The Big Trip: Overview

Burned Out

Having worked on a major project at the office for nearly a year — and, to a lesser extent, needing to take a break from my studies in order to create my commercial for the Union Pacific’s “Great Big Rollin’ Railroad” video remake contest — Deb and I planned a rather ambitious two-week road trip across the Midwest. As planned, the trip contained several key elements that made this trip one of our most anticipated journeys and it did not disappoint.

The General Idea

The timing of the trip was dictated by the annular eclipse which occurred on May 20, 2012. After studying multiple possible locations, with the help of Google Maps, I picked a location on the Union Pacific’s Caliente Subdivision at Barclay, Nevada to view and photograph the eclipse from. I have never chased on the Caliente Subdivision before and this location offered a decent alignment between the center-line of the eclipse and the UP trackage. My hope was to get a photo of a train with the eclipse occurring in the background. Once the eclipse had subsided, we were clear to go anywhere and do anything.

In considering additional possible destinations for the remainder of our trip, and thus the route as well, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to go see several places we have always wanted to visit. For me that were the mainlines in Wyoming, including the famous Powder River Basin, and Nebraska. For Deb it was the historic overland trails in that part of the country and Yellowstone National Park. She is a big fan of wildlife and there are few better locations to see wildlife than Yellowstone.

Our Planned Route for the Trip.
The dashed line is our return leg. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

For the uninitiated, the region we chose to visit is steeped with historical significance as the Nebraska/Wyoming area is where the main routes of the immigrant and homesteader trails pass through. Deb and I have always appreciated the struggles of the American pioneers and mountain men that led the way west. In fact, the American western history is one of our favorites periods. As such, our two desires dovetailed nicely together — we would chase trains on the heavily trafficked mainlines throughout Nebraska and Wyoming and visit key historical locations that we have always read about. Yellowstone National Park turned out to be the icing on the cake.

After much discussion and even bartering, we decided on a route that would afford us an opportunity to see the following locations and sites:

• Solar Eclipse Train Shot - Barclay, NV - UP’s Caliente Subdivision
• Golden Spike National Historic Site - Promontory, UT
• UP’s Evanston Subdivision from Ogden, UT to Granger, WY
• Jackson Hole, WY, the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone National Park
• Independence Rock State Historic Site
• Casper WY, and the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center
• Powder River Basin - Bill, WY - BNSF’s and UP’s Orin Subdivision
• Bailey Yard - North Platt, NE (Golden Spike Visitor’s Center)
• Nebraska Mainlines - UP’s South Morrill, Kearney, and Columbus Subdivisions
• UP’s Harriman Dispatch Center - Omaha NE
• Cheyenne, WY - UP’s Sidney Subdivision
• UP’s Moffat Tunnel and UP’s Moffat Tunnel Subdivision
• UP’s Gila and Yuma Subdivisions
• …and all historic points in-between!

Due to the length of the trip and the distances involved, we had to forgo a few locations such as Devil’s Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands of South Dakota. Also the return portion of the trip, in which we chose to return by a different route than taken during our outbound track, was expendable, should it be necessary.

Hurry Up and Wait

We had about five weeks to prepare our gear and make final preparations. We both looked forward to the trip immensely and the weeks before passed every so slowly it seemed.  We packed anything and everything that we thought we might need along the way and then I packed some more stuff — tow gear, emergency equipment, and personal protection devices — just in case.

It turned out to be a great trip, despite some things not going in our favor, to say the least. In the next post, we’ll begin our Big Trip!

Our Rig - Our home away from home. A Ford F-250 4x4 with a fully-equipped Lance 845 Camper.

My Submission to Union Pacific's "Great Big Rollin' Railroad" Video Remake Contest

…or The Last Six Months of My Life

At the beginning of the year I came across this press release disclosing the fact that the Union Pacific Railroad would be holding a contest to launch the celebrations for their 150th year. It sounded like a perfect opportunity for me to expand my foray into railroad graphic arts so I eagerly set about to create a submission for the contest:

Omaha, Neb., January 03, 2012 – As part of the launch of its 150th anniversary celebration website, Union Pacific Railroad will award more than $35,000 in prizes to the top entries that remake the company’s classic 1970s television commercial, “We Can Handle It.”

Video remake contestants can find information, rules, sheet music to the commercials Great Big Rollin’ Railroad theme song, and other resources at www.up150.com. Entries are encouraged from all music genres including blues, reggae, pop, country, rock, hip hop, rap, jazz and others. The grand prize winner will receive $15,000, two finalists will receive $5,000 each and six runners up will receive $1,000 each. One entry each month also will win receive $1,000. Entry deadline is July 1, 2012, and contestants must be 18 years of age or older.

