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Real or not?

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Real or not?
Posted by CMStPnP on Thursday, January 24, 2019 2:03 PM

This looks a little staged to me via trick photography but maybe not.    Location is Brookfield, WI on the Canadian Pacific.    You can see it no longer is directional running from Milwaukee Road days, CP upgraded the signalling so that trains can run in either direction on either track through Brookfield, WI.    Frequently it is dispatched that way now, in the Milwaukee Road days it happened only rarely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUOJ3SiHESc

The Depot was built shortly after the Civil War and is to be moved across the street and gutted for as a new restaurant.     This is Brookfields idea of historical preservation, just preserve the shell.    It is the second oldest building in the town and dates back to when the only line through the town was the now abandoned branch to Waukesha (just past the railroad crossing in the background).    Then the tracks to Watertown and later to Portage were built and the depot was renamed Brookfield Jct. for a bit.

 

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Posted by tree68 on Thursday, January 24, 2019 2:57 PM

Engineer likely would really have been on the horn had that actually occurred.  It's easy to stop the camera (on a tripod), then restart it as the train passed.  

Just like all those home movies where Janie suddenly "disappears" as she's walking down the street.

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, January 24, 2019 3:10 PM

Full FAKE and poorly done at that.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, January 24, 2019 3:19 PM

Shame because most of the 'usual' mistakes in this sort of thing were avoided.  Note that the clouds don't move between the 'dive' and the time the camera begins to autocorrect for darker perceived conditions as the locomotives pass.  You would have to single-frame-step at about 0:58 to confirm that the diver disappears momentarily before the nose of the locomotive blocks view of him.

As noted, the horn would have been liberally applied, and you'd at least hear the brakes being set up on the consist; likewise, no one seems to have commented on the car cruising across what is supposedly an activated crossing only "seconds" ahead of the high-speed train.

It also doesn't help the verisimilitude that the 'actor' looks briefly up and toward the track before he steps between the rails and ostentatiously turns his back and 'gets on his phone'.  I suspect he was indeed making sure there wouldn't be an actual train in the shot as set up...

(Not that I encourage this kind of thing -- but had some sound effects been dubbed into this thing, and some very elementary bitwise editing of a couple of video frames to keep the feet in view (or show the fellow getting up from "where he had fallen" after the train passed) it might be very hard to detect the fakery...)

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Thursday, January 24, 2019 3:22 PM

I think it's staged.

I went full-screen on the laptop for a closer look, and before the guy makes his jump at the 57 second mark there's a slight freeze and jitter in the video.

At any rate, how did he get up off the ground and clear to the other side of the depot before the train passed?  That's some hustlin' there, especially through the snow!  And he certainly seems to be a little old for that kind of immature behavior, but of course that's no guarantee of anything.

The depot surviving as a shell?  Not ideal, I'll grant you, but better than no suvival at all.

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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, January 25, 2019 4:02 PM

BaltACD

Full FAKE and poorly done at that.

 

Very very bad editing. Laugh

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Posted by Semper Vaporo on Friday, January 25, 2019 4:22 PM

Also, note that in the part where the train is just about to hit the actor, he is completely horizontal, when leaping off the track, and there is a small spray of snow at his feet.  Yet at the end of the video, it shows a similar scene, probably a rehersal; the actor runs and remains vertical, and there is no spray of snow at his feet.

Amateur videography, but not all that badly done at first glance.

Semper Vaporo

Pkgs.

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