Terrific Photo Thread: 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair

From the News paper artist rendering. It appears to be just south of what is now McCormick Place. I am also having trouble opening the link.

I used this link http://www.railarchive.net/rrfair/rrfair_photos.htm  I believe I have seen a couple of You Tube videos from this fair also.

Thanks..Even more than I imagined that existed.  Makes me think how great it would be to have a railroad fair these days....

Impatient types will want to skip to this page for some colorful shots :

http://www.rypn.org/forums/vie...=34268&start=165

 

C&O steam turbine, GM Train of Tomorrow, PRR T-1, C&EI Atlantic, B&O EM-1 and streamlined Pacific, Monon and GM&O streamlined coaches - you get the idea....

Wow! Thanks for sharing! I love how you could sit at the main stage as they parade equipment past. Don't skip to the color, start at the beginning.

Here are some you tube videos.   Its to bad I don't have a time machine so I could attend the fair.

 

 

Great stuff on that site.  Thanks for sharing.

-Greg

Absolutely unreal!  Thanks everyone for putting all this together. truly outstanding !

This is also the Fair that Walt Disney and Ward Kimball rode the Super Chief to in order to see the trains on display.  Kimball had some great home movies of Disney in the cab of the F Unit, as well as being outside the locomotive and meeting the Santa Fe crew.  

 

Walt Disney looked like a kid in a candy store meeting the crew.  Just this excited person.

 

The one story Kimball told was that Disney called him late one night to go, and when Kimball picked up the phone, the voice on the other end said, "Ward?  This is Walt."

 

Kimball said, "Walt who?"  Disney's reply, "DISNEY!  How many Walts do you know?"

Cool photos. I have the program booklet shown in the first link. I would have attended, but I was born the following summer. It was held only about six miles from my childhood home.

I was about 12 or 13 during the Chgo RR Fair and my parents drove to Chgo from home in Milwaukee to see the fair mostly because their son, they knew, was a RR nut!  I know that I enjoyed it and wandered all around the grounds during the day.  We did not see the pageant show in the grandstand, probably was an extra cost feature, but we did ride the San Fran Cable car that was rigged up to operate a few hundred yards.  I have two souvenir booklets, one from 1948 and one from the 1949 shows.

 Great Stuff!

 

Paul Fischer