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.

Gelert goes to Beddgelert

Despite the gale force wind and the torrential rain, fourteen hour power cut and so on I hauled my carcas out of bed and made my way to Port this morning. The first thing I did was to fit the camera's rain coat and then mine. With Andrew Thomas I drove to Gelert's Farm just in time to see Lyd with some bogie wagons and a couple of vans rattle over Cae Pawb crossing. I just got the camera set up and got a rather dark bit of video of it. It didn't make the final edit but here it is, just for you.

After that we boarded a WHHR train headed by Gelert and set off for Pont Croesor once we had the token. There was a brief pause at Pen-y-Mount junction while the points were unclamped and re clamped behind us and then we were off to Pont Croesor. The heavy rain continued to fall making shooting difficult as I spent more time cleaning the lens than videoing through it.

The token was exchanged and we set off for Beddgelert. We had a brief pause at Nantmor for a crew briefing on what to do in the long tunnel if the train slipped to a halt and then we were off. Gelert started the train away on the wet 1 in 40 with no bother and rattled through the tunnel with only a brief wheel slip mid way.

We had to wait in the pass for a short while as Jon Whalley the F&WHR chief engineer was joining us by road at Bryn y Felin. The tests concerned the couplings and the tight curves on the WHR. You can see that the footpath beside the line was completely underwater at this point.

Once the tests were completed succesfully we moved off and steamed into Beddgelert station in fine style. This was the furthest that a WHHR train had been on the rebuilt line and hopefully it will mark the beginning of more trains run in better weather. Here is the full trip.

Season's Greetings

Just a quick post to say that I hope you have a merry Christmas and that Father Christmas brings you something nice.

I'll be back in the new year with lots of exciting video projects which you will be the first to hear about.

Ho Ho Ho



Festshopman