I loved this movie. I enjoyed the realism in character, interactions with old experts and new innovators battling heads over how things are done when new technology is introduced. So many people don't realize how real these kinds of conversations were, and still are today. I love cutting edge new innovations, but at the same time the social and political structure of our world today, makes me more like that older engineer, "This aint Railroad'n,,,, this is insanity!!!"
The acting was a little wooden though, but then this was a few years after sound and they were still learning how too act it. But yeah the tech and atmosphere were honest as the diesel Streamliners were advanced and new. The basic plot is still quite relevant today, an epic "errand of mercy" with medical equipment with seconds too spare happens now and then. Thinking of medical gear the Iron Lung was new then too.
21:26 "its like i said, you can't beat steam" 19:34 CB&Q Mikado 4990 speeding down the rails looked amazing, and that 5 chime whistle sounded beautiful
Today 5 of May 2020, I came here to forget about pandemic. @38:04 Now, I’m trying to get away from the word quarantine, and it keeps following me. What gives? I’m going crazy.
That cross-country run had a lot of very close shaves- I counted 3 times when the Silver Streak would have piled up if it had been moving just a little faster-!!!
My favorite scene in this film was when the steam engine passed by the streamliner. I couldn't help but laugh at how the old outran and outpulled the new like that.
19:22 Interesting the Silver Streak is being paced by a DeSoto Airflow, which had been introduced in 1934, the most streamlined production car at the time.
I heard that this short inspired the Looney Toons cartoon short, Porky’s Railroad. Where Porky and his steam engine, Toots, race against The Silver Fish to prove that they’re still reliable.
WOW!!! Does this film fit in with our current times and pandemic now! Who would have thought. BTW, I think what they refer to in the film as infantile paralysis is what we now call polio, and before the vaccine, it meant, I believe, being put in an iron lung - sometimes ? or often, forever.
Interesting the character “Caldwell”. The 1976 movie. Gene Wilders character was George Caldwell. A coincidence??? Lol. The festive music at 30:00. Is the same music used in King Kong. Another RKO film from 1933.
Wow, what an exciting story; it seems that so often throughout History, essential progress is achieved through a combination of one-person’s Vision - combined with Miraculous-Circumstances - which together make it possible! (I believe that both those-elements originate from the same Source!!!) Thank-You for this!
At one time I used to cross a similar bridge , a shortcut for work , had to time it just right so I would'nt get caught in the middle , few trains , many boats . 😊
53:31 -- "Don't worry about these curves, Dan. This is a different kind of train." Right. This kind of train is not affected by inconvenient laws of physics such as inertia.
@@BackSeatHump I'm not so sure about that- "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line"- and when you are flying, you are unaffected by land barriers!!!
HECK, ALL NEW TECHNOLOGIES HAVE TEETHING PROBLEMS- LOOK UP THE STORIES OF ROBERT FULTON AND THE STREAMBOAT, SAMUEL F.B. MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH, AND THOMAS EDISON AND THE INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB!!! REMARKABLY, THE SILVER STREAK MORE THAN REDEEMED ITSELF, AND IT DELIVERED WHEN IT REALLY MATTERED!!!
From what I gather, it was a problem in the generator-an excitation circuit that was just a teeny bit too far apart. I remember one time fixing a portable light plant with a similar issue.
13:35 The machanic with glasses & fedora sounds like Dagwood Bumstead . Could that be Arthur Lake under that grime ? 47:00 A man skating on stilt ice skates , how cool is that ? 😊 This movie entertains on different levels , I would recommend this movie to friends . So much better than " Streamline " . People getting motion sickness imagine if they had a modern Bullet Train . 😅
The man offered $200, 000. oo to build an experemintal design in 1935 . In todays money that would be $44,286,569.oo . Unbeliveable , don't you wish a dollar still had that much clout . 😢😢
The first Rocket train was out ran buy a horse and carriage and everyone thought trains would amount to nothing. The problem with good ideas is they sometimes do not work the first time.
A great shame they didn't make the Pioneer sets double - ended, with a power car at both ends sandwiching articulated trailers. They'd have had a great product for high-speed interurban service, that didn't need overhead wires or third rail. It could even have been built to run on electricity where provided, as it had electric traction motor transmission, for all or part of its journey. Rather like the FL-9's. In the UK I worked on the DEMUs, Diesel Electric Multiple Units. These were long-lived, characterful, reliable machines, and only disappeared when the health and safety Nazis made it impossible to run them on the main line.
While the pioneers were not power cars on both ends, other Interurbans did have them, but they were electric. Interurbans did not survive because of lack of double ended diesel engines but mainly highways.
Actually, they did do this. There a train was called the Electroliner that looks almost exactly how you described this and exactly how it works-almost.
@@jamesf791 you zre right. The Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee actually had a Pioneer Zephyr-like train, the Electroliner, that was double ended with cabs on both ends.
Looks like RKO had stock footage of the Burlington Zephyr, the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and Hoover Dam under construction, and wrote a movie around it.
Charles Sterrett before he became the Durango Kid in B Westerns. and "Big Boy Williams before he too becazme a cowboy star. (cant figure out the nail puzzle)
Zephyr was a dog. That Burlington mike looked great pulling ahead of that oil burner. Any modern day super power steam could have and did put the EMD boys in there place. The Burlington "Gopher" had nothing on a Milwaukee Hudson or Atlantic. N&W Northern or Santa Fe Hudson. For that matter a NYC Hudson, Niagara or Mohawk. Diesels starting a train they can't pull. Steam engines pulling a train they can't start.
DOES ANYBODY RECOGNIZE ARTHUR LAKE- WHO IS PLAYING CRAWFORD, THE NERD? ARTHUR LAKE WENT ON TO PLAY DAGWOOD IN THE LATER "BLONDIE" MOVIES!!! ...LOOKING UP ARTHUR LAKE IS WHAT STEERED ME TO THIS MOVIE!!!
this part is factual. the biggest transport plane in the US was the Fokker F-32. only 7 were built, they cruised at just 120mph, and they were so unreliable they were grounded by the government in 1931.
I got about halfway through the film, but the audio quality is so poor that it all comes out as mumbling. If there were captions, that could be worked around.
Who are these extra people? I thought there were no passengers..... The audio was off through much of the movie. In some places it was worse than others.
I love the way the drivers can is,not partitioned off the generator and diesel engine? The heat and noise would be to say the least unbearable. Very corny but that was films in 1935 in general
That's the way gas/electric & diesel electrics were in the old days particularly with doodlebugs and box cabs.. Yes the noise and heat from the Winton 201a would be almost unbridgeable. This set I believe is in the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago.
@@trainguy111 The movies always lied to us, at 17:53 a whistle is heard but it is not the sound of the machine, I think it was edited. At 2:00 of the following video you hear the real horn ... I think ... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-k04asHt2Kg0.html
Yeah a great ending he gave his all thanks to the help of the other train workers the bad guy did not cause loss of lives,bless the Lord,for His protection,woohoo!!!!!!!😀😁
