REWRITING HISTORY? General Electric's latest diesel locomotives are not much prettier than Cadillac's latest slab-sides. Their promotional efforts are somewhat more clever. From PBS, here is the most important day in the Nineteenth Century.


Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific reenacts the picture as a still-shot within the movie. A recent commercial for GE Transportation's Evolution series diesels shows us what really happened. Mr DeMille missed a steamer coughing a funnel full of cinders onto the dignitaries just before the pictures. Nothing changes in a century. The original publicity for GE's Milwaukee Road electric locomotives spoke of liberating passengers from "cinders that blind," and some of the publicity for the original oil-electric (what we now call Diesel) locomotives also promoted the new power's ability to clear the air.