I really like watching these old films. I probably saw some of them in grade school. They portray a more simple, uncomplicated life which was not reality. Every age has its own set of problems and concerns we tend to forget as we struggle with our present ones. America was certainly different in 1954.
My Dad, I still miss him, drove trains for 40 years with the ACL, Seaboard Coastline. Started in 1938 retired in 1978. What a guy. They didn't call him "Sport" without reason.
Really nice A-B-B-A set of locomotives. I’m surprised to see bulk milk tank cars, didn’t think they had these. The joint rail seems always so well maintained in these days. R F& P, linking North and South. Thanks periscope again for a nice film of historical heritage.
Significantly more than you see nowadays. The biggest railroads run crews of just two, when they don't automate fully, unless they need to bring in extra engines for steep hills where they'll have an extra couple pair onboard.
@kelvintorrence5994 No, they don't. Not trains on the mainline anyway. Every UP train runs with a crew. My friend is an Engineer for UP here in Utah. He's got a DAMN GOOD job. Them boys got it made in the shade and are VERRRY well compensated for their work. Sorry...But exactly ZERO "automated" fully loaded coal trains are running down (or up) the canyon, along Hwy. 6 from Helper through Thistle, Spanish Fork and North to SLC.👌🏻 That's one of the steepest and most dangerous passes in the entire U.S. and you'd better have your game face on when you climb aboard and take the reigns.💯 Those trains will never be automated. My buddy says: "If you can bring a fully loaded coal train down THAT canyon and not let it get away from ya... You're good to run any load, on any stretch of line anywhere in the country."
@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH Very good to hear that there are still railroad men doing what must be a fabulous job. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a railroad engineer. What little boy hasn't at one time or another?
@@thejerseyj5479 Yessirr.👍🏻 We've got some good ol boy railmen who kept/keep the world turning, here in our neck of the woods. I'm so jealous of what he (they) get to do. I ask 'em all sorts of questions like a wide-eyed 5 year old would... and STILL get that feeling I did as a kid, every single time I see a train anywhere! Without fail. I'm also blessed to know and be friends with several men who are 1-2 generations wiser than my 40 yr. old (still a pup) self. Men that are my late father and granddaddy's age who retired from UP after 25-50 years of railroading, back in the good ol days. Shout out to some local UP Legends: - Mr. George Jones. Salem, UT. (Ret) - Andy Ottesen. Salem, UT. (Ret) - Glade Collard. Salem, UT. (Ret) - Zach Forebush. Spanish Fork, UT. 🛤 🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🇺🇲💨
I grew up in a Santa Fe town. Topeka. The T in A,T&SF. I think in the 1950s, half the town worked for or were related to someone who was employed at either the Santa Fe corporate offices downtown or at the shops, located in the Oakland neighborhood. The rest of our town were out at the Air Force base, where they flew the beautiful B-47, 24 hours a day. It was a great place to be if you loved trains and airplanes like me.
Richmond Fredericksburg and Potomac train gets humped at Potomac Yard (Pot 9:52 in Alexandria, Virginia. A set of Baltimore and Ohio F-units takes over for a trip north. Guessing that is either Baltimore or Philadelphia as the terminus. Interesting to see milk cars as they would soon dissappear from the railroad scene.
I'm guessing the locomotives are either F3 or F7 units, although I'm not sure which. The number board on the lead says 692 but according to the B&O's roster that number should belong to a GP9.
Excellent editing. Great movie. Everything about railroading is very interesting. I'm sure it's a 'guy thing': working with big, heavy, powerful stuff that could kill you in a second if you're not paying attention. I should think the most stressful part of railroading would be trying to go through a town at a reasonable speed along a five mile stretch that has 25 street crossings. God bless you and your families.
I think the switching yard at the beginning is Potomac Yard, which is in Alexandria, VA, along US 1. All the tracks were removed in 1982 except for the through tracks. Several large strip shopping centers were built there in the 1990s, and Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Washington Redskins, tried to move the team there to a new stadium in the 90s, but failed. Just recently, Governor Glenn Youngkin of VA and Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, tried to move both teams to a new stadium at Potomac Yard, but the Democrats stopped that move. The area keeps striking out for a sports team.
