I grew up next to the Rock Island tracks in Lincoln (Havelock) Nebraska. Every night at 9pm the Rocket would go by our house. The neighbor boy had never been on a train so his father took him to Omaha and back to Lincoln. The whole neighborhood stood by the tracks with flashlights as the Rocket went by.
All these trains except the Fiat cars ran the line right in my back yard. As a kid back in the 70s, the RI passenger trains were my favorite beside the Burlington Northern bi-level cab cars and Amtrak.
@@markdebruyn1212 There was also FIAT Elettrotreni, (search the translation of "Elettrotreni" but i think There Is no translation) however that was the brand name for Electric trains. Fiat has produced also very much "littorine" ( the Aln of amtrak were littorine, small and self propelled trains). Fiat was only a second brand name, the First brand name in Building trains was the Breda. Sorry for some errors, i'm italian.
Had the ICC not allowed the discontinuance of the Minneapolis-Kansas City and Chicago-Omaha trains in 1969 and 1970, the Rock Island would have found the money to join NRPC. A lot of railroads gave the new corporation equipment, often fully-depreciated, and valued it a lot more than it was worth. But because the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 stipulated that railroads had to pay the equivalent of 1969 losses, it was cheaper for the Rock Island to stay out and keep running two sets of trains.
🔴🦅🇺🇲🦅 I miss riding in the Cabose car the clickety clack of the steel rails , would put me right to sleep, , I worked on the Mighty Rock Island line in Blue Island Illinois ❤️‼️👍
The Bi-Centennial painted E8 ended up in Baldwin City Kansas at Midland Railway. A demonstration hobby railroad.I worked and help operate old 652 for a couple years. Round windows were put in the sides and "The Rocket" painted in art decco lettering. It was painted a bright orange-red with black and silver striping. It really looked nice.
That coach with the small door in it. Was Minneapolis and Saint Louis. The Rock Island got them when the last train on the M&ST: a Watertown, SD mail train was discontinued by loss of mail to trucks. Watertown, SD gets 2 million dollars a year to maintain air service at government expense under the EAS program.. The train went to many more places that a plane could never land. Billions were collected on tickets until 1962. This money was spent on improving roads and airports like Moline. Bus services get 5311D subsides to maintain service to cities under 50,000 people. Amtrak with booming business gets cuts in service. Jacked up fares and threats of shut downs every year. With now popular and booming business. The national passenger rail system went bankrupt from coast to coast really in 1967 when the mail was removed by trains. Work of the powerful highway and airline lobbies..
My stepdad and his first wife took the Rock Island Rocket on their honeymoon. what a nice experience that must have been riding one of the great trains of American history.
@ that was how the government tricked people; in reality, Amtrak was a half-assed bailout Nixon only signed because it was designed to fail and fade-out. It survived only because of 1973, and with people demanding trains especially on the NEC, congress gave it more authority than it was designed to handle. Furthermore, the government heavily assisted airlines and cars/trucks/buses and ended the mail contract, which offset losses.
It's funny how they configured the headlight lighting for that railcar: in Italy at that time train headlights were not very different from those of cars (they still are today) with ditch lights that had parking lights, low beam and high beam, with the third light that only acted as a third high beam, while for the tail lights special red filters were inserted in the ditch lights. For operation in the USA, however, the ditch lights are equipped with permanent red filters, because at that time they did not yet exist in the USA and the only projector is the third headlight, the problem was that that light was unique with only one level of intensity, instead in the USA it is split and has 2 levels of intensity, also the horn sounds very differently and the bell is missing, I don't know if the original IVECO engine was replaced with a Detroit Diesel or Cummins engine and the transmission was always mechanical, perhaps with a fuller or automatic gearbox
After CRIP and UP asked to amalgamate in late 1950s, CRIP stopped doing many everyday things; doing when needed. Ten years later UP were not interested in a mess, or the amalgamation was denied. Stories abound of guys bumping into jobs demanding computer knowledge, they did not know where the switches were located. Ineptitude reigned there, the clerks strike ended the managerial incompetence.
Private-owned intercity passenger rail may be gone for now, but if more lines like Brightline start popping up our salvation might arrive. The revolution is nigh!
To join Amtrak, the Rock Island would have had to pay the equivalent of its 1969 losses to the corporation. It ran the Minneapolis-Kansas City Plainsman for half that year, and the Chicago-Omaha Nos.. 7 and 10 for all of it. To justify eliminating those two sets of trains, the RI inflated their losses with creative accounting. In fact, the railroad persuaded the Interstate Commerce Commission to drop the Plainsman without a hearing, and to discontinue 7 & 10 before the hearings took place.
The 1967 removal of the mail by bailed out Government Motors and other highway anti rail people. Bankrupted the private passenger rail system coast to coast. it was years before Amtrak was formed. It was to continue to decline and go out of business in a year or two. But instead with little or no investment has record ridership today. Just cut backs. downsizing and jacked up fares on limited services.
