Excellent video. My grandfather was an engineer on the southern railway. He lived in alexandria va. He ran the crescent in the 1960s. Back then sou. Engines were painted black and white. He gave southern railway 47 years dedicated service.
We lost a piece of Americana when we lost class 1 rail passenger service. We travelers gave up customer service for speed. Shame on us. The airlines still cannot touch this level of passenger service; Amtrak tries. SR family member.
the same generation and generations before it that made rail travel great in this country are the same generations that opted to kill it with the highways. Im only 25 and yall could have pushed to have these lines electrified and upgraded to have highspeed rail. I did my part and got a degree in mechanical engineering but without any industry to work that builds high speed rail there aint fuck all i can do. Thanks
@@roadmaster720 I work in Construction asshole so Im pretty pre occupied atm. Thanks for the tip though. Heard the hospice has a room open if you wanna check in
@@roadmaster720 only a moron could put idiot and educated in the same sentence and pass it off as an insult. you cant even explain to me how my statement is wrong.
Rode the Crescent to Atlanta to visit a close friend during the Summer's in the early 70's from Alexandria, VA. Loved that train! Loved the roar of the 4 E8's as they charged into the station. Great piece! Thank you.
As some know, I did this report for NBC's Today Show and Nightly News, but the back story is that a few years earlier, when my wife and I married, we took the Crescent to go to Washington to work for NBC and raised our kids in Arlington and Alexandria, VA. We stiull take the Crescent back to Atlanta to visit our home town!
I was a Fireman on #1 and #2, from Meridian, Ms to New Orleans, La., during this time. You could set your watch by the train, it was always on time. Freight trains did not delay “The Silver Slipper”. My engineer smoked cigars and one time the rope on the train horn broke while he was blowing for a crossing and he nearly swallowed his cigar.
Thank you for that memory and that story! We got one chance to film the engineer at the stop to change crews in Meridian. He said, "We're fueled and ready to go. Number One's leaving"
Yeah, we swapped out with the Crew from Birmingham, Ala. Depart Meridian, Ms at 3:20 pm and get back the next day at 11:00 am. Loved those E8 engines, never had any problem with them. The food on the Crescent was great, had their own cooks, not the microwave meals.
Man this brings back a lot of memories from my summers in Meridian, MS. My granddad used to take me down to Key Field on Sundays after church to watch the Delta arrival and departure and the Crescent headed down to Laurel along US11.
That is really a great memory with your Dad. Thank you for sharing. As you saw here, we were in the cab with the engineer as he left Meridian, headed for New Orleans.
I was born in 1976 so I was 2 when this aired. I vaguely recall seeing this on our tv, but I was a toddler playing with my pop and his Lionel Southern Set. Damn has the time flied, today we call passenger service “Amtrak” and it’s a fucking shame to call it “America’s Railroad” when it’s not.
in 1966 at12yrs old i got toride the Southerner before it was the Southern Crescent from Philadelphia to Greensboro i'll never forget that trip as long as i live,even to this day i take this train when ever i can especially when i get a sleeping car ,to me there's no other way to go.
Thank you very kindly for posting this entire report. I'm very glad to see that this chronicle of a forever-gone railway tradition can at least be kept around in this form for more to see.
My father was a SR conductor out of WS, NC. Saw the Crescent come through Greensboro. The passenger train from Greensboro to North Wilkesboro stopped in the late 1960’s.
the Southern Railway was responsible for the operation of the train and it was a credit to Amtrak back then. Southern did everything right till the end. While the Crescent still runs the Viewliners, Amfleet coaches will never be the Crescent.
I rode this train as a kid in 1976, in an open section car. Amtrak never took any of those cars (that I know of) from Southern or any other railroad, so that was the first and only time I got to experience that and I still remember it. Have photos from the dome car of the train stretching out forward and back, with those green and white E8 locomotives clearly visible.
Thank you so much for posting this. I really enjoyed it! That was filmed during the last year that Southern ran the Crescent and it is a shame to loose such a high end passenger train. Thanks again for posting.