I remember when I lived in Arlington in the early sixties seeing that busy Freight yard there.. seeing cars that were pushed over the hump often with the New York Central Railroad logo on it
Imagine the ice they needed every day to keep those cars cool during the summer in the USA. Now they have individual refrigeration units. I bet they never imagined that people anywhere could watch the trains zoom by in real time in color in La Plata, Missouri on the internet from their living room. Except for continuous welded rails, most things haven't changed very much. Someday they might be using electric power. But that will take a while. Containers changed the world of shipping and lowered the cost of shipping a lot. No globalization without containers. They are probably the simplest thing to change the world since the wheel. And it was all caused by traffic jams along the East Coast.
I guess that roller bearings hadn't taken over yet. I remember seeing a 1949 animated cartoon made by Timken touting the advantages of roller bearings. It was called "Big Tim."
Nice to see some Potomac Yard footage! The audio quality was a little dodgy, as if the film reels got a little too close to a magnet large enough to disturb the sound recording.
Move 80 ft and caboose not moved yet. Big George. Before my time but sure sounds nice when you can make a big thing out of something that we probably don't even think about nowadays. News back then..
And if Murphy was sloppy, he was up to 10 MPH in those 80 feet. That meant the caboose went from 0 to 10 MPH instantly when the slack came out, and everyone in it fell over. Then Murphy got a good talking to by his conductor at the next stop. Proper slack management, especially on passenger and mixed freight, was a real art, and something the engineer needed to think about.
@@johnkoval1898 Plenty of tattoos. On sailors, for the most part. And men. Tattooed ladies were very scarce. If you saw someone with tattooed arms, you could virtually bet he was a Navy man. By the 60s tattoos had somewhat gone out of style, then in the late 60s onward they came back with a vengeance.
Very diplomatic, calling the fireman the "assistant engineer." It took the railroads decades of contract negotiations to get rid of these do-nothing nobodies after diesel engines took over.
The unions fought to the death to keep those feather-bedding old geezers in those jobs, but the handwriting was on the wall! When GM rolled out the Diesels in '39, it was a matter of time!!!!!!!!
There is no point to have a fireman on a diesel locomotives. This is why they wanted to kill steam locomotives but they were not able to eliminate the position. C&O wanted to buy what was left of the Erie Lakawana RR but the unions demanded 6 people crew. Subway 🚇 trains only had 1 person in the cab. Same for street cars. If the RR knew that they would have to have fireman on diesels they would have kept steam locomotives. Many RR went broke from dieselization. Branch lines that were profitable with old cast off steam locomotives became unprofitable haveing to pay for the cost of a $250,000 locomotives when the job was performed by a$5,000 steam locomotives sent to scrap yards. Derelict steam locomotives sat in scap yards for decades as their previous owners slid into bankruptcy. Poetic justice ⚖️!
Original crew in steam era was engineer, fireman, conductor, front and rear brakemen. As time went on the brakemen were dropped (because air brakes came along), then the fireman was dropped (because there was no fire to tend), leaving just the conductor and engineer. Then the caboose was dropped in place of a FRED or "rear end device" that transmitted rear brake pressure indication to the cab of the lead engine, and the conductor now rides in the fireman's position on a freight. On a passenger train he rides back in a passenger car.
RR's had 5 member crews in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest between shifts. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. On call 2 hour notice. PSR ,12,000 tons 200+cars trains now.
Eastbound : even train numbers, westbound : odd. And rotating the map clockwise - west : north, and east : south. Great when reading timetables. Maybe why addresses in US postal system for west, north sides of the street are odd, for east, south they're even, like knowing Morse code for whistling at crossings - two longs, a short, a long : the letter Q (British : 'the Queen is coming'), and on US railroad time to be sure. Not sure what the Navy thinks of all this, however. Nice movie by the way. Thx.
Railroads built America giving good job that were who you were. You were a railroader . Back when we're were a prosperous country. Safe cities and safe schools.USA was great in black and white. No welfare states . No millions of illegals getting handouts from the government. We are now circling the toilet 🚽 and going down.😢😢
Trains are for hauling. Trucks are for delivering. Unfortunately, trains can only go where the rails are laid and in bulk to be efficient. 100 single trucks can go anywhere at any time. The unit trains and intermodal hotshots on "through" runs still make sense. The way freights delivering to every town along the way, not so much. There's a lot of inefficiency -- equating to time -- in handling peddler freight. 50 years ago it was "please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery." Now it is "delivery guaranteed by tomorrow if you order before 3 pm." Trains can't compete with that.
