|
The Dutch National Railway Museum , Het Spoorwegmuseum,
in Utrecht got on board with Medialon show control for
its four innovative exhibit areas. Using Medialon
Manager V3, V3 Lite and Ethernet, Rapenburg Plaza
created show-control systems for the 49-year old museum,
which reopened two years ago as a crossover between an
historical museum environment and a themed amusement
park. The network crafted by Rapenburg Plaza, which
includes three Medialon servers, three Richmond Sound
Design AudioBoxes, five Ecue media engines, and multiple
Kiss Boxes, enables all the lighting, sound, special
effects, video and show- control equipment to work
together.
The Dutch National Railway Museum features four
individual worlds, each run by Medialon, where visitors
can enjoy trains and railroads in very different ways.
The first world, The Great Discovery, is an audio-guided
walk through beautifully lit and decorated scenery where
visitors learn about the early days of steam trains and
railroads in Holland. Medialon controls the audio
components, steam and smoke effects, and an elevator.
In Dream Journeys, museum-goers experience the luxury of
The Orient Express in a replica station complete with
original carriages. The multimedia environment features
video hard disk players, several screens and a
Beamsystems projection screen controller; a full-scale
theater offers a show combining live actors, lighting,
audio, smoke and a revolving stage, all controlled by
Medialon.
Steel Monsters takes the form of a theme park-style dark
ride, which has visitors stepping into four-person train
wagons to trace all the jobs of a Dutch railroad-working
family over the years. The cars also take the
museum-goers up close to, over and under big steam
engines with hundreds of special effects and show
effects, all controlled by Medialon.
In the final world, The Workshop, edutrainers relate
anecdotes and secrets behind the rolling stock on
display. Medialon controls the lights and smoke effects
throughout this exhibit.
Medialon also provides overall control of the lighting
in the entire museum. To provide energy efficiency in
the large facility, all fixed lighting is controlled
through Medialon with Kiss-Box units boxes so lights can
be lowered in rooms without visitors. Medialon also
controls the subsystem and checks all the worlds to
ensure the lighting is running properly. In addition, it
tallies the burning hours of lamps and video projectors.
Gertjan Dijkstra, one of the employees responsible for
museum maintenance and operations says, “For us it’s
great to have an overall view of the whole building
concerning all technical installations. Even when the
museum has more 3,000 visitors a day we still can check
if the dark ride or the theater show is running without
walking around the whole building. The fact that every
lighting fixture (and piece of) audiovisual equipment is
hooked to the same Medialon network is really great! I
couldn’t live without it anymore.” |
