Love American railroads... love America! To me a US train horn blasting is one of the most thrilling & romantic sounds... blows me away whenever my English ears hear one!
Yes we can appreciate all the sights and sounds of the different railroads. As a US resident the shrill whistle of the UK steam loco's has a place in my heart as it was heard around the world thru exports helping to build other countries railways.
This is an EXCELLENT overall railroad video covering many of yesteryears railroads with EXCELLENT coverage of reefer car icing operations at 14:52 of this video. Periscope Films did a superb job with these railroad videos and especially the one titled PENN CENTRAL, that railroad and the video, to me deserves an A+++++. Thank you Periscope.
Originally released in 1955. The Times Square footage at 1:32 has the Criterion Theater offering Bob Hope's "The Seven Little Foys", released in June 1955.
These vintage railroad promotional films are very valuable and fun to watch! Railroad taxes SHOULD have been used for improvements to RAILROAD systems, NOT improvements to airports, waterways and the ever-expanding highway system!
@PeriscomeFilm: First of all, let me pay you my very highest compliments on how expertly this film has been restored! It calls me back to the times I would sit in an elementary school classroom and watch films of all sorts -- but those films were IN NO WAY in the kind of shape this restoration is! :-) No lines, dots, streaks, or film breaking in the middle of the presentation! Haha! The color is exquisite, the amount of "shake, rattle & roll" is minimal at best, the exposure amazing, etc. And the content of this film is amazing! Thank you SO MUCH for doing this painstaking work! (I do some film-to-video transferring, but I do not have the ability to do this kind of quality, to be sure.)
A couple of things: I din't realize how long ago the welded rail showed up. Almost all of the trains were made up or at least photographed to show so many four-unit diesels. It was so beautiful to watch. Anybody count all of the railroad lines? I've watched this several times. It's so good.
I found out that the French were the first to implement welding on their railroads, mostly for repair and the British saw that and began welding their rails.
@@mikezylstra7514 That was the 1950's for you. As the saying goes, not all boats were lifted equally by the economic prosperity of the early postwar period. It's taken a long time and a lot of struggle for things to change mostly for the better. At least the railroads back then did provide jobs for African Americans, even though racial segregation was still quite prevalent. It was a start, anyway. Sadly, there are people who want to turn the clock back to the 1950's or earlier. "Make America Great Again"? What's with the "Again" stuff? The film was well-produced and was quite informative from both the technological and historical standpoints. Some of the script is dated, though, and probably would be rewritten today.
It dawned on me as the narrator was showing us truck trailers and cargo containers moving across the nation on trains, that it was this idea, of containerized cargo, that pretty much led to the decline of modern trains to move as much cargo as they used to. Partly led by increasing airline competition, which led to less train travel, and the use of cargo ships that carry containerized cargo. These put so much strain on the individual railroads that many merged together or simply shut down. Eventually, the government stepped in to create Amtrack. When I was growing up, in the 1950's, I wanted to be a train engineer, just like my neighbor. He drove trains around the steel mill, in the city were I lived. I thought that was the coolest job a person could have. Later, I was told that the steel mill was shutting down. This was due to newer, more modern mills built well after the one we lived near, which was over 100 years old, at that point. Several parts had been modernized, but not enough to keep it open.
I saw Northern Pacific in here! I only saw two shots, might be more I'm unaware of. One at 5:25 and another at 7:46. One at 5:25 looks like a mixed freight in western Montana. The one at 7:46 is a real treasure. Look closely. It's inside Northern Pacific's one-of-a-kind passenger car, the Traveller's rest. (Not misspelled) There were only six of these cars built, and at the time of this film, these cars had just recently undergone remodeling on the interior, making it a bar/lounge/history car on wheels. There is only one, maybe two of these cars left anywhere. Also this film was released in 1955. Reason I bring this up is, anyone else see a good lookin' stewardess/nurse in that car? They were introduced in June of 1955, so at the time of this film, they're pretty new to the train! Good show!
Took one of the last rides, Greeneville, NC > NOLA, glorious trip. Amtrak runs the route still, but no dining car like the eating palace they had then, dang fabulous food.
