Friends,

Seeking out the source of this audio: https://youtu.be/vducr6_UIgM

I ran across the film years ago but have been unable to find the original source -- likely a product of the Association of American Railroads in the era -- but a day's worth of searching YouTube and elsewhere without a title, year or more context has left a dead-end.

It's a great example of the passionate, verbose, excited railroad PR campaigns of the day, ill-fated as it may have been...

Ring a bell?

Kelly,

It is likely available through the Dodd Center at UConn. They’ve got most things New Haven.

Thanks, Mike! While it does feature the New Haven's president, the rest of the video is railroad agnostic, so I'm wondering if they just took his Congressional (?) testimony and used it as the opening. I'll hit up that resource.

Isn't such a film available under the name "A Great Railroad at Work" or something similar?

It's a great piece, but it's not from that particular film.

I'm pretty sure it's an Association of American Railroads piece.

I thought it sounded like a news program, not an AAR publicity film, your clip starts at 11:37:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MsVcGLTiN0

As for the title of the program: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"

Bless you kind sir.

Much appreciated.

Mr. Lynch - thanks for posting the original clip.

PMC - thanks for digging up the complete program from 1961 - it is fascinating on many levels. I like how Chet Huntley of NBC News (not Morley Safer of CBS News as the YouTube poster states) personalizes the segment with his reflections of growing up with the railroads in Montana. There are also some great shots, including interior NY Penn prior to the demolition.

It appears that almost everyone interviewed agrees that the rapid consolidation of the rail network and the phasing out of passenger service was short sighted and not in the country's long-term interest, yet not much was done to stop it. You have labor and some ridership blaming management, management blaming the government, and government saying, "oh this is terrible."

The only RR shown in a positive light is the C&NW. Concurrently, as the last segment of Los Angeles' interurban is being torn up, the planners in the Bay Area are proposing the original BART five-county plan, which was later reduced to a three-county approach.

My inclination is that the PR campaign by the railroads was home grown. It is almost laughable (if it were not disturbing on some level) to see the railroads, who were perceived by many of the riding public as having often abused their monopoly, coopting the language of the civil rights era ( "Emancipation Special", "equality") as if they were a long-repressed minority. This is hammered home by the juxtaposition of George Alpert's congressional testimony with reflections of the commuting public discussing the abysmal service on the New Haven.

All in all, a great period piece. This video would make a great companion piece to the Mighty Trains segment on The Shinkansen.