THE GOLDEN SPIKE 150th -- A LOOK AT WHEN TRAINS WERE EXCITING. Late April, 2019. Single-item pullout.
You're in the right place! This is the link for just this story, as an archived "stand alone."
This feature appears in the FULL EDITION, with all the other stories published on the same date, and a TABLE OF CONTENTS of that edition, at:
https://news-events-perspectives.blogspot.com/2019/04/news-events-perspectives-associated.html
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This feature appears in the FULL EDITION, with all the other stories published on the same date, and a TABLE OF CONTENTS of that edition, at:
https://news-events-perspectives.blogspot.com/2019/04/news-events-perspectives-associated.html
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# 17 feature...
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From the section:
☆ "EVENTS -- Arts, Entertainment, plus News about and FOR Artists..."
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GETTING READY FOR THE GOLDEN SPIKE -- --
From the section:
☆ "EVENTS -- Arts, Entertainment, plus News about and FOR Artists..."
--
A LOOK AT WHEN TRAINS WERE EXCITING
Our Managing Editor, Larry Wines, is headed to northern Utah for a very unique reason. He's ridden horseback on the Little Bighorn Battlefield on the anniversary day of the battle, with the last Crow war chief as his guide. He put to sea to welcome the Battleship Iowa to her new home as a museum. He was there when the first non-government-sponsored human space flight took place. He's pioneered new routes up mountains. Now he's giddy about being on the exact site, at the exact time, 150 years later, for the re-driving of the Golden Spike that completed the first transcontinental railroad.
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| Andrew J. Russell's historic photo taken May 10th, 1869, provides the script for re-enactors. |
Larry quickly acknowledges the National Park Service re-enacts the event every year on May 10th, and he's always advocated that date should be a holiday. He says the same about July 20th, when humans first landed on the Moon. And he reminds us that 1969 was the first Moon landing and the centennial of the Spike. Now, 50 years after the last time Big Media thought it was a big deal, he says otherwise. He writes, "both events -- which are milestones in the history of our species -- are eclipsed by every new iPhone release, or the red carpet premiere of any insipidly stupid movie with a cast of celebrities who are famous for being famous."
His journalistic efforts often take issue with celebrity worship, while lamenting evoking inspirations from our forebears' genuine achievements to contrast our society's breathless infatuation with the trendy and disposable.
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| Big Boy is 132 feet long and weighs 1.2 million pounds. 4014 traveled 1,031,205 miles in its original 20-year service life. |
Come May in Utah, it won't be just the meaning of the Spike that will command his pen. The Union Pacific railroad -- the very same one that was there for the driving of the last spike 150 years ago -- will gloriously demonstrate what it means to endure.
Larry says it would be enough if "the U.P just showed up," then he adds, "They're bringing two giant steam locomotives with them."
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| The "Big Boy" being towed towed from years of display in Pomona, CA, to Cheyenne, WY, where it was rebuilt. Click to enlarge and see the size of the two mechanics. |
The engine sat stuffed and mounted for decades in the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona. Even before the merger mania that reduced America's railroads to just four large carriers, UP ran to Los Angeles. But the giant Big Boys did not. They were built to climb the western summit of the Rockies, and descend the Wasatch mountains into Ogden. Even when they ran in the 1940s and '50s, high, wild Wyoming still evoked the original days when the UP built across the trackless Great Plains, and over a pass in the Rockies that even the wagon trains had not found.
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| Big Boy is two engines under one huge boiler. It is a 4-8-8-4 -- four guide wheels, eight drive wheels in the front engine, eight more drive wheels in the back engine, and four trailing wheels to hold up the firebox. |
The rails don't even go there today. The line, bypassed by an incredible timber trestle across the Great Salt Lake, was scrapped for the metal in its rails during World War II. And the giant Big Boys moved the goods that won that war.
 |
| Big Boy's sixteen drive wheels are each 68 inches in diameter. |
Just as 19th century poet Brett Harte wrote of the original scene at Promontory, those on hand at the meeting of 4014 and 844 can ponder, "What was it the engines said, pilots touching head to head?"