No, “Metra” did not take over responsibility of operating the Rock’s suburban commuter trains, as it hadn’t been ‘invented’ yet. The Regional Transportation Authority ( RTA ) took over the service.
Actually NIRC (Northeast Illinois Railroad Corporation) was created in June 1981 after the C&NW didn’t wanna to run it the commuter service anymore. They was runnin the trains from March 1980 until the NIRC was created.
I got a chance to ride all the major non-Amtrak. I did not ride the Reading or the Georgia, but I did ride the Southern, Rio Grande, and Rock Island. I rode the Quad Cities Rocket shortly before the club diner came off. The parlor was already gone. I will tell you that the equipment was clean and the food in the diner was excellent. The Rock Island did try, and John Ingram was trying to bring the railroad back. It could have made it if management had been better in the '60s, and they hadn't let deferred maintenance take over the property. Shortly before the Rocket remnants were discontinued, the track had gotten better. A Rock Island, Milwaukee and North Western merger in the mid '60s under North Western management might have pulled it off.
If this merger came to pass, the combined RI/CNW/MILW would be so powerful that Burlington Northern would have not existed and BNSF would not be with us today. Combined with Union Pacific and Southern Pacific the lines would comprise of three routes to the Pacific at Chicago (Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles). A truly transcontinental railroad to be sure.
Scooby Carr I believe that’s true! In the early ‘70s the Rock was turning five trains a day over to the SP in Tucumcari. UP would have been a likely merger partner. It would have been a great railroad, and the Midwest would have had better rail service.
Awesome vidoes! But how do the engineers drive the trains in reverse? Is there some-one at the back (now the front) with a coms link to the drivers cab, or what? This has always puzzled me.
If you watch the video from 3:25 on, they explain that it was on a sales tour of the United States at the time, being promoted for use on lightly patronised runs. Note the North American coupler and cowcatcher that have been added.
I hate that the ICC forced any operator that didn't join Amtrak to operate their intercity trains themselves without help and couldn't discontinue them. The Rio Grande and Southern choose to keep their intercity trains going, they are the only real good examples. The Rock Island should have just killed itself in the 70s. they probably hadn't made a profit in decades and were living paycheck to paycheck so to speak.
Total 6 railroads declined to join Amtrak when it began in 1971, for various reasons. The law that created Amtrak required non member railroads to operate their trains til at least 1975, then file with the ICC or state agencies to drop them. Southern dropped 2 of its 4 trains and made service reductions to the other 2. By 1977 it ran only its Washington-New Orleans Southern Crescent. Two years later Amtrak had that train. Per this video, the Rock Island ended its intercity train service Dec 31 1978 after Illinois ended its partial subsidy.
They're not the same railcar! The 920 one is a Fiat prototype that never come back in Italy, the 1920 was another ALn.668. Fiat never sold the 920 to FS or Trenitalia
Mesmerizing and classic. A microcosm of how pitiful the private American passenger train had become. Dirty, faded and unwashed - worse than Seaboard Coast Line's Silver Comet in 1969 or the L&N remnant of The Georgian, out of Evansville, Indiana, at Atlanta Union Station that year.
Now just stop...The Rock Island did not join Amtrak. Because it was PAID $1500 a trip by the state of Illinois in 1970 money to run each train. Just enough to cover costs. No profits. The service was run in the ground and was awful. Trains were late and had no dining or popular palour service on them at the end. When the state money was cut the trains ended. It was so awful the crew would come in alone sometimes! There were 40 ten mile per hour slow orders in 181 miles. And lots more 30's and 40's! The whole national rail system went bankrupt when the mail was removed in 1967 from trains across the county. It took a few years to put together America Travel Tracks. Amtrak. A cut back downsized operation. Now with record ridership across the country. The congress has tried to shut it down 49 times!
intercityrailpal 49 times. Wow! amazing that Amtrak has been evading oil-thirsty republican shills for so long. The “emissions” are angering liberals just as much!
Corruption at the top. I read Antony Sutton's Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones and this explains Global Politics. They are all Rent Boys as we would say in the UK!
I don't believe so. The I-88 toll road people fought to kill the Northwestern service. The Rock Island runs along the I-80 corridor with I-88 near by. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been put in the Moline Airport and the I-80 interstate. All the Rock Island tickets taxes and right of way taxes went into these projects that benefit the RI competition. While the Rock went from 90mph to TEN miles per hour for miles and miles! What finally killed the RI and other railroads was removal of the mail in 1967 to highways. You can Thank GM and the highway lobby for that. They got the Post Office to remove the mail. GM which got the 50 billion bail out years later! Yes the governments of Canada and the US lost billions on that deal. There was NO bailout for the RI.
