Railworks America

Hello, all!
In 2014, I went on a trip with a friend to Symington Yard to do a little bit of rail fanning, which ended up turning into a small train chase. It was late in the year, with the Canada Geese making their way back south. High winds and gloomy skies made up the weather for the afternoon, but that didn't deter me from shooting some of the action we caught at the southern end of the gigantic yard. There I caught my first shots of the then brand new ES44AC's, as well as a marshaling set with two slugs. From there, we proceeded farther south, where we met the train we chased, coming to a stop at a red Safetran (also brand new). Once the other train had cleared the single track mainline, our train commended it's journey east, where we followed it for about an hour. In the last shot, you can see the conductor hanging out the window for the final send off. Gotta love awesome train crews like that.

The video was shot in true 4K, 3840x2160, though, due to free-handing the camera in high winds, video stabilization had to be used, which reduced the quality due to having to zoom in to reduce the noticeable edge artifacts. Once it gets to the scene where the Dash 9 and 8 are pulling up next to my car, then it's proper 4K, as I didn't need to use stabilization. I apologize for the bad cuts. For some reason, Premiere Pro didn't render the video properly, which is sad, because I worked to hard to get the colouring as close as possible between shots in the last half (my camera has a 5 minute recording limit in 4K mode. The camera then needs to adjust the white balance before taking the next video. This has since been resolved). Anyway, enjoy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKWdBu-bpjs

Always nice to see others sharing their personal train videos too.

A little video filming and editing advice for ya....

Try to edit down your clips more. This video is a bit long and likely won't hold people's attention for the entire 30+ minute clip. Try to get a little larger variety of different shots too.

As for image stabilization? Try not to use it if it's "digital" image stabilization (unless you really have to) because that crops the image a bit and reduces the resolution (as you noted). Go with "optical" image stabilization (if the camera has it) instead because it doesn't crop the image nor does it reduce the resolution.

If your camera only does digital stabilization and doesn't do optical stabilization, try doing a test with stabilization OFF and see if your Adobe Premier's digital stabilization tool does a better job in post-production than the camera's stabilization.

The 5 minute limit on 4K videos? That's very common in DSLRs or mirror-less digital cameras with 4K video capability. It's a safety measure imposed that's purposely limited to 5 minutes because their larger-than-normal (designed more for low light picture stills than for 4K continuous video) high bit-rate 4K sensors overheat in those small compact camera bodies. It allows the sensor to cool down a bit between shots so it doesn't fry like an egg.

Get a dedicated 4K camcorder like mine if you want to shoot longer 4K videos. They have more space inside dedicated to much better cooling of the sensor. I've shot 1+ hours continuous in 4K with no overheating issues on my camcorder. Luckily most train shots don't require shooting longer than 5 minutes, so you should be okay most of the time.

Yeah, I was thinking of splitting the video up, but I just wanted to get the video out. I couldn't really move around too much as I was pressed for time. I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to have had. I also originally edited this in 2014, and my skills have definitely gotten better since then. My camera doesn't have optical stabilization, unfortunately, but trust me, you would get motion sickness before I stabilized it in ProDad Mercalli. I want to eventually get my hands on a dedicated 4K camera, but I have other priorities first, like working on my new house and my beloved car! One day though! Thanks for the advise, I will definitely have better videos in the future!

Can't help but agree about the length, but that sure is a stupendous yard. I found a map of it at this URL: http://now.winnipeg.ca/maps/symington-yards-map .

Model, anyone?

OldProf wrote:Model, anyone?

Krellnut and Dleeboy made it as part of their Trans Canada route. The scope of that project was colossal.

BoostedFridge wrote:

OldProf wrote:Model, anyone?

Krellnut and Dleeboy made it as part of their Trans Canada route. The scope of that project was colossal.

So, where might one find this route?

BoostedFridge wrote:



OldProf wrote:
Model, anyone?

Krellnut and Dleeboy made it as part of their Trans Canada route. The scope of that project was colossal.

So, where might one find this route?

Still a WIP, I think Krellnut only got the track laid and the route itself was over 1000 in length.