Acton packed

While I was hurtling about Snowdonia in the rain, my second unit was in Acton at the London Transport Museum open day. Why? Because newly back in service Prince was there giving footplate rides and spreading the word. I got to work this morning and was handed a DVD of files so I had a quick edit and here is the end result.

 

Snowdonian adventures

What can I say? 95 miles in the car, 80 miles on the train, 12 hour day. The Snowdonian.

 

I arrived just after 7.30 in time to get the shop open for some pre trip sales and to get the camera gear in the car, not the camera and tripod as I need that to capture preparation shots at Harbour. Then before the train departed I climbed into the car and drove over to Mr Huddart's crossing to get set up for my first proper shot of the day which was the long shot of the train going over Cae Pawb.

 

Once this was done it was off to Bryn y Felin for a shot of the train coming out of the pass and over the bridge; this went off OK and the sun was making an effort to shine over the top of the hill; the day was looking promising.

Next I hopped in the car and drove to the Beddgelert Forest camp site. I parked by the top level crossing and shot towards Beddgelert then swinging round to get a nice reverse angle shot as the train turned away. Back in the car and a short but nippy drive to Rhyd Ddu station to shoot the arrival and a platform shot.

 

Next location was on the bridge at Castell Cidwm to get a nice shot of the train with Snowdon in the background, run over the road to get the departing train heading for Mynydd Mawr. The next car journey was along the road through Waunfawr and down to Caeathro, back towards Dinas and up the Rhostryfan road to get a shot of the train emerging from under the road bridge.

 

Then, despite the awful traffic I made a slow dash to Caernarfon to capture the arrival and the end of the first leg. By now the train had gained Lyd on the back in readiness for the run back to Port.

I left the locos running round and taking water to get setup for the next sequence at St Helen's road bridge. From the foot crossing there is a lovely long shot back towards Caernarfon. Eventually the double headed train came storming up the bank and through the bridge. By now there was a hint of rain in the air.

 

Next location was the bowstring bridge at Plas-y-Nant shot from the layby. By now it was raining and the wind was blowing pretty hard too so it was out with the cameras rain coat. This makes the camera safe from the weather but it also makes all the controls hard to get at so the shot I got isn't as smooth as I would have liked. A dash to Rhyd Ddu for an arriving shot and then it was back in the car ASAP.

 

 

Off to the top end of Beddgelert station next, I had intended to stand in the field and shoot the train coming down the last S bend but the rain was now pelting down so I took what cover there was to be had under the water tower. After what seemed like an age the train duly arrived.

At this point there was a long lunch break so that the passengers could make their way to The Goat Hotel for lunch and the service train could pass. I went back to Port to get a warm cuppa and a sandwich then it was back to the Aberglaslyn Pass for a shot of 143 and train heading towards Beddgelert and then The Snowdonian going on its way towards Porthmadog.

 

The rain continued to pour down but it did make for some quite atmospheric footage.

The view from inside the raincoat with the zip done up

 

Back to sunny Porthmadog where the rain was only slight to get the classic shot of the train coming over Britannia Bridge only from Pont Croesor the set was now quadruple headed having gained Merddin Emrys, Palmerston and Britomart but having dropped 87 off. Through they chuffed and I raced off (at road legal speeds) to Minffordd to document the arrival there.

 

The new footbridge at Tan-y-Bwlch next and the train now only double headed by Palmerston and Merddin arrived in fine style. The new perch makes a different camera angle which is always a welcome addition on such a well photographed railway.

Tan-y-Grisiau next and a long shot of the train departing the station and running along the ledge towards Blaenau.

High speed dash to the water tower at Blaenau, throw the tripod down and just capture the arrival. Back in the car, dodging a hail of thrown objects from some of the lovely youth of Blaenau and it was back to Tan-t-Grisiau only this time to the Port end of the station by the road crossing.

 

 



 

Another dash back to TYB and I was set up opposite the water tower to document the arrival and by the platform to get the departure.

