Rain, snow, sunshine and IT

It may seem as though I've been asleep since I came back from Paddington but I haven't, well not all the time. I have been very busy getting the shops ready for the new season which has now started; among the usual ordering stock and so on we have had another new EPOS system installed (still not working properly) a new company IT server (think it's working) and I have a new super computer for editing and a new version of Sony Vegas (both of which have 'issues').

Any how, I have managed to get out with camera on both the FR and the WHR to capture early spring on the railway. I took a ride on the FR which you can see the fruits of here:

 

Yesterday I chased the WHR trains clocking up nearly sixty road miles. During this journey I videoed in the sunshine and in blizzards. 

 

First shot of the day, cow shit corner

Unfortunately I forgot to take the cameras raincoat with me so I improvised a snow coat with a Tesco bag for life and my Swiss Army Knife.

 

The snow really came down thick and fast while I was waiting at Cae'r Gors but by the time the train came it had nearly stopped and the sun came out.

Last shot of the day, Pant Farm crossing near Hendy

The results of my efforts can be seen here:

 

Travelling in space

Space, that is, if you count getting in a van and driving to London and back and then on a train and going to London and back!

Since my last post I've been to Cardiff to buy new stock for the shop for the forthcoming year and down to London twice to video the unloading and unveiling of Princess at Paddington. All very exciting but it means the paperwork pile was enormous when I finally got back to the office.

The Network Rail people at paddington were very helpful and seemed pleased to have us there even though we caused a bit of a stir dragging the 'old girl' over the concourse with a Landrover winch. The worst thing about the whole expedition was the temperature of the place; it was freezing. My feet still haven't warmed up properly!

 

The first time I went down in the van with Chris Parry and we took loads of goodies with us but the second trip I went by train with the unveiling team. I only stayed for one night the second time and came back by train in the afternoon... which was very slow as some overhead line had come down in the morning so everything was buggered up all day. Chester to bangor was a nightmare, I bet there is more space on Indian Railways trains. I didn't make it into the carriage but was stuck in the vestibule with drunk builders and loud mobile phone users; I really don't know how people put up with it on a daily basis. Urgh.

 



Between the 'get in' and the 'show' on St David's Day I had a couple of days off so I decided to strip out my studio and re arrange it as I haven't been happy with the ergonomics of it. Finally got it all plugged in and working again, now I just need some time to make some muisc.

Anyway back to sunny Londinium I went for the great ceremonial unveiling. Everything went off very well and the main lady of the day looked stunning, her new paintwork shining in the lights on the stand.

 

 

Here is the video of the whole trip. It has been a bit of an epic to get it made because my new computer has arrived and it nearly works... more about that another time once it completely works.

 

Time travelling

I've been working on finishing the 'Fred' DVD but circumstances have conspired for that not to happen just yet. Firstly the PC I use to edit on is rather long in the tooth and I have also run out of storage for new video footage. I'm not an expert on the technicalities of computers but I know that I have three external drives of 1 terra byte each and they are now full tot he brim. All is not lost as the new all singing and dancing mega PC is on order and should be with me in the next week or so. It should allow me to work faster and easier... famous last words.

Secondly, I was supposed to go out and shoot some last shots of things Fred mentions to add into the film but the weather was awful, there was no loco available and my driver went sick... I went home and lit a fire to sulk beside.

Anyhow, that was yesterday. Today I took the camera for a ride on the FR and experimented with the time lapse facility. You can see the results of this here:

It shot half a second every 30 seconds. I'll try another trip on another day with a different rate, it makes for a very quick but slightly odd video.

Fred and the Princess

I've been a busy bunny this week of my time knocking the'Fred' DVD into anearly final shape. I've got all the archive pictures I need as Fred found some slides with a couple of faces which he mentions, Norman Bond scanned them for me at double quick speed and they help tell the story. Also I've been making sure that the audio levels are as even and audible as possible, there are a couple of shots which have quite a bit of wind blasting noise on them which I've flitered out but it also weakens Fred's voice which is quite low, in the end it's a compromise between the distarcting wind noise and not making Fred sound too odd. At half term I'm hoping to get a trip up the line to shoot a few last shots to illustrate what Fred is saying and then it is finished. Hopefully my new whizz bang PC will be here by then so I can actually render the project because at the moment it overwhelms my current machine and crashes it so I haven't seen it on disk yet.

