Edison film of Southern Pacific freight train from 1898

Trains Magazine Steam & Preservation
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http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/AMALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(edmp+1618))

Double-headed with a pusher, and brakemen atop the cars. It comes out of a tunnel and rounds a curve.

Worth watching. MPEG version was better resolution than the quicktime version, in my opinion.

(Edited by moderator. Made the link click-able)

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Amazing, like looking at ghosts, ghost locomotives, ghost freight cars, ghost brakemen. God bless Thomas Edison and his motion picture invention for giving us this window into the past!

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I don’t think there is very much like this one, either. I have seen, from the same collection, run-bys of named express trains that were obviously staged, but this is normal operations captured here.

4

That’s an amazing film.

I make the locomotives out to be 4-8-0 “Mastadon” types. Kind of unusual but I guess the SP found them to be good pullers through the mountains.

Note the smoke pouring out of the tunnel after the train has cleared. No wonder they went to cab forwards.

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I can only imagine the breathing conditions for the Brakemen on the car tops!

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Looking at this film again I was reminded of a Lucius Beebe quote, although it has nothing to do with railroads. In 1948 Beebe and some of his cafe society friends were discussing the upcoming Truman versus Dewey presidential election. Someone said “If Dewey gets elected it’ll set the country back 50 years!” Beebe’s reply? “And just WHAT was so wrong with 1898?”

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Appears to be a special freight train, can’t make out all the writing on the placards / posters each car carries, but it says something about a special train of hops travelling the Sunset Route. It was fairly common back than that a railroad and/or shipper would do a special train with each car having added decoration advertising what is being hauled (lumber, potatoes, hops etc.)

Note the cars have reporting marks for SP and also subsidiaries CP, T&NO and SA&AP.

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A small window into railroading past…A good idea why the work (GCOR) rules were established, to protect the crews. How did the rear-end crews cope with the smokey conditions in tunnels, and snow sheds?

Thanks for sharing the video here.