Southern Railway operated the Southern Crescent daily on an overnight schedule between Washington and Atlanta, then three times weekly Atlanta-New Orleans. Until 1975 it ran daily to Birmingham. Amtrak conveyed through cars to and from New York, allowing for travel NY-Atlanta-New Orleans, plus even a transcontinental NY-LA sleeper via New Orleans and Amtrak's Sunset Limited. Note Southern had a total of 4 trains when Amtrak began and Southern stayed out in 1971. By Thanksgiving 1976 the Southern Crescent was the only one left. Two years later Southern applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission to discontinue the train, though semi officially the goal was to convey it to Amtrak.
A fabulous 'time capsule' piece. Fantastic to see what you made of it all those years ago. Who would have dared to guess it would still be running nearly 40 years later! I've found this video because in a few weeks we're going to be travelling on the Crescent, all the way, from New Orleans. We're coming from the UK to do it!
Rode one of last runs in '78, 1/2 price because I was a trackman on the also-fabled D&H. Ended up mentioned in an article in Time Mag. Glorious trip. Food was some of the best I have ever had, before or since- and cooked on a wood stove, if my ol' man memory is intact chancey!).
I remember watching this broadcast on NBC. It unfortunately was when I was 12 years old and, unlike on the farms and rural communities of Iowa back then, 12 year olds could not drive the distance required for me to have been able to ride it. That didn't keep me from trying and pleading to get my parents or grandparents to take me to Washington to ride it with them. Unfortunately none relented and I was never able to ride a pre-Amtrak train other than the Illinois Central's Hawkeye. We rode that many times to and from Chicago including its last run.
Mike, thanks for your comment. The Crescent was very popular on the East Coast. I rode it to Washington with my wife and kids when I took the job with NBC in DC.
You & I are about the same age, growing up in Iowa I wish I had gotten to ride the Rock Island before it dropped passenger service... I remember going to Perry to pick up my uncle for Christmas of 1970, seeing the "City of Denver" stop is my only real memory of pre-Amtrak passenger service.
Rode the Crescent many times as a kid Alexandria to Atlanta. My Dad worked for Southern so got to ride free. Oct '79 I was 13 first time riding by myself when it derailed in Spencer Yard. Dad retired in '84 after the merger.
I saw the Crescent coming into Gastonia, NC in a cloud of brake dust - one fall midnight in 1963 - long station stops were a "no" anywhere on the system - a couple of horn blasts from up front , and the train was gone toward Spartanburg in little more than a heartbeat.
It lives(in N scale) on my RU-vid video "1976 Southern Crescent." More to come. Also, one of these days there will be 4 restored E8s at various museums in the southeast. Let's get them together at Spencer NC for a photo shoot, or even, dare I say, a fan trip!
@JacksonBain, it may interest you to know that one of the engines that pulled the Southern Crescent in its final days of operation has been preserved - in operating condition - by Norfolk Southern, the descendent, by way of merger, of the Southern Railway!
Amtrak still runs the crescent, but they run it with the run-of-the-mill amfleet and viewliner coaches, although 4 locomotives that hauled the crescent, Southern 6900, 6901, 6910, and 6914 are all preserved with engines 6900 and 6901 operational and restoration of 6914 nearing completion and several of the coaches that ran the train are preserved in museums all across the southeast such as the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and the Southeastern Railroad Museum.
Now Amtrak, not only on the Crescent, but all overnight trains in the eastern half of the U.S. no longer offer fresh cooked food in the diner, instead it's airline style box food only, thanks to budget cuts and their latest CEO Anderson. Waiting for the western long distance trains to get hit with that crap at some point.
My parents met in college at UNC Chapel Hill in the late 1970’s and my Dad’s parents were living in Atlanta at the time, therefore he would drive down to see them. To this day, of his biggest regrets is knowing about the Southern Crescent because if he had, he definitely would’ve ridden it instead of driving.
We used to run freight trains in to Pot Yard and I can still here that southern draw asking ….Who’s on the motor, over. RF&P B&O CR D&H and the Southern. Trains we had where 685 / 682. 84 / 85. FLTT / 682. Latter came things like 403 / 402 or red train blue train. CP power and GATX power. And the Orange Blossom and WLTT. Elsmere put the skids on that one.