With all the compliments I wonder how many viewers realize how much of this film is stock footage. I think nearly all... Carl Dudley made some industrial/promotional films with original footage but also many that were nearly all stock footage cut together.
Interesting to see a documentary produced at a time when railroads were actually working to innovate and run better operations, compared to today's practice of turning rail systems into skeletons of their former selves and running trains as slow as possible.
Amtrak Board chair VP Mike Pence and Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson should treat Amtrak as part of America’s heritage and not a dime a dozen airline! It IS the Smithsonian on Rails!
ice is no longer used thanks to insulated mechanical refrigerator cars without the invention of Piggy-Back Service the highways would be severely congested!
@@danielmauter1737 could be that mechanical refrigeration was just getting started nowadays its a removable unit instead of the unit built into the boxcar
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films like this one were destroyed and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like this on online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes. So, in the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous UA-cam users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content. We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to deal with these kind of issues.
It was a pleasure to watch the cleaned up vid. I’ve got 20 years of editing - it’s a small miracle to make the vid better than the original film. I feel periscopes pain - I own my Dad’s WW2 footage and have diagonal corner to corner watermarks here on who tube.
Not quite exactly, there are many commuter train services in many metropolitian areas & many Amtrak corridors that has & is seeing an increase in passenger train service. Many of the interstate highways that have killed off passenger train service in the second half of the 1960’s before Amtrak came into existence in 1971 are the same highways that are bringing passenger train service back.
shit, you people need to stop claiming you "own" PD stock footage. get this GD watermarks and counters off the screen. It's an eyesore and you can't even enjoy the video because of it.
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes. In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous UA-cam users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do. Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
@@PeriscopeFilm it's not thievery because you do not OWN it. Nor do you have the right to shut anybody down. Something Weird had this very film on DVD for years. I own the Something Weird version of this movie already myself. It's called PUBLIC DOMAIN. If you really cared about preservation of films as you claim to, then you'd do what Something Weird, Fantoma, BFI or AFGA have been doing for years and that's remastering them and saving them to DVD or blu ray. Then you can share the movies with EVERYBODY, and they'd never be in danger of disappearing because they'd be mass produced. Hording them away and selling them as stock footage is antiquated nonsense and makes certain very few people ever get to see them. Nobody is going to know anything about them if they just happen to catch ten seconds of one in a student short film somewhere.
The antiquated nonsense@@MontagTheMagician is making DVDs and Blu-rays. That's not preservation, it's 1990s technology and is going the way of the DoDo. What we do -- scanning directly from motion picture film and archiving 4k digital files, and then presenting the scans to the world so millions and millions of people can see them, is something that DVD never permitted. This month we streamed 177,000+ hours of content to viewers around the globe, including to many people in the developing world who could never afford a DVD player. Wake up and smell the coffee, you are living in the past if you believe DVD and Blu-ray is viable or the best way to preserve content. The present and the future is streaming and sharing on platforms like this one.
@@PeriscopeFilm LOL "never afford a DVD player." They are like 20 bucks now. way cheaper than iphones or computers. I'll let Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video and Shout Factory know their mediums are going the way of the dodo bird so they can have a good laugh. I been hearing that for the last 20 years or so and still waiting for that to happen. Your memberships are like $600, thanks for bring forgotten films to the masses. I'm sure the working class will be glad to know you have thousands of industrial movies from the 50s stored away on a shelf somewhere. Funny someone pedaling seventy year old movies lecturing me about "living in the past". You got these movies for nothing out of an old warehouse somewhere and you think you're a hero. Mike Vraney is the real hero.
We're very respectful of Mike Vraney and Stephen Parr, who were pioneers in this arena. May they rest in peace, and shout out to Parr who was a friend of ours and very kind to us when we first started. Starting in about the year 2000 we started producing DVDs of our content. That was a viable business but at a certain point we began to recognize we could never do what we wanted to do -- put out tens of thousands of obscure film titles -- on DVD. As fate would have it, we transitioned to UA-cam where we could put up all sorts of random content, and have not looked back. Meanwhile, the marketplace for DVDs has gotten smaller and smaller every year. DVD sales plummeted 20% industry wide in the last year alone, Netflix discontinued their service, and Best Buy no longer stocks them as of this year. And as far as people who can never afford a DVD player, that's absolutely a reality, many of the viewers on UA-cam are students, live in the developing world, or are searching for free entertainment and educational resources because they cannot afford anything else.@@MontagTheMagician
These older films truly are interesting. I'm glad and thankful that we are able to enjoy watching them!😊
Mm mmm
@@renzoquintanilla2702 Were you eating?
or we WOULD be if the fken thing wasn't watermarked to all hell.
