Charles Smiley Presents

Our Interests Charles Smiley Presents (CSP) has been bringing rail fans and model railroaders videos of railroad subjects since 1994. Since 1997 the emphasis has been on railroads and eras that have either changed dramatically with time, or in many cases, disappeared altogether. CSP uses old movie film and video shot back when the rail scene looked a lot different. The vanished-differences seem far more appealing to us than the things you can easily see today. Our Background It began as an idea in 1994. Charles Smiley is an electronic engineer with a background designing military/aerospace, industrial computer and patented professional and broadcast video and audio equipment. After a number of years designing video equipment, the urge to create entertaining videos on railroad topics became irresistible. A lifelong hobby of model railroading added the spark. A modeler’s thought By making these videos, and evaluating many hundreds of hours of rail material, the time spent in that activity improved my modeling. It has also expanded my interest in all North American railroads – not just the few that I have modeled. I hope these videos will expand your interests as well. Production Value Each video takes two to three months to research, edit, script, add narration, create maps, add a bit of licensed music and sound effects. These are not videos that spend 24 hours video-taping at one location and that are slapped together. We don’t ‘fill up time’ showing an entire 120 car coal train crawling by at 10-mph. That is not our idea of a documentary. Each video we make has material shot over several years, to several decades, of time. Most of our videos incorporate material from a number of movie film and video sources to create a balanced program.