Historical Section of “Polonceau” Railway Carriage

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Historical Section of "Polonceau"
Private Railway Carriage

Interactive Installation

Historical Section of “Polonceau” Carriage is an installation we have developed for the Russian Railway Museum. A multi-screen video wall is moving back and forth along a rare carriage named after a French engineer Camille Polonceau. The video demonstrates inner space of a private premium carriage used by prominent Soviet officials. Mechanical and electrical design, as well as original video content were created from scratch.

Inner space

The height of video wall is 4.2 m, it consists of 5 screens and covers a distance of about 22 m. Ensured accuracy for the whole travel path is 1 mm. As visitors follow the moving wall within easy reach, the installation is equipped with an industrial safety system.

Historically accurate shooting made within a filming zone specially created in the Museum is combined with computer-generated imagery. Video content is accurately synchronised with video wall movement, so that a physical carriage standing next to a visitor a provides a glance at one of historical episodes that may have happened inside.

Moving along premium carriage “Polonceau” visitors observe Vyacheslav Molotov, notorious Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, on his typical business trip. Inner space of the carriage presents a kitchen, lavatories, compartments for porters and guards, drawing rooms, a study and Minister’s private compartment. The episode was recreated by one shot filming with custom
high accuracy motion control technology. The video provides some explanations for interior environment.

The main challenge was to create content with chroma key technique for compositing filmed action and CG. For proper realism and parallax effect we needed moving camera with precise repeatability for a 22 m travel path. It was impossible to rent such system for studio floor filming, so we decided to use some ideas implemented in our installation “Diesel Locomotive Virtual Cutaway”, which we developed earlier for the same museum.

We designed and built historically accurate decorations and placed it behind the first one. Camera was mounted on a moving video wall. According to filming script a special program was written to control camera movement. After filming camera movement data dump was uploaded from control system and imported to video editing software. Installation assembly and commissioning were scheduled for 2 months later after filming. Due to digital motion control system and unique project pipeline no further adjustment, movement program correction or content re-rendering was needed after the installation and content were finished.