@@Westerner78 Big Tire (Firestone, Goodyear, Michelin) and Big Oil (Shell, Standard, Phillips 66, Citgo) also contributed to the mess in government sponsored competition.
At the time, as you'll surely know, most passenger services in the USA were under constant threat of closure, not only intercity ones, but commuter ones as well. With low ridership comes low revenue, and at the time, there wasn't a single passenger railway company in good financial shape. The idea was that the italian ALn 668 (or it's derivatives) could've been ideal for the scarcely maintained and badly damaged american tracks, as it was exceptionally light (35 tons vs the 53 of a Budd RDC), wich meant less damage to the track, and more economical to run, as it had a low fuel consumption (compared to gas-guzzling E8s hauling half-empty gallery cars). At the time, FIAT (the ALn668 manufacturer) had already fullfilled huge orders from around the world for railcars based on the ALn668 system (in fact, by 1976, FIAT had already delivered ALn668-based DMUs for railways in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay), and with the ALn668 earnig a nice reputation as a reliable, simple and economical DMU, FIAT felt confident to enter the north-american market to provide an alternative to the afromentioned RDCs and locomotive-hauled trains. The ALn668 seen in the video (ALn668 1920 of the -1900 subseries), was loaned by FIAT from FS (the national railway company of italy) in 1976 and sent to Chicago (to METRA) and Boston (to MBTA). Besides fitting the american automatic coupler and front-window protector-grills, ALn668 1920 was practically unchanged from the units still running in Italy (in fact, it also kept most italian inscriptions). The only major difference was that it had to be actually "weighted down" by adding an underfloor steel plate (increasing the weight by around 1 ton) as american railway officials (i don't remer if METRA or MBTA ones) actually felt that the ALn 668 was too light! ALn668 1920 perfomed excellently (it was one of the very few units that managed to run during the harsh winter of 1976), but in the end, no order was made, with most railways continuing to prefer RDCs or loco-hauled trains. Budd was also developing the SPV2000 at the time, intended to be the RDC's successor, wich may have played a part in the refusal of the ALn668, as most railways were expected to prefer the homegrown SPV2000. Unfortunately, the SPV2000 proved to be a failure. In retrospective, the ALn668 was an ideal candidate, as not only it was light, economical and fuel-efficient, but it could've been well suited for commuter services, with the two automatic doors per side (especially the semi-central ones of the -1900 subseries), compared to the tiny, manual ones of the RDC (wich gave access directly to the cab. ALn668s had, and still have a fully-separadted cab). One of the very few criticisms of the ALn668 was that it lacked air-conditioning, but fitting one with it would've been to defy the purpose of the ALn668 of being an economical and simple DMU (also not that AC is really needed in cold Chicago or Boston). As a final note, ever since the failure of the SPV2000, there haven't been any large-production "made-in-usa" DMU designs (and if we exclude the WESCommuterRail ones, none at all). The few DMUs running in the USA today are all derivatives of either the German Siemens Desiro (DB VT642) or the Swiss Stadler GTW2/6.
I thought blue island was jus a myth.the company i work for is based out of blue island.modern forge.they built a second forge shop in piney flats Tennessee in 1976 which is wheir I work..we here alot about blue island we here blue island this blue Island that blue island does it this way.i thought they were jus making blue island up but I guess not
Rock was to big for a short line run railroad...chicago Galveston..el Paso...little rock ark..denver...omaha..Houston.. Texas's the killer of most railroads...sp..mp..tp..SF..Burlington..Rio grade..ssw.. katy..😣 .ect
By the time Nixon signed the Railpax (Amtrak) law in October, 1970, all the RI had left were the Peoria and Rock Island trains. The Rock could afford to stay out of Amtrak.
Illinois paid $1500 a trip to run the trains. With 40 ten mile per hour slow orders in 181 miles at the end. Funding was cut the trains came off. The service was awful. I rode it many times. There also were 40, 30 and 20 MPH slow orders. The trains ran hours late. All the Rock Island taxes on property and tickets were spent on nearby I-80.
