Unstoppable

Opens tomorrow (11/12/2010):

Shortline Inspiration

Eastside Freight Rail, Near Seattle, WA.

There is something to be said for shortlines.

Despite tight budgets and second-hand power, they are increasingly becoming the front-line face of American railroading. The big boys have unit trains and double-stacks, but shortlines offer something different - with creative thinking, customer service, and can-do attitude.

More importantly for a modeler - they offer several current examples of loose-car railroading on a scale a modeler can build a layout around.

The two videos offer two such examples, and many more can be found on Youtube.

So now you know what's been rattling around in my head. Now, to give these ideas some fleshing out... well, stay tuned.



Tulsa-Sapulpa Union Railway - Tulsa, OK. Love that paint scheme.

Unstoppable

Please, let it be great good decent.

Usually, train movies tend to be bad; not always, but the record is not good. Tony Scott is going to attempt the impossible, to make a train movie I can publicly admit to wanting to see.

No website to link to as yet.

Some amateur videos showing filming are available on Youtube, like these:

Western Coal Connection

The Burlington Northern moves coal in the late 1970s.

A big thanks goes to "mwmnp25" on Youtube, for making these available.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Powder River Trains

Street Car Appeal

Oooohhh, Tyler likes.

The new F-line PCC streetcar from Bowser, seen here in San Francisco Municipal Railway paint.

Looks good, looks good. Models like this come out and that interurban railroad I've been thinking about sounds better all the time. (The Bachman "Peter Witt" streetcar is another. If someone will make a good ready-to-run steeple-cab freight motor, I might make the jump.)

When it comes to modeling, interurban and streetcar lines have the following assets and liabilities:

Assets:

• Compact track arrangements (such as Sacramento Northern's 40th & Shafter terminal)
• Short trains
• High frequency of trains (it's a streetcar line, after all!)

Liabilities:

• Lack of ready-to-run models (for some, this is a plus)
• Catenary or overhead wires (a real modeling challenge)
• Era (1900-1950, with some exceptions; heyday of the interurbans was the 1910s and 1920s. Unless you model it as a de-electrified switching road, like the modern day Southern Railway of British Columbia.)

The Lively World of Great Northern

A promotional movie by the Great Northern Railway, just before its merger into the Burlington Northern in 1970. This is state of the art railroading, circa 1969.

A big thanks goes to "mwmnp25" on Youtube, for making these available.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Steel and Steam Heat

I need relaxing. Hence, here's some train content.

Here is film of VIA Rail's Atlantic departing Halifax for Montreal in 1993.

This was the last Atlantic to be steam-heated, as trains had been for the previous hundred-plus years. Steam heat had been gone from Amtrak for nearly a decade. This was a train as my grandparents would have remembered.

The blue-and-yellow railroad cars you see would be retired after this trip; not worth rebuilding, a few would go to tourist trains, most to the scrapper. The silver stainless-steel cars had a better chance; several of their siblings run still on VIA's trains. The Atlantic had as bleak a future as its consist; it would be discontinued in 1994, supplanted by the Ocean.

After the Milwaukee Road - Harlowton, Montana

NBC News
March 23, 1980
Reporting from Harlowton, Montana

Thirty Years Gone

Thirty years ago this week, the Milwaukee Road abandoned its Pacific Coast Extension and limped home from the West, the last train crawling out of Tacoma early in the morning of March 15, 1980. Service actually ended on March 7th, with a few employees retained to salvage what they could and load it on boxcars bound for the shops in Milwaukee.

The transcontinental no one knew was gone.

I never knew it, but I wish I had.