Arlo and City of New Orleans

Thank you.  Most enjoyable

It's been a long time since I've heard it.  Thanks for posting it.  The movies of the train are a perfect accompaniment to the song.

great song , was a great train

Thanks for posting'.. Been a long time since I heard Arlo sing that great song'....

Been a while since I've heard that one. Didn't know IC had ditch light's back then.

@feet posted:

Been a while since I've heard that one. Didn't know IC had ditch light's back then.

IC didn't have full domes, either.  It's Iowa Pacific equipment painted up IC.  The 515 shown in some scenes is an ex-C&NW E8 that was recently acquired by the Illinois Railway Museum.

Rusty

One Saturday in 1967 I rode the City south from Memphis to some point in Mississippi where I could catch the northbound City to get back the same day or early the next day. I did that just to say that I rode the City of New Orleans. At the time I was stationed at NAS Memphis for technical training and had the weekend off. One day I should try to locate an IC schedule from that time to see where I went to! I do remember that I had less than an hour to wait between trains.

Interesting fact:  The Northern Pacific would lease one of their vista domes to IC during the winter (when passenger traffic declined on NP's North Coast Limited). IC re-painted the dome car to IC brown/orange/yellow to match the rest of the City of Miami train, and operated it during the winter months.

@Pingman posted:

Interesting fact:  The Northern Pacific would lease one of their vista domes to IC during the winter (when passenger traffic declined on NP's North Coast Limited). IC re-painted the dome car to IC brown/orange/yellow to match the rest of the City of Miami train, and operated it during the winter months.

The IC also did the same with Missouri Pacific domes.  Plus windows along the dome tops and ends were blanked to reduce strain on the air conditioner units, somewhat defeating the attraction of the dome cars.

Rusty

Apologies for not thanking the OP for the video earlier; it's very entertaining.

Additional facts:  the full domes in the video were originally built for the Great Northern Empire Builder and had six-wheel trucks instead of the usual four-wheel trucks found on streamliner pax cars due to the extra air conditioning equipment they carried for the greenhouse.

Willie Nelson has done a very good cover of City of New Orleans

Great video and song love both versions of the song, Arlo's and Willie's. The train is several different videos some with one dome and some with three domes.  Absolutely Wonderful Video Thank You for posting.

Thank you, Bill, for posting this. Although it's obvious in most of the film clips, that the train used is a revised remnant of the original City of New Orleans, the way it was put together and used as an illustrative video background for Arlo Guthrie's version of the song was very well done, IMO.

Although Willie Nelson's version of the song is OK, I've always been partial to Arlo Guthrie's version. Arlo has an interesting musical heritage and I liked the TV series Byrds of Paradise, in which he was a regular. I also like his song, Ukulele Lady, which was played a lot in Hawaii when I resided there in the 1970s.

Anyway, I found the video and the song most enjoyable.

Thank you very much for this posting.

Jim K

Thanks Grampstrains, I haven't had "the motorcycle song" stuck in my head in a long time

Another interesting fact:  Iowa Pacific (Ed Ellis's company) signed a lease with the State of Mississippi to operate trains along the former Illinois Central Grenada District (which did not last long).  Iowa Pacific ran an excursion train painted in IC colors on part of this route several years ago.  The state had to purchase the 80 or so miles of track on this district to prevent the rail salvage company that bought from it from IC successor Canadian National from scrapping it.

IC operated the City of New Orleans and Panama Limited, along with numerous locals, on this route.  Before the Amtrak City of New Orleans route changed to CN's route farther west in Mississippi in the mid 90s, I had the chance to ride the train along the original route.  By that time, the track was not maintained very well--we were moving quite fast along the jointed rails with the coach bottoming fairly hard at several locations.  The following passenger car, visible through the vestibule window, was rolling and bucking alarmingly.  I overheard the conductor ask the engineer how fast he was going on the radio and the reply was a crackled "nnnniiiiiiinnneety...."  That was probably the most exciting Amtrak ride I ever experienced, and probably the only time I ever looked for a seatbelt on the train!

This is the Youtube video you want to watch. Arlo gives a touching tribute to the late Steve Goodman composer of the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjOMIki6qs