At the time, as you'll surely know, most passenger services in the USA were under constant threat of closure, not only intercity ones, but commuter ones as well. With low ridership comes low revenue, and at the time, there wasn't a single passenger railway company in good financial shape. The idea was that the italian ALn 668 (or it's derivatives) could've been ideal for the scarcely maintained and badly damaged american tracks, as it was exceptionally light (35 tons vs the 53 of a Budd RDC), wich meant less damage to the track, and more economical to run, as it had a low fuel consumption (compared to gas-guzzling E8s hauling half-empty gallery cars). At the time, FIAT (the ALn668 manufacturer) had already fullfilled huge orders from around the world for railcars based on the ALn668 system (in fact, by 1976, FIAT had already delivered ALn668-based DMUs for railways in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay), and with the ALn668 earnig a nice reputation as a reliable, simple and economical DMU, FIAT felt confident to enter the north-american market to provide an alternative to the afromentioned RDCs and locomotive-hauled trains. The ALn668 seen in the video (ALn668 1920 of the -1900 subseries), was loaned by FIAT from FS (the national railway company of italy) in 1976 and sent to Chicago (to METRA) and Boston (to MBTA). Besides fitting the american automatic coupler and front-window protector-grills, ALn668 1920 was practically unchanged from the units still running in Italy (in fact, it also kept most italian inscriptions). The only major difference was that it had to be actually "weighted down" by adding an underfloor steel plate (increasing the weight by around 1 ton) as american railway officials (i don't remer if METRA or MBTA ones) actually felt that the ALn 668 was too light! ALn668 1920 perfomed excellently (it was one of the very few units that managed to run during the harsh winter of 1976), but in the end, no order was made, with most railways continuing to prefer RDCs or loco-hauled trains. Budd was also developing the SPV2000 at the time, intended to be the RDC's successor, wich may have played a part in the refusal of the ALn668, as most railways were expected to prefer the homegrown SPV2000. Unfortunately, the SPV2000 proved to be a failure. In retrospective, the ALn668 was an ideal candidate, as not only it was light, economical and fuel-efficient, but it could've been well suited for commuter services, with the two automatic doors per side (especially the semi-central ones of the -1900 subseries), compared to the tiny, manual ones of the RDC (wich gave access directly to the cab. ALn668s had, and still have a fully-separadted cab). One of the very few criticisms of the ALn668 was that it lacked air-conditioning, but fitting one with it would've been to defy the purpose of the ALn668 of being an economical and simple DMU (also not that AC is really needed in cold Chicago or Boston). As a final note, ever since the failure of the SPV2000, there haven't been any large-production "made-in-usa" DMU designs (and if we exclude the WESCommuterRail ones, none at all). The few DMUs running in the USA today are all derivatives of either the German Siemens Desiro (DB VT642) or the Swiss Stadler GTW2/6.
I grew up next to the Rock Island tracks in Lincoln (Havelock) Nebraska. Every night at 9pm the Rocket would go by our house. The neighbor boy had never been on a train so his father took him to Omaha and back to Lincoln. The whole neighborhood stood by the tracks with flashlights as the Rocket went by.
All these trains except the Fiat cars ran the line right in my back yard. As a kid back in the 70s, the RI passenger trains were my favorite beside the Burlington Northern bi-level cab cars and Amtrak.
I'm italian and when i saw the Aln 668 i thinked to be in Italy
@@giacomomonti2240 I din't even know that Fiat used to built trains
@@markdebruyn1212 There was also FIAT Elettrotreni, (search the translation of "Elettrotreni" but i think There Is no translation) however that was the brand name for Electric trains.
Fiat has produced also very much "littorine" ( the Aln of amtrak were littorine, small and self propelled trains).
Fiat was only a second brand name, the First brand name in Building trains was the Breda. Sorry for some errors, i'm italian.
Good to see those old E series engines, such a cool look .
Had the ICC not allowed the discontinuance of the Minneapolis-Kansas City and Chicago-Omaha trains in 1969 and 1970, the Rock Island would have found the money to join NRPC. A lot of railroads gave the new corporation equipment, often fully-depreciated, and valued it a lot more than it was worth. But because the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 stipulated that railroads had to pay the equivalent of 1969 losses, it was cheaper for the Rock Island to stay out and keep running two sets of trains.
I wish we could still have a direct Chicago-Omaha train, there are plans for one over the former Rock Island line through Iowa (now IAIS)
🔴🦅🇺🇲🦅 I miss riding in the Cabose car the clickety clack of the steel rails , would put me right to sleep, , I worked on the Mighty Rock Island line in Blue Island Illinois ❤️‼️👍
miss watching the rock island railroad go thru altoona iowa
The Bi-Centennial painted E8 ended up in Baldwin City Kansas at Midland Railway. A demonstration hobby railroad.I worked and help operate old 652 for a couple years. Round windows were put in the sides and "The Rocket" painted in art decco lettering. It was painted a bright orange-red with black and silver striping. It really looked nice.
@ Amen to that brother
4:55 that is Oak Forest Ave. in Tinley Park. I pace trains on it all the time and it is never busy.
thats very good footage it looks better than cell phone footage
That coach with the small door in it. Was Minneapolis and Saint Louis. The Rock Island got them when the last train on the M&ST: a Watertown, SD mail train was discontinued by loss of mail to trucks. Watertown, SD gets 2 million dollars a year to maintain air service at government expense under the EAS program.. The train went to many more places that a plane could never land. Billions were collected on tickets until 1962. This money was spent on improving roads and airports like Moline. Bus services get 5311D subsides to maintain service to cities under 50,000 people. Amtrak with booming business gets cuts in service. Jacked up fares and threats of shut downs every year. With now popular and booming business. The national passenger rail system went bankrupt from coast to coast really in 1967 when the mail was removed by trains. Work of the powerful highway and airline lobbies..
it was Depressing to watch The Rock, C&NW, & Milwaukee slowly go. They were Stars in their day.
