Germany by Rail Timelapse

Tue, 11/08/2011 - 16:05

Germany has one of the worlds most comprehensive rails networks. About 41,000 Km of track, 5,400 train stations and more than 20,000 powered rail vehicles are used to transport almost 1.95 Billion passengers for 78.582 billion passenger kilometers each year.

Put into perspective - its enough track to circumnavigate continental USA 3 times, in a country slightly smaller than the US state of Montana.

The aim of this video is to give a sample of train travel in the country - seen mainly from the stations. It was shot in a variety of locations - Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg and Hanover, and made up of footage taken from a total of over 24000 stills.

Music: "Running" (from Play: The B-Sides) by Moby.

Special thanks to the team at Eurail.com who provided assistance with rail passes that proved invaluable in shooting this!

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stunning, next time in Lisbon

Submitted by Luis Santos (not verified) on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 17:29.

stunning, next time in Lisbon we will do some :D

Thank Luis! Its a deal -

Submitted by Holgs on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 17:45.

Thank Luis! Its a deal - Lisbon is a perfect city for it I think!

Great stuff holgs. Too bad

Submitted by Tyler Olson (not verified) on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 19:41.

Great stuff holgs. Too bad you weren't in Berlin last weekend.

There's always next year -

Submitted by Holgs on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 20:47.

There's always next year - looks like it was a good turn out!

Great video. How did you do

Submitted by Stefanos Kyriazis (not verified) on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 09:07.

Great video. How did you do this?

It was shot with a Canon

Submitted by Holgs on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 10:00.

It was shot with a Canon 5Dmk2 + an intervalometer - all up about 24000 frames went into it and a total of about 8 hours of shoot time - each second of footage takes 30sec-2mins to shoot depending on the intervals chosen - then edited down to usable clips. A lot of work goes into one of these!

Thank you

Submitted by Stefanos Kyriazis (not verified) on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 18:00.

Thank you

Do you take the photos and

Submitted by Kelsey (not verified) on Thu, 11/10/2011 - 12:55.

Do you take the photos and then combine them in something like After Effects, or is there a different way?

I use Lightroom 3 to make the

Submitted by Holgs on Thu, 11/10/2011 - 15:21.

I use Lightroom 3 to make the color adjustments to images, cropped to 16:9 format images with the short edge sized to 1080 pixels, then open the jpg images in Quicktime 7 Pro as an Image Sequence to create the individual clips.

My first time here. Love the

Submitted by Micamyx|Senyorita (not verified) on Sat, 11/12/2011 - 01:05.

My first time here. Love the video! Will be checking the rest of your entries especially under the Asia category :D

I have followed enough links

Submitted by James Avery (not verified) on Sat, 11/12/2011 - 03:14.

I have followed enough links form twitter to very average photos to have almost grown weary - then I stumble across this, and it is absolutely stunning.

As you say, it takes a lot of effort to get all this together, so I wouldn't want to mention too many other angles I'd love to see, but Cologne is fantastic from the other side of the Rhine, and the ICE3's let you see right through the front - if the driver is in a good mood :)

Thanks James! There's always

Submitted by Holgs on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 18:44.

Thanks James! There's always more angles, and I'd love to shoot something from inside - the problem if you're not actually inside the drivers compartment though is that you have too much glass to get decent shots - I tried a few stills that way but didn't get anything I was happy with. Cologne would be really nice at night as well - the day I shot the station there though, the clouds came across and it just got worse from there... next time!