Producer: Highball
Locations: Allentown, Buffalo, River Line …
Timeframe: 1990s
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes
Source: P. Crook
Best of Conrail. Starts out with good intentions. Ends up quite a distorted mess. Someone dropped the ball on a video transfer. Unwatchable after that failure point.
Contains previous material from: Winter on the B&A, plus Conrail’s River Line. Eastern focus.
Quality Control Advisement.
A single DVD-R. Detailed Chapter Menu. Narrated by Peter Falconi. No maps or extras.
Overall, it has some fine Videography. Although, excessive time spent in the rain. This quickly becomes tedious! Doesn’t matter much. Poor quality release.
The image plays soft on modern, HD equipment. Typical for videos shot from this time. Live sounding audio is fine.
The narrative is fairly basic. Locations and weather conditions. Some callouts on train symbols.
Too much time is spent here. Foul weather conditions are not conducive to good railfanning. Waste of time, past a few shots for flavor. This in Pennsylvania.
Better weather at Bear Mountain. Conrail River Line.
Most of this show plays fine, as shown. Approximately 1/3 left to play. The notch appears on the screen. Following Chapter begins the major problems.
All of a sudden. Big Quality Control issues. Follow these 3 screenshots. Same train is approaching. Check the weird bends in the steel structure. Top of the screen. Note the black notch.
See the Windshield bending effect? Varies by frame. Worse on closeups and curves. Large screens amplify to unwatchable!
Now, the numberboard appears to melt. Well, that should illustrate the problems. Maybe, one additional look…
This shows the distortion really well. Reminds me of Gumby. Seriously, a poor transfer of some sort.
Best of Conrail
This release is ruined by heavy distortion. Someone did not perform a proper transfer. The result is unwatchable picture, afterwards. Plenty of solid Conrail shows available.
Rating: Quality Control Advisement
American Train Video Reviews 