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| Union Pacific 844 is also a giant. A 4-8-4 type -- with the conventional ONE engine under its boiler, her eight drive wheels are each eighty inches in diameter, enabling passenger train speeds (in the old days) of 100 mph. |
That head-to-head meeting of Big Boy 4014 and racehorse 844 happens in Ogden May 9th. On the 10th, and repeated for two additional days to accomodate the crowds, the far smaller 19th century replica steam locomotives will occasion that same question once again at Promontory.
Let's hope it occasions a long overdue dialog about the energy efficiency and environmental friendliness of rail transportation -- both passenger AND freight -- compared to the inefficient mess our tax subsidies have recklessly encouraged. FACT IS, even a big steam locomotive properly employed on a train it can handle is far more efficient and produces less pollution than the convoys of trucks needed to move the same weight.
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Larry sent the following, to get you ready for his stories from Utah. He did a piece on Mardi Gras and its traditions. That feature story ended with a homage to the great trains that once took revelers to New Orleans.
Here it is.
SPECIAL SECTION -- RUNNING EXTRA TO MARDI GRAS
(Tap or click any image to enlarge.)
For over a hundred years, Americans went to Mardi Gras by train. That heritage is still celebrated in the many parade floats in New Orleans whose krewes design them to look like 19th century steam locomotives. Some parade floats even vent "steam" and have whistles that blow on compressed air!
Then as now, the clubs on Bourbon and Canal Streets packed 'em in for live blues and jazz. The skillful blaring of horns and the furiosity of strings played blindingly fast became trademarks. But that was all the time, and this was the Big Easy. Then comes Mardi Gras, and you express everything with exponents.
Get past the college frat boys with the beer bongs. When Mardi Gras abates, the music flows effortlessly and so does the culture. History resumes its quiet immediacy with the vaults of 200-year-old above-ground cemeteries. And it fulfills the Zydeco band's appeal for "Somebody scream!" with the five-chime steam whistle on the paddlewheeler Natchez. Add to that the National World War II Museum for a profound sense of past and present intermingling.
In New Orleans, you can still ride old rail streetcars from the 1920s. In fact, you can catch three different streetcar lines within three blocks of the train station -- where all the many streamliners and the great "limiteds" began and ended their runs. Inside, the station, the walls still hold their Conrad Abrizzio art-deco / industrial age murals framed by architectural elements for which Frank Lloyd Wright was the mere chief draftsman. Punctuating the murals in two monolithic swaths are the trains' arrivals-and-departures call boards -- they still hang massively on the high walls, listing a paltry total of three trains. The rest of those boards is a gaping darkness of ten or twelve vertical feet; the empty ribbed surfaces made for press-in letters have displayed only blank space for decades.
Still, New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal was responsible for $17,668,780 in fiscal year 2018. With the merest trickle of activity.
Once it was very different. The trains' schedules meshed with those of paddlewheel riverboats headed up to Natchez, Memphis, St. Louis, Cairo, and Cincinnati. Ocean-going steamships waited at the wharves.
Let's look back at how revelers went to Mardi Gras in a more spacious age. When over a dozen different railroads operated daily passenger trains in and out of the Crescent City.
___
Today, with post-Hurricane Katrina track damage still annuling the Florida train, Amtrak still runs trains on just three historic routes.
The best of these is the "Sunset Limited." It was once the flagship of the Southern Pacific Railroad, complete with an on-board barber shop newsstand. It ran behind jaunty red, orange, silver and black locomotives -- streamlined steam, and then streamlined diesels. Amtrak's train with the same name still runs Los Angeles to New Orleans; you can still look 20 to 50 feet away across the border into Mexico from Southwest Texas; of greatest importance, on this train you can still get a private bedroom with a porter to prepare your bed; there's still dinner in the diner, freshly-cooked real food. But don't wait long to ride it.
___
The reason is clear when we look at the next Amtrak train, the "City of New Orleans."
Indeed that's the one that gave its name to the Steve Goodman song made famous by Arlo Guthrie. Once, the Illinois Central ran the luxurious "Panama Limited" from Chicago to New Orleans, along with the far less well-appointed "City of New Orleans." Both were glorious in chocolate brown and orange livery. The "Panama" is long gone. Amtrak's "City" still runs Chicago-New Orleans, but... it is now far worse than modern generic. That's because the mercenary Delta Airlines exec who is now in charge of Amtrak has invoked an insane management paradigm and a thoroughly obfuscating accounting system to justify cutbacks and "austerity."