At about 7:45 the narrator says the locomotive goes 80 feet before the caboose moves. If my elementary school math skills are holding that would be a bit more than 7.5 inches per car with 125 cars. Anyone happen to know how accurate that is?
Remember hearing something about 6 inches of slack per coupler as a rule of thumb not counting for the modern hydroshock/cushion draft gear that would start showing up 10ìsh years later from when this film was made that could add more slack travel. Over a hundred cars 80 feet might have been a conservative estimate.
Fairly reasonable at the time, before the greater use of cars with cushioned draft gear. Today, the slack would be much greater, with as much as 20 inches of travel per coupler.
All railroads in the US were laid out east-west, no matter what direction the track actually ran. For instance, on the SP, San Francisco was the west-most station on the line. So if you were on a train from an Diego to SF, you were going railroad west, even though it was pretty much geographic north. Tracks going north or south were assigned as east or west by convention on each railroad.
North was typically even south was odd. Not all railroads were east and west. IC had both east west and north south. www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/ICG/ICG%20ETTs/ICG%20MO%20Div%20ETT%20%231%202-14-1974.pdf
"Highball" = "clear track". The original train signal was a large red ball that was hoisted when the track was clear and it was safe to move. Thus "high ball" meant "go". The ball signal disappeared almost instantly, to be replaced with several other types. But the "high ball" concept stuck, and was concatenated to just "highball".
Sarcasm alert: I'm quite sure the railroads employed more than four locomotive engineers. Pretty hard to feature all of them in a fifteen minute short. Multiplied by all of the RRs in the USA.
this was 1954, the only blacks I saw were the ones loading ice into the refrigerated freight cars. And some people think those were the good old days and if you were a white man they're absolutely right, if you were a woman or someone of color then not so much.
I saw no graffiti on the cars. I suppose the demographic that produces graffiti "artists" was still under control in 1954 and did not dare deface the trains.
Almost correct. The big difference was the nonexistence of the rattle can. There were hobos in those days (we would now call them homeless), and they would occasionally mark the sides of train cars. But the most common way to do this was chalk, and that would quickly wash off in the rain. Also, railroads had car wash facilities in those days, and again, the car washer would wash off chalk graffiti.
They had Railroad Police then, and they diiiiid nottttttttt plaaaaay! If they caught you, they could literally get away with murder, and noooooooobody gave a f*ck, and you had absolutely nooooooooo rights! So stay the f*ck off the railroad! Hoboes were in mortal danger, both from the railroad police and from each other. Besides, spray-paint was very rare and expensive!
Yep. Unions fought to keep the position in existence once there was no need for them, so their tasks changed as described in the film. They effectively became "assistant engineers", verifying signal aspects, attending to any mechanical issues that might arise, and other miscellaneous jobs. Typical crews were an engineer, fireman, and head brakeman in front, with the conductor and rear brakeman in the caboose. That all came to an end in the 1980's with the replacement of cabooses with End Of Train devices. Now it's just an engineer and a conductor on most trains.
If I recall my history correctly, the country was in a recession about that time during the Eisenhower administration. [Eisenhower had pulled out of Korea, causing job losses in the military-industrial complex, which he warned about in his farewell address. The deeper "Eisenhower Recession" came in 1957-58. There's a couple reasons why America is constantly at war. One is economics. The other is Congress has more "war time" powers than they do in peace time.]
@joelmoyer2462 You need to re-recall your history. Yes, there was a recession in 1954, but the country still had a solid manufacturing base, steel making, aluminum making, energy independent, and the dollar was backed by silver. Today, the dollar is a "Federal Reserve Note'" that is backed by paper IOU because Congress created more dollars in order to spend more dollars. In addition, in 1954, Social Security was a true trust fund. Today, Social Security is in the "general fund" which means Congress now borrows from it (bankrupts it) regularly. And in 1954 we had a real President who did not have dementia and was laser focused on our national security. I will take 1954 with our borders secure even with its recession any day over 2024 with an over 30 trillion dollar national debt. Once again, re-recall your history with no political blinders.