They were the three best! Loved them all.
The sound of the covered wagon @ 5:30 is perfect 567 notch 8 music.
Only one other engine in the world makes the same sound as a 567. A another 567.
They did the best they could with what they had, I'm sure. Those are some dirty, beaten up passenger trains.
Sad to see such a railroad in decline grass everywhere engines almost black from years and years of service just sad
It’s back now buddy
BTW, those FIAT railcars are still in operation to this day in Italy.
My stepdad and his first wife took the Rock Island Rocket on their honeymoon. what a nice experience that must have been riding one of the great trains of American history.
I watched this on Christmas Eve 2020.
The sound of the old AB brakes at 2:11 is PRICELESS.
Long live The Rock.
That is an FS (Italian State Railway) Aln668 diesel car. Its nickname was "Micetta".
I love the E & F locomotives in Rock Island livery
what about the F-Units
Me too as well as the DL models
My great-uncle Jack Dillon was a conductor on one of the Rockets out of El Reno OK in the 1920s into the 1940s.
In moline the next door city of rock island they are planning to make a amtrak from moline to Chicago and bring back the “quad cities rocket” name
1978…
A Railroad experiences its Downfall.
very nice video i love these locos they look great
Amazing these passenger trains kept running with the Federal US hostility to passenger trains
ou have to remember the Shadow Government is the real one sadly. Read books by Antony Sutton and Mason Gaffney to find out more.
Any hostility to passenger rail in the 1970s was caring and sharing compared to transportation policy today.
@ that was how the government tricked people; in reality, Amtrak was a half-assed bailout Nixon only signed because it was designed to fail and fade-out. It survived only because of 1973, and with people demanding trains especially on the NEC, congress gave it more authority than it was designed to handle. Furthermore, the government heavily assisted airlines and cars/trucks/buses and ended the mail contract, which offset losses.
Them Es sure had a wicked sound to them....wish I could seen it.
RIP conductor HL Calay! RIP the ROCK ISLAND.....im sure my dad is running freight behind U28Bs, U33Bs and GP40s in heaven...
Sure miss that old railroad. :-(
4:42 Passengers could get off the train without getting run over by a passing freight?
Wow
R.I.P IC highliners
It's funny how they configured the headlight lighting for that railcar: in Italy at that time train headlights were not very different from those of cars (they still are today) with ditch lights that had parking lights, low beam and high beam, with the third light that only acted as a third high beam, while for the tail lights special red filters were inserted in the ditch lights. For operation in the USA, however, the ditch lights are equipped with permanent red filters, because at that time they did not yet exist in the USA and the only projector is the third headlight, the problem was that that light was unique with only one level of intensity, instead in the USA it is split and has 2 levels of intensity, also the horn sounds very differently and the bell is missing, I don't know if the original IVECO engine was replaced with a Detroit Diesel or Cummins engine and the transmission was always mechanical, perhaps with a fuller or automatic gearbox
I used to switch railroads at Blue Island to end up on the NORTH end of the Loop.
Wow! I can`t wait to get this one!
After CRIP and UP asked to amalgamate in late 1950s, CRIP stopped doing many everyday things; doing when needed. Ten years later UP were not interested in a mess, or the amalgamation was denied. Stories abound of guys bumping into jobs demanding computer knowledge, they did not know where the switches were located. Ineptitude reigned there, the clerks strike ended the managerial incompetence.
Private-owned intercity passenger rail may be gone for now, but if more lines like Brightline start popping up our salvation might arrive. The revolution is nigh!
Excellent video, auhtentic history!
To join Amtrak, the Rock Island would have had to pay the equivalent of its 1969 losses to the corporation. It ran the Minneapolis-Kansas City Plainsman for half that year, and the Chicago-Omaha Nos.. 7 and 10 for all of it. To justify eliminating those two sets of trains, the RI inflated their losses with creative accounting. In fact, the railroad persuaded the Interstate Commerce Commission to drop the Plainsman without a hearing, and to discontinue 7 & 10 before the hearings took place.
The 1967 removal of the mail by bailed out Government Motors and other highway anti rail people. Bankrupted the private passenger rail system coast to coast. it was years before Amtrak was formed. It was to continue to decline and go out of business in a year or two. But instead with little or no investment has record ridership today. Just cut backs. downsizing and jacked up fares on limited services.
I have this program, I highly recommend it.
Wow!
The rocks back after nearly 40 years
Yes it is, yes indeed…
After the RI retired EJ&E operated over the line for a short period of time between Joliet and Peoria
Did you forget the Des Moines rocket
No, “Metra” did not take over responsibility of operating the Rock’s suburban commuter trains, as it hadn’t been ‘invented’ yet. The Regional Transportation Authority ( RTA ) took over the service.