'Evie' Roberts and Will Jones

It's been a week for finishing things off as I've also (hopefully) finished the WHR postcard. I finally stopped fiddling with the music at mix 6, I'm pretty happy with the balance and the sounds. Now I need to get Clare Britton and Paul Lewin to say it's ok to go ahead and get 10,000 of them made... gulp. This is why it has to be right.

This is a screen grab of the menu page

 

Also this week the sun came out! Yes! The sun came out! It came out at just the right moment too as it was the morning we were going to get pictures of the shiny new paintwork which Boston Lodge's answer to Michaelangelo, Glenn, has applied to Princess. The loco looked stunning and you can see her in the video I made.

Princess comes out

 

 

 

I've also been  out and about on The Cob recording the comings and goings out there, yesterday I got some nice shots of the man doing the track welding which was quite spectacular. I'll add this footage to whatever I get in the next couple of weeks to make the next progress report... watch this space.



Points and new toys

I've finally finished making a package on the progress at Harbour Station which you will see below and the new disk printer has arrived.

 

I've had a quick play with it and it seems to be much better quality than the old one but the best thing about it is that I can print 100 disks in one batch without loading each disk individually by hand, as with the old machine. It has a robot arm which picks up a blank disk, puts it in the printer tray and then picks it up and puts it in the output tray, lovely. It wasn't cheap but will earn its keep very quickly once the season gets under way.



It was a bit wet

 

On the day the new points were delivered by road from where they had been in store in Minffordd yard the wind blew, the rain fell and the temperature didn't get above zero. Brrr.

 

 

Anyway, here is the video which starts in early in the year and comes up to date.

 

 



Points and snow

The weather has been horrid... for years now but more specifically this week. The points for the new layout
in harbour station were delivered this Thursday and me and the camera were there to record the event and the freezing rain.

Each pair of points came in two parts and were craned off as you can see above. The first set to arrive was the WHR loop point and the second is the king point which will select between the WHR platform and the FR one, this second unit is much longer as FR trains will need to go over it at line speed. I'll put together a package on the work so far next week when I've got some footage of the installed points.

With the snow forecast for today I decided that another day in the studio made sense so that's what I've done. I pretty much finished the programming for the WHR card music despite the temperature in the studio starting at 3 Celcius this morning. The edit of the video is now the correct length and the music fitted nicely, but there are still a few musical phrases that need re-programming to tidy them up.  By 4pm when I finished it had crept up to a tropical 10. I spent the day in jumper and coat. Adding some guitar parts is the next stage but my fingers were numb so my usually poor playing was pitiful so I gave up on that idea.

Freezing my tits off

 Snowing outside the window

Always sunny on telly

The new drum machine sounds great and the Akai it is replacing is now listed on eBay, shame to get rid of it but I need the cash.

New year, new toys

The new year is with us and January is half over already and not a squeak from me. Well, I've been busy with editing and making music for the WHR Postcard MK2.

I've been working on the Fred DVD which is coming along nicely and is nearly done. Fred has been very helpful in finding pictures to illustrate his story mostly they have been prints which I've scanned but he has also found some nice 35mm slides which I need to get digitised. Also pending for this project is a quick trip up the FR to get some shots of various places mentioned which we didn't get in September. I should get this done in February half term when the railway will be back in one piece and the P Way guys will have a minute to help me.

In addition to 'Fred - the movie' I've been putting together a DVD postcard for the marketing dept which they will give away when Princess goes to Paddington in March. It will have three main chapters being an advert for Snowdonia and 5 minute packages of the FR and the WHR. These are pretty much finished having used some of the music I did for the Year in Snowdonia DVD.

The music for the new WHR postcard is coming along and I've re cut the video to hit the various changes in the music. I've just got a new drum module from eBay which has nicer sounds on than the Akai machine I've been using previously. It's always nice to have a new toy to play with and often inspires new ideas.

New drum box is bottom right

The other new toy which I haven't actually got yet is a new disk printer as the old one is pretty worn out. The new one can do 100 disks in a batch rather than doing them one at a time as I have to do now. It should be better quality printing and save me time when in 'factory' mode.

The camera hasn't been entirely idle either. I've been amassing footage of the rebuilding of harbour station and should have a progress report to show you sometime next week. The new points are being delivered tomorrow which should be interesting.