@@johnjackson8401 I'm not the one making assumptions with political blinders. Reading comprehension might indicate that I'm not a Democrat by me mentioning Ike had *warned* about the military industrial complex. That would be before a certain political party tried to invade Cuba then sent troops in an "advisory capacity" to Vietnam to [try to] clean up France's mess. Would I love to have the Eisenhower mindset with modern technology? You bet. But I'm not going to gloss over history simply because I like Ike. He did the right thing disengaging from "perpetual war" for the country's benefit. Notwithstanding an economic downturn in 1953-54 as we pulled out of Korea or the sharper recession in 57-58. We weren't fully on the idiotic Keynesian sinking ship of inflation yet. Another video of a train wreck talked about the $60,000 cleanup costs of a train wreck from this time period really illuminates the effects of rampant inflation during the terms of that certain political party (Carter, 1st 2 years of Clinton until Republicans controlled Congress for the first time in decades, Obama, and Biden). I could have bought a whole train of goods in 1954 with my disposable income from 2024. But there are idiots who think $20 / hrs for flipping burgers is a good idea because they can't pay their rent on $15/hr. Still, the country was in a downturn in the 50s. Railroading especially. Dieselization wasn't because the railroads saw diesels as the inevitable future. It was mostly financial. Diesel was cheaper than coal and cleaner. They were dropping passenger service to save money. As much as we like to romanticize the 1950s (and there are reasons to), we can't ignore that it wasn't *all* lemonade on the front porch at sunset listening to the community band playing in the park gazebo.
Reading comments from poosies getting triggered by grammatical constructs is annoying. I bet the OP would be perfectly fine if some blue-haired 12-year-old twit on TikTok said she identified as cake as her gender.
I really like watching these old films. I probably saw some of them in grade school. They portray a more simple, uncomplicated life which was not reality. Every age has its own set of problems and concerns we tend to forget as we struggle with our present ones. America was certainly different in 1954.
You mean, better.
No better. Different, the 1950s had wars, pink scares, labor wars
This is amongst the most mature comments I’ve seen on a video, kudos to you sir.
Those films were very much reality
Railfans should take notice of this film, it's that good. Nice preservation work, PeriscopeFilm.
I’m watching it. That’s notice right?
Boy, what a trip down memory lane! Put me right back in the right hand seat again. The Glory Days of railroading.
My Dad, I still miss him, drove trains for 40 years with the ACL, Seaboard Coastline. Started in 1938 retired in 1978. What a guy. They didn't call him "Sport" without reason.
Probably within a quarter mile of where I'm sitting ..the CSX Mainline, Florida to Richmond is right down the street
A Rail fan's delight!
They told the story, used the camera.. understood. 👌 Easy to watch. Doesn't even matter what they're saying.
Really nice A-B-B-A set of locomotives. I’m surprised to see bulk milk tank cars, didn’t think they had these. The joint rail seems always so well maintained in these days. R F& P, linking North and South. Thanks periscope again for a nice film of historical heritage.
5:57 Fascinating, if you don’t fill the milk tanker up completely, it magically becomes a butter tanker by the time you get to the other terminal
But you can’t get it out of the tank. 😂
Five guys in the crew!
No any more the cheap cheap railroads dont want the 2 they have now,they want no manned trains to
Significantly more than you see nowadays. The biggest railroads run crews of just two, when they don't automate fully, unless they need to bring in extra engines for steep hills where they'll have an extra couple pair onboard.
@kelvintorrence5994 No, they don't. Not trains on the mainline anyway. Every UP train runs with a crew. My friend is an Engineer for UP here in Utah. He's got a DAMN GOOD job. Them boys got it made in the shade and are VERRRY well compensated for their work.
Sorry...But exactly ZERO "automated" fully loaded coal trains are running down (or up) the canyon, along Hwy. 6 from Helper through Thistle, Spanish Fork and North to SLC.👌🏻
That's one of the steepest and most dangerous passes in the entire U.S. and you'd better have your game face on when you climb aboard and take the reigns.💯
Those trains will never be automated.
My buddy says: "If you can bring a fully loaded coal train down THAT canyon and not let it get away from ya... You're good to run any load, on any stretch of line anywhere in the country."
@RILEYLEIFSON_UTAH Very good to hear that there are still railroad men doing what must be a fabulous job. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a railroad engineer. What little boy hasn't at one time or another?
@@thejerseyj5479 Yessirr.👍🏻 We've got some good ol boy railmen who kept/keep the world turning, here in our neck of the woods. I'm so jealous of what he (they) get to do. I ask 'em all sorts of questions like a wide-eyed 5 year old would... and STILL get that feeling I did as a kid, every single time I see a train anywhere! Without fail.
