PAGING AMERICAN FLYER. The elder Walter Dorwin Teague, who design historians tend to recognize for his work on consumer goods and airliners, also worked with Pullman's Osgood Bradley division and the New Haven Railroad to design a fleet of streamlined passenger coaches that were on northeastern rails a little bit ahead of the Union Pacific's and Burlington's motor trains and well ahead of the Hiawatha (or the Coronation). The largest fleet was on New Haven, with Bangor and Aroostook and Boston and Maine also using the design. (A few railroads outside New England also bought such cars.)


The design allowed for easy tooling in a tin shop, with New Haven's A.C. Gilbert quickly turning out S (and later O-27) approximation of the cars, which may be the first time in ferroequinology that a fleet of prototype cars received a nickname based on a model. (Yes, American Flyer put names on incorrect cars: only Bangor and Aroostook had Teague baggage cars.)

I just received the 40^th anniversary issue of Passenger Train Journal, which included an intriguing article on the Alaska Railroad's passenger trains, including an interior shot of what looked like an updated American Flyer car. The article mentioned some Pullman-design cars licensed to Daewoo. I did a bit more research and came up with some exterior shots.

Going shot of a train Near Denali, from the Alaska Railroad gallery.

Here's a roster shot.

Alaska Rails image.

I suppose the roof had to be squared-off for manufacturing practicality. Now, if Amtrak ever had a proper capital budget, wouldn't a rake of these look good on the Downeasters or the Northeast Regionals? Heck, I wouldn't mind some being assigned to the Hiawathas and the Illinois service. The Passenger Train Journal article noted that Daewoo built the cars for Alaska in order to establish a presence in the North American rolling stock market.

THEY MADE SOME TRAINS WORTH TRAVELING AGAIN.

Amtrak began operating on 1 May, 1971.  The title of this post refers to their original slogan.  Here's coverage of the first day in Milwaukee, where we no longer had train service to Green Bay, but we regained a train to Seattle.  Today, we'll look at some evidence of what has changed (sometimes for the better) and what has stagnated.

Let's start with the Empire Builder, my canonical example of an overpurposed train.  By Thanksgiving of 1971, it had become what looked very much like a Burlington Northern train, despite Milwaukee Road, and on occasion Union Pacific or Gulf Mobile and Ohio diesels in charge.

HINTS OF ADVANCING AGE. What message is there in this Chicago and North Western Commuter Streamliner, a few of which were still in revenue service in 1986-1987 when I started at Northern Illinois, now the air-conditioned diesel train at the Illinois Railway Museum?


The train includes one of the original North Western gallery commuter coaches, as well as one of the early cab control cars, allowing the museum to run trains in both directions without a conductor on the cow's tail.

For that matter, here's a Milwaukee "New Look" bus from the class that used to get me home from Allen-Bradley. It's been in preservation long enough to rate a vintage vehicle license tag, in this instance one recognizing that buses in this style were known among bus enthusiasts as "fishbowls."


Elsewhere on the grounds, the car shop is doing what Cold Spring Shops used to do, preparing streetcars for use on the Wells St. line (does the roll sign include "County Stadium"?)


Here's an unusual item in a Midwestern museum. These motors provided the prototype for early Lionel, Ives, and American Flyer electric locomotives of the Christmas-tree-circling type. That supposedly too-small pantograph on the Lionel units was in fact a believable representation of the fitting used to draw power from overhead contact rails in the throat of Grand Central Terminal.


Is there a better looking power source for a passenger train than an E unit?


And enough rolling stock was out of the barn to permit a relatively unobstructed view of an Electroliner.


Museum visitors continue to marvel that such a modern-looking train is in the collection. It has been in the museum collection longer than it served either the North Shore Line or Philadelphia Suburban.

HUMBUG? I owe Tom a tag-back, so here goes ...

