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TRAIN VIDEO CONCEPT
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[quote user="rixflix"] <p>Bucyrus,</p><p>we may be kindred spirits and I hate to dampen them, but how can you think that the railroads would ever go for this idea. It wouldn't tuirn a buck. </p><p>No, they might employ their advertising firms to do the camera work, but never us fans, buffs and nuts.</p><p>[/quote]</p><p>Rixflix,</p><p>No need to apologize for the "Don't Bogart" comment.</p><p>I realize this won't be easy, and the hardest part will be convincing the railroad companies. But I only have to convince one. And I would not approach them as a fan or buff with a crazy, half-baked idea. In fact the idea needs to be fully tested and perfected before approaching the railroads with it. Beyond that, I would not generalize about what the railroad companies will or will not do. </p><p>There are actually three parts:</p><p>1) Design, build, and test the boom.</p><p>2) Procure the camera and sound recording equipment.</p><p>3) Convince a railroad company to try it.</p><p>I have no idea what equipment to use for the video and sound. I would seek a second party for that component. My main contribution would be the design and construction of the boom. This is a big commitment because it would need to be done before approaching railroad companies. Certainly the cost of building the boom would be several thousand dollars. It would need to be operational with its own power supply. Any power or control signal failure would cause the boom to drop by gravity. </p><p>I would lift the boom with a pneumatic cylinder using compressed air from a pre-charged, portable reservoir. A battery would also be needed to power the cylinder control valve, which would spring to vent position with a loss of electric power. The boom arm would need parallelogram linkage to keep the camera level as it is raised and lowered.</p><p>I have not analyzed the economic viability of this venture as a business, but I do speculate that the product would have significant value. I can visualize the product result, and consider <em><u>spectacular</u></em> to be the low baseline of descriptive adjectives. As I mentioned above, the closest thing that I have seen to this approach is the use of a helicopter. Certainly helicopter video captures the fullness of the birds-eye-view. But when you get that high in the sky, the view becomes somewhat of an abstraction of the actual experience on the ground; just a pleasing graphic design. Right now I am just in the thinking stages of this concept, and I thought I would throw it out to see if anybody had anything to add. </p>
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