This 1966 color film highlights the return of the high use of railroads to transport goods due to new train car developments. It was backed by the Association of American Railroads was produced and directed by Robert Yarnall Richie Productions Inc. and narrated by broadcaster Chet Huntley. The video begins with footage of various angles of Hoover Dam (0:06-0:32). The poster to the grand opening of the Union Pacific Platte Valley Route is shown, and the camera pans around Joseph Pickett’s 1914-1918 Manchester Valley folk painting (0:33-1:25). A train passes through tunnels and the Utah ghost town and former railroad hub Wahsatch; the tracks and cargo containers are shown up-close (1:26-4:16). Construction equipment and workers improve tracks, and dynamite is used to clear an area (4:17-5:43). Engineers, managers, and typists receive and analyze real-time data from automated checkpoints along the track (5:53-7:00). A scanner is demonstrated identifying train cars with color-coded barcodes (7:01-8:00). Specialized freight cars and loading, including a Monsanto tanker car, are shown up-close (8:01-8:40). Lumber is forklifted into side-loading cars, workers fill a specialized car full of liquid hydrogen, materials are pumped into specialized cars, and a turbo-generator is loaded onto a specialized flat car (8:41-10:46). The business deal for the automobile rack-car train is reenacted, with the railroad Vice President speaking to a Detroit auto-manufacturer representative, presenting ideas, and engineers building models and drawing blueprints. A finished version with hundreds of cars being transported down the railroads is shown. Cars are rolled off the train and into a lot for last-mile transport (10:47-14:59). Workers and forklifts remove car chassis frames and heavy components from high-capacity box cars, and move cars back unto the rack-car train (15:00-17:38). Elephants help push Strates Show carnival midway circuit cars up unto the tracks (17:39-18:06). A crane picks up 18-wheel trailers and loads them unto the train (18:07-19:55). A unit train of grain cars carrying wheat is unloaded rapidly unto a boat for export (19:56-20:53). Magnetic cranes move steel into cars and coal is scooped into a specialized box car, while an operator monitors and controls the movement of the cars (20:54-24:30). Men and women pile into commuter trains and trolleys in San Francisco. Demos of experimental passenger trains are shown (24:31-26:07). Trains go through the mountains at high-speeds. Produce is loaded and unloaded from train cars; cartons are labeled Panoche Dawn (26:08-26:56). A family boat is pulled from the water and a rocket takes off from a launching pad (26:57-28:14).

We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com