Greetings, fellow members of the Western Kentucky Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. I hope that I can provide information through my monthly reviews that will be useful to you in your search for entertaining and informative RR videos. I have eighty-four different RR videos at this time and plan to continue adding to my collection as time goes by.
As we continue this monthly feature, I would like to share with you my favorite on-line vendors for RR videos. I have found the following websites to be excellent sources of good videos and the vast majority of my collection has come from these sites:
I will try to rate the videos in an objective manner but we all have our favorite railroads and we all have connections to particular areas of the country. If I review a video that has special meaning to me, I will warn the reader that my review might not be entirely objective.
| Title | Indiana Rail Road, the Indianapolis Subdivision |
| Producer | Railway Productions |
| Format | Wide Screen DVD |
| Playing Time | 1 Hr 30 Min |
| Purchased From | TrainVideoDepot.com |
| Date Purchased | 9/12/2011 |
| Price Paid | $27.89 |
Excellent use is made of Google Earth to show the topography of the route from Indianapolis to Newton, IL. The entire route of the Indianapolis Sub is former IC RR trackage. The scenes progress from Indianapolis to Newton, which is considered to be “southbound,” although the actual route of travel is almost due west after Bloomington.
They don’t let the viewer know when the scenes he is viewing were shot. I had to skip ahead to the very end to find that the copyright date is 2009. This information is not on the cover or at the beginning of the video. We get some nice looks at Indiana Rail Road’s new SD 90/43 MACs with their bright red paint.
It is very annoying that the narrator mispronounces “Monon” every time her refers to it, which happens several times during this DVD. He does not put any emphasis on the second syllable. It is supposed to be pronounced MO’-NON’, not “MOWN-un.”
It is also very irritating that the seasons change from one scene to the next. One minute you see the trees in full summer foliage and the next minute the trees are totally bare; then you go right back to full foliage in the next scene and back to winter conditions again in the next scene. There are also some spring and fall scenes mixed in with the summer and winter scenes. This is very hard to ignore as you watch the video.
There is some really nice footage of trains crossing Richland Creek Viaduct, also known as “Tulip Trestle.” It is one of the largest RR trestles in the world, reaching 175 ft in height at its tallest point and running 2295 feet in length. It was built in 1905.