These vintage railroad programs brings back the old vintage days of railroading for television
The proud America
...........I want this version today
This was an America that was the only World War II industrial power not physically damaged by the war. Sorry, that world is gone now.
@@sscalercourtney5486 😣
Start making something.
Love American railroads... love America!
To me a US train horn blasting is one of the most thrilling & romantic sounds... blows me away whenever my English ears hear one!
Yes we can appreciate all the sights and sounds of the different railroads. As a US resident the shrill whistle of the UK steam loco's has a place in my heart as it was heard around the world thru exports helping to build other countries railways.
I dedicate this video to hobo shoestring. A legend in our own time. Ride safe shoestring.
Excellent! You hit a home run with this wonderful window into the past!
This is an EXCELLENT overall railroad video covering many of yesteryears railroads with EXCELLENT coverage of reefer car icing operations at 14:52 of this video. Periscope Films did a superb job with these railroad videos and especially the one titled PENN CENTRAL, that railroad and the video, to me deserves an A+++++. Thank you Periscope.
Love our channel? Subscribe and consider becoming a channel member ua-cam.com/video/ODBW3pVahUE/v-deo.html
A swell movie. This America is long gone.
I would love to go back to that era!
7:33: Very rare instance of a EMD Aerotrain loco (LWT12) pulling a non-GM Talgo trainset.
Originally released in 1955.
The Times Square footage at 1:32 has the Criterion Theater offering Bob Hope's "The Seven Little Foys", released in June 1955.
These vintage railroad promotional films are very valuable and fun to watch! Railroad taxes SHOULD have been used for improvements to RAILROAD systems, NOT improvements to airports, waterways and the ever-expanding highway system!
@PeriscomeFilm: First of all, let me pay you my very highest compliments on how expertly this film has been restored! It calls me back to the times I would sit in an elementary school classroom and watch films of all sorts -- but those films were IN NO WAY in the kind of shape this restoration is! :-) No lines, dots, streaks, or film breaking in the middle of the presentation! Haha! The color is exquisite, the amount of "shake, rattle & roll" is minimal at best, the exposure amazing, etc. And the content of this film is amazing! Thank you SO MUCH for doing this painstaking work! (I do some film-to-video transferring, but I do not have the ability to do this kind of quality, to be sure.)
Yes, this one is a joy to watch, on some of theses old films the resolution is so bad they are virtually unwatchable.
Awesome footage of the railroads of the 1950s! The old New York Central, an hour away from Rockford, where my family is renting a house.
The locomotives in this video were 'so shiny and new'.
A couple of things: I din't realize how long ago the welded rail showed up. Almost all of the trains were made up or at least photographed to show so many four-unit diesels. It was so beautiful to watch. Anybody count all of the railroad lines? I've watched this several times. It's so good.
I found out that the French were the first to implement welding on their railroads, mostly for repair and the British saw that and began welding their rails.
Warren, the nations first iron rail was made in the 1800s, in my heritage hometown of Mount Savage Md.
No. I was too busy counting the black passengers. I got to....zero.
@@mikezylstra7514 That was the 1950's for you. As the saying goes, not all boats were lifted equally by the economic prosperity of the early postwar period. It's taken a long time and a lot of struggle for things to change mostly for the better. At least the railroads back then did provide jobs for African Americans, even though racial segregation was still quite prevalent. It was a start, anyway. Sadly, there are people who want to turn the clock back to the 1950's or earlier. "Make America Great Again"? What's with the "Again" stuff?
The film was well-produced and was quite informative from both the technological and historical standpoints. Some of the script is dated, though, and probably would be rewritten today.
