Ron Keiser's "Cascade & Silverton" F Scale Layout
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- čas přidán 22. 12. 2023
- Ron was a conductor on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. The route was originally built by the Denver & Rio Grande Western.
www.durangotrain.com/history/
His layout is in the 24' x 36' (7m x 11m) basement of a condominium in Arvada, Colorado. There are 9 locomotives, 39 structures, 135 human figures and 2 tunnels on the layout.
The town of Cascade was actually a construction camp when the Silverton line was built in 1881.
All of the locomotives and rolling stock have been modified, either by dusting (weathering), and working magnetic air hoses.
The time period for this line is `1942, when the D&RGW was in its heyday. This was a good time frame, as it allowed him to use both lettering styles the Grande had on their equipment at the time. It also interchanged with the Rio Grande Southern back then. All of the locomotives except the Shay actually worked in Durango, either as a switcher, or on the Silverton mixed train.
Locomotives:
Loco #476 (Chili line Train) Accucraft 2-8-2 , a K-28 class loco
Loco #453 Accucraft K-27 2-8-2 (long freight)
Loco #375 (work train loco) a 2-8-0 C-25 class loco.
Loco #340 Accucraft 2-8-0 C-19
Loco #346 Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 C-19
Loco #40 Bachmann Spectrum Rio Grande Southern C-19
Galloping Goose #7 Accucraft Rio Grande Southern
Shay #3 Bachmann Spectrum 38 Ton Silverton Railroad
Loco #345 Bachmann Spectrum Rio Grande C-19
Cameraman Notes:
I used a Sony PXW-Z150 and PXW-X70 camera - primarily in manual exposure and manual focus mode. I also used a DJI Osmo Pocket 2 (which was sometimes mounted to a custom flatcar.) Most of the lighting is the original track lighting on the layout. Some scenes were supplemented with LED panel lights. Audio is from a Sennheiser MKE 440 external microphone.
I spent about 24 hours at the layout capturing video and over 100 hours editing in Final Cut Pro. - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Super. An incredible layout. The camera was smooth, and the detail. Fn3 is becoming popular, and I'd love to have D&RGW K-28 #478, (My favorite narrow gauge steam locomotive) D&RGW K-27 #464, two dozen gondolas filled with pipe, a caboose, and a railroad like this to operate it all on. Seeing #476 was a treat. Hello from the Tracy Mountain Railway in Colorado. 💙 T.E.N.
Hi James, fantastic video of Ron Kreiser's F Scale layout. I love this three foot track because I like to drive myself. I think locomotives like the C-19, K27, K36 and K37 are great. Thanks for the nice video and Merry Christmas. Many greetings from Germany.
Glad you enjoyed it
Beautiful layout in every way. His attention to detail creates a wonderful slice of life in a by-gone era. And your camera work puts the viewer right into the middle of the place and time creating an immersive experience that feels like a cherished memory of place once lived in.
Outstanding collaboration of two creators that clearly have an enduring lifetime love of railroading.
Thanks for sharing James. Merry Christmas.
Really awesome! 👍👍👍 Greetings from Austria 🇦🇹
Good to know that this video has international appeal!
Simply incredible!
Beautiful layout
If I were going to build a train layout, this is what I would want it to look like!
Beautiful layout.
Very Nice!!!!!!!!!
Very nice video.
Fantastic!
Exquisite modelling - but what sets this video apart is what is too often overlooked - the VIDEO. Good stable camera (too many great layouts spoiled by shaky, too-fast-moving, etc). Good depth of filed (easier to do in larger scales) adds to realism, & little shooting "off set" (except some Point Of View "cab ride" shots, which is nearly impossible to not show the room). Good music & sound, too. Very exciting presentation!
Thanks! The bulk of the camera work was done after manually measuring focus distances and using the focus magnifier function of the Sony cameras, along with an external monitor. Tripods were used for all video - including a Manfrotto 055 that features the column operating in both vertical and horizontal modes (which is commonly used in food photography.)
