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Bergensbanen RLV |
Bergensbanen RLV Bergensbanen (Bergen Line) is the highest mainline railway line in Northern Europe, going from Bergen to Oslo crossing the Hardangervidda plateau at 1,237 metres above sea level. The planning started in 1871, the building of the main parts started in 1901, and it was finally opened 27. november 1909. At that time, it had cost more than Norway's government budget for a full year. On the day 100 years after its opening, the Norsegian state channel NRK showed a 7 1/2 hour documentary, showing every minute of the train ride. This was a big success, and they later decided to release the video from the front window camera for download at [http://nrkbeta.no/bergensbanen-eng/]. Even though there was only the video and no GPS log (they tried to log the ride, but something went wrong), I thought that this might be a good base for a RLV. Some might say that it was a crazy idea, especially when considering that I've never made an RLV before. Ole Fredrik gave me an advice to start by making a small RLV in my neighbourhood; I didn't quite follow that advice :-) Due to the fact that there is no GPS log for the route, the profile is made 100% by hand. After some searching, I managed to find some length and height info about the stations, tunnels and bridges, and I have used that info to make a rough profile. After that I have been refining the profile, but you will probably see that it is still not perfect. If I aimed for that, this project would never have finished... Instead of releasing one "package" with RLV-, PGMF- and AVI-files, this is distributed as "mix and match". You can choose between two videos, with different size and quality (more video choices will probably be available in the future). Also, several versions of the RLV- and PGMF-files are available, as will be explained below. The final RLV is 496 km long, and probably the longest RLV ever made (at least I don't know of any longer RLV). I can understand that this might be a bit too long for most people (even though it also contains shorter distances), so I have made an option to cruise through the RLV in double speed, making the total distance "only" 248 km long. The video in the original version normally runs with a very low framerate (because the train rides much faster than any cyclist), but the 2-speed version works much better. To keep the same elevation as the original, I have made all the hills twice as steep. You might think that this will make the whole thing feel very unnatural, but you probably get used to it very fast. Bergensbanen includes quite a lot of tunnels, and some of them are quite long (the longest are over 10 km). Some of you might find it a little less motivating to see just a black screen for many minutes, so I have added another option: Cutting of long tunnels in the RLV file. The RLV is programmed so it runs the video very fast when inside the tunnel, so the long tunnels become much shorter. The advantage of doing it this way is that you don't need to download a new, big video if you change your mind about the tunnels; you just download the small RLV-/PGMF-files. The parts of the video where the train stands still (mostly at stations) are cut away. However, the parts just before / after the stop, the train moves very slowly, and so will the RLV. The alternative (running the videoreally fast here to maintain the speed) will just make the video skip. However, when running the 2-speed version on slow PCs, the video might still skip when the train runs slow. If so, I've made a version that will run the video slower in these parts. |
Below are the different video / profile options available at the moment. If you have requests for other profiles, let me know at flex78(a)gmail(.)com. Videos: [video 1] - 720 x 400, 4.2 GB [video 2] - 1280 x 720, 8.4 GB Profiles: [NO_BB_1s1p] - Original 1-speed version - 495.8 km - 2% max gradient [NO_BB_1s1p_T] - 1-speed version with tunnel cut - 442.1 km - 2% max gradient [NO_BB_2s2p] - 2-speed version - 247.9 km - 4% max gradient [NO_BB_2s2p_T] - 2-speed version with tunnel cut - 221.0 km - 4% max gradient [NO_BB_2s2p_40] - 2-speed version running more slowly around stations - 252.2 km - 4% max gradient [NO_BB_2s2p_T_40] - 1-speed version with tunnel cut running more slowly around stations 225.3 km - 4% max gradient Happy (rail)riding! |