Burlington Northern passenger trains were " Rainbow Trains " as well in 1970 & 1971. Burlington Route, Northern Pacific, & two Great Northern color schemes could all be seen in one train!
That scene at 3:53 is pretty amazing. I'm sure it isn't original sound, but it does sound pretty close unlike most other clips in this trailer and in other videos like this. It would have been amazing to get the real sound of one of those things blasting by at 90+.
I've actually never taken a passenger train in America before, only ever in Britain, China, Japan, and Continental Europe. I've only ever ridden on tourist railroads like the Strasburg, but seeing these films makes me wish I could take an Amtrak train when they used these creative looking consists.
Bought this DVD and Empire Builders to Milwaukee on Sat. and totally enjoyed them both. Hopefully, the photog has more footage. Yes, thats the Southern 4501 on the Schlitz Circus Train. My mom, 5 year old sister and 7 year old me were standing unknowingly right next to the guy shooting the movie as it passed through our hometown of Waterloo, WI. at Harrison St. My sis lets out a brief scream as the train approaches that can be heard on the DVD.
I was born in 1950.I got to see the end of three cultureal shifts and the beginning of a new one . . ."baby-boomers.6 surrounded in 1950.s by modernism (men and women returning home to a new life.pockets flushed with spendable cash propelled and dipped us into the Golden Age of the wonderful 1950s and 1960s.Hartland has MY SOUL!!! My brothers and I would fall asleep to the steam engine's drivers clicking and hear that long long low whistle.Every day Mom would take us to the little Hartland train station to see those groumd-blast freight trains pulled by the 4-8-4s and the high speed HIAWATHA'S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! replete with telegragh machine,green visor and spectacles!!! Those freight trains and Hiawatha's were clocked at 90.7 mph after they rounded that Peewaukee bend in the East .That light crept so slowly rounding that bend we thought it would never head straight West ALAS,Here SHE COMES !!!
I just realised the narrator is the game guy who did the narration for the ‘Firepower’ military documentary DVD series. Either that or they sound REALLY similar 😅
It would be nice to see the North Coat Hiawatha return. Its also a sad state how primitive our country is with rail travel. People complain about the pollution, global warming, and the traffic on the highways, but yet, they choose to forget about rail transportation as a necessity to resolve these issues or at least slow them down.
I think originally Amtrak simply used railroad passenger cars in their original livery; however, you may have seen some cars in the video that were in Amtrak colors. Eventually, most of the equipment looked the same, at least on the outside. As rando points out, however, in 1975 (or thereabouts) Amtrak started buying new equipment (probably Amfleet), painted of course in Amtrak colors, and the Superliners came out in 1979-80.
Amtrak should bring back their EMD E & F units, as well as the SDP40F (Revised and redone), P30CH (Revised and redone), and other locomotives that they used to have like the Pennsylvania GG1's and GE E60's. In the end, in my opinion, any Locomotive can be useful, and can last a very long time with proper maintenance and care. If locomotives need to be redone to qualify for tier 4 emission standards, then they should be redone.
It's just criminal that they canceled most of those wonder full trains. Reducing the Hiawatha route to a dinky corridor route? That's an insult to the train. But at least we have the Empire Builder. Let's hope nothing happens to that!
traindude80 Amtrak’s Hiawatha Route is run exactly how the Milwaukee road ran it for their last time. When the Milwaukee built its transcontinental route, they went too far over budget, and I mean by millions upon millions of dollars over budget. This eventually grew out of control and as a last ditch effort to save the Milwaukee Road, they sold off the line to Great Northern, who then made the empire builder service. The Milwaukee Road by then had gotten rid of all Hiawatha services, such as the Olympian Hiawatha, the Northwoods Hiawatha, etc... They then made a new service from Milwaukee to Chicago called the Hiawatha. And then they went bankrupt. Great northern merged with Burlington Route and the two later merged with the Santa Fe, creating BNSF, but had already stopped service on the empire builder when Amtrak was created. Amtrak is innocent, for the most part. They did stop using the F40PH as their main source of road power so that’s a big guilty in my books. At least they still use a couple F40PHs.
It is running on the grass or should I say weeds. Some of the tracks are like that were I live most of the tracks are still used but some have been ripped out. Which sucks if only I had Hank Hills lawn mower to get rid of the DAMN weeds.
Pretty much anything that doesn't begin with an "RS" and isn't part of the K5LA/HL/LLH/whatever family was in production in the 1950s. You're going to have to be a bit more specific.
My mind was just shocked from what Amtrak used to be like when they were first founded and started revenue service. Also, I got quite emotional on these old clips as well. 🥹🥹.
