Posted on 08/19/2017 2:57:24 PM PDT by Snickering Hound
Travelogue style profile of the "Super Chief", a magnificent Streamlined passenger train of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
During 1950 & 1951 the Super Chief is re-equipped with new streamlined sleeping cars built by the Budd Company and the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF), and dining cars from Pullman-Standard. Santa Fe also added the Pullman-built "Pleasure Dome Lounge Car", one of the most luxurious ever made for any train, to its Super Chief consists, billing it as the "...only dome car between Chicago and Los Angeles.". A speedometer in the front of the car showed the train's velocity.
The film details different features of the train, such as the observation lounge and 100% private rooms including a roomette for one, the new type bedroom, and the new Super Chief compartment. Drawing rooms are also offered. The Super Chief’s kitchen and dining car are shown. We are then introduced to the main lounge of the new "Pleasure Dome" car. Here, one can play cards, use a writing desk, or even go to the barber for a haircut! The lower lounge is shown where you can have a cocktail. This is followed by the turquoise room, the first and only private dining room on rails.
I rode on her three times: Once when I was adopted and twice when we picked up my sister from the adoption agency four years later. Only rich people took airplanes back then.
From what was seen on the YouTube video, the Super Chief passenger train must have devoted one railcar to stock pallets of cigarettes used by passengers during the Chicago-LA trip.
How did MST3K miss this short?
The barber has the shower so you will be rather ripe when you arrive unless you pay him a visit.
LOL. I think that Amtrak is all no smoking now.
“I rode on her three times.”
Wow. What a great memory that must be!
In 1951 I was five years old and loved the war bonnet paint scheme on the Santa Fe F-7 diesel.
Have an n-scale model and love looking at her.
IMHO
I don’t remember the first trip as I was three months old, but I do remember the others when I was four years old. Good food.
We boys (four of us at the time) rebelled against the three railed sets that came out after that (or at least after we had our American Flyer for a few years.)
We lost interest as girls came along and we couldn't do anything else to a 4X8 sheet of plywood.
We had a tunnel, trestle, loading dock, village, trackless trolley IN the village, little people and landscaping everywhere (mirrors are ponds to the knowledgeable) and a ton of et-cetera's.
Logs got loaded with a switch onto a flat car and to get around the track a couple of times and be able to switch all switches and perform all tasks was a minor miracle.
SOMEthing was always going wrong
It was how I learned a great engineering rule .... every element is a potential problem and every addition is a potential leak
Paper route money went to the train set and there has NEVER been a locomotive so handsome as the "Super Chief" !
Beautiful video. I long for the days of dignity among all people, exciting travel and adventure.
I took a train from NYC to Denver in 1976. Several hours’ stopover in Chicago, so I went to the Mercantile Exchange. Then the Chicago-Denver train had cars that were higher with huge windows all around so we could see the landscape. Everyone milling around meeting everyone else. Met mostly Midwesterners.
But do recall as a kid having my elementary class go out to watch this one come through. 
So tell us about this train you saw when you were in elementary school.
Circa 1926 my (then ten-year-old) father was traveling from Washington, DC to Hopkinsville, KY with his ailing father. They were riding in a coach and a well-to-do married couple passed by and asked if they could take the boy on up to the dining car with them. It was a marvelous dinning car and was one of my father’s best memories.
His father was to die within months and the young boy went on to be a renowned neurosurgeon and had many a meal in fancy restaurants but nothing ever impressed him more than that dining car.
I know nothing about it other than pics today call it the “GM Aerotrain”. I just recall that oval snout.
Loved the Super Chief. My dad worked for ATSF and we always looked forward to those train rides.
At least one night, but might have been two ... can't remember back to 1965 as well as I'd like.
I got a tooth infection on the way and they had to hospitalize me to drain the tooth for extraction and I landed in Kimpo a week later.
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