I'm not into railroading either. I just have an indirect casual personal connection with that one and was surprised when it gained notoriety.
You'd probably know it if I mentioned the details, so I'll wait before spoiling it.
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I'm not into railroading either. I just have an indirect casual personal connection with that one and was surprised when it gained notoriety.
You'd probably know it if I mentioned the details, so I'll wait before spoiling it.
I come from a railroad family going back to my great-grandfather and his brother who were both engineers for the Pennsylvania Railroad. My grandfather and uncle were also PRR men and I have several cousins who work for various rail lines around the country. I spent my formative years in an apartment overlooking what was then the Penn Central's Cleveland Line which was extremely busy despite the PC being mired in bankruptcy at the time. Seems like everywhere I've lived has been within earshot of active tracks and when I moved to Chicago I specifically chose an apartment right next to Union Pacific's West Line which sees 160 or so trains every weekday.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
I believe 1225 appeared in the movie The Polar Express. I got to ride behind 1225 back in '91 when it double-headed an excursion with sister Berkshire Nickel Plate 765 pulling 31 cars!Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
If you've ever seen the Robert Redford movie The Natural longtime Cleveland resident Grand Trunk 4070 (the Cuyahoga Valley Line locomotive) appears in it. Unfortunately 4070 is a long way away from being operational again.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of.
1225 --> 12/25 --> December 25th may have helped the story author here. No idea whether it inspired fabrication of the the entire story or was a happy coincidence after the fact. What I've read suggests that he was also familiar with the locomotive's presence at the same location I know it from.
Grand Rapids, its holiday-dress downtown, and the Herpolsheimers department store are also memories I have in common with the author and we all appreciate connections to our memories. Today I live relatively close (25 miles) to 1225's current home in Owosso Michigan as well.
I also get a kick out of the way new viewers of the movie often get creeped out by the animation style it used and I enjoy most of its musical soundtrack.
1225's number was just a coincidence. When the PM parked all their steam locomotives in the late-'50s they couldn't scrap them until the bank liens on them were paid off. So they all sat for several years rusting away out in the elements. When it was decided to preserve one or two 1223 and 1225 were chosen as they were easy to get to and still in relatively good shape. 1225 was eventually returned to operational status while 1223 was preserved as a static exhibit at the state fairgrounds in Detroit and later moved to Grand Haven.
Of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by homer13j
There are plenty of other elements of railroad history that play roles in popular culture as well, particularly in song and story rather than commercial mass media.
An obvious example:
https://youtu.be/TvMS_ykiLiQ
Generations before rail had songs about shipping canals, stagecoach lines, plank roads, and trails. Of course the further you go back the smaller the populations and the reach of mass media even when that was campfire tales and songs passed among travelers.
Not to have too much overflow here from the "Listening" thread, but who else learned this tune in their early school years?
https://youtu.be/ep1hi6VBaWg
Probably completely foreign to recent generations, hmm?
Amusingly that video still fights the old battle over a lyric: 15 years vs. 15 miles. As far as I can tell it was always 15 years until a collection republished it as 15 miles and the arguments began.
We were taught "15 years."
I certainly remember that one. I hiked a bit of the C&O canal tow path, though not the Erie. Some of those paths have turned into bike trails that I've considered.
I walked up a stretch or railroad grade outside Lewiston Idaho. It's very scenic, as it goes through six tunnels and over numerous trestles as it climbs a canyon. Being as scenic as it is, and since all the trestles are made out of wood, the stretch has been used in two films that I am aware of, though it's only a couple miles long. You can find it in The Wild Wild West, and in the much older Breakheart Pass with Charles Bronson.
Rail's the best way to travel, but not an option for most people out in the west.
On the other hand, I've figured out a route that is mostly rail-trails from my house to my sister's place out near Seattle. I'll bike that next summer...as a plan B, or if plan A takes long enough to develop.
