HD Trains Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

HD Trains Blu-ray Movie Review

All a-bored, er, aboard.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 7, 2010

There’s an allure to train travel that can’t be underestimated. Instead of dealing with TSA agents, long unforgiving lines, being squeezed into a cigar shaped tube like unfortunate sardines, and a host of other trials that come with air travel, the train aficionado gets to luxuriate in a considerably more relaxed environment. Yes, it certainly takes longer, but it also makes getting there more enjoyable, at least to those who aren’t constantly checking their watches to see how much time has passed. Even train lovers have a hard time traveling on steam powered caravans nowadays, so rare has this form of fuel become. Les Jarrett, who operates Railway Productions, is obviously perhaps more than even a mere “fan” of trains. His video presentations, which number in the scores by now, might be seen by some as approaching obsession. This new four Blu-ray set offers some recent forays into tourist runs of some of the few existing steam lines still extant in the United States. The good news is, these are for the most part well produced efforts, with a nice option to play them either with or without the sparse narration. The bad news, this release virtually defines “niche product,” and aside from those fascinated by trains in general and steam engines in particular, there’s probably little here that will coax the casual viewer to journey along for the ride.

HD Trains contains four Blu-rays, each with its own hour or so long program.

Disc One: Steam Giants

While this is probably the least picturesque of the four installments on this new release, it contains quite a bit of historical background on what the narrator refers to as “big steam,” the behemoths of the steam-powered locomotives that tend to attract the most interest from the public. Here we’re introduced to three historic steam engines, the Nickel Plate 765 from Fort Wayne, Indiana, the “Daylight” Southern Pacific 4449 from my hometown of Portland, Oregon, and Parsons, Kansas’ Union Pacific 844. The first two lines are seen at a regional Train Festival held in Owosso, Michigan, where scores of train lovers gather to ride the beasts on short excursions of approximately 70 miles round trip to nearby Alma, Michigan and back. While there’s frankly not a whole lot to see in this episode, the historical background of the trains is quite interesting, and a number of salient factoids are presented. The Daylight’s Art Deco styling is addressed, as well as the fact that the Union Pacific 844 is the last new steam engine delivered to the Union Pacific (in 1944, believe it or not), making this train the only never retired steam powered engine in the United States fleet.

Disc Two: Winter Steam in the Rockies

This outing is certainly one of the more enchanting from a visual and even aural perspective, as we travel along the Durango and Silverton narrow guage railroad in and around the mountains of Colorado. While we don’t get to see any blizzard-like conditions, there’s a fair amount of snow as the engine chug-chugs its way through mountain passes and stream-filled valleys, with iconic whistle blows echoing through the peaks. The Durango, Colorado station, which is visited throughout this episode, was actually built as long ago as 1882, and remained in service for a century until 1982. This line charters trains to groups who want to recreate what train travel might have been like in the mid-20th century, when the bulk of the trains passing through carried freight, but a car or two for passengers was often appended on the end of the freight cars. This episode also gives some background on the difference between narrow and standard gauges. Some railroads, hoping to save a little construction money, decided on narrow gauge tracks, which span about three feet between the rails. Standard gauge tracks are a fair degree wider, running around four feet, eight and a half inches.

Disc Three: Steam Ghosts

There aren’t really any spectral spirits in this episode, just a historical harkening back to the turn of the 20th century when steam was still de rigeur for train travel. The rugged terrain of places like Ely, Nevada and Heber, Utah are shown, as lines like the Northern Nevada railroad are explored. This line dates from around 1905 and ran until 1983, when Kennecott Copper (which still operates a huge mine west of Salt Lake City) donated the lines to a preservation trust. Like the other episodes contained on this Blu-ray set, Steam Ghosts makes copious use of Google Earth maps in showing the viewer where certain lines go and how they connect. This episode also journeys to other lesser known Utah locales in the beautiful and rustic Wasatch Mountain Range like Wallsburg and Vivian Park. This is probably the least generally engaging episode in the four Blu-ray set, and may well indeed be of interest mostly to those living in or around Nevada and Utah.

Disc Four: Cavalcade of Steam

You might think you’ve set foot back in the 19th century at the start of this episode as several establishing shots show the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish communities in and around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, going about their business in their iconic horse and buggy units. Seeing a steam engine powering through this locale seems perfectly fitting in that context. The first location explored is the Strasburg Railroad, which operates not just a historical steam line for tourists, but a number of touristy shops as well as a really fun looking scale steam line that the kids can ride. Founded in 1832, the Strasburg line is the oldest line in the United States still running under its original charter, though actual passenger service ended in 1919. Though the line is only four and a half miles long, it still caters to hundreds of thousands of tourists per year, who flock to the site to experience the sights, smells and sounds of a historic steam line. This episode then journeys considerably further west to Chama, New Mexico, visiting the Cumbres and Toltec line, which was actually bought by the states of New Mexico and Colorado in 1970 in order to preserve it for future generations. This is another narrow gauge route featuring a steam engine built in 1925. This episode makes a nice, if subtle, case for historic preservation, making it clear the neither of these lines would still be here today without the concerted efforts of concerned citizens and train lovers.

Overall this is a slight but enjoyable set of treks for those with this particular interest. While there probably isn’t enough here to recommend this set beyond its rather narrow audience, the fact that Railway Productions continues to crank out these offerings rather regularly probably speaks to the fact that there are still multitudes of people who enjoy riding, and learning about, historic trains.

HD Trains Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

HD Trains chugs onto Blu-ray with a pretty soft looking AVC encoded transfer in 1080i and a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. There's siimply not the clarity and sharpness here that we've come to expect from most contemporary Blu-rays, even those shot on hi-def video. The interlaced source elements don't help matters, with some artifacting around steam, one of the more prevalent images in this set. The best part of this set are the nicely saturated colors, though again a lot of this set plays out in kind of beige and brown environs like the dusty mountains of Utah and Nevada. Quite a bit of this set actually looks more like upconverted DVD material than actual hi-def imagery.

HD Trains Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Quite a bit better are the audio offerings on all four Blu-rays in this set, and there are four mixes on each episode. While there isn't much narration on any of these outings (which I personally think is a good thing), you can actually choose to watch all of these without any narration at all, instead listening to the soothing sound of the steam at work with the occasional subtle underscore. All four episodes therefore come with lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes either including narration or without it, as well as two more lossy mixes in Dolby Digital 2.0, which do the same thing. My hunch is most viewers will want to watch these the first time with the narration, in order to get the historical background information included on each episode, and then to rewatch at their leisure with just the sound effects. Both of the DTS mixes are really quite robust, if obviously narrow and without a wealth of directionality. Low end is full, especially as trains rumble by, and the narration is clear and crisp.

HD Trains Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are provided on this budget priced set.

HD Trains Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Topics has really been stretching the envelope of what a budget priced label can provide to the Blu-ray consumer. Several of their recent releases have been top notch efforts that belie their "low expectation" consumer appeal, delivering solid content and really top notch video and audio. This HD Trains set is probably too much of a niche product to really reach a large audience. Though the audio here is very good, and wisely offers two options for each episode, the video quality is a good deal softer than we've come to expect from Blu-ray presentations, even budget priced ones. Train lovers are probably going to love these outings, but others will probably want to fly over this particular release.