I'm also blessed to know and be friends with several men who are 1-2 generations wiser than my 40 yr. old (still a pup) self.
Men that are my late father and granddaddy's age who retired from UP after 25-50 years of railroading, back in the good ol days.
Shout out to some local UP Legends:
- Mr. George Jones. Salem, UT. (Ret)
- Andy Ottesen. Salem, UT. (Ret)
- Glade Collard. Salem, UT. (Ret)
- Zach Forebush. Spanish Fork, UT.
🛤 🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🇺🇲💨
“6000 horses all there in his left hand”. My heart is STILL pounding!
Twice that in a nitro funny car.
@@tomhowe1510 How far can a nitro funny car pull a 5,000 ton load? 😃
@@rafaucett how fast can a train git there
@@tomhowe1510 How far can a nitro funny car travel before blowing its engine?
@@rafaucett who gits the chix
I love how the narrators back then all used to model themselves on John Wayne.
Nice find guys! Appreciate your efforts to preserve these.
I grew up in a Santa Fe town. Topeka. The T in A,T&SF. I think in the 1950s, half the town worked for or were related to someone who was employed at either the Santa Fe corporate offices downtown or at the shops, located in the Oakland neighborhood. The rest of our town were out at the Air Force base, where they flew the beautiful B-47, 24 hours a day. It was a great place to be if you loved trains and airplanes like me.
Richmond Fredericksburg and Potomac train gets humped at Potomac Yard (Pot 9:52 in Alexandria, Virginia. A set of Baltimore and Ohio F-units takes over for a trip north. Guessing that is either Baltimore or Philadelphia as the terminus. Interesting to see milk cars as they would soon dissappear from the railroad scene.
Meant to say (Pot Yard)
I'm guessing the locomotives are either F3 or F7 units, although I'm not sure which. The number board on the lead says 692 but according to the B&O's roster that number should belong to a GP9.
Murphy has control of that beast like a dragon slayer I love it!
Well done 👌
Thank you 🤠
Excellent editing. Great movie. Everything about railroading is very interesting. I'm sure it's a 'guy thing': working with big, heavy, powerful stuff that could kill you in a second if you're not paying attention. I should think the most stressful part of railroading would be trying to go through a town at a reasonable speed along a five mile stretch that has 25 street crossings. God bless you and your families.
Incredible Technology. Even back then. Great stuff! Too bad we couldn't return to such efficiency. Life was good then.
I think the switching yard at the beginning is Potomac Yard, which is in Alexandria, VA, along US 1. All the tracks were removed in 1982 except for the through tracks. Several large strip shopping centers were built there in the 1990s, and Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Washington Redskins, tried to move the team there to a new stadium in the 90s, but failed. Just recently, Governor Glenn Youngkin of VA and Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, tried to move both teams to a new stadium at Potomac Yard, but the Democrats stopped that move. The area keeps striking out for a sports team.
I remember when I lived in Arlington in the early sixties seeing that busy Freight yard there.. seeing cars that were pushed over the hump often with the New York Central Railroad logo on it
Imagine the ice they needed every day to keep those cars cool during the summer in the USA. Now they have individual refrigeration units. I bet they never imagined that people anywhere could watch the trains zoom by in real time in color in La Plata, Missouri on the internet from their living room. Except for continuous welded rails, most things haven't changed very much. Someday they might be using electric power. But that will take a while. Containers changed the world of shipping and lowered the cost of shipping a lot. No globalization without containers. They are probably the simplest thing to change the world since the wheel. And it was all caused by traffic jams along the East Coast.
Holy white noise!
Great film!!!
I guess that roller bearings hadn't taken over yet. I remember seeing a 1949 animated cartoon made by Timken touting the advantages of roller bearings. It was called "Big Tim."
They were all Hyatt journal boxes. Don't think Timken was used yet.
1:16 "when he's not working, he drives a small car" showing man getting out of an auto the size of a small freightcar.
Looked like a '52 Chevy. That was a very practical car for the time.
@@misterwhipple2870 Chrysler product, probably a Plymouth. Might have the optional radio and heater, but almost certainly a three-on-the-tree shift.
@@aberdeenbranch You're right. I did not look closely enough. It's probably a '52, but definitely a Mopar. Thanks for keeping me straight.
