Wheels of Progress - A 1950 Rock Island Railroad Film

Awhile back I posted a documentary that included a rare Rocket clip. I’ve found the source here in part 1, but most of the railroad action is in part 2. It’s hard to believe almost as much time passed from the creation of this film until shutdown, as from shutdown until now. I sure miss the Rock Island.

Wheels of Progress - Part 1

Wheels of Progress - Part 2

To download anything from YouTube in FLV (Flash) or MP4 formats, simply put “pwn” in the URL before “youtube.”

Example for Part 2:

http://www.pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=K4RJTDCSFHA

And while you’re looking, here are two RI shorts from Green Frog:

One

Two

Enjoy!

Mike

I’m going to have to dig around, I’m pretty sure I have “Wheels of Progress” on a VHS tape that I bought maybe 20 years ago. I wonder if it was later issued on DVD??

I think that Rick Prelinger also has it up as part of the Prelinger Archives. There are a couple of other railroad industry films on there (one of which from Union Pacific wound up on MST3K!)

There is also a film by General Motors from the 1920s about safe driving which has a locomotive engineer lecturing people about safe driving and comparing driving a car to driving a steam locomotive. No, I am not making that up.

So many cool goodies on there - my favorites are probably the Atomic films like “Duck and Cover” and “Operation Teapot.”

Wheels of Progress is on DVD. Just check eBay or Google it and you should be able to find it quickly.