Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks.

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks!

I don't have keep alives in my engines unless they come from the factory that way. But the first thing I do with an engine is to check to make sure that all eight (or twelve) wheels are picking up electricity, by running the engine at full speed while holding it on the track with the wheels spinning, over a thin strip of paper towel soaked with alcohol, and changing the position of the paper towel to test each wheel's contact with the rail and with the motor. The alcohol makes sure there isn't any lube oil on the wheels. Sometimes the contact wires between the truck and the decoder come loose in shipment, so I have to carefully solder them back on. This usually involves taking the shell off, which usually involves removing the couplers. My guess is that one of your trucks isn't picking up electricity at all. That happened to me once recently with a Athearn SW1500 which arrived from the factory with one of the truck wires loose, so I had to solder it back on. But when you say "of course the pickup is rough over yard ladders", I would also carefully inspect the railheads near the insulated frogs to make sure they're clean, and if there are any point rails with intermittent electrical contact, solder a tiny wire across any hinges to make sure that contact is happening the way it should. I've been amazed at how much careful work it takes (with a magnifying glass sometimes) to get all the ballast glue off the top of the rail after ballasting. Thanks for your question, and I hope this helps.

Thanks 👍

​@@muchfunwithtrainsno problem

Thanks Brian! All these engines look great to me!

Thanks Ron!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Yup! Thanks!

I think the DB sound is great. I've set the decoder so that the DB can actually slow the train. The transition from dynamics to motoring is a good effect...

Thanks Randy!

Glad you like it! Thanks!

Glad you liked it!

Thanks Ron!

So true, and I forgot to mention it. I have some small clipboards that I make lists on, and hang them around the layout to remind me of the various "punchlist items" that crop up. Sounds like you do the same.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for your comments!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks Randy!

Thanks Ron - it was a beautiful evening! :)

It makes sense that they would combine what used to be separate trains. Thanks for your comment!

@@muchfunwithtrains Yeah, potentially taking traffic from the Q-CHCSSE which doesn't run so much anymore.

Just what I was thinking....

Glad to hear it. I haven't seen such a long string of empties in a while, but I'm usually down there in the morning when they rarely run those types of trains. I hear them in the middle of the night, though....

@@muchfunwithtrains I think I'm going to go down by the Everett waterfront next weekend 👍

So true! Also, you really notice if details are out of place or missing on the larger models - N scale is much more forgiving...

Thanks. What did you like about it?

My pleasure. Thanks for your comment. Looking forward to the Lynnwood service, too.

Thanks Robin! We care! I think I rode on one of these in the late '90's!

On my last visit to the UK in 1998, I rode a train from Brighton to London in a cramped passenger car during rush hour. I wonder if it was one of these class 108 cars near the end of its life?! Thanks for your comment!

Glad you enjoyed it. We used the NMRA track gauge to make sure the stump wasn't too high, so far so good...

You're welcome Ron. Sorry about the bandwidth problem in the middle of it...

LOL Thanks bud!

Yes, thanks for this. I have some of that 1/16" plex and we just need to cut it in strips and fabricate some mounting sticks and it should work fine. Thanks for your comment and glad you enjoy the layout.

That would make a funny video - a speeded up shot of three people all trying to get their fingers in the right place to rig the cables right! Thanks for the idea! :)

Lol - I bought it at a swap meet, but the rigging of the cables is really complicated and I've been putting it off for years. If you look closely you can see it's a big tangle.

Good!

Thanks!

Thanks for your great question, which I probably should have covered in the presentation, under the topic "point of view", that is, are you trying to simulate being a drone that can follow the train while it's moving, or an observer on the ground watching the train go by, a hiker on a mountain top watching the action down below, or the view out of the engine's cab window (or looking back from the caboose)? If you watch a number of my (and others') videos, you'll see all kinds of approaches, each with pros and cons, and depending on the goal(s) of the video. Most of my videos are spontaneous shots that I take while other people are running trains on my layout. So they're not planned in advance. While I'm taking the shot, I might hold the camera down near the ground, or high up in the air, or I can follow the train along like a drone (if there aren't too many people in the way, which there often are). Once in a while a shot is so captivating that we'll stop the action, back up the trains, and run it a second time with the headlight on, correct whistle signals, less chatter in the room, and so forth. If I have the time and energy to plan a video and shoot it by myself, I do sometimes let a train run around the room in a loop and capture it in different places. But that takes a lot of time, so you won't see that too much in the videos on my channel. "Camera cars" are also a fun way to go, but again they take a lot of planning to execute. Two examples on my channel are : kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o7xynbCG3tionIE.html and kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rN92ndKKmqm8laM.html . You can make a camera car with a $30 "spy cam" propped up in a gondola car, and either run it until its battery runs out or set up a battery pack next to it for several hours of video. Of course then you have to spend several more hours editing it. But that wasn't your question. But to summarize my answer, (1) it depends on the goal of your video which angle is best, and (2) I wouldn't know, because most of my videos are made spontaneously, so what you see is the result of my split-second (and often wrong) decisions about whether the follow the train or stay still and watch the train go by. Thanks again for your excellent question, and I'll probably add a slide on this for the next time I give this presentation.

@muchfunwithtrains thanks so much for your excellent advice. I'd love to go to one of your presentations, but it'd be hard justifying the air ticket to my wife... I have noted that more often than not you're filming trains others are driving, which, if anything, means you can devote your focus to the shots. I could say I've found pretty much all your shots are excellent, although one isn't necessarily privy to what's on the cutting room floor. I'm genuinely interested in learning more, not so much the "good shots", but that sometimes elusive "continuity" or smoothness, the transitions when following a train around. There's that good analogy where the eye (brain) is a wonder at filling in the gaps and there's that oft repeated thing in editing where you film someone walking through a closed door: it can look quite jarring when motion stops to turn the handle and open it: it's better the behind shot showing the hand reaching for the handle, then immediately transitioning to the other side of the door showing it already opening, your brain automatically filling in the action in between. The sudden stopping of motion just looks a bit wrong. Bit like train entering a short tunnel one side, then filming train exiting out the other side: it can look better the train just about to enter the tunnel and an immediate transition to the train just exiting out the other portal. For some reason it looks a bit unnatural to show a train actually entering the tunnel at one end, and then about to exit the other end. I guess it is something to do with the sudden motionless image which acts as a transition between moving shots, especially when we know the subject is moving. Gosh you're a bright person to talk to.

I use Davinci Resolve, which works on both

G'day Ken, and thanks for your comment. I have another clinic coming on "how to use triage to stay focused on building your layout". We addicts have to stick together! :)

@@muchfunwithtrains Too right Burr, We addicts do need to stick together. 😀😀 I think that my channel would have well over 1000 subscribers if I lived in the US. However I do have the best of both, my home layout is Australian and the club's layout is American. Cheers Ken

Thanks Dan, and glad you enjoyed it! Don't hesitate to give me photography tips anytime! :)