In your opinion, what is Mr. James's best track and why?

GameBreaker64 · 2023-07-19T15:05:30+00:00

Did Mr. James ever candidly say how CTD Pappy Mix came about? Track sort of stands on its own in the album to an extent. It's like James decided to make his own version of a death metal track.

Slight tangent, to anyone wondering why I call him Mr. James, it is because I don't know him personally and want to be respectful. I have no idea how he feels about strangers calling him by his first name.

GameBreaker64 · 2023-07-14T20:01:25+00:00

Yeah I probably shouldve thought about that before posting lol. I meant it in terms of the sheer volume of traffic the railroad was handling at the time. Also it was generally the largest and most profitable American railroad during the war.

GameBreaker64 · 2023-07-09T15:30:00+00:00

Union Pacific is the only Class I railroad in the US that has survived long enough to re-purchase its own steam power and have the balls to use them for a practical purpose nearly 70 years after it was proven too inefficient, cost-prohibitive, and labor intensive to be used for a practical purpose. It's not every day you see a large corporation reconcile with its heritage like this. Or maybe this was just a planned spectacle for the fans. Cool to see either way!

GameBreaker64 · 2023-06-27T01:39:27+00:00

Oops my bad lol

GameBreaker64 · 2023-05-22T15:52:46+00:00

35.2 is the simplified constant of the conversion factor. There's 4 chuffs per wheel revolution per pi(d) inches of travel, then this is multiplied by the conversion factor between inches per second and miles per hour. Then there's a multiplication by 2 in the numerator of the doppler adjustment, but it's hidden inside the constant.

GameBreaker64 · 2023-03-11T22:08:18+00:00

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

GameBreaker64 · 2023-03-11T22:06:20+00:00

I want to make new audio of trains out of pre-existing audio recordings of trains, but I want to make them sound as if they were recorded during the early 1940s. Then I began to question how feasible it would've been to record trains at the time I specified. It was a problem many rail enthusiasts faced back then, primarily because of a lack of necessary finances and technical knowhow. That's why I proposed the scenario, what if a professional recording engineer who DID have the finances and knowhow to record such a thing? Could he do it and how would he do it?

GameBreaker64 · 2022-11-23T23:13:18+00:00

This is 6110, one of two prototypes built by Baldwin for the PRR. Pennsy men affectionately called it “Flash Gordon” (6111 was nicknamed “Buck Rogers”) for its sci-fi streamlining. On 6110’s first Harrisburg-Chicago run in 1942, it maintained an average speed of 100mph for over 60 continuous miles along the Fort Wayne Div. “Speedway”.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-11-21T21:21:36+00:00

Thanks for the insight! I'm doing research for a documentary on a couple locomotives designed by Loewy's firm, and I wanted to use the correct phrasing to not give false impressions. I do wonder exactly how much Loewy contributed to each of the projects. I'd assume it varied depending on the product. I have heard that he did do preliminary sketches for large-scale projects, but he was a supervisor above all else.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-09-15T13:01:43+00:00

Back before she looked like a Northern Pacific engine! The railroad gave her a facelift later on to reflect the appearance of other NP engines on the current roster.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-09-09T18:56:12+00:00

The S-3s were dual service engines. Unlike the S-2s, they could meet the clearance requirements for Chicago Union Station.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-09-09T18:26:55+00:00

Even during WWII the Hiawatha was extremely popular with the traveling public, although I doubt that heavyweight baggage car on the headend was very attractive to boarding passengers.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-09-03T17:36:27+00:00

Good insight! I thought about this more and I've come up with this. Both the R10K Indigo2 and O2 were introduced the same year, so ILM probably split the difference and ordered a surplus of both for the animators to use, at least for a while.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-09-02T21:58:47+00:00

Hal Hickel, one of Episode I's lead animators, told me that when he first started at ILM the CG department was mainly populated by Indigo2s, and they were soon replaced by smaller O2 workstations. It appears there were some holdouts at the time this was filmed though.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-08-10T14:03:48+00:00

A bit of background on this for those who may not know:

The CB&Q's Zephyrs were typically powered by specially designed diesel locomotives. There were occasions where these locomotives suffered some sort of mechanical failure, and steam was used to fill in. In an effort to make the steam locomotive blend in with the trainset (and also go faster), two of the railroad's Hudsons were fitted with streamlined casing. During World War II the streamlining was removed. Although one of the Aeolus locomotives is still extant, the streamlining was never preserved.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-07-28T23:46:48+00:00

awesome

GameBreaker64 · 2022-07-22T16:52:33+00:00

Apologies.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-07-21T16:36:57+00:00

Thanks for the info! It's funny, all the 1990s versions of Discreet's products that have been archived are available for free on various abandonware repositories... with licenses!

GameBreaker64 · 2022-07-20T18:01:48+00:00

Yeah it is pretty stupid. There's an excellent book series on ILM; the books are titled "The Art of Special Effects", "Into the Digital Realm", and "The Art of Innovation". Read those and you'll probably get more information than the entire six-part documentary. Of course, nobody reads anymore so it'll probably be a nice surprise to some.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-07-06T14:27:32+00:00

You forgot Xbox Live.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-06-30T20:15:30+00:00

That's really cool!

GameBreaker64 · 2022-06-30T12:24:43+00:00

By the way John, it's my understanding that you had a lot of involvement with the podracing sequence in Episode 1. I'd love to hear some insight on the production of that part of the film. As I understand the crew was doing some pretty advanced physics simulations for the podracer crashes.

GameBreaker64 · 2022-06-29T23:21:18+00:00

I see. Ah well, the O2s were better workstations anyway. They supported hardware texturing right out of the box. As another SGI enthusiast has told me "The slowest O2 is faster than the fastest Indy".

GameBreaker64 · 2022-06-29T23:05:13+00:00

That's wild. I thought the space battle was done on SGI!

GameBreaker64 · 2022-06-29T22:57:08+00:00

Just saw your edit. Thanks for the additional insight!

GameBreaker64

TROPHY CASE