1. Wrapping, or gift bags? Wrapping, although not expertly.
2. Real or artificial tree? It's plastic, with a $5 set of battery-powered light emitting diodes.
3. When do you put up the tree? As a break from composing exams.
4. When do you take the tree down? After Twelfth Night.
5. Do you like egg nog? Yes. Tom and Jerrys too.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? That Boston and Maine freight train set.
7. Do you have a nativity scene? On an ornament.
8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Pass.
9. Mail or email Christmas cards? All postal, all the time.
10. Favorite Christmas movie? Does "Charlie Brown Christmas" count?
11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Summertime, especially if I'm in someplace exotic. One year I had almost everything on hand at the May Bank Holiday.
12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Lasagna. (There's a great story about the Christmas the oven failed ...)
13. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored light emitting diodes.
14. Favorite Christmas songs? Adeste Fideles, Stille Nacht, We Three Kings.
15. Travel at Christmas? Often. It's less painful now that the job meetings are early in the new year.
16. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? You know Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer, and Vixen/Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen/But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all...
17. Angel on the tree top, or a star? A flashing red light, in case any tiny aeroplanes are nearby.
18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning? Sometimes it's midday Christmas, depending on travel schedules. One learns patience.
19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Self-indulgent advertisements from car companies that target the noveaux riches.
20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color? It has to have a train under it.
21. What do you leave for Santa? Nothing. (No fireplace, in fact, no chimney!)
22. Least favorite holiday song? That Lexus jingle (see 19 infra).
23. Favorite ornament? A 1955 lantern.
24. Family tradition? It must involve chocolate.
25. Ever been to Midnight Mass or late-night Christmas Eve services? Only on-screen in the living room. The early evening one, yes, I even had the "Myrrh is mine ..." Magi part one year.

I suppose there's a purpose in limiting the items to 25, but there's an obvious one missing.

26. Lionel or American Flyer? Lionel, definitely.

TURF THEM OUT.

Karol Markowicz opens up a can on the corona tyrants.

Apologize. Then exit stage left and let us never hear from you again.

You fearful, quiet politicians who let extended lockdowns destroy businesses, fray the fabric of our cities and cost us all so much: We saw you maskless, at concerts and parties, while our 2-year-olds stay masked to this day.

We know that you didn’t actually think masking was important like you implored us it was. You loved your power and nothing else mattered. Apologize.

She continues, "Don’t apologize, we don’t believe you anyway."

THE LATTER DAY TRACKLESS TROLLEY.

Milwaukee will be getting a new bus rapid transit line.

The Federal Transit Administration is supposed to pick up most of the tab for the project.

[The transit authority] said in a statement Thursday that riders will be able to enter the buses through either the front or back entrances due to wider aisles and level boarding.

The buses are able to operate 247 miles on a single charge. During the winter months, diesel-powered heaters will be installed to keep the passenger department comfortable.

I wonder if there will be Hamburg-style recharging installations at the ends of the line, where the buses lay over.

Work on those reserved lanes and safety islands is now under way.

Expected to be operational by October of 2022, battery-powered electric buses will connect Milwaukee's lakefront, Marquette University, Milwaukee's near west side, Wauwatosa, Froedtert, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Children's Wisconsin. It will also link people to areas like Fiserv Forum, the Art Museum, American Family Field, and Milwaukee County Zoo.

Does anyone else have memories of the Wells-Wauwatosa car line of long ago?  The last remnants of that line, from near Cathedral Square to Hoyt Park in Wauwatosa and Allis-Chalmers in West Allis, with direct access to County Stadium, quit running in March 1958.

One reason the Wells cars kept running as long as they did was Milwaukee's city engineers wondered about converting the Wells Street streetcar-only viaduct to a busway.

Wells Street Viaduct postcard courtesy
Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society.

That conversion proved not to make sense, and city officials of the era thought extra-fare "Freeway Flyer" buses running on the new expressways to park and ride lots at the outer parts of the county were the way to go.  Up to a point, but not so much, and even in Milwaukee there are a lot of days when the expressway isn't expressing.

The new trackless trolleys will use a reservation on the Wisconsin Avenue viaduct just to the south of Wells.  Whether road-ragey motorists on the Avenue will put up with their stroad being put on a road diet for the use by buses that city officials envision as enhancing service to transit-dependent populations remains to be seen.

As part of the lead-up to the project commencing, one guest on that Milwaukee radio station indulged in some wishes for a light rail service from the Summerfest grounds past the baseball stadium and the fairgrounds, and on to Waukesha.  Um, there's an expressway where that used to be.