Accurail’s 40-footers are the easiest boxcars to modernize IMHO - just clip the pegs off the bottom of the running boards, glue them in the holes, and you’re done.
LOL! I saw another McCloud episode (the one with Barbi Benton I think…anybody remember her?) where they were arresting some guys loading stolen stuff on a boxcar at a freight yard…funny thing was, all the switch engines were SP, as was a lot of the rolling stock (even some 40-footers as I recall) Hmmmm - what is a yard full of Espee switchers doing in NYC? Guess it was really filmed in LA all along[:D]
You’re right. Back in those days most of the filming was in California. The scenes of traffic moving through and the Manhattan skyline were editited in. That’s Hollywood!
I grew up in the 70’s, Southern Rock and Trans Am’s were the best part of the 70’s for me. I still listen to Southern Rock and I still own a 1978 Trans Am.[:D]
In the Seventies, I listened to fusion jazz. Chick Corea, Stanly Clark, John McGloughlin, Carlos Santana, and rock like Hot Tuna, Pink Floyd, Yes, and Beautiful Day. No John Travolta finger pointing for me.
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LOL! I saw another McCloud episode (the one with Barbi Benton I think…anybody remember her?)
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Lyrics of a Barbi Benton song from the seventies called Brass Buckles :
She outgrew brass buckles on her shoes, by twelve she was fillin’ out her jeans.
With a mind young and wild and a body the devil styled, she could make a man do anything.
I was talking with some friends the other night about the 70s and the TV shows. Do ya’ll remember the TV shows like The Mac Davis show, Donnie and Marie, Sonny and Cher? Seems like everybody had a one hour variey show then. I miss those days…
TV Land has alot of them now and they are a hoot to watch!
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What, no Pink Lady and Jeff?
And no mention of Jim Rockford (to be fair, I think there were few railroad related instances on the Rockford Files - the only two which come to me involve a coffin being shipped on an Amtrak train either to or from Northern California, and Jimbo hiding some object in a Union Station locker).
And on the topic of McCloud, no mention of Banacek, the Polish detective who shared the Mystery Movie timeslot - now the one railroad related item I remember from that rather cool show was stealing a railroad freight car (flat car?) with an expensive sports car on it from a moving train - IIRC, the criminals cut holes over the couplers in the boxcars surrounding the flatcar, ran cable between the two boxcars, ran out the cable slack and uncoupled the flat car, pushed it off on a siding and then recoupled the boxcars by reeling in the cable and welding the holes shut.
Here’s a quote from some spoilsport explaining why that wouldn’t work (and which I didn’t consider)
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QUOTE: The “Vanishing Railroad Car” episode was the shark jump for me. From a person who comes from a railroad family, I know for a fact that this theft could never have been committed the way Thomas Banacek said it did. Banacek said the thieves uncoupled the railroad car in question from the car ahead of it and from the one behind it and kept the entire train going by running a heavy steel cable between the disconnected sections. They built a special switch that allowed the first section of the train to run straight through it. Then, they quickly threw the switch to send the car to be stolen onto the temporary siding. After the stolen car was switched-out, they threw the swi
Count me in as a teen in the 70s. I grew up in St. Louis, which was MoPac, Frisco and BN territory. I don’t remember the MoPacs being too dirty, but it might have been hard to tell in the blue. And those odd looking transfer cabooses, like somebody built a shed with windows on a flat car.
And yes, Southern (Serves the South, Gives the Green Light to Innovation) box cars were everywhere.
Welcome Back Kotter, Barney Miller, Sanford and Son, All in the Family and various spin offs. Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football and Don Meredith losing his train of thought when the cameraman zoomed in on a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, only to say “she ain’t wearin much clothes, is she?” Baseball had “the Big Red Machine,” football had the Steelers, the Canadiens dominated hockey after the Flyers won back to back Cups and just before the Islanders dynasty started.
Some good music to start the decade, some not-so-good towards the end (in my opinion). New York was broke and 3-Mile Island broke.
VW beetles and beach buggies, Led Zep drifiting out a window, fluoro colours, long hair and mini skirts. When would the South (sic) Pacific Lines be set other than 1972? A wonderful time (at least seen through 30 years of rose tinting and as it will be modelled in my study)
Would Tomar Industries signals be appropriate for a heavily used branchline in the 70s? I think that I am going to go with these because the Digitrax SE8C signal decoder manual shows you how to use those![X-)] Or I could pester the DCC expert at our club about how to do NJ International Signals…
Speaking of the “NBC Mystery Movies”, there was a “McMillan and Wife” episode where most of the action took place onbaord an Amtrak train. If you look carefully at the shots of the train cruising, you’ll see that the Amtrak train was pulled by Santa Fe “Geep” locomotives. This must have been the mid-70s when the SDP40fs were blamed for various derailments, so the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern temporarily banned the locomotives from their lines.