This is mainly about ship traffic but there is a little railroad action in the form of barges and the Hell Gate bridge. It’s worth seeing.
Wow! What a great time machine! Thanks for posting!
What I find most interesting are the sailing ships looking like they are still working vessels. In 1937, yet.
Coasting schooners hung on for quite a while. While subject to the vagaries of winds (although schooners can sail a lot closer to the wind than a square-rigger can) they were still a very economical way to haul cargo of various types up and down the East Coast.
Square-riggers were also an economical way to haul non time sensitive cargos to areas where the prevailing trade winds could take them, especially to harbors that didn’t have the infrastructure to support steamships, but their time was rapidly coming to an end.
Does anyone know which ocean liner that was at the very beginning?
The SS Queen of Bermuda.
Thanks!
Interresting!
The colouring of the newsreel was a bit more “artificial” rather than “Intelligent”.
I recognised the “Queen of Bermuda”, although, since they cut the sequence before the name, it could have been “Monarch of Bermuda”. I’m surprised the funnel coulours were so wrong. At least the original film must have been panchromatic to render the red such a light colour.
This has been listed on these forums before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJDLl2RbS_c
But this has genuine colour footage of New York in 1939 if I’ve followed it correctly. It has closed captions (in French like the commentary) but you should recoginse the names of the areas.
The unloading of passenger’s cars and the elevated railway scenes were high points, but the actual colours of clothing was interesting. Many more brown suits and jackets than more recently.
The New York scenes are from 30 minutes to 40 minutes in the video. There is some B&W newsreel footage.
Peter
Scrapped in 1966. Seems to have had a thing about funnels.[:^)]
Here are two similar colourised videos of London.
The first, during WWII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLbPYQcUcgM
This includes some pre WWII coverage of Waterloo station.
Apparently made in 1933
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRAOrIfcvkU
In both of these, the colour red seems to be a problem.
London buses and trams were red with cream lining.
Even the changing of the guard produces only a weak red…
Peter
You can see firsthand the aircraft revolution in a particularly dramatic form in the last part of this.
The ship was extensively rebuilt to receive its ‘last’ single funnel, being lengthened at the same time. Presumably it was extensively redecorated inside. Yet less than half a decade later, the company had abandoned liner service to Bermuda entirely, and the ship was not resold to another market but scrapped outright.
That second London film was amazing to see. Note the half-track in front of the airliner at 1:30- it’s a Citroen Kegresse.
The airliner, a Handley Page H.P. 4 or H.P. 45, which also was amazing to see as it was one of the last biplane airliners.
In 1933 I believe the United States still primarily used biplane airliners.
Note the locomotive chassis being shipped at about 4:15. It would be interesting to identify what that is, and where it might be going.
Speaking of how colors showed up on black and white film, take a look at this: https://www.icollector.com/Douglas-Croft-Robin-hero-tunic-from-Batman-the-serial_i35060805
And here it is from 1943 (scroll down, upper photo) and the later 1949 (actual red, yellow and green) production stills: https://dcmovies.fandom.com/wiki/Robin_Suit_(Batman_serials)
After a couple of views and some thought, that is the “Royal Scot” (actually 6152) being shipped for exhibition in the United States…
There is a build up of dirt at the buffer mountings indicating that it isn’t a brand new locomotive. The colours and lining are correct, and just before the loco what appears to be an LMS passenger car is seen being loaded.
So it was going to the USA.
Peter
Biplane? I guess the DC-3 monoplane wasn’t introduced until 1935?
Wikipedia claims the DC-3 was “fast”, allowing a coast-to-coast trip in the US taking only 18 hours with only 3 stops.
There is a story about two elderly ladies who bought tickets on such a trip instead of taking a train trip. Every time they landed for one of these stops, a little blue truck would race up to refuel their plane so they could be on their way.
One lady turns to the other, “isn’t it amazing how fast this airplane is?” The other replies, “That is indeed the case. But what is even more amazing is how the little blue truck is able to keep up with us!”
Here is yet another colourised video from the 1930s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dbvj6-SdX0
This covers a ferry crossing from Flushing (in Holland) to Harwich and scenes of London (some of which were in the “1933” video.)
The Dutch trains have NS class 3900 4-6-0s and the “Flushing Continental” has a rebuilt LNER B12/3 4-6-0.
Check out the miniature reversing train toy at 6:31…
They tried to make the buses and trams in London red, but didn’t try with the Mitropa dining car on the Dutch train.
Peter
The Curtis Condor was probably the only biplane “airliner” that was in wide use in the US in 1933. IIRC, the Ford Tri-motor was the most common prior to the introduction of the Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-2. Biplanes such as the Boeing 40 did have space for paying passengers, but this was more like an “air taxi” rather than an airliner. (Though a DC-3 would seem ridiculously small to the current generation of airline pax.)