11-10-2009, 12:20 PM
Just spotted an interesting item from Friday November 6th in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten:
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Oslo-Bergen railroad line (which crosses the mountainous central spine of Norway to get from Oslo in the lowlands in SE Norway to Bergen on the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of Norway, Norwegian TV channel NRK 2 has recorded a full trip from Oslo to Bergen across the mountains.
It was a major project for a young nation - Norway only regained it's full independence in 1905, after being par of Denmark for about 400 years from the late 1300s until 1814, and being forced into a union with Sweden for 93 years, from 1814 until 1905.
The trip, which is about 500 kilometers long, and will pass through a total of 182 tunnels in 7hrs and 16 minutes, was recorded in October 2009, using 4 cameras - one showing the engineer's view, two showing the view out windows on either side of the train, and one used to record footage among the passengers.
They plan to actually broadcast the entire trip, ie starting their broadcast at 7:55 pm CET on Friday November 27th, and continuing until a little past 3 am local time, alternating between showing footage shot from the four cameras on the train, and (when the train is in tunnels) showing historic footage from the construction of the railroad line (ie from 1909).
Sounds like a dream situation for a hardcore railfan. I am actually impressed that management at NRK TV went for it. Of course, they do have three TV channels (of which NRK2 is the channel for documentary shows and suchlike), and they are funded by the tax payers, so they don't have to please people selling soap or cereal, but still.
I might need to get a recorder with a hard disk that can record a 7 hour show, just for the heck of it :-)
More history (in English) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Line
Grin,
Stein
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Oslo-Bergen railroad line (which crosses the mountainous central spine of Norway to get from Oslo in the lowlands in SE Norway to Bergen on the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of Norway, Norwegian TV channel NRK 2 has recorded a full trip from Oslo to Bergen across the mountains.
It was a major project for a young nation - Norway only regained it's full independence in 1905, after being par of Denmark for about 400 years from the late 1300s until 1814, and being forced into a union with Sweden for 93 years, from 1814 until 1905.
The trip, which is about 500 kilometers long, and will pass through a total of 182 tunnels in 7hrs and 16 minutes, was recorded in October 2009, using 4 cameras - one showing the engineer's view, two showing the view out windows on either side of the train, and one used to record footage among the passengers.
They plan to actually broadcast the entire trip, ie starting their broadcast at 7:55 pm CET on Friday November 27th, and continuing until a little past 3 am local time, alternating between showing footage shot from the four cameras on the train, and (when the train is in tunnels) showing historic footage from the construction of the railroad line (ie from 1909).
Sounds like a dream situation for a hardcore railfan. I am actually impressed that management at NRK TV went for it. Of course, they do have three TV channels (of which NRK2 is the channel for documentary shows and suchlike), and they are funded by the tax payers, so they don't have to please people selling soap or cereal, but still.
I might need to get a recorder with a hard disk that can record a 7 hour show, just for the heck of it :-)
More history (in English) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Line
Grin,
Stein