Followed by, "He's working today." Meaning he is driving the "big car" aka the locomotive.
My 1st car... 1952 Plymouth,4-door,6 banger,3 on the tree,top speed 60mph,w/a good tailwind, NY to MN in1964,57mph avg👍👍
Talk about carrying the freight!
Nice to see some Potomac Yard footage! The audio quality was a little dodgy, as if the film reels got a little too close to a magnet large enough to disturb the sound recording.
@1:09 Murphy drives a ‘small’ car ? Cars back then were anything but small ! 😊
Murph left his window down, too. Hope it didn't rain while he was gone.
Only when he's not working. Today he is working [driving the "big car" or locomotive].
This film was surprisingly interesting! 👍🏻😊
bellissimo video grazie.
Title said RF&P, but the main train in the film was B&O!
"Ask an engineer why he likes to run a "fast freight?" and he'll just smile"....
Oh there's a classic fallen flag right there at the RFP
I would love to see milk tankers on the Uk freight scene again
All of these guys were 40 yrs old
Nearly all of them were 55-65 years old.
Featherbedding...Fireman on a diesel electric engine. Gone today along with the brakeman.
yup he was basically along for the ride
Move 80 ft and caboose not moved yet. Big George. Before my time but sure sounds nice when you can make a big thing out of something that we probably don't even think about nowadays. News back then..
And if Murphy was sloppy, he was up to 10 MPH in those 80 feet. That meant the caboose went from 0 to 10 MPH instantly when the slack came out, and everyone in it fell over. Then Murphy got a good talking to by his conductor at the next stop. Proper slack management, especially on passenger and mixed freight, was a real art, and something the engineer needed to think about.
9:56 As this was filmed between Richmond and DC, I’m wondering if that was the Auto Train just after it left Lorton
The Auto Train wouldn't appear for another 29 years.
Where's all the graffiti on the cars?!
No graffiti and no tattoos. A much more wholesome society back then.
@@johnkoval1898 Plenty of tattoos. On sailors, for the most part. And men. Tattooed ladies were very scarce. If you saw someone with tattooed arms, you could virtually bet he was a Navy man. By the 60s tattoos had somewhat gone out of style, then in the late 60s onward they came back with a vengeance.
I hate grafitti on freight cars.
Spray paint had been invented, but was just starting to catch on.
This was filmed back when people still found the time to raise their kids teaching them right from wrong.
thumb 👍
things were built right back then. .
Very diplomatic, calling the fireman the "assistant engineer." It took the railroads decades of contract negotiations to get rid of these do-nothing nobodies after diesel engines took over.
Then in the 1970s, the railways had a brain fart when they realized their engineers started to retire
The unions fought to the death to keep those feather-bedding old geezers in those jobs, but the handwriting was on the wall! When GM rolled out the Diesels in '39, it was a matter of time!!!!!!!!
There is no point to have a fireman on a diesel locomotives. This is why they wanted to kill steam locomotives but they were not able to eliminate the position. C&O wanted to buy what was left of the Erie Lakawana RR but the unions demanded 6 people crew. Subway 🚇 trains only had 1 person in the cab. Same for street cars. If the RR knew that they would have to have fireman on diesels they would have kept steam locomotives. Many RR went broke from dieselization. Branch lines that were profitable with old cast off steam locomotives became unprofitable haveing to pay for the cost of a $250,000 locomotives when the job was performed by a$5,000 steam locomotives sent to scrap yards. Derelict steam locomotives sat in scap yards for decades as their previous owners slid into bankruptcy. Poetic justice ⚖️!
How many crew in '54 compared to the 2 today?
Original crew in steam era was engineer, fireman, conductor, front and rear brakemen. As time went on the brakemen were dropped (because air brakes came along), then the fireman was dropped (because there was no fire to tend), leaving just the conductor and engineer. Then the caboose was dropped in place of a FRED or "rear end device" that transmitted rear brake pressure indication to the cab of the lead engine, and the conductor now rides in the fireman's position on a freight. On a passenger train he rides back in a passenger car.
RR's had 5 member crews in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest between shifts. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. On call 2 hour notice. PSR ,12,000 tons 200+cars trains now.
I’m not surprised about the modern North American Baltimore And Ohio Railroad long sturdy streamlined diesel electric freight trains.