For Amtrak's (supposedly modern) "City of New Orleans," that meant the end of real food. Now, you look out the window at the lush, green Mississippi River Valley, and then farther South, at the Spanish moss-draped bayou, all while you eat 7-11 style fare. Literally. Unless a major political change arrives while there is still time, more of that third-world-class travel -- or cancellation altogether -- awaits riders on several of Amtrak's well-patronized long-distance trains.
___
The third train still running to New Orleans is the generically modern version of the "Crescent Limited." Once resplendent in green and gold (as depicted here in steam days), it was the pride of the old Southern Railway. It still runs from Washington, D.C. (with a through-section from New York City); still has Pulllman bedrooms and a real dining car; uses Amtrak's few European-style "Viewliner" cars with double-rows of windows on one level; and its terminal is still the platform in New Orleans. For now.
____________________
One steam locomotive like this one -- a green-and-gold Southern Railway class PS-4, 4-6-2 Pacific type -- survives. You can see it in the Smithsonian Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Perhaps unique in the world, it was completely rebuilt before going into the museum. It is therefore a 1920s-vintage, brand-new rebuilt, zero-mileage steam locomotive. Fitting, since New Orleans and D.C. were the train's terminals.
____________________
Amtrak is what we have now. It's all that we have now.
Sadly, the best Amtrak has been able to do was under its PREVIOUS management who was working to make it better, before the current politically-entwined front-office disaster. Amtrak has always needed to EXPAND to make it easier to use, with more departure and arrival options and more connections. Instead, it's always been about fighting more cuts, and fighting to keep real food aboard trains that passengers call home for one or two days or more. And now, the fights are about nothing less than survival of the American passenger rail option. Even when the energy use statistics and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have ALWAYS greatly favored trains? The hugely subsidized airline industry -- which receives stratified layers of often-camoflauged taxpayer cash -- actively lobbies against comparatively tiny subsidies for Amtrak.
It won't be solved in the current piecemeal approaches of separate states myopically viewing their own needs in isolation. A commitment is required for the American passenger train, from sea to shining sea, and in the heartland where no air carrier can economically provide service, anyway. We lost our way in our love affairs with fast cars an cheap gas. Now we have gridlocked freeways and busted interstates and It's far gone to fix with a bake sale or a pot of gumbo.
We can always dream of a time when we won't be in cattle-car airliners with our knees in our armpits! And nothing is stopping you from calling your member of congress and your two US senators!
Anybody for a "Back to the Future" rail system?
________________________________________
(Tap or click any image to enlarge.)
For over a hundred years, Americans went to Mardi Gras by train. That heritage is still celebrated in the many parade floats in New Orleans whose krewes design them to look like 19th century steam locomotives. Some parade floats even vent "steam" and have whistles that blow on compressed air!
Then as now, the clubs on Bourbon and Canal Streets packed 'em in for live blues and jazz. The skillful blaring of horns and the furiosity of strings played blindingly fast became trademarks. But that was all the time, and this was the Big Easy. Then comes Mardi Gras, and you express everything with exponents.
Get past the college frat boys with the beer bongs. When Mardi Gras abates, the music flows effortlessly and so does the culture. History resumes its quiet immediacy with the vaults of 200-year-old above-ground cemeteries. And it fulfills the Zydeco band's appeal for "Somebody scream!" with the five-chime steam whistle on the paddlewheeler Natchez. Add to that the National World War II Museum for a profound sense of past and present intermingling.
In New Orleans, you can still ride old rail streetcars from the 1920s. In fact, you can catch three different streetcar lines within three blocks of the train station -- where all the many streamliners and the great "limiteds" began and ended their runs. Inside, the station, the walls still hold their Conrad Abrizzio art-deco / industrial age murals framed by architectural elements for which Frank Lloyd Wright was the mere chief draftsman. Punctuating the murals in two monolithic swaths are the trains' arrivals-and-departures call boards -- they still hang massively on the high walls, listing a paltry total of three trains. The rest of those boards is a gaping darkness of ten or twelve vertical feet; the empty ribbed surfaces made for press-in letters have displayed only blank space for decades.
Still, New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal was responsible for $17,668,780 in fiscal year 2018. With the merest trickle of activity.