Actually NIRC (Northeast Illinois Railroad Corporation) was created in June 1981 after the C&NW didn’t wanna to run it the commuter service anymore. They was runnin the trains from March 1980 until the NIRC was created.
@3:26 september 26 1977...two days before my now ex wife was born. I'm a conductor for UP
The Italian diesel railcars was built by Fiat FerroviariaT and called the FS Class ALn 668 , Sweden orded 100 of them called them for the SJ Y1 class.
My dad was a trainman for the CRIP....the actually tried to keep this and put it into hiding as they wouldn't give it up....
Fiat railcars were used in Mexico. I saw one in Juarez, and I recall them running through Copper Canyon.
I got a chance to ride all the major non-Amtrak. I did not ride the Reading or the Georgia, but I did ride the Southern, Rio Grande, and Rock Island. I rode the Quad Cities Rocket shortly before the club diner came off. The parlor was already gone. I will tell you that the equipment was clean and the food in the diner was excellent. The Rock Island did try, and John Ingram was trying to bring the railroad back. It could have made it if management had been better in the '60s, and they hadn't let deferred maintenance take over the property. Shortly before the Rocket remnants were discontinued, the track had gotten better. A Rock Island, Milwaukee and North Western merger in the mid '60s under North Western management might have pulled it off.
If this merger came to pass, the combined RI/CNW/MILW would be so powerful that Burlington Northern would have not existed and BNSF would not be with us today. Combined with Union Pacific and Southern Pacific the lines would comprise of three routes to the Pacific at Chicago (Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles). A truly transcontinental railroad to be sure.
Scooby Carr I believe that’s true! In the early ‘70s the Rock was turning five trains a day over to the SP in Tucumcari. UP would have been a likely merger partner. It would have been a great railroad, and the Midwest would have had better rail service.
You can purchase this on our website.
Green Frog Productions, Ltd.
it was RTA back in those days then they changed it too metra
ah yes the old blue island station
@howardkevinm They did, in 1975, it kept them afloat for a little while longer until 1980.
the 652 independence was restored by and for the midland railway. now it has been sold to a different line. sold with a sister loco.
It's in Manly Iowa
Yep and E6 630
Fallen soldiers. The Rock Island Rockets
Thank Government Motors for getting the mail removed in 1967! Bailed out GM lobbied against trains. Surprised?
Awesome vidoes! But how do the engineers drive the trains in reverse? Is there some-one at the back (now the front) with a coms link to the drivers cab, or what? This has always puzzled me.
Isis OSIRIS there is an operating control compartment at the opposite end.
Nice video, looks like I want the whole dvd.
A question about that fiat railcar. I have heard it had a nickname but I forgot it. Does anyone know it?
Miceetta
I want to buy this
Rock Island discounted rate of America account for your system train railway
there is a rock island rocket in Kansas city MO
Happy to see such a railroad in decline grass everywhere engines almost black from years and years of service just happy.
What was the European Fiat diesel railcar doing in the opening scene?
If you watch the video from 3:25 on, they explain that it was on a sales tour of the United States at the time, being promoted for use on lightly patronised runs. Note the North American coupler and cowcatcher that have been added.
Aln 668
cool
I hate that the ICC forced any operator that didn't join Amtrak to operate their intercity trains themselves without help and couldn't discontinue them. The Rio Grande and Southern choose to keep their intercity trains going, they are the only real good examples. The Rock Island should have just killed itself in the 70s. they probably hadn't made a profit in decades and were living paycheck to paycheck so to speak.
Total 6 railroads declined to join Amtrak when it began in 1971, for various reasons. The law that created Amtrak required non member railroads to operate their trains til at least 1975, then file with the ICC or state agencies to drop them. Southern dropped 2 of its 4 trains and made service reductions to the other 2. By 1977 it ran only its Washington-New Orleans Southern Crescent. Two years later Amtrak had that train.
Per this video, the Rock Island ended its intercity train service Dec 31 1978 after Illinois ended its partial subsidy.
Does anyone know what happened to ALn.668-920? Whether it remained somewhere in the US or was demolished...
It's back in Italy in service with Trenitalia.
No, it never returned to Italy, maybe it was sold somewhere in South America but here in Italy there's no ALn.668 like the one in the video
@@passionetrasporti Si, ha ripreso la numerazione originale ALn 668.1920 in questa foto: www.ilportaledeitreni.it/2019/04/07/246011/
They're not the same railcar! The 920 one is a Fiat prototype that never come back in Italy, the 1920 was another ALn.668. Fiat never sold the 920 to FS or Trenitalia
@@passionetrasporti ALn 668.920 era numerata 1920 quando era in Italia
Anyone working on a time machine??