The original We Can Handle It television spots featured hand-clapping, foot-stomping employees from across the Union Pacific network singing the Great Big Rollin’ Railroad lyrics in a variety of settings, some more on key than others. Several different versions of the commercials were produced and aired. Still popular today, the Great Big Rollin’ Railroad ring tone has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Upon reaching the web site dedicated to UP’s Anniversary, UP150.com, I discovered the “assignment” was as follows:

• Show your railroad pride by remaking the classic Union Pacific Great Big Rollin’ Railroad commercial.
• Create and submit a spot that is no longer than 60 seconds in length featuring the song used in the original Great Big Rollin’ Railroad commercial. You can perform the music in any style you wish, but you cannot change the original lyrics.
• Your Submission should be in commercial form consistent with these Official Rules.

It seemed simple enough except for a few things:

1. I am not musically inclined whatsoever.
2. I lacked the skills necessary to produce the vision of the commercial that I had in mind.

Joe’s Video Submission for the Union Pacific’s “Great Big Rollin’ Railroad” Video Remake Contest

My vision was to have the commercial based around a museum setting that showcased some key Union Pacific exhibits and remain close to the historical significance of the various milestones in the Union Pacific story. To that end I knew that I would have to virtualize most, if not all of the commercial. I was OK with doing just that since I love technology but the issue was I that I had never done something like this before.

I spent the next few months, (totally neglecting most other aspects of my life like this blog), learning how to build 3-D models and sets and render the same. I learned about animations and key-framing as well as motion graphics and, much to my surprise, how to edit and assemble a musical track. I owe a great deal of thanks to my daughter Jessica and her beau, Joe, for giving me their well-meant musical criticism and suggestions along the way. They are the voices singing the jingle in the commercial and give warmth to the effort.

Eventually the finished effort took shape and the hard part of fine-tuning and tweaking the edits came and went. Just a couple of days before the deadline I was able to submit my entry.

I am happy with the way it turned out except for some saturation issues in some scenes that I can only attribute to the encoding and cross-encoding of the video to shrink a 1.1GB file under the 200MB submission limit imposed by the rules.

I would love to get your feedback on my effort so jump over to the Union Pacific’s 150th Anniversary GBRR site by clicking on the image on the right and check out the video and let me know. Also be certain to look at the other submissions as there are some amazing and some funny videos to be sure!

Update on Friday, June 29, 2012 at 9:56AM by Joe Perry

UPDATE

I am getting feedback that the voting process requires you to create an account and log-in first. That is understandable since the need to “validate” each vote cast. However, some inidividuals say the process is cumbersome and others have voiced privacy concerns. Here’s my suggestions:

1. If You Want an Easy Process — Use the “Sign In With…” option and choose either Facebook or Twitter, provided you have an account with those services.



  

2. If You Are Concerned With Privacy — Use the “Sign Up” and create an account on the UP150.com site directly. This will require you to validate your email address by clicking on a link in an email that the site will immediately send you upon signing up, but you don’t have to worry about the site having access to your Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Unique Track Side Photo and Viewing Opportunity

NASA’s Annular Solar Eclipse of 2012 MAY 20 Web Site

First Off, An Apology

I want to apologize for being rather remiss in my upkeep of this blog. Since my last post a lot of things have happened for me — all good — which left me over committed. I am working on a major project that required me to learn new computer graphic technologies that I have never done before. Also, I have received numerous requests to publish some of my work which required my attention as well. I will strive to keep current posts coming as I continue spread myself a tad bit too thin.

Coming in May 2012, A Rare Opportunity

Now I am not an astronomer, nor a scientist, at any level so keep that in mind as you read this post. I do, as does Deb, enjoy amateur astronomy though and we try to follow or view most astronomical events as time permits. As such, there is an upcoming event that we are excited about along with the photographic possibilities that come along with it.

The event is a solar eclipse — an annular solar eclipse to be exact. (From Wikipedia.org: “An annular eclipse occurs when the Sun and Moon are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun. Hence the Sun appears as a very bright ring, or annulus, surrounding the outline of the Moon.”) It will happen on May 20, 2012.

Having never photographed during an eclipse event, I am curious about what opportunities might exist so we are committed to being in place to see the eclipse somewhere track side. As good as the map on the NASA web site is, it didn’t speak to traffic volumes on the various subdivisions that I am not versed with so I opted to make a map specifically for my research efforts.

I took the eclipse trajectory datum and overlaid it on a map of the railroads with line size denoting traffic levels, which I got from the FRA web site, and then placed that on top of a geographic representation of the western states. Click on the map below and you too can use the map for your planning efforts as well.

There are precautions and requisite equipment required to not only photograph the event but also to protect the health of your eyesight so use the NASA web site as a starting point to do your research and gain an appreciation of, not only the risks, but also the rewards of photographing the event. (You can click on the web graphic on the right to open the NASA web site in a new window.)

We are presently planning our adventure so I don’t know where exactly we will be but we will be somewhere shooting video and photos — of that you can be certain.

(If any of you have experience in photographing an eclipse or during an eclipse feel free to give me your story and/or recommendations. Thanks!)

The path of the centerline of the solar eclipse overlaid a rail map. Click the image to download a high-res version.
[3/24/2012] © Copyright 2012, ChasingSteel.com.

REMEMBER: Do not attempt to observe the partial or annular phases of any eclipse with the naked eye. Failure to use appropriate filtration may result in permanent eye damage or blindness!