I hope you all don't mind me placing this link in this forum. It is just a great film and it is not getting enough exposure where it belongs. Thanks again Ralph, I am going to watch it again tonight.

https://ihc185.infopop.cc/eve/f...6042471/m/1673959757

Wonderful film, Ed. I'd love to take The Empire Builder someday from Chicago to Vancouver!

Just watched the film. I liked it. Thanks for posting it.

Wonderful film,I forwarded it to my brother , a retired CNR Engineer Donny "Turbo" Brunton who worked in the Sioux Lookout-Armstrong area,Winnipeg, and then transferred to Vancouver

This film portrayal of railroading "101" in the late 1950's has to be one of the best historical and truthful films you will ever view.

There are some things you should key on;

[1] Jeweler setting Engineers watch and using a ball point pen to stop the second hand

[2] Train Orders were wrote up and handed up to the head end and rear end of passing trains by the station operator on what was known as "onion-skins" [ a very thin yellow waxed paper ]. These were used up until the late 80's on a lot of RR's.

[3] It was customary in the days for men to get on & off moving equipment to save time and delays. I could get off equipment at 22mph and on at 18mph [ on my good days ] and that's standing up!! With so many personal injuries and deaths this practice came to a halt on most RR's by 2000.

[4] Those cute little one and two man "motor cars" [putt-putts], that was the mode of travel for all the section hands and section foremen of the day. Today they get on/off the rails at crossings in what is known as "Hi-Rails". These are 3/4 to 4 ton trucks that have rubber tires for the highway and steel wheels for the rail and can go out to inspect the rails ahead and behind trains and to transport tools and men to remote locations to repair and maintain the rails.

[5] This film was shot in ABS territory, of which this is one system of moving trains by rules, train orders, and block [semiphore] signals.

[6] You newbies will see how "important" information was sent in that era- VIA Party Lines This was how you found out everything and got all the local and regional news and weather reports and all the latest juicy gossip We didn't have Facebook, Blackberries, computors & Skype and earbuds

[7] Those section men cleaning out those switchpoints with sticks, scrapers, and brooms, well that's about the only thing that still happens in 2011 on the RR's, yes even till today. The rest is "ancient history".

This is worth your 22 minutes to see the real railroading and the real railroad worker and the actual conditions in a true account. And from the flat lands of Texas where snow and mountains are not likely to happen, the scenery in the film is spectacular even though it is not enhanced and straight from the dark age days of the 50's.

regards,
bb

The Watch section was very interesting. Some watches there I would swear were 17J, and the Gimbal Mounted 15J Waltham 8 day was being used in a VERY practical fashion. I gotta go dig up the 500-odd pictures I took with my Brownie as a kid roaming around the St. Paul/Minneapolis Yards in the late 1940's. Was fascinated with the "Trucks", car markings, Loco's (still many steamer's) and variety of Cabooses, etc.
The map is the same area only about 70 years before I did that

If you are interested in the history of the rail's in Canader the National Dream is one you might enjoy.....

regards, John

Also, can't forget "The Railroader" done in the early 1960's with Buster Keaton riding across Canada in a "putt-putt". Go to the same web site of the National Film Board and type it into the search area.

I love in the film those Art Deco "Stream-Liner" polished aluminum passenger coach cars and the pan-o-ramic observation deck cars are still around and can be seen housed in Toronto's Union Station along with the 1970's "Rapido" trains that were simply too fast for the CP tracks that run between Montreal and Windsor.

Also, interesting how times have changed. Back then, freight waited for the passenger trains. Nowadays the freight has the right of way. Guess it reflects how freight is shipped more by rail and passenger use is down.

Here is a photo I took at Field, British Columbia in December 1979, we were just about ready to change off with a Revelstoke crew and continue eastwards to Calgary lots of snow that winter, the through freight in the siding will follow us, ABS had been replaced with CTC (Centralized Traffic Control) at that time but otherwise not much had changed since the 1960s.

Buchaneer

Larry, that is nice to hear. At least they are keeping people working.

That is a great film! I hired out on the Cotton Belt Railroad at Commerce TX in 1979. Being a tail end, backwater subdivision on the SP system, terminating in both Dallas, and Ft Worth, TX, everything we had was the oldest and most obsolete the railroad had to offer. Actually, that is part of what drew me to that line of work --- the old fashioned nature of it. With the exception of covered wagon locomotives, our operation was almost identical to that in the film, and that was in 1979! We operated in dark territory with train orders, and in Greenville, TX the Cotton Belt, KCS railroad crossing was protected by a simple swinging gate with a stop sign attached to protect the movement across each track! ( Every train on both railroads approached this crossing diamond prepared to stop until this gate was seen to be swung to stop the other railroad). It was really something to see and experience, I loved it. But Alas, all good things come to an end. The Commerce branch was mostly abandoned many years ago , and what remains is being operated by a short line railroad. By the time the 21st. century was approaching, we finally had to move into the 20th. I retired from Union Pacific in 2010.