Hello Sony Community,

I think most of you will agree with me when I say "standing in front of a model railway has something magical about it".

One constantly discovers new details, which were placed consciously or unconsciously by the builder of the layout. Even if you think you've seen everything, you'll notice something new.

That's exactly how I feel when I look at my father's model railway, which I've seen hundreds of times. But even at the hundred and first time I discover something unknown, which I overlooked before or simply never consciously looked at.

For quite some time I have been combining my hobby (video shooting/editing) with my father's hobby.

For this purpose we create different model railway videos for his YouTube channel "Engineman".

Since I'm a big fan of the Sony Action Cams - mainly of the latest model, the FDR X3000 from 2016 - I played around with the thought, if it would be possible to put the camera on a locomotive and let it ride along.

From simply looking at it, it was already clear to me that it would be more suitable than the Action Cams from other manufacturers, which are usually wider than long. Yet it still wasn't as easy as I initially thought.

It was not possible to put the camera on one of the existing wagons and simply let it drive over the layout. That was due to the camera - despite its quite compact size - still being too big for normal low side cars. The locomotive pushed the wagon to the first tunnel and got stuck there.

A normal low side car is too high for the camera.

So I went on a search for a working alternative, which I found in the low floor car with the Märklin model number 4740. Now the camera fit through every tunnel and it was finally possible to see the whole layout from the perspective of the imaginary train driver in scale 1:87.

With a so-called low floor car the whole thing looks different.

With this problem out of the way there was nothing stopping us - so we coupled a Köf to the low-floor wagon and drove off.

Of course we tried a few things, such as driving ahead of another locomotive and putting it into the spotlight of a video.

If you turn the camera backwards, you can take great videos of the front of other locomotives.

In this case, however, you should note that the lenses used in Action Cams have a fixed focus. This means that everything below a certain distance appears blurred and everything above said distance is in focus.

For the FDR X3000, the minimum distance is between 20 and 30 centimeters. If you fall below this distance - in this case the train - becomes blurred. Everything above this distance is not a problem though.

Since an Action Cam cannot adjust the focus, you should keep a certain minimum distance.

You should keep this in mind even when pushing the camera or coupling it together with its flat wagon in the middle of a train. I only mention this here because I don't want to raise false expectations. While this is not a problem for sports activities (for which this action cam is intended), it is a factor you should always keep in mind.

From the camera's point of view, for example, the entrance to the station looks like this:

Entering the station from the camera's point of view.

As you can see in this video-frame, the room the layout is in is very strongly illuminated. The reason for this - camera sensors are always happy about a lot of light - that way distinct informations arrive at the electronic photoreceptor and the video is clearly defined.

If the environment is too dark, so-called "video noise" occurs. However. This effect can be minimized in poor lighting conditions by reducing the resolution, frame rate, bit rate OR everything at once. The lower the resolution and bit rate, the coarser the noise - the coarser the noise, the less it will be noticeable in the later video.

A great feature that shouldn't go unmentioned is the ability to connect the smartphone to the camera. This gives you wireless access to all functions and settings of the camera - and you can also follow the action live on the smartphone - depending on the thickness of the substructure of the layout this works even in tunnels.

With the PlayMemories Mobile App you can follow the action on your screen.

Last but not least I have two videos for you.

One is a short summary of the text here:

Here you can see a full round trip on the model railway layout of my father:

I wish you and your families a Merry Christmas.

- Nic