I wasn’t expecting a massive success this weekend in terms of trying out a new way to stream, but my goodness did it work well! The only troubles I had was the internet connection being choppy at the start and my second camera manning the HO timing out every 30 minutes.
The N Scalers took back their award worthy setup times leaving the HO in the dust; we were down a member for the morning so were thin on the ground. The HO was finally up and running by 11:45ish. Things got interesting after that; my first action was to setup the next generation of live streaming; an updated webcam, my DSLR, a video capture card and the streaming program Streamlabs OBS. I did have a play around on the run up, with some frustration around my desktop computer, but I was pleased to discover my laptop took both feeds well and I could setup the new stream in no time… And on the new NMRA Interchange!
Suffice to say I may never go back to just streaming directly on YouTube… As you can see in the first photo I was able to present a view from both layouts, with options to switch sizes on the fly depending on what was interesting at the time. Steamlabs also gave me the ability to create a separate window which I could share with the Interchange; we got a couple of viewers there.
Even better was the ability to create an interlude for lunch, instead of killing the stream like I was doing originally…
So to be fair, being able to do that and have a very successful (in my opinion) first live test was the highlight this time. But there are several honourable mentions…
That F7A that has been giving me trouble for months was finally resolved when I changed the address to something larger. It seems address 103 isn’t looked upon favourably by the setup, so using 1103 instead got it working. I very happily hooked it up to my (wannabe) Superchief consist, and they ran together with very few hiccups.
Second honourable mention is the Scaletrains engine that stopped working last time – I successfully fixed it, and it dominated the HO view towards the end of the stream. The picture above shows this succinctly and as seen at the start of this post, had a smaller friend when Dennis (aka dad) pulled out his own Southern Pacific engine and caboose to run on the N Scale.
And finally…
Dean and his El Capitan for reasons you can hopefully start to understand (hint; I like ATSF and passenger trains!)
Throughout the day we did have some maintenance going on; Paul P fixed a loose rail on Patrick, fixed an alignment problem in between the Clark boards, and finally he continued work on Laxton. We also saw an issue with one of the feeders on Peach meadows which Paul H quickly took care of.
One thing to note with the streaming, a bit more preparation for the YouTube profile and on the Interchange would do a lot more for engagement and reach; the YouTube version of the stream didn’t have a thumbnail nor any tags, so the engagement wasn’t as big as the previous livestream. We were pleased to see viewers either way; it goes to show even a minimal amount of engagement with the intended audience grants us some viewership.
Breaking down and packing away was the usual effort, the last people leaving the hall around 17:00. We’re closer to readiness for the Open House in June, but there is more work to be done of course.
I’d like to remind everyone the Thamesiders are holding a quiz night in March after the physical meet. I’ll put up a dedicated page soon with contact details if you’d like to book a table. But before that, there is the UK annual FreeMo meet at Epsom to attend – if you’re going, see you there!
Happy railroading all!
Neal K
Thamesiders MRG 