The commonly seen auto-exposure readjustments reacting to dark locomotives & bright boxcars were eliminated by using manual exposures. In order to use shutter speeds of 1/180 - 1/250th of second on the Sony cameras to capture detailed, in-motion rivets I had to use an ISO of 1000 to 1600. (I didn't use a higher ISO so that I didn't get "noise" in the dark shadow areas.).
The sensor of the Pocket 2 provides clean shadows and blacks up to ISO 3200 - much better than the Sonys! This allowed for a minimum shutter speed of 1/200th of a second for all the camera car work. Much color-grading was resolve high-contrast and low contrast lighting situations that varied significantly on the camera car video. This required multiple adjustments throughout the video clip using keyframes (and not merely one exposure adjustment for the full duration of the clip.). I controlled the Pocket 2 with an iPhone to set exposure and point of focus because the screen on the camera is quite diminutive (and has been greatly increased on the Pocket 3.)
Locomotive headlights were sometimes quite bright and I used masks to reduce the headlight luminance - particularly when the Pocket 2 faced the the front of the locomotive while the camera car was pushed in front of the locomotive.
If bigboy is placed on the layout if Will definitely be the biggest among the others
And the first narrow gauge Big Boy in history is born. A G scale Big Boy fits the track, but he is using G scale track as 3 foot narrow gauge, or Fn3, like HO & HOn3, or O & On30, F & Fn3, and the locomotives are larger by scale than the Big Boy. 💙 T.E.N. P.S. I'm not sure if F scale standard gauge (F gauge) model track exists. 🙂
Pretty sure this layout was also on the ‘22 convention layout tour.
He is a Denver Garden Railway Society member.
From where did Ron source the great variety of figures?
I'm in the Denver Metro area Do you have any extra G gauge tracks
Ron and I are members of the Denver Garden Railway Society. denvergardenrailway.org. We have swap meets every February and June - you could find LGB and Aristocrat track at our swap meets. Also, Rocky Mountain Train Supply has a selection of used G gauge rolling stock and track. rockymountaintrainsupply.com
Layout size ? Thank you.
From the description. "His layout is in the 24' x 36' (7m x 11m) basement of a condominium in Arvada, Colorado. "
What is F scale?
F scale is 1:20.3 scale. The 45 mm track gauge becomes 3' prototypical. LGB trains are typically 1:24 scale, as are Bachmann. Aristocraft made 1:29 scale trains. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_scale
@@JamesMackayColorado is it about the same size as G scale or is it bigger than G scale?
I think it is supposed to be narrow gauge g scale
Correct! LGB trains are G scale - 1:24.
F scale trains use the same 45mm track gauge, but are scaled 1:20.3 as the 45mm track gauge becomes the 3" dimension that was commonly used by Colorado narrow gauge trains such as the Denver & Rio Grande, Rio Grande Southern, Colorado Central, Denver South Park & Pacific, etc.@@paulwebber1657
F scale (1:20.3) is about 20% larger than G scale (typically 1:24)@@TexasRailfan21-RailfanRyan
Beautiful layout in every way. His attention to detail creates a wonderful slice of life in a by-gone era. And your camera work puts the viewer right into middle of the place and time creating an immersive experience that feels like a cherished memory of place once lived in.
Outstanding collaboration of two creators that clearly have an enduring lifetime love of railroading.
Thanks for sharing James. Merry Christmas.
I enjoy doing camera and editing work in the 21st century! Many of the scenes had numerous effects applied to them - including separately adjusting the shadows, mid-tones, highlights and each of their saturations. Some clips were edited to have warm-balance highlights and cold-balance shadows for increased chromaticity in the final image. Even so, bright roofs and bright headlights sometimes needed to be masked to achieve a pleasant luminance that fit with the rest of the image.
I never could have done this with the reversal films of 20th century movie making (and the merely ~1/2 stop of exposure latitude that they allowed.)