I was expecting something completely different with mainline in the title. What a pleasant surprise
It dawned on me as the narrator was showing us truck trailers and cargo containers moving across the nation on trains, that it was this idea, of containerized cargo, that pretty much led to the decline of modern trains to move as much cargo as they used to. Partly led by increasing airline competition, which led to less train travel, and the use of cargo ships that carry containerized cargo. These put so much strain on the individual railroads that many merged together or simply shut down. Eventually, the government stepped in to create Amtrack. When I was growing up, in the 1950's, I wanted to be a train engineer, just like my neighbor. He drove trains around the steel mill, in the city were I lived. I thought that was the coolest job a person could have. Later, I was told that the steel mill was shutting down. This was due to newer, more modern mills built well after the one we lived near, which was over 100 years old, at that point. Several parts had been modernized, but not enough to keep it open.
Very Enjoyable Footage Of Days Gone By !!!!!!!
ken c aye don’t be so haste to say that, Virgin Trains USA might be ushering in a new era of train travel
reverse thrust well your an idiot then
reverse thrust if taking the train we cut down emissions and get me out of traffic I’m in
This is when I should have grown up.
Trailer trains, the direct ancestor of intermodal transportation.
I saw Northern Pacific in here! I only saw two shots, might be more I'm unaware of. One at 5:25 and another at 7:46. One at 5:25 looks like a mixed freight in western Montana. The one at 7:46 is a real treasure. Look closely. It's inside Northern Pacific's one-of-a-kind passenger car, the Traveller's rest. (Not misspelled) There were only six of these cars built, and at the time of this film, these cars had just recently undergone remodeling on the interior, making it a bar/lounge/history car on wheels. There is only one, maybe two of these cars left anywhere. Also this film was released in 1955. Reason I bring this up is, anyone else see a good lookin' stewardess/nurse in that car? They were introduced in June of 1955, so at the time of this film, they're pretty new to the train!
Good show!
This guy was "the" movie trailer/movie tv spot voice-over guy back in the 60's
LOVE THIS ONE!!
What a fantastic musical score!
2:05
I love this part
Took one of the last rides, Greeneville, NC > NOLA, glorious trip. Amtrak runs the route still, but no dining car like the eating palace they had then, dang fabulous food.
Film: "Electronic rail yards!"
Hunter Harrison: "If I can't 100% mark up, close them!"
And throught The heart! Forever
Very interesting
With all the compliments I wonder how many viewers realize how much of this film is stock footage. I think nearly all... Carl Dudley made some industrial/promotional films with original footage but also many that were nearly all stock footage cut together.
Art Gilmore was on of the top ten Hollywood narrators. (He also did some Christian projects.)
He was the opening and closing voice on "The World Tomorrow."
And "Highway Patrol",
All those fallen flags. Sad.
well UP & KCS still exist
@@microbusssabout that. At least they have a steam program
Interesting to see a documentary produced at a time when railroads were actually working to innovate and run better operations, compared to today's practice of turning rail systems into skeletons of their former selves and running trains as slow as possible.
The date got covered up at the ending credits, but this solidly 50s, but only as early as 1955, judging by specific passenger equipment depicted here.
Better times
Seems life was grander then unlike today disarray
14:31 Jake & Elwood ?
Film: Move the products of today!"
Hunter Harrison: "If I can't make 100% mark up, screw you!"
Anyone missing something. No graffiti on any rail car. Before the juvenile delinquency sat in !
Bingo! And we can tie much of the demise of America to that affect alone! Good catch...
A spectacular production of railroad propaganda. Some great footage
Amtrak Board chair VP Mike Pence and Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson should treat Amtrak as part of America’s heritage and not a dime a dozen airline! It IS the Smithsonian on Rails!
Warren those F units were rated at 1500 h.p.each FYI.
You know guys?,I Really hope to American rail I want BNSF,CSX,and The king railroad is Union pacific still rollin in America Forever!
ice is no longer used thanks to insulated mechanical refrigerator cars
without the invention of Piggy-Back Service the highways would be severely congested!
I'm surprised they were still using ice in mid '50's??..
@@danielmauter1737 could be that mechanical refrigeration was just getting started
nowadays its a removable unit instead of the unit built into the boxcar
This video will not play!