 

After a short pause at Penrhyn level crossing it was back to Harbour station for a final shot.

 

As soon as I finished videoing I took the camera up to the office, dried it off, put the batteries on charge and went home.

 

 

The next day I was at my desk and editing by 9am. First of all I downloaded all the footage onto the computer and this amounted to nearly an hours worth. After the first edit I had it down to 25 mins, a second run though and adding captions got it down to 22 but I wanted to get it to 10 mins for Youtube. This took a couple of goes, each time getting more ruthless. First I cut out shots I could do without and lost a couple of locations altogether and then I trimmed the heads and tails of some shots to get the whole thing tighter. It was ready to start uploading by about 2pm. It rendered ok and then said that it was going to take about 6 hours to upload... so I went home. Epic.

 

 

I meant to say, here it is.

 



Two screens on my wagon

At last I have two monitors again. Hurray. However... it seems that I have to plug the second one into the PC once I've launched Vegas, the editing software, or it won't open. I suspect that I need to adjust something somewhere.

From left to right the equipment you can see is:2 x disk duplicators, 1 disk printer with ordinary desktop printer on top, Left hand audio monitor, 2 x video monitors, Right hand audio monitor with small audio mixer in front of it and with 3 x 1TB hard drives and network hub and card reader on top, PC in white case with lit up ventilation fans. Out of shot there is the power amplifier for the audio monitors. Also on the desk are the camera battery charger and the camera power supply which I use when I am downloading video from the camera.

The PC is basically a high end gaming machine because it needs to have plenty of memory and high speed graphics cards, of which it has 2. This allows me to see the video playing back at full quality and without being jerky as it was on the old machine. Between the internal and external drives I have 6TB of memory (and a further 3TB as a back up). The 3TB of external drives are all pretty much full, HD video files are enormous but this should keep me going for a couple of years. The gaming origins of the PC explain the rather over the top appearance of the case and the lit up fans. It looks like Darth Vader's toaster.


 

Red engines mostly

Since my last waffle I've been out with the camera a few times and finally finished the Fred DVD and got it on sale.

Seems to be selling well so I hope that people enjoy it, we've started thinking about shooting dates for part 2 - The deviation years. Anyway a there are a few other things to get finished before then.

The Paddington DVDs finally turned up in time for the last weekend down there but they won't go off and they don't have anything which dates them to this year so I'm sure they will be useful for marketing give-aways for a good long while. I do wish I'd stuck to my guns for the cover picture but there we are, Mr Lewin is the boss.

 

The day after I went out in the snow to get the shots of the WHR that make up the short package in the previous post I went out again and went to some different locations so that the final edit in the year of the life DVD will be quite different and extended. One location I'd never gone to before was the far end of Plas y Nant halt platform that you can see in the picture above. Quite nice.

 

 

In the pictures above, lurking behind Moel-y-Gest is the freshly restored and painted Prince. While I was there they were setting the safety valves which was interesting to see and which will probably end up on the year 2013 disk. sadly the next day was my day off and this was when the 'old gent' had a test run so I didn't get to capture that.

 



The next day I was back at work and so I popped over to Minffordd Yard to see Princess arriving back on FR metals from London and Prince swapping places on the lorry for his trip to Acton this weekend, where he will be chuffing up and down at the London Transport Museum open day. Sadly I can't go down and shoot that, so I've sent the second unit. Chris Parry is going and he has a stills camera which can also take HD video and he promises to bring me back some footage.

The horse in the above picture which also appears in the video below is the equine star of the forthcoming Steam 150 event and is at Minffordd getting used to the clanking, hissing and grunting of the railway and its staff.

This is the video of the swapping of the locos.

My new PC is settling down and works very well, the new version of Vegas (Pro12) has a slight tendency to hang up and fall over rather too often but while it is running is great. I'm still running on one monitor which is a royal pain in the seating area but hopefully that should be solved tomorrow... we'll see.