Bridge of Allan tunnels

At work this afternoon we went for a location-scouting walk along the old railway line (and tunnels) near Bridge of Allen in Perthshire.
The old line runs almost parallel to parts of the M90 motorway, which I regularly travel on, yet until I conducted some research last week I had no idea that the line was ever there... One of the random facts I picked up last week is that part of it was bombed by the Nazi's during World War 2!


After parking our cars on a farm road in the middle of nowhere we went across an over-grown railway bridge and then walked the trail for about 1.5 miles; during which time we had gone through two very long, pitch black tunnels and encountered numerous decaying objects (of the mechanical variety).


I had never encountered a tunnel that can compare to these (while on foot), so thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I think it would be a great location to film all sorts of things... Indeed I was actually asked last month about filming a music video there for a metal band! So now that I know what it's like I can't wait to push ahead with that idea.

On another note, I used my digital stills camera to experiment with some time-lapse photography & experimental stopmotion (similar to Pixelation) on the way back to the cars. I haven't really done much time-lapse or pixelation before, but I am planning another music video (for a different band) that uses this kind of filming technique, and so thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the process.

For this experiment I basically just took a photo every 2 seconds (roughly) while walking along a short part of the trail leading up to the second tunnel. 

I had a good idea of what the footage should look like when played back as an animation sequence; but because I was photographing while walking (and without a flash) I had no idea whether or not it would turn out any good... To be honest I expected that the footage would be all blurry and randomly jump all over the place, but I think it has turned out surprisingly readable. You can judge for yourself by watching it in the video below:



And to conclude, here are some other photos from the day...

(This final photo is more or less what you see without a torch - and that's relatively near the entrance!)