@@DAPchatt Cool 😎😎 I remember like years & years ago, 6133 was brought down to Greensboro NC for an event that was going on that day, think there is a video of it too
That horn departure salute was because the Crescent had just changed crews in Meridian, Mississippi. As you probably know, the Crescent was called Train Number One on the Southern Railways Line.
E8 #6900 is alive and well at the NC Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. E8 #6901 is at the Southeastern Railway Museum just north of Atlanta. #6913 is at the South Appalachia Railway Museum in poor shape, but restorable. #6914 is cosmetically restored at the Tennessee Valley Railway Museum . So...there is hope!
@@nicolascalvache8102 I looked at some recent videos of it after it got back from Altoona. It doesn't look bad, not too different from when I watched them in the late 70s going into and out of DC. I put a quick video of my 4 N scale E8s pulling a Southern Crescent on RU-vid, "1976 Southern Crescent." I got the the last two E8s at Trainmaster's Models up in Buford. I teach over in Anniston a couple times a month and fly into ATL, so one of these days when you're open I need to get up there and say howdy and see one of my favorite locomotives. Maybe a volunteer could get me in sometime when my schedule permits, even if it's closed? i am not usually there over the weekend. As I type I am looking at my print of Robert West's "Christmas Morning," which has #6901 leading a Southern Crescent into snowy Atlanta. Under it is my letter from Graham Claytor to a teenaged me in 1977 about how the Bicentennial decals had been removed from the 1977 calendar photo, and job opportunities on the Southern. Ah, the good old days. Thanks for replying, I will get down there one of these days.
Yes, the 2 at Spencer are nice, but I see they are painting over rust. They need a bit of metal work, but they both run. Yes there's hope...maybe a reunion run
There’s no money in it. Look at Amtrak. It loses money on every single route it runs other than the northeast corridor. That’s why railroads gave up passenger service to begin with.
Kind of sad looking at this because back when this train was running with original equipment it had class now it's just another amtrak train with nothing special about it at all.
What was it about moving from a CBS affiliate like WAGA to NBC national? I thought folks stay within their affiliate then move up national like the late Michele Clark?
Davan Mani, thanks for remembering where I came from before NBC! Atlanta was my home town, and WAGA was wonderful, but I also worked for NBC affiliates elsewhere before the DC bureau hired me. Today, as you know, newscasters hop around way more than I did!
+Jackson Bain I noticed that Jane Pauley did the same thing at WISH CBS8 affiliate before moving to WMAQ Chicago NBC5 then Today. Whereas Carole Simpson, Geraldo Rivera, and Pat O'Brien stayed within their affiliates from beginning then moved after getting big to other affiliates?
Maybe back then it was good but, We just took this train ride from New Orleans to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and it SUCKED!!! The train was always violently shaking, rocking back-and-forth and at times felt like it was going to roll over! It sucked so bad that the first day we got off the train we couldn’t even walk. We felt like we were beat up by a professional boxer. We were told there was a dinner cart and there wasn’t one, the only thing they had was a microwave hotdog or hamburger with very little of anything else. We didn’t even ride the train back we booked a flight as bad as I hate to fly I couldn’t take a beating like that again for 30 hours again. Not only what was mentioned above but the water stopped working so we were limited to one restroom for the entire train and they only let us off 2 times in 30 hours to stretch and get fresh air!! Never again. Don’t believe these videos saying how good these train rides are going to be because they suck!! Especially the Crescent 20 route!
Passenger rail travel after WWII became useless. Faster modes of transit came into being. Even an Amtrak today doesnt make a profit. In fact Amtrak can sell out 90% of long distance trains and STILL wont make a profit. The only part of Amtrak that makes any profit is the NEC.
Amtrak exists because it is in the national interest to have a viable passenger rail transportation system. It would be foolhardy not to. Airlines and automobiles alone are not adequate. All you have to do is look at the chaos in the airline industry lately and the price of gas to see some of their weaknesses. Amtrak exists because we need a strong passenger rail system and not necessarily to make a profit. Missile defense systems don't make a profit either but we have them because we need them.