W.O.W.
Like train
i miss the chant of those 567 engines.
Is this original sound?? It sounds like it.
Amtrak706 it sure is.
Mesmerizing and classic. A microcosm of how pitiful the private American passenger train had become. Dirty, faded and unwashed - worse than Seaboard Coast Line's Silver Comet in 1969 or the L&N remnant of The Georgian, out of Evansville, Indiana, at Atlanta Union Station that year.
Now just stop...The Rock Island did not join Amtrak. Because it was PAID $1500 a trip by the state of Illinois in 1970 money to run each train. Just enough to cover costs. No profits. The service was run in the ground and was awful. Trains were late and had no dining or popular palour service on them at the end. When the state money was cut the trains ended. It was so awful the crew would come in alone sometimes! There were 40 ten mile per hour slow orders in 181 miles. And lots more 30's and 40's! The whole national rail system went bankrupt when the mail was removed in 1967 from trains across the county. It took a few years to put together America Travel Tracks. Amtrak. A cut back downsized operation. Now with record ridership across the country. The congress has tried to shut it down 49 times!
What would the USA (or anywhere else) be like without its politicians and so called "elite"?
What Congress needs to do is to sell it to someone who would run it correctly.
Isochest far better.
intercityrailpal 49 times. Wow! amazing that Amtrak has been evading oil-thirsty republican shills for so long. The “emissions” are angering liberals just as much!
Corruption at the top. I read Antony Sutton's Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones and this explains Global Politics. They are all Rent Boys as we would say in the UK!
If Rock Island did give Amtrak it's passenger trains would The Rock Island turn out differently?
I don't believe so. The I-88 toll road people fought to kill the Northwestern service. The Rock Island runs along the I-80 corridor with I-88 near by. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been put in the Moline Airport and the I-80 interstate. All the Rock Island tickets taxes and right of way taxes went into these projects that benefit the RI competition. While the Rock went from 90mph to TEN miles per hour for miles and miles! What finally killed the RI and other railroads was removal of the mail in 1967 to highways. You can Thank GM and the highway lobby for that. They got the Post Office to remove the mail. GM which got the 50 billion bail out years later! Yes the governments of Canada and the US lost billions on that deal. There was NO bailout for the RI.
@@Westerner78 Big Tire (Firestone, Goodyear, Michelin) and Big Oil (Shell, Standard, Phillips 66, Citgo) also contributed to the mess in government sponsored competition.
So was that Fiat supposed to try to give the bud self-propelled cars to run for their money like you see on the Marc?? out in Maryland
Why were the Italian Fiat railcars even trialed? Didn't America's railroads have a number of Budd RDCs by this time?
At the time, as you'll surely know, most passenger services in the USA were under constant threat of closure, not only intercity ones, but commuter ones as well.
With low ridership comes low revenue, and at the time, there wasn't a single passenger railway company in good financial shape.
The idea was that the italian ALn 668 (or it's derivatives) could've been ideal for the scarcely maintained and badly damaged american tracks, as it was exceptionally light (35 tons vs the 53 of a Budd RDC), wich meant less damage to the track, and more economical to run, as it had a low fuel consumption (compared to gas-guzzling E8s hauling half-empty gallery cars).
At the time, FIAT (the ALn668 manufacturer) had already fullfilled huge orders from around the world for railcars based on the ALn668 system (in fact, by 1976, FIAT had already delivered ALn668-based DMUs for railways in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay), and with the ALn668 earnig a nice reputation as a reliable, simple and economical DMU, FIAT felt confident to enter the north-american market to provide an alternative to the afromentioned RDCs and locomotive-hauled trains.
The ALn668 seen in the video (ALn668 1920 of the -1900 subseries), was loaned by FIAT from FS (the national railway company of italy) in 1976 and sent to Chicago (to METRA) and Boston (to MBTA).
Besides fitting the american automatic coupler and front-window protector-grills, ALn668 1920 was practically unchanged from the units still running in Italy (in fact, it also kept most italian inscriptions).
The only major difference was that it had to be actually "weighted down" by adding an underfloor steel plate (increasing the weight by around 1 ton) as american railway officials (i don't remer if METRA or MBTA ones) actually felt that the ALn 668 was too light!
ALn668 1920 perfomed excellently (it was one of the very few units that managed to run during the harsh winter of 1976), but in the end, no order was made, with most railways continuing to prefer RDCs or loco-hauled trains.
Budd was also developing the SPV2000 at the time, intended to be the RDC's successor, wich may have played a part in the refusal of the ALn668, as most railways were expected to prefer the homegrown SPV2000.
Unfortunately, the SPV2000 proved to be a failure.
In retrospective, the ALn668 was an ideal candidate, as not only it was light, economical and fuel-efficient, but it could've been well suited for commuter services, with the two automatic doors per side (especially the semi-central ones of the -1900 subseries), compared to the tiny, manual ones of the RDC (wich gave access directly to the cab. ALn668s had, and still have a fully-separadted cab).
