Fun color film of the Santa Fe 1950's.
Don
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Love this film. Would love to go back in time and travel from NYC to LA on the 20th Century Limited and Super Chief. Such luxury and comfort...I might not kill myself being on trains for over three days. "A hotel on wheels" indeed. Not that different from a cruise ship or ocean liner. Getting there eating better food than you were eating at home and seeing the scenery was part of the experience. Life was slower then.
A nostalgic part of me loves the way people dressed for travel back then and wishes we still do.
That nighttime shot at 4:20 sure looks like Lionel and not Santa Fe...
Great film. I agree, I'd like to travel back in time for a ride.
Don Winslow posted:That nighttime shot at 4:20 sure looks like Lionel and not Santa Fe...
Great film. I agree, I'd like to travel back in time for a ride.
Don, I think you are correct. The huge coupler pocket as well as the short and very bright cars (all have he same light intensity, which would be highly unlikely) as well as the shape of the dome, looks like a Budd dome in shape and not the PS dome with the hard edges.
In any case, the time frame could make this work if indeed it is a Lionel stand-in.
Good eye.
Charlie
Byrdie posted:A nostalgic part of me loves the way people dressed for travel back then and wishes we still do.
Actually Byrdie, I was thinking about this and honestly, not sure where or when the change took place, but in my opinion, the actors on this film are already pretty casual in dress as compared to the pre-war style. I guess it is just a matter of perspective, but it already looks like the trend to casual ware is already taking place, not like the classic dress/wardrobe in prior years.
Charlie
Don Winslow posted:That nighttime shot at 4:20 sure looks like Lionel and not Santa Fe...
Great film. I agree, I'd like to travel back in time for a ride.
I have a six car Williams 2500 set in TX SPECIAL. Plus the 2245 Lionel F3 AB. My train looks like the night scene in the film when I run it at night with lower lights!
Actually on these period films I always note how they always show people smoking. Being a life long non-smoker, it still amazes me how integrated smoking was in society until the last decade or two.
Charlie posted:Don Winslow posted:That nighttime shot at 4:20 sure looks like Lionel and not Santa Fe...
Great film. I agree, I'd like to travel back in time for a ride.
Don, I think you are correct. The huge coupler pocket as well as the short and very bright cars (all have he same light intensity, which would be highly unlikely) as well as the shape of the dome, looks like a Budd dome in shape and not the PS dome with the hard edges.
In any case, the time frame could make this work if indeed it is a Lionel stand-in.
Good eye.
Charlie
Also, Santa Fe F-Units didn't have the smooth "passenger pilot." Plus, there's a gap between the pilot and the anti-climber.
Rusty
My grandfathers never went anywhere without a hat of some sort and when traveling they and the grandmothers always were dressed like they were going to church. And the smoking was ridiculous. People were even smoking on airplanes.
The night scene in the video does look like a Lionel stand-in was used and doesn't look all that bad. I say they did an ok job on that.
I would love to go back in time and ride each and every one of the premiere passenger trains in this country. What a vacation that would be!
Cool film! That narrator was a famous voice on films of the 1940s-1950s. I didn't get his name. I enjoyed his pronunciation of "Los Angeles" , with a hard "g", i.e., "Los Angle-Ease". I don't believe that is a common pronunciation today.
Early in film, did I see a very young Kirk Douglas in the Obs. Car and in several shots thereafter? Upon arrival in LA, the "star" was met by a '51 Chevy Bel Air, only the second year of the Chevy's first hardtop.
Smokers have been a serious minority in California for a half century. I came here from the East in 1966, and was pleasantly surprised. There was even social pressure. . .
We had smoking on airliners until the late 1980s. I don’t know when Amtrak stopped it. One look at a jet transport outflow valve would cure you.
The route of the stars was the SC and the 20th CENTURY. But how was the atmosphere, service, etc. Each train and rail line had its philosophy. But seems at this time the ride on the 20th was in a league of its own. Or was there a myth about the 20th.....
Peter,
Growing up with a Grandfather who chain smoked, along with all of his friends, felt normal, It was soon after the Marlboro man came down with cancer that I remember social pressure to stop it in public.