🐢🎼 At a Siding! 🎼🐢
Eastbound : even train numbers, westbound : odd. And rotating the map clockwise - west : north, and east : south. Great when reading timetables. Maybe why addresses in US postal system for west, north sides of the street are odd, for east, south they're even, like knowing Morse code for whistling at crossings - two longs, a short, a long : the letter Q (British : 'the Queen is coming'), and on US railroad time to be sure. Not sure what the Navy thinks of all this, however. Nice movie by the way. Thx.
Railroads built America giving good job that were who you were. You were a railroader . Back when we're were a prosperous country. Safe cities and safe schools.USA was great in black and white. No welfare states . No millions of illegals getting handouts from the government. We are now circling the toilet 🚽 and going down.😢😢
Big George’s ladies
Ugh. That was “cringe” as the kids call it.
The ladies liked being pulled by Big George 😍
Shoestring and Stobe mighta road on one of these.
Ага особенно сейчас в Америке поезда очень хорошо ездят и без железной дороги, но только недалеко)
How come we don't use trains for freight as much anymore? Trucks seem less efficient
Trains are for hauling. Trucks are for delivering. Unfortunately, trains can only go where the rails are laid and in bulk to be efficient. 100 single trucks can go anywhere at any time.
The unit trains and intermodal hotshots on "through" runs still make sense. The way freights delivering to every town along the way, not so much. There's a lot of inefficiency -- equating to time -- in handling peddler freight. 50 years ago it was "please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery." Now it is "delivery guaranteed by tomorrow if you order before 3 pm." Trains can't compete with that.
At about 7:45 the narrator says the locomotive goes 80 feet before the caboose moves. If my elementary school math skills are holding that would be a bit more than 7.5 inches per car with 125 cars. Anyone happen to know how accurate that is?
Remember hearing something about 6 inches of slack per coupler as a rule of thumb not counting for the modern hydroshock/cushion draft gear that would start showing up 10ìsh years later from when this film was made that could add more slack travel. Over a hundred cars 80 feet might have been a conservative estimate.
Fairly reasonable at the time, before the greater use of cars with cushioned draft gear. Today, the slack would be much greater, with as much as 20 inches of travel per coupler.
Odd number going west even going east. What about north or south?
All railroads in the US were laid out east-west, no matter what direction the track actually ran. For instance, on the SP, San Francisco was the west-most station on the line. So if you were on a train from an Diego to SF, you were going railroad west, even though it was pretty much geographic north. Tracks going north or south were assigned as east or west by convention on each railroad.
North was typically even south was odd. Not all railroads were east and west. IC had both east west and north south.
www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/ICG/ICG%20ETTs/ICG%20MO%20Div%20ETT%20%231%202-14-1974.pdf
high ball
"Highball" = "clear track". The original train signal was a large red ball that was hoisted when the track was clear and it was safe to move. Thus "high ball" meant "go". The ball signal disappeared almost instantly, to be replaced with several other types. But the "high ball" concept stuck, and was concatenated to just "highball".
It was nice to see how many black people were employed by the railroad driving the trains
Ignorant remark-
Sarcasm alert: I'm quite sure the railroads employed more than four locomotive engineers. Pretty hard to feature all of them in a fifteen minute short. Multiplied by all of the RRs in the USA.
this was 1954, the only blacks I saw were the ones loading ice into the refrigerated freight cars. And some people think those were the good old days and if you were a white man they're absolutely right, if you were a woman or someone of color then not so much.
Railroads only hired black people as porters, red caps, janitors and track laborers until the early 60s.
Notch 8
Now these modern trains employ only one person and have no caboose.
Two. Conductor is still there on US trains. He rides in the cab along with the engineer on a freight, in a passenger car on a passenger train.
free rolling cars? an OSH geek just had a stroke
Hump yards still work exactly that same way today. The only difference is a computer is operating the switches and retarders.
That's Jason Robards narrating the film! Knew that sounded familiar!
I saw no graffiti on the cars. I suppose the demographic that produces graffiti "artists" was still under control in 1954 and did not dare deface the trains.
😏😏😏
Damn
Almost correct. The big difference was the nonexistence of the rattle can. There were hobos in those days (we would now call them homeless), and they would occasionally mark the sides of train cars. But the most common way to do this was chalk, and that would quickly wash off in the rain. Also, railroads had car wash facilities in those days, and again, the car washer would wash off chalk graffiti.