Once it was very different. The trains' schedules meshed with those of paddlewheel riverboats headed up to Natchez, Memphis, St. Louis, Cairo, and Cincinnati. Ocean-going steamships waited at the wharves.
Let's look back at how revelers went to Mardi Gras in a more spacious age. When over a dozen different railroads operated daily passenger trains in and out of the Crescent City.
Today, with post-Hurricane Katrina track damage still annuling the Florida train, Amtrak still runs trains on just three historic routes.
The best of these is the "Sunset Limited." It was once the flagship of the Southern Pacific Railroad, complete with an on-board barber shop newsstand. It ran behind jaunty red, orange, silver and black locomotives -- streamlined steam, and then streamlined diesels. Amtrak's train with the same name still runs Los Angeles to New Orleans; you can still look 20 to 50 feet away across the border into Mexico from Southwest Texas; of greatest importance, on this train you can still get a private bedroom with a porter to prepare your bed; there's still dinner in the diner, freshly-cooked real food. But don't wait long to ride it.
___
The reason is clear when we look at the next Amtrak train, the "City of New Orleans." Indeed that's the one that gave its name to the Steve Goodman song made famous by Arlo Guthrie. Once, the Illinois Central ran the luxurious "Panama Limited" from Chicago to New Orleans, along with the far less well-appointed "City of New Orleans." Both were glorious in chocolate brown and orange livery. The "Panama" is long gone. Amtrak's "City" still runs Chicago-New Orleans, but... it is now far worse than modern generic. That's because the mercenary Delta Airlines exec who is now in charge of Amtrak has invoked an insane management paradigm and a thoroughly obfuscating accounting system to justify cutbacks and "austerity."
For Amtrak's (supposedly modern) "City of New Orleans," that meant the end of real food. Now, you look out the window at the lush, green Mississippi River Valley, and then farther South, at the Spanish moss-draped bayou, all while you eat 7-11 style fare. Literally. Unless a major political change arrives while there is still time, more of that third-world-class travel -- or cancellation altogether -- awaits riders on several of Amtrak's well-patronized long-distance trains.
___
____________________
One steam locomotive like this one -- a green-and-gold Southern Railway class PS-4, 4-6-2 Pacific type -- survives. You can see it in the Smithsonian Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Perhaps unique in the world, it was completely rebuilt before going into the museum. It is therefore a 1920s-vintage, brand-new rebuilt, zero-mileage steam locomotive. Fitting, since New Orleans and D.C. were the train's terminals.
____________________
Amtrak is what we have now. It's all that we have now.
Sadly, the best Amtrak has been able to do was under its PREVIOUS management who was working to make it better, before the current politically-entwined front-office disaster. Amtrak has always needed to EXPAND to make it easier to use, with more departure and arrival options and more connections. Instead, it's always been about fighting more cuts, and fighting to keep real food aboard trains that passengers call home for one or two days or more. And now, the fights are about nothing less than survival of the American passenger rail option. Even when the energy use statistics and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have ALWAYS greatly favored trains? The hugely subsidized airline industry -- which receives stratified layers of often-camoflauged taxpayer cash -- actively lobbies against comparatively tiny subsidies for Amtrak.
It won't be solved in the current piecemeal approaches of separate states myopically viewing their own needs in isolation. A commitment is required for the American passenger train, from sea to shining sea, and in the heartland where no air carrier can economically provide service, anyway. We lost our way in our love affairs with fast cars an cheap gas. Now we have gridlocked freeways and busted interstates and It's far gone to fix with a bake sale or a pot of gumbo.
We can always dream of a time when we won't be in cattle-car airliners with our knees in our armpits! And nothing is stopping you from calling your member of congress and your two US senators!
Anybody for a "Back to the Future" rail system?
________________________________________
Larry's complete February 2019 feature story on Mardi Gras has photos of parade floats representing old steam trains. Those are not included above, but can be found in the archive of the full story, at:
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Boilerplate? Where's the main pressure gauge? And the firebox?
What "boilerplate"? Who came up with that goofy term for the basic essential informational stuff...
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JOURNALISTS, WRITERS, EDITORIAL CARTOONISTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, ARTISTS, AND THOSE WHO CAN TELL A STORY WELL... if you would like to contribute something -- once, from time-to-time, or as a member of our ad hoc assemblage, please email managing editor Lawrence Wines, at:
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