Search - Great Trains of America: Western Railroading on DVD

Great for some --Miserable for others

07/13/2001

(2 out of 5 stars)

"If you want to spend money on a tourist train infomercial this is a good set(I bought east and west in one set). If you were planning a tourist train ride and want a sampler of what is our there this CD set would get you started. Great footage, scenes, maps, times etc. A very good job and a lot of information with wonderful people.OK now why do I hate it.Simply, not enough trains and locomotive shots, if you are into trains,trains,trains, you might as well try to use this set to replace your worn out frisbees.There are way too many interviews, talking heads, stupid tourist scene shots, wasted footage on kids heads, old peoples heads,hungry people, more people. They should have called this "Pictures of people who like trains"I really dont want to spend my money on a train CD that shows repeated footage of people being fed cheap food in a cafeteria. How about this... the inside of a bunch of offices, with more talking heads. They could have used space for some really good stills etc.Some of the train engineer interviews are good, and the video conversion is decent, but there is too much "tourist filler ugly wasted moronic footage" and not enough great train footage, if you have ever seen good train videos. How many people do we have to look at in each section,wasnt this supposed to be about trains?? Sorry, but this is a canned production that would make a Disney hype package look amatuerish on any day,but if you are wanting to take a train trip......then buy this..... it is superb, you could probably find more faster on the Web, and not have to suffer through all the people shots,but it is a great tourist CD package. The side shots of trains being worked on are ok first time around but that becomes filler too.In all fairness they were trying to capture the whole train tourist experience scenery,the spirit behind it all and present a well rounded CD, so there it succeeds,very very well.Next time around more trains , way,way,way, less people shots and train rider shots and train robber shots, and kids, and more kids, and more kids, and people on a bench, and people eating and people walking,and people in line and people in offices,and more people (I was amazed there wasnt a bathroom on the train shot) ......IF ITS GREAT TRAINS OF AMERICA... THEN BRING ON THE TRAINS. Keep up the good work!!!"

In support of the other review...

Koolasky | 08/03/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"...an episode was selected off this disc at random (Grand Canyon Railroad) and by studying both screen seconds and total shots, I found that a ridiculous ONE-THIRD of the show had tourists as the obvious focus of attention, i. e. "cute" kids, elderly people, people looking out of windows, etc... On top of that, the steam locomotive in action recieved only about 5.5 minutes out of the show's 30-minute running time, which is about ONE-FIFTH of the show. Excuse me???

When neither of those things are on screen, it's mostly talking heads. One or two of the speakers are good -focusing on the railroad's history - but the others were terrible - in paticular a conductor who won't stop gushing about "the smiles on peoples' faces" and how "if they're happy, I'm happy."

From my statistics, it's obvious why these shows were produced - simply as giant, half-hour long commercials. That's not a bad thing if you're planning a family vacation, but if you're here to see steam locomotives, turn elsewhere. If that's the case, I highly recommend the far more professionally made Pentrex videos instead of this gettaway-planner schlock."