One of the very few criticisms of the ALn668 was that it lacked air-conditioning, but fitting one with it would've been to defy the purpose of the ALn668 of being an economical and simple DMU (also not that AC is really needed in cold Chicago or Boston).
As a final note, ever since the failure of the SPV2000, there haven't been any large-production "made-in-usa" DMU designs (and if we exclude the WESCommuterRail ones, none at all).
The few DMUs running in the USA today are all derivatives of either the German Siemens Desiro (DB VT642) or the Swiss Stadler GTW2/6.
Wow im the youngers
I thought blue island was jus a myth.the company i work for is based out of blue island.modern forge.they built a second forge shop in piney flats Tennessee in 1976 which is wheir I work..we here alot about blue island we here blue island this blue Island that blue island does it this way.i thought they were jus making blue island up but I guess not
Rock was to big for a short line run railroad...chicago Galveston..el Paso...little rock ark..denver...omaha..Houston.. Texas's the killer of most railroads...sp..mp..tp..SF..Burlington..Rio grade..ssw.. katy..😣 .ect
By the time Nixon signed the Railpax (Amtrak) law in October, 1970, all the RI had left were the Peoria and Rock Island trains. The Rock could afford to stay out of Amtrak.
Illinois paid $1500 a trip to run the trains. With 40 ten mile per hour slow orders in 181 miles at the end. Funding was cut the trains came off. The service was awful. I rode it many times. There also were 40, 30 and 20 MPH slow orders. The trains ran hours late. All the Rock Island taxes on property and tickets were spent on nearby I-80.
Correction, per the requirement to pay to join Amtrak based on 1969 passenger losses, RI could not afford to join Amtrak.
What 3:58 !! We needed to buy rail cars from FIAT...., in Italy ?? ...!! Whaa ?! What happened to RDCs ??!!
Italian train are VERY good
At the time, as you'll surely know, most passenger services in the USA were under constant threat of closure, not only intercity ones, but commuter ones as well.
With low ridership comes low revenue, and at the time, there wasn't a single passenger railway company in good financial shape.
The idea was that the italian ALn 668 (or it's derivatives) could've been ideal for the scarcely maintained and badly damaged american tracks, as it was exceptionally light (35 tons vs the 53 of a Budd RDC), wich meant less damage to the track, and more economical to run, as it had a low fuel consumption (compared to gas-guzzling E8s hauling half-empty gallery cars).
At the time, FIAT (the ALn668 manufacturer) had already fullfilled huge orders from around the world for railcars based on the ALn668 system (in fact, by 1976, FIAT had already delivered ALn668-based DMUs for railways in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay), and with the ALn668 earnig a nice reputation as a reliable, simple and economical DMU, FIAT felt confident to enter the north-american market to provide an alternative to the afromentioned RDCs and locomotive-hauled trains.
The ALn668 seen in the video (ALn668 1920 of the -1900 subseries), was loaned by FIAT from FS (the national railway company of italy) in 1976 and sent to Chicago (to METRA) and Boston (to MBTA).
Besides fitting the american automatic coupler and front-window protector-grills, ALn668 1920 was practically unchanged from the units still running in Italy (in fact, it also kept most italian inscriptions).
The only major difference was that it had to be actually "weighted down" by adding an underfloor steel plate (increasing the weight by around 1 ton) as american railway officials (i don't remer if METRA or MBTA ones) actually felt that the ALn 668 was too light!
ALn668 1920 perfomed excellently (it was one of the very few units that managed to run during the harsh winter of 1976), but in the end, no order was made, with most railways continuing to prefer RDCs or loco-hauled trains.
Budd was also developing the SPV2000 at the time, intended to be the RDC's successor, wich may have played a part in the refusal of the ALn668, as most railways were expected to prefer the homegrown SPV2000.
Unfortunately, the SPV2000 proved to be a failure.
In retrospective, the ALn668 was an ideal candidate, as not only it was light, economical and fuel-efficient, but it could've been well suited for commuter services, with the two automatic doors per side (especially the semi-central ones of the -1900 subseries), compared to the tiny, manual ones of the RDC (wich gave access directly to the cab. ALn668s had, and still have a fully-separadted cab).
One of the very few criticisms of the ALn668 was that it lacked air-conditioning, but fitting one with it would've been to defy the purpose of the ALn668 of being an economical and simple DMU (also not that AC is really needed in cold Chicago or Boston).
As a final note, ever since the failure of the SPV2000, there haven't been any large-production "made-in-usa" DMU designs (and if we exclude the WESCommuterRail ones, none at all).
The few DMUs running in the USA today are all derivatives of either the German Siemens Desiro (DB VT642) or the Swiss Stadler GTW2/6.
3:28
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