Hey, I liked the train in Streamline Express – it was everything that Supertrain should have been but turned out not to be. Sure, the plot is nonsense and some of the assumptions screenwriter-wacky, but the underlying premise was good. And I have to wonder if it shaped any of the Breitspurbahn planning…
Maybe it was inspired by Popeye?
Perhaps more likely by Porky
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=MzwxL6305Q4&feature=emb_logo
Did you notice the sleeping car in the movie “Elgin Manor” is still in service on the VIA Rail Canadian? Also in the dining car scene did you see what they were eating for lunch? A mound of cottage cheese, a slice of meat loaf and it looked like orange slices but could have been carrots. I wonder if those were actually on the CP Rail menu. I can’t imagine eating cottage cheese with meat loaf…eck!!!
How do you know it was cottage cheese and not mashed potatoes?
Meatloaf and mashed potatoes = comfort food, especially at the roadside diner and on the Reading’s Philly-NYC trains. Just add peas as the veggie, carefully placed in a line on the mashed potatoes preloaded on your knife. Did that etiquette come from The Stooges or Laurel and Hardy?
Rick
If my plate arrived with cottage cheese, it would leave with cottage cheese.
Mashed ‘taters’ would be a different story. When I was young, if we had mashed potatoes but no gravy, it was butter for a topping. We were a meat and potatoes family.
Well I agree reality didn’t have too much to do with the story in general. Hoover Dam to Chicago would be about 1775 mi.; the real Zephyr’s Denver to Chicago nonstop run was just over 1000 mi., so is stretching things a bit.
IIRC the “Silver Streak” was driven all the way by the hero, who was something like the head of the railroad’s engineering department, so there wasn’t a standard crew. Not sure with someone in management running the train if the 16 hour rule would apply? More importantly, since the race to Chicago was to save the life of the son of the president of the railroad, I suspect the president wouldn’t mind paying a fine for violating the work rules if it meant saving his son’s life.
In the present day, the only Senior Railroad Official that maintained their ‘Engineer’s Card’ was Cindy Sanborn while she was with CSX. Of course once she moved on to UP and then NS I doubt that she did. Saw a article recently that she was retiring from NS.
Interesting. So how often would Ms. Sanborn need to run a train to keep her engineer card? Seems like it would have to be enough times to have a check ride and an unannounced test as a minimum. I wonder what the average conductor thought when paired up with someone like that.
My understanding it required a yearly ‘check ride’ over one of the territories she was qualified on. I could be wrong.
If you actually watched the movie, you would have seen that the race was TO Boulder City.
On one of the Roanoke VA NRHS 611 Independence Limited trips I was on, Grahm Claytor was running 611 between Bellvue, OH and Ft.Wayne IN. I clocked the speed using time between mile posts and got 70mph. (51 sec.) The employee TT indicated speed limit for the track for passenger was 60 mph. Enroute to the motel, I asked some of the loco crew about it and was assured they NEVER went that fast.
Yes, it was taking iron lungs from Chicago to Boulder City. As I mentioned, I haven’t watched the movie since the 1980s so memory is a bit hazy. The discussion about the distance and time etc. are still the same regardless which direction it was heading though.
Movie Silver Streak. 1976.
The Searchlight Signal Scene at Time 00.46 was filmed just West of Crowsnest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv_wl30h6eU
A concrete foundation was poured and a socket was installed so a false Signal
could be set in a pipe and could be turned clear of track
when not in use.
It was here.
https://www.google.com/maps/@49.6641468,-114.7722696,652m/data=!3m1!1e3
Cut at top had Tunnel into Fifties known as 'Grain Bin ’ Tunnel as gravel always
seeping in.
Looking East.
https://www.basininstitute.org/home/image.html?zn=7&id=3a1e54bdc7020832077d6c172662beb3
Looking West.
https://www.basininstitute.org/search/details.html?id=19811#.Y4zXsX3MLIU
When CP 8900 Train&nbs
Never fire the chauffeur before the end of the ride…