Western Railroad Discussion > Leaving Wichita Falls

Seeing Nomo's and Lotharb's posts of recent, I put together some video I shot about 6 weeks ago of a BNSF train leaving Rhea, TX. Rhea is the double track approaching Wichita Falls station from the south on BNSF's Wichita Falls Sub. This container train had just been given its track warrants as I arrived, so I threw up the camera and recorded the train as it approached. You can clearly see some of the hogbacks that Nomo & Lotharb documented - the line goes up and down like this pretty much the entire way between Amarillo and Ft. Worth.

If you look carefully in the background, you'll see an empty BNSF coal train that had just cleared the south (east) switch and was waiting to head into WF for a crew change.

Thanks for looking.

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Nice video Eric. Nice and steady with no herky jerky panning and out of control zooming. Good job! Also, nice job with the editing and use of the transition effect between the different angles. I did notice when the engines left the frame going away from you, you used a page peeler effect instead of a cross fade transition effect you were using. Was this the way you wanted it? Usually a page peeler effect is something used at the end of the final scene.
You've come a long ways with your train videos in such a very short time. Way to go!

George

well done video. what kind of camera were you using?

66

Thanks for posting. I've always have a place in my heart and some good memories from rail fanning the Wichita Falls area.

Thanks all for your thoughts!

66, the camera is a Panasonic HDC-SD60 (Would you believe I bought it because it sounds like a locomotive model?). Its HD, but I'm still learning how to render videos from HD size to TO size and maintain the quality.

What kind of techniques are used to run a train over territory like that? It seems like very specialized work and I'm sure it takes some creative throttle work to TRY and not break anything and keep from getting kicked around. Has some management genius developed software to run the territory as smoothly as possible in that kind of country relegating the hogger to an "educated observer." I can only assume railroads are always trying to save a buck on fuel, brake shoes, and avoid broken knuckles, etc.