjected photos and compared them to the models in your video. Very creative.

Ralph - Great video and a beautiful layout.  How many guys did you have over for your operating session?

Art

Very nice Ralph, love that PC electric��

This video makes me want a train layout even more.

Nice video & layout.

LOTS of cool train action!!!! Great stuff!!!

That's what I call a lot of train action. I liked the way you interjected photos and compared them to the models in your video. Very creative.

Ditto... Nice job....

Hi Big Ralph • Well done operating session on an excellent layout. Like how you showed the prototypical photos. Well done.

Great video! Really like the vintage Amtrak and not much beats the Chessie for color schemes from that era.

Well done!

Peter

Thanks everyone for your kind remarks

@Art - it's a "virtual" operating session so that I can share it with everyone on the internet.

Movie FAQs and Triva

Time

From inception to publication took 3 weeks although not full time - I worked on it a little bit each day. It took more than an hour of recordings to end up with a 12 minute movie.  In fact, one of the more tedious tasks is going over all the clips again and again to narrow it down.

Tools

• Camera: Canon S3is (this is an older camera).
• Software: Windows Movie Maker. 
• Camera mounts:  a standard sized tripod, a mini tripod, camera-on-a-flatcar and hand held. 

No smoke

This is the first movie in recent memory during which I did not have any of the locomotives smoke units operating.

Dummies?

• The Conrail SD40-2 + SD45 +SD45 train is all conventional. The lead unit is an MTH dummy with lighting, the CR SD45 is a Williams chassis with scale MTH body and the Reading SD45 is plain ol’ Williams.

• The CR GG1 #4800 is one of several scale GG1 shells I have that I can install on a powered chassis or dummy chassis.  Having several scale Williams GG1’s, I opted to sacrifice one of them and turn it into a dummy unit. 

Project Management

Trying to showcase 5 different trains on 3 tracks meant shooting a lot of clips. I had to organize everything in a spreadsheet just to keep them straight.

Train Speed

I find that I need to slow them down just a little for the camera. If I ran the passenger train past the camera at scale speeds it would just be a blur and not be very interesting.  Passenger train speed in this movie are  40-45 smph.  Freight train speeds are from 25 smph to 40smph. 

Ralph,

very nice layout and excellent train action ... 

Ralph, it's always fun to see your videos of Jasper's Rock!  The layout is still looking great and a wonderful job producing the video.

Thanks for sharing!

Fantastic video work. Very high production quality. On a PC, yet!