As a Naval Aviator in the 80's and 90's, the ready room was always layered in smoke clouds, and being able to go topside or along the catwalks for fresh air was my getaway. Even our flight suits had a cigarette pocket on the left sleeve, mine held my earplugs and chewing gum.
I am not sure about currently, but smoking was still allowed on European airlines, especially Turkish and Greek in the 90's.
bob2 posted:Smokers have been a serious minority in California for a half century. I came here from the East in 1966, and was pleasantly surprised. There was even social pressure. . .
We had smoking on airliners until the late 1980s. I don’t know when Amtrak stopped it. One look at a jet transport outflow valve would cure you.
I was so happy when California banned smoking in restaurants and then all public buildings. I hate that disgusting, stomach-churning stink.
Going to York and walking into a restaurant and being assaulted with that stench was a real appetite killer. One time they seated me in the non smoking section - and the next booth was the smoking section. I left and went somewhere else.
Many folks cannot understand it as apparently they are not as sensitive to smells as I am.
you have me day dreaming about Santa Fe ...
here’s my San Francisco Chief
is that Marker! And the combined Super Chief El Capitan!
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Very nice video, Erik! Thanks for sharing it. And you got Howard out rail fanning. 
If only we could go to trackside and see it again in real life today . . .
And for the smoking discussion, I remember the train accommodations and lounges/dining cars smelling like smoke. But all interiors smelled like smoke then. The absence of it is no loss.
And I recall, in the late 1960's, airlines offering each passenger who looked old enough a small package of cigarettes to smoke on-board. I think each pack contained five cigarettes. And the Stewardesses, as they were called then, would strike a match and light a passenger's cigarette.
Santa Fe provided Kleenex Pocket packs with Chico on the package. Thankfully, they did not provide cigarettes.
We even got five cigarettes in our C or K rations in the Army. I also remember how many people smoked on a plane then they had a smoking section on the plane and a non-smoking section. That didn't work out so well. The best was when I was on a flight on Iberia Airlines to Spain. One side of the plane had smoking and across the isle was non-smoking. Glad it all stopped. Don
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I was a smoker most of my life I can remember visiting my dad in the hospital and going to the lounge with him to have a smoke would have been in the mid eighties.
al
Great video! Thanks for posting..
In the early 60's I took the 20th century from NYC when I returned to college on a Sunday. Dressed in a suit and tie, and smoked back then. A couple of times I was the only person in the dining car, rail travel was dying but I had a grand time.
This past December went to "the Pan Am Experience" in Burbank and for one of the photos they gave us fake cigarettes to puff.
Bob2......USAF environmental systems tech from back in the day. Many a C-130 aborted or had pressurization problems due to outflow valve controller gummed up with nicotine. Had a full bull quiz me about what caused the problem, I brought him the gummed up controller. As a non smoker I enjoyed it.
Richard
Rppoind,
I guess helicopters were a good choice then, during my tenure in the service, it was hard enough to get flight time, systems were failing a lot during those bleak years of funding. I remember that my fixed wing buddies were getting minimums a lot, which was 4 hours a month. I often had visiting senior officers getting their flight min for pay, which bumped a co pilot of precious training time.
The golden years were 83/84 when the peacekeeping budget in Lebanon and the urgency kept us all between 60 and 100 hours a month, every one of us was loving it, then reality hit in 85 and we went back to 10 hours a month if we were lucky. By this time, smoking was starting to be frowned upon for aviators, and the ready rooms and office spaces began to be clear of anything but typical odors from the machinery we used for publishing flight schedules and multiple copies, the flimsy you typed up to put on the drum often had a lot of the gooey "White out" from typos, the Xerox craze made all the clerks much happier, not to mention the word processors and finally computers. Smoke breaks became fewer for the office, and more got accomplished.
The video looks lovely but I can't stand the annoying watermark. JMHO so I won't say any more as this is a train forum...
And were not, depending on the airline, stewardesses, required to be NURSES, in the early days of commercial flight?
What a great film. I never realized the Super Chief was such a luxurious train. I wonder what the fare was in today's dollars?
