British Steam-North Yorkshire Moors Railway (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Best Of British Steam (4), British Steam (5)
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	47:47
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	RV Television MRA Entertainment	Starring	Paul Brown
Case	Brackley-Trans-Lipped
RPI	?	Music	None Given

    British Steam is a series of six DVDs that looks at some of the great preserved railways of Great Britain. They were previously issued overseas under the Classic Trains banner and that accounts for why the credits in the programme are so entitled. The six railways that the series look at are The North Yorkshire Moors Railway, The West Somerset Railway, The Severn Valley Railway, The Paignton and Dartmouth Railway, The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and The Bluebell Railway.

    Our first journey is to The North Yorkshire Moors Railway which is based near the Yorkshire harbour town of Whitby. Interestingly, the National Rail line from Middlesbrough to Whitby, to which the North Yorkshire Moors Railway connects at its terminus at Grosmont, is one of a number of branch lines that may be considered by the British government for micro-privatisation under new franchise arrangements that will see such branch lines looked after by smaller, community-based organisations rather than large national companies. Logically such community-based organisations will be based around existing organisations with rail operating experience. Potentially, therefore, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway might be amongst the very few preserved railways that might actually return to common carrier passenger haulage! As it is now however, it runs one of the longest stretches of preserved line in Great Britain as well as one of the most intensive schedules during the summer months. It runs from Grosmont in the north to Pickering in the south, through some of the stunning scenery of the North York Moor.

    The programme covers a typical day's operation from locomotive preparation through to the actual running of the trains themselves. For the non-train buff there is a decent dollop of more mundane tourism stuff too, showing some of the sights to be seen along the railway line and in Whitby itself.

    With a reasonable selection of motive power on view and some decent photography (albeit let down somewhat by the fact that it was apparently shot on video and that has implications for the quality of the transfer), this is quite an interesting look at the railway. However, those problems with the source material certainly are difficult to overcome and you can certainly imagine something better. Still, better something rather than nothing at all.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    Just like the earlier Best Of British Steam series, which would seemed to have drawn material from this British Steam series, you have to remember that this is closer to home video rather than professional film. The transfer is reasonable enough if a little variable in appearance. Reasonably sharp, reasonably well detailed but subject to washout issues in sunlight.

    Colours are average at best, being somewhat underdone most of the time and that means the real beauty of the scenery and locomotives are not truly revealed. Still, just on occasions, when the sun is at the right angle and the camera is at the right angle, it all works quite well.

    There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. Just like the earlier series, the major issue is aliasing - just about every straight line manages to alias and at times it gets rather annoying. The video origin is evidenced by some flaring here and there. There are no film artefacts to worry about in the transfer.

    This is a single layered, single sided DVD so there is no layer change to worry about.

    There are no subtitle options on the DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 effort.

    The narration comes up well in the transfer, being easy to understand, but once again some of the sound recording of the trains themselves is a little underwhelming. There do not appear to be any audio sync issues with the transfer.

    The original music accompaniment is also nothing much to worry about again.

    The soundtrack is again a reflection of the nature of the programming and does little more than carry the narration and expose the lack of quality in the original sound recordings of the engines and trains themselves. Rather annoying, however, is the fact that there are obvious moments here where the sound recording that should have been inherent in the video is deliberately missing, so that ambient sound is simply not in the playback.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Previews (10)

    Since they are all pretty much the same in presentation (each one of them uses the exact same music and effects track playing over the video), the ten trailers are more easily dealt with in one paragraph rather than ten! All are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, are not 16x9 enhanced and feature Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The technical quality is very much the same as the main feature with most of the same issues with colour and aliasing noted. The ten trailers are:

• Best Of British Steam - Northern England (0:59)
• Best Of British Steam - Southern England (0:59)
• Best Of British Steam - Wales (0:59)
• Best Of British Steam - Scotland (0:59)
• British Steam - The North Yorkshire Moors Railway (1:08)
• British Steam - The West Somerset Railway (1:07)
• British Steam - The Severn Valley Railway (1:08)
• British Steam - The Paignton and Dartmouth Railway (1:07)
• British Steam - The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (1:08)
• British Steam - The Bluebell Railway (1:06)

    This is the same DVD as is available in Region 2 and I seriously doubt that anything different would be made available anywhere else so if you want the programme, once again this is your choice.

    Whilst there is nothing really wrong with the programme itself, the source material limitations and the problems of the transfer do detract somewhat from the overall presentation. If you can push aside those limitations then this might well be worthwhile checking out even if you are not a railway buff.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall