Check this out, I remember listening to the music in school many years ago but the film is amazing!
Well , actually the music piece was written before the advent of the locomotive series seen in the film , the Chapelon Pacifics .
Nevertheless , they must have been amazing locomotives indeed : although the spindle is being brought to backwards as seen immediately after that close up on the clock , the locomotive starts out forwards - gee .
Seriously : some really fast revving to be seen at 7:30 , 7:33 , 7:49 and 8:04 ; interesting too : the close to rail view of passing through that wide left at speed , see how the engine’s running is shortly being disturbed by switchwork only to re-settle to smooth running immediately after , although trackwork is clearly less than perfect and still far from the simply immaculate alignment I witnessed when travelling the SNCF Eastern mainline Strasbourg to Paris with curve lead-in and lead-out as soft as to become hardly noticeable and with just perfect compensation by amount of superelevation . What impressed me , too , was how drivers of those very strong electrics universally started trains in a very smooth style , like emulating a Pacific or Mountain up front , not an electric of potentially high tractive effort which could abruptly ‘tear’ a train off a station platform like to make you sit down whether there’s a seat or not , the way some DB drivers would do .
Fascinating to see how these 231. C / .E locomotives of decidedly non-fit outlines came into their own when seen in their smooth running at speed .
Juniatha
edit : Strasbourg in French spelling as spoken in Alsac-Lorraine
Juniatha, you’re back! Thank goodness, I thought you were angry with us!
By the way, did you get those 611 pictures I sent you, or attempted to send?
Hi Fireloco
time is too precious to waste it by anger or other negative emotion . All of us are better off exchanging positive emotion .
If positive emotions cannot be shared I prefer zero emotion , not to become entangled in a negative spin .
Think of how much trouble , fiendishness , riot and - in the final consequence - war could be spared , how much energy could be applied instead to solving urgent global problems crucial to win our future .
See message , too , Fireloco .
J____uniatha
Well, I just watched “Pacific 231.” Hard to say what’s more impressive, the music or Monsieur Chapelon’s locomotive!
Oooooo-la-la!
Maybe someone should try a video of French steam with that magnificent march “Regiment de Sambre-Meuse” playing in the background.
What a lucky guy to have such a fine neighbor! And a war hero at that!
Last year the Lancaster flew to Britain to take part in Battle of Britain commemorative flights, along with a Spitfire and Hurricane. What a time to be in Britain! This Labour Day, when the Canadian National Exhibition closes with an air show, there will be a B of B commemorative flight. I can watch that from my back yard with an adult beverage in my hand. But, what a time to be in Britain! Dang!
Earlier in July, a restored B-24J was here for a show and did a buzz over my house. I would have loved to hear the differences in the sound of the 4 Merlins vs 4 P&W R-1830-35s!
Why would anybody want to see something as ugly as a B-24?? Disclaimer, Dad flew with the 306th Bomb Group in 1944.
2 years ago I was in New York City walking down the west side and what flies down the Hudson? The B-17G from the Yankee air museum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which, by the way was where B-24s were built by Henry Ford in the Willow Run plant. What sweet music it made! My old man was a dorsal gunner on a B-29, completed his training but the war ended before he could see combat.
I would! And have! OK, a B-24 isn’t as good looking as a B-17, it couldn’t take the punishment a '17 could, it was more difficult to fly than a '17, but by God a lot of history was made by the B-24 and a lot of good men served on 'em.
I’ll visit a B-24 any time one come to town.
By the way, the late Jimmy Stewart flew B-24’s.
And achieved the rank of Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve.
One of the major problems with the B-24 was the combination of high wing and sealed fuel tanks rather than the bladders used in most aircraft, which resulted in fuel leaks that made their way into the fuselage after relatively minor damage.
Jimmy Stewart appeared in the film “No Highway” based on the book by Neville Shute (Conway) as a research scientist working on airliner structural failures who found himself on an airliner that was likely to fail during the current flight.
At an intermediate stop he retracts the undercarriage on the hardstand after failing to convince the flight crew of the problem.
A friend was concerned that Jimmy Stewart (not surprisingly) appeared more familiar with the controls than his character was supposed to be…
After repairs, the aircraft taxies out for takeoff and the tailplane falls off…
Interestingly, the book, written in 1949, predicted the failures of (and the official responses to) the De Havilland Comet years later.
M636C
I’ve been trying to remember the title of that movie, which I saw on television when I was about 10 or 11. I do remember that the plane (model name “Reindeer”) looked like a Viscount with some extra parts.
Honegger wrote Pacific 231 in 1923
The locomotive in the film clip 231 E 24, was the fourth Chapelon Pacific built new in 1936, originally NORD 3.1194. 3.1171 to 3.1190 (231 E 1-20) were rebuilt in 1934/35 from Paris Orleans 3520 class built as early as 1909.
Apart from the double chimney as the poppet valves, the external appearance of the P-O Pacifics was generally similar to the rebuilds, dating right back to the smaller wheeled 4500 type, the first Pacific in Europe in 1907. Many ETAT Pacifics, similar apart from a round top firebox to the 3520s, were built for a number of French systems (including the P-O).
The PLM had numerous locomotives of a different design, and the Nord had two native designs with narrow fireboxes before adopting the Chapelon rebuilds.
But it is likely that Honegger had a locomotive that looked like 231 E 24 in mind when he wrote the piece…
M636C
The wikipedia entry is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway_in_the_Sky#
The British release used the book title, but it was called “No Highway in the Sky” in the USA. The aircraft is illustrated by a movie frame grab. I think the “Reindeer” name was derived from the multiple vertical tails.
Having read the book, I think the Bristol Brabazon was the aircraft Shute had in mind when he wrote the book. There was a reference in the book that the tailplane had a greater span than a WWII fighter aircraft wingspan…
M636C
Bristol Brabizon
Bristol Britannia (derived from the Brabizon)
If memory serves, by looking at that photo of the Brabazon you can see what the trouble with the aircraft was, that very unconventional engines-buried-in-the-wings combined with counter-rotating propellers. The Bristol engineers just couldn’t get the bugs out of it.
The Britannia as I understand was pretty darn good.
The trouble with the Brabazon was trying to build a jumbo airplane with '40s materials and piston engines. By the time they got it done, the future had gone to faster aircraft, most notably the Comet.
I for one would have been interested to see a Brabazon engined with the Tu-95’s NK-12s – including the multiple-speed gearboxes – and the later version of the propellers. Wouldn’t have cut down on the noise much, might not have increased the speed enough, but it would have allowed the ‘lap of luxury’ last-bastion-of-the-Empire stuff to be preserved…
I haven’t heard it personally, but I understand the noise of a TU-95 is absolutely horrendous! Supposedly even US submarines can track that airplane when submerged. Not that the “Bear” isn’t a good airplane, but wow!
Did you know the Republic Aircraft tried a turboprop fighter in the 50’s? The noise level from that one, I believe a variant of the F-107, was so bad that even with ear protection ground crews got nauseous. It was dropped without regrets.