This is a great little film (about 26 mins. long) - see the links to the version on YouTube below. There’s something for everyone in it (BaltACD comes to mind). It really shows railroading (and some aspects of society) as it was 40+ years (cabooses even !), and many, many of the topics that have been discussed here.
I invite everyone to watch all 3 parts (they seem to automatically transfer from one to the next), then post here the parts (likely more than one) that you like the most.
The opening shot and some others are on the now abandoned SP&S east of Pasco. The single grain car loading was in the Paulouse country of SE Washington. A couple of years after this was made the government opened the Snake River to navagation as far as Lewiston Idaho, diverting almost all of the grain to the “free ride” on the river. Many of the NP and UP branches in the area have been abandoned and the rest are wards of the State of Washington.
Harvey Lloyd, New York City born and bred, an urban-oriented cat if ever there was one, has fallen in love with the Great American West.
Because he is a talented cinematographer, the romance is hardly one sided. In return for the joy the vast western plains and mountains have given him, Lloyd has captured their breathtaking beauty on film in a classic documentary which more than 3 million people have viewed thus far.
For what started out to be an industrial motion picture for the Burlington Northern Railroad has developed into a sensitive, yet dramatic portrayal of the majestic American heartland and the art of railroading across some of the most demanding terrain in the world.
“Portrait of a Railroad," the kind of film usually found among selected short subjects, won a first prize in the Venice International Documentary contest several months ago. It is being submitted for an Academy Award this year.
But far more importantly, the film has given audiences such pleasure throughout the United States and Canada that people routinely give it a standing ovation
What I thought of when watching the brakeman hanging on the grabirons while switching was looks like fun now but when its a dark and stormey night and the rains getting in to the face and going down the neck, they don’t show that. It is a romantic film and many changes have occurred, no hooped up orders, no cabooses, computerized CTC, or track warrants. Thanks for calling it to our attention.
I saw this film in 1975 and was impressed by the fact that this was a film that would have some appeal to the general public. I felt that it humanized the railroad, a message that a lot of people, including many of us in the hobby, don’t always hear.
When I started as a switchman with BN in 1989 at Northtown I worked many shifts pulling pins on the hump. EVERYTHING went over the hump—with two exceptions: explosives and the Boeing aircaft fuselages. Cabooses, intermodal, auto racks, LP gas, and even a dead-in-tow EMD switch engine—“let 'em go” was the word from the tower. Once we had a depressed center flat car get high centered on the hump crest but we pushed it again and got it moving on its way.
Film denotes a slice of life that I expreienced in the early years of my career. With that being said, the appearance of the the property shows a level of deferred maintencance even on what was then a profitable and on going concern. Pity the Penn Central and the other NE railroads.
Thanks (belatedly, to be sure) for finding and posting that Chicago Tribune review and interview with Harvey Lloyd. I’d not seen it before, so it added some insight to what I already knew about the film - most of which was also similarly complimentary. Thanks again !
Chuck - Yes, I noticed that tri-level - along with many other of what today we view as anachronisms.
The part I really liked was the still photos and brief interviews with the working railroaders - the muscular black guy, what looked like a blacksmith with the bill of his cap folded back and his straight-forward view about his life, and the fellow with the accent hoeing or raking in his garden while a B-unit was moving slowly past in the background.
I really started observing freight trains at age 3-1/2 on Manhattans’ West Side Freight Line, now Amtrak’s Penn Station - Hudson line, which was just beginning to be covered over for Riverside Park. This 40+ year old film shows how much modernization occoured by the 1970’s. Alteady, no outside-braced wood boxcars, no catwalks on boxcars, all interchange with roller bearings, no steam. Sure. a lot has happened since then. When I went into HO scale as a teenager, The Varney 0-4-0T B&O dockside switcher, and the Mantua Reading 0-4-0 Camelback were the started level purchases. All-gone.