And kids run toward the train to see it.
Now.......
They had Railroad Police then, and they diiiiid nottttttttt plaaaaay! If they caught you, they could literally get away with murder, and noooooooobody gave a f*ck, and you had absolutely nooooooooo rights! So stay the f*ck off the railroad! Hoboes were in mortal danger, both from the railroad police and from each other. Besides, spray-paint was very rare and expensive!
No graffiti on any car!!
Graffiti wasn't completely unheard-of back then, but it was almost always done in chalk, and washed off by itself in the next rain.
A fireman on a diesel? 😂
Yep. Unions fought to keep the position in existence once there was no need for them, so their tasks changed as described in the film. They effectively became "assistant engineers", verifying signal aspects, attending to any mechanical issues that might arise, and other miscellaneous jobs. Typical crews were an engineer, fireman, and head brakeman in front, with the conductor and rear brakeman in the caboose. That all came to an end in the 1980's with the replacement of cabooses with End Of Train devices. Now it's just an engineer and a conductor on most trains.
Anybody in this film under than 70?
The film itself is 70 in 2024!
Nope. Those guys started running trains for General Sherman.
@@misterwhipple2870- The conductor had 40 years under his belt. That means that he hired on in 1914.
@@OldsVistaCruiser I know that, I was exaggerating by about 50 years. It was a joke.
Yep, no graffiti. The country was booming in 1954.
If I recall my history correctly, the country was in a recession about that time during the Eisenhower administration.
[Eisenhower had pulled out of Korea, causing job losses in the military-industrial complex, which he warned about in his farewell address. The deeper "Eisenhower Recession" came in 1957-58. There's a couple reasons why America is constantly at war. One is economics. The other is Congress has more "war time" powers than they do in peace time.]
@joelmoyer2462 You need to re-recall your history. Yes, there was a recession in 1954, but the country still had a solid manufacturing base, steel making, aluminum making, energy independent, and the dollar was backed by silver. Today, the dollar is a "Federal Reserve Note'" that is backed by paper IOU because Congress created more dollars in order to spend more dollars. In addition, in 1954, Social Security was a true trust fund. Today, Social Security is in the "general fund" which means Congress now borrows from it (bankrupts it) regularly. And in 1954 we had a real President who did not have dementia and was laser focused on our national security. I will take 1954 with our borders secure even with its recession any day over 2024 with an over 30 trillion dollar national debt. Once again, re-recall your history with no political blinders.
@@johnjackson8401 I'm not the one making assumptions with political blinders. Reading comprehension might indicate that I'm not a Democrat by me mentioning Ike had *warned* about the military industrial complex. That would be before a certain political party tried to invade Cuba then sent troops in an "advisory capacity" to Vietnam to [try to] clean up France's mess.
Would I love to have the Eisenhower mindset with modern technology? You bet. But I'm not going to gloss over history simply because I like Ike. He did the right thing disengaging from "perpetual war" for the country's benefit.
Notwithstanding an economic downturn in 1953-54 as we pulled out of Korea or the sharper recession in 57-58. We weren't fully on the idiotic Keynesian sinking ship of inflation yet. Another video of a train wreck talked about the $60,000 cleanup costs of a train wreck from this time period really illuminates the effects of rampant inflation during the terms of that certain political party (Carter, 1st 2 years of Clinton until Republicans controlled Congress for the first time in decades, Obama, and Biden). I could have bought a whole train of goods in 1954 with my disposable income from 2024. But there are idiots who think $20 / hrs for flipping burgers is a good idea because they can't pay their rent on $15/hr.
Still, the country was in a downturn in the 50s. Railroading especially. Dieselization wasn't because the railroads saw diesels as the inevitable future. It was mostly financial. Diesel was cheaper than coal and cleaner. They were dropping passenger service to save money. As much as we like to romanticize the 1950s (and there are reasons to), we can't ignore that it wasn't *all* lemonade on the front porch at sunset listening to the community band playing in the park gazebo.
Anthropomorphing and sexualizing trains is a little harsh on modern ears.
Political Correctness is VERY harsh on OLD ears!
Go have yourself a good cry...
Reading comments from poosies getting triggered by grammatical constructs is annoying.
I bet the OP would be perfectly fine if some blue-haired 12-year-old twit on TikTok said she identified as cake as her gender.
Big George loved his ladies lol
grandma had a hot box.