What surprises me is how many of our rivers and streams here were once navigable, not merely by canoe but also by jonboat or even barges and later steamers that were smaller versions of what later became the archetypal Mississippi Riverboats.
Now we still have some dams, though many have gradually been taken out. But in general the streams and creeks have shrunken to a trickle. I think the latter was due to drainage efforts related to agriculture. In bigger cities major rivers were long ago "channelized" for flood control and to open up previously marshy real estate to other uses.
There are places here where you can still canoe during Spring, but just barely. Funny to hear local songs that make it clear people used to row or pole goods to market on those creeks. Steam power was understandably only "a thing" on the larger rivers nearer their mouths, though for a time some of the steamboats were transported upriver or into lakes and restored for operation as novelty businesses.
You see that out here, as well. The dams on the lower Snake River were put in place to create a navigable slack-water pool from the Pacific all the way to Lewiston. That doesn't mean that the river wasn't navigable before that, though. Boats were running the river, when it was possible. There were water conditions that made navigation impossible, though only for part of the year.
I grew up canoeing on a brook that bordered our property. The flow wouldn't normally be enough to allow for canoeing, but beavers turned much of the brook into a series of step pools, while the rest of it had a shallow enough gradient that it was passable.
I've been back there a few times since then, and I find it a bit hard to believe that I ever canoed there. Doesn't seem all that passable.
I guess I should go back and try it again.
Yeah, there is a named "river" here that was once used extensively for light water traffic but these days it is really just canoeable 2 out of 3 years, the 3rd year being too shallow except in the Spring.
I hear Lake Mead is up 5 feet recently, but I'm not sure about the prospects of the Colorado for water and power over the coming decade.
They aren't good. For reservoirs that are used for irrigation, the drawdown has ended for the year (at least up here), so the reservoirs can start recharging. The problem is that they need a huge snow year...or several in a row, to get that lake level back up.
I've wanted to bike the old Milwaukee Road from Seattle to the east since they pulled it up in the '80s. There are some pretty spectacular public trails built on it, but a lot of the land through Montana and to the east has reverted to the adjacent landowners and is fenced and posted. Would the line you referred to near Lewiston be through Sixteen Mile Canyon?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Biking the Erie Canal is also up there on my list, and I've been trying to do Pittsburgh-DC for at least 20 years now, but circumstances keep preventing it.
Yeah, it's too bad Amtrak's Pioneer and Desert Wind got cancelled. But then again Amtrak's management has been an absolute dumpster fire since the '90s.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Pittsburgh-DC is now part of the Great American Rail-Trail, as is a chunk of the Milwaukee Road across WA. There are HUGE chunks that have not been laid out, yet, and it isn't clear whether or not they ever really will be, largely for the reasons you pointed out. Still, it's a start.
One of the possible plans I have for next summer would include biking most of the Milwaukee Road route across WA, though it would also include several other rail-trails on both ends of that. I've also looked into a route that takes the Milwaukee Road, continues it on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. I've already biked the paved part of that route. It's paved because it was the old mining railroad serving the silver mines up the Coeur d'Alene river. Since silver ore can be up to 50% lead, that railbed is very toxic. It was decided that capping it was the best option, so it became a very nice, paved, bike trail...with signs telling you not to drink any water or get off the pavement except at designated areas.
I've never heard a name for the rail grade by Lewiston. The only thing I can find for sixteen mile canyon is in Montana. The grade I'm talking about is the old spur line south out of Lewiston to the town of Grangeville. It just serviced grain elevators in the Camas Prairie, as far as I know. The scenic stretch was a switchbacking route up a canyon from the valley floor to the prairie.
There's talk about bringing Amtrak service back to Boise. Oddly, the talk is about a train from Boise to Salt Lake City, with Boise to Portland possibly coming later. That makes no sense to me. I know of nobody who regularly travels to Salt Lake City, but lots of people who regularly travel to Portland. Why connect two small cities rather than a small (but growing) city with a large city?