Just came across this, and I can't help but think that for an organization with someone who has the knowledge and talent to carry it off, that this would be an excellent teaching tool for the public as well as the signalmen it was meant for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLcaJdsRr0

Tom Scott makes excellent videos. He has one where he covers the Ferdinand Magellan, or US. Car No. 1:

https://youtu.be/C2NNujJKJL4

Bad link. It goes to a 60 Minutes piece on Tony Bennett.

Thanks!

Thank you for that. Must have changed a letter or two around by mistake. I've edited my original post with the intended video.

There are a couple of notes about the Ferdinand Magellan narration.