Nice to use the same symantic for an informal about today's industries like facebook or google...
Bread
The songs
Ok
It makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
Mainline a USA..speedball.. yeah baby. Than call me mister happy
WHAT HAPPENED?
Great flim. Too bad about the time code.
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films like this one were destroyed and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like this on online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes.
So, in the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous UA-cam users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content. We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to deal with these kind of issues.
@@PeriscopeFilm ignore this guy and keep up the good work.
@@PeriscopeFilm Thank you for the detailed explanation.
It was a pleasure to watch the cleaned up vid. I’ve got 20 years of editing - it’s a small miracle to make the vid better than the original film. I feel periscopes pain - I own my Dad’s WW2 footage and have diagonal corner to corner watermarks here on who tube.
Now just freight !! Sad
Not quite exactly, there are many commuter train services in many metropolitian areas & many Amtrak corridors that has & is seeing an increase in passenger train service. Many of the interstate highways that have killed off passenger train service in the second half of the 1960’s before Amtrak came into existence in 1971 are the same highways that are bringing passenger train service back.
shit, you people need to stop claiming you "own" PD stock footage. get this GD watermarks and counters off the screen. It's an eyesore and you can't even enjoy the video because of it.
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes.
In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous UA-cam users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do.
Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
@@PeriscopeFilm it's not thievery because you do not OWN it. Nor do you have the right to shut anybody down. Something Weird had this very film on DVD for years. I own the Something Weird version of this movie already myself. It's called PUBLIC DOMAIN. If you really cared about preservation of films as you claim to, then you'd do what Something Weird, Fantoma, BFI or AFGA have been doing for years and that's remastering them and saving them to DVD or blu ray. Then you can share the movies with EVERYBODY, and they'd never be in danger of disappearing because they'd be mass produced. Hording them away and selling them as stock footage is antiquated nonsense and makes certain very few people ever get to see them. Nobody is going to know anything about them if they just happen to catch ten seconds of one in a student short film somewhere.
The antiquated nonsense@@MontagTheMagician is making DVDs and Blu-rays. That's not preservation, it's 1990s technology and is going the way of the DoDo. What we do -- scanning directly from motion picture film and archiving 4k digital files, and then presenting the scans to the world so millions and millions of people can see them, is something that DVD never permitted. This month we streamed 177,000+ hours of content to viewers around the globe, including to many people in the developing world who could never afford a DVD player. Wake up and smell the coffee, you are living in the past if you believe DVD and Blu-ray is viable or the best way to preserve content. The present and the future is streaming and sharing on platforms like this one.
@@PeriscopeFilm LOL "never afford a DVD player." They are like 20 bucks now. way cheaper than iphones or computers. I'll let Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video and Shout Factory know their mediums are going the way of the dodo bird so they can have a good laugh. I been hearing that for the last 20 years or so and still waiting for that to happen. Your memberships are like $600, thanks for bring forgotten films to the masses. I'm sure the working class will be glad to know you have thousands of industrial movies from the 50s stored away on a shelf somewhere. Funny someone pedaling seventy year old movies lecturing me about "living in the past". You got these movies for nothing out of an old warehouse somewhere and you think you're a hero. Mike Vraney is the real hero.
We're very respectful of Mike Vraney and Stephen Parr, who were pioneers in this arena. May they rest in peace, and shout out to Parr who was a friend of ours and very kind to us when we first started. Starting in about the year 2000 we started producing DVDs of our content. That was a viable business but at a certain point we began to recognize we could never do what we wanted to do -- put out tens of thousands of obscure film titles -- on DVD. As fate would have it, we transitioned to UA-cam where we could put up all sorts of random content, and have not looked back. Meanwhile, the marketplace for DVDs has gotten smaller and smaller every year. DVD sales plummeted 20% industry wide in the last year alone, Netflix discontinued their service, and Best Buy no longer stocks them as of this year. And as far as people who can never afford a DVD player, that's absolutely a reality, many of the viewers on UA-cam are students, live in the developing world, or are searching for free entertainment and educational resources because they cannot afford anything else.@@MontagTheMagician
Yesterdays news, unfortunately. Nice propaganda 🙄