Model Railroad Blog

One turnout, two years of satisfaction and going strong

Extra track space is at a premium when switching Sweetener Products. In this view, two corn syrup tanks are temporarily stuffed into the Sabor Hispano spur while the car sorting and spotting takes place.

 

I’ve never been one for artificially designing  un-realistic switching nightmares into a track plan.  The prototype offers up enough to keep you thinking as is and does so with relatively little track. Switching Sweetener Products is challenging on a few fronts.  First, this is a car spot driven industry.  Each tank car contains a different grade of syrup and must be spotted at the appropriate unloading hose to prevent contamination.  Second, there isn’t a lot of track to work with, especially when taking into account the relatively large number of cars being dealt with.  Finally, thinks are further complicated by the fact that the tank cars look almost identical making it difficult to keep track of them while you work.  Working this industry is an exercise in concentration!

Why is this important?  It’s important because it illustrates the point that a layout that occupies a tiny footprint that is within the reach of any hobbyist, is inexpensive, and only has one turnout(there are two turnouts but the second isn’t used much) can be both highly plausible and fulfilling to operate.  The construction aspects of the LAJ kept me busy and happy for several years and I’ve yet to grow bored with it.  An operating session would easily extend longer than an hour and entail so much focused concentration that you’d likely be ready for a break at that point anyway.  Here’s how a session might unfold.

 

Every prototype is different but, from the conductors I’ve spoken to, generally  the yard job doesn’t pre-sort the cars for the local prior to sending it on the road.  The local needs to do that when it gets to the industry.  Using that as a guide, a local would come down The Horn Lead with the corn syrup tanks bound for Sweetener Products and need to sort them prior to spotting.

 

 

Maybe my professional rail buddies will set me straight, but this is how I’d approach things.  First, I’d dump the cut of incoming loads temporarily on the Federal Cold Storage lead.  Next I’d pull the entire cut of empties including the car in the process of being unloaded.  Using the cut of empties as a “handle”, I’d begin the long push/pull process of spotting the loads at their dedicated hoses, including re-spotting the car that yet to be un-loaded.

 

The car that wasn’t fully un-loaded throws a wrench into things because now we don’t have enough room for all of the incoming cars.  Rather than take the extra car back to the yard, it’s spotted outside the gate to be dealt with by another shift once space opens up.  All of this is going to take you “awhile”.  In the end it’s an approach that offers a lot of entertainment per square foot and per dollar of hobby budget.

 

“Sounds of the J” Movie Short

Sound of the J

 

It took a good month of fairly hard work, but I’ve completed my first all out effort in the area of model railroad video.  “The Sound of the J” can be seen on YouTube HERE.  Seeing how much work it took to put together a seven minute “short” sure gives you a new appreciation for the pros that have to produce two hour long movies under much more difficult conditions.  For those that want to venture down this path here are some random thoughts that may be helpful, most of which I picked up from online tutorials and published interviews of movie pros.

Know what you want to accomplish going in

It’s human nature to want to whip out the camera and immediately hit the record button.  However, to get a decent result you need to hit the mental pause button, and take some time to think through what your end game is. Who is your audience? Just yourself? The hobby YouTube universe?  Sales prospects?  Are you trying to instruct, tell a story, sell a product, or instill a mood by taking the viewer on a journey?  In my case the audience was only myself. I wanted to be able to experience my layout in a way I couldn’t with the naked eye.  I wanted to capture the sense of mass and power that is unique to railroading.  I wanted to highlight the sounds of railroading.  It took some discipline along the way from the standpoint that I knew that the format wasn’t that of a traditional model railroad video and wouldn’t appeal to a mass audience.  I was tempted at times to truncate the long freight car crawl sequences and had to constantly remind myself that if a cut appealed to me, if it captured the feel I wanted, it needed to stay in.  Producing to entertain a broad audience, to be a “pleaser”, is necessary in many cases but it also can be a slippery slope that can temper more creative efforts.

Composition and creativity leads the train, not  tools

It’s so easy to get caught up in the technology that the central goal is lost.  That central goal is composition, producing something that is creative and artistic.  Anything beyond that is simply a supporting tool, a means to an end.

Have a plan

Write a “script” or outline beforehand that lays out the scenes, sequences, sounds, and editing approaches before you start filming.  In my case this was just a simple chart on piece of notepaper.

Break with tradition

Model railroad video traditionally follows a very specific format.  Try to break away from that approach and explore different techniques.  The best way to do that is to study films, long and short, outside of the hobby.  Video is a large hobby in it’s own right with a passionate following constantly pushing the envelope with new approaches.

Know the challenges going in

Depth of field:  The shallow depth of field of close up photography creates challenges unique to our hobby.  A smartphone’s small sensor appears to give you more depth of field than a traditional video camera or DSLR.  The small dimensions of the phone also give you viewing angles and camera locations that would be simply impossible with other devices.  You can work around the depth of field issue by working primarily with broadside shots or viewing angles that are controlled in a way that the camera doesn’t pick up much in the distance.

Backdrops:  Traditional model railroad backdrops tend to be problematic from the standpoint of either being distracting, un-realistic, or having a tendency to wash out to a muddy, gray blue behind the camera.  I contacted Dave at Backdrop Junction and bought a six foot long plain sky backdrop and had him bump the saturation up twenty percent.  I then taped the backdrop to the wall behind the shot.

Sound: Ambient model railroad sound is totally un-usable.  My first step in the editing process is to delete the recorded sound and cut in audio from sources such as Freesound.org, Sound Dogs, YouTube, Scanner captures, etc.

Lighting: The same rules apply as still photography.  Flourescent bulbs will give you a flat, low contrast, muddy look.  I used photo floods and overhead LED strip lights.

Upgrade with a video app

It is much, much easier to produce a decent iPhone video with the FiLMic Pro app.  You get independent focus and exposure control, better white balance, and numerous other tools that make your life easier.  As an example of what FiLMic can do, jump to the sequence at the 5:30 mark.  You’ll see that I started with the cross bucks as the focal point and used the FiLMic focus wheel to transition to a focal point on the boxcar.  Night photography can be tricky in that the video is always grainy and glittery.  I shot the night scene under room light but spun the FiLMic exposure wheel to an underexposed setting to give the illusion of darkness.

Finally, a shout out to Scott Jordan for allowing me to use the audio on his YouTube video as well as the several blog readers that explained to me how to capture scanner audio.

 

 

Summary

Camera: iPhone 6sPlus

Software: FiLMicPro

Sound: Clips from Sound Dogs, Freesound.org, YouTube (with permission!), scanner captures

Backdrop: Plain “sky” on 6 foot vinyl roll with increased saturation

Phone mount: A variety of methods were used from leaning the phone against a weight, clamping it with spring clamp, to using a dedicated camera phone holder on a tripod

Editing Software: Adobe Premiere Elements 15

Lighting: Overhead 3200K LED strip lights and/or Tungsten photo floods

Compelling Video -8/11/17

I’ve spent most of my model railroad free time working on another video and slowly (very slowly!)  I’m getting up to speed on the differences between motion and still photography.  For the latest video I wanted to have scanner chatter in the background.  Tracking it down has been a challenge but I’ve made some progress.  Scott Jordan was very generous in allowing me to use his YouTube audio of “Switching a Rail Yard”.  I know that many of my blog followers enjoy slow speed switching.  I think you’ll love Scott’s highly creative piece where he clips the camera to his vest as he goes about his job in the field.  You can see it HERE.  

I also appreciate the suggestion from my readers that I download a scanner app. that allows you to record audio.  To that end I’ve been experimenting with “Police Scanner 5-0 Radio Pro” which has a record feature that works well.  It’s sort of like hunting chipmunks though, you have to develop a knack for knowing when to hit the record button ahead of the transmission which can be tricky.

I’m having a lot of luck with using my iPhone as a camera.  The small sensor and physics of the camera give you a little more depth of field than traditional cameras.  Following the advice of the producers of a Sundance breakout film, I use the app FiLMic Pro to make the iPhone more user friendly.  The app has been an absolute godsend and gives you a tremendous amount of control.  You can set focus and exposure independently, have white balance control, and have a “wheel” to give infinite focus control.

A few posts back I wrote a post about producing for “An Audience of One”.  I’d never really thought about it but I do think it’s important to take a step back and consider the end game.  Who is this video for?  Does it serve a commercial or public service end?  Do we want to entertain our friends?  Are we sub-consciously looking for pats on the back (which is human nature for all of us I believe).   The point of the post was that for me personally, the videos are solely for my own enjoyment.  There is no commercial purpose whatsoever.  They aren’t produced to entertain the hobby as a whole.  At a few points in the production process I found myself drifting towards altering the content in a way that might appeal to a broader audience.  Doing so can be a slippery path where you end up with more people sorta liking it versus a smaller group really liking it.  Altering content to avoid negative feedback results in a more watered down, homogenized, “muzac” style production.   On a small scale it’s the Indie movie vs. Blockbuster situation.  The broader model railroad audience as a whole prefers the formulaic template of fast pace, fast cuts, flashing lights, and high angles.  I enjoy lower angles, longer clips, and more of a scale pace that is closer to what I’m used to seeing when I rail fan.  The reality is that’s human nature to have others enjoy what we’ve done but in this case it’s crazy to let that alter my course when in the end I’m the only one in the audience I’m trying to entertain.

 

 

Crystal Promotions

Watching videos of the LAJ on YouTube I’ve noticed that one of the favorite shooting locations for rail fans is the South Soto Street crossing.  Here they catch trains leaving the team track and heading back to the yard.  Looming in the background of many of the shots is the Crystal Promotions structure.  It shows up so often it almost becomes iconic.  I thought it would fun to find a way to photograph the structure on my layout.

I mocked up a small extension shelf at the end of the bench work and clamped it to the fascia.  Next I made flat of the Crystal Promotions structure and laid it in place.  It was a really, really tight fit but I was able to shoehorn my iPhone into position to get the shot.  Some photo shopping with Helicon Focus, Knockout 2, and Adobe Elements and I was able to get the image at the top of the post.  I’ve uploaded a larger, higher resolution image on my Flickr account HERE.

Click HERE to see a video of the prototype at the Soto Street crossing (1:37 mark).

The “Rail Scene”, More Than Just Rolling Stock

Back of the Maywood Avenue structure model. Photograph taken with an iPhone 6sPlus. (A larger file of this image can be seen on my Flickr page)

 

 

I know it’s a different take than most people have, but for me locomotives and freight cars are just one part among many as to what makes up the overall rail scene.  I don’t need to encounter a train in order to have a good day of, for lack of a better term, “rail fanning”.  I love taking in the architecture, the smell of creosote, and perhaps the sound of a train a mile away.  A rail image doesn’t have to have a train in it to catch my interest.

 

 

A case in point is the back of the structure at the intersection of Maywood Avenue and the Horn Lead.  The graceful decay, the palms, art deco architecture, it all adds up to the embodiment of all that is the Los Angeles Junction.  When I built the structure I made a point of fully detailing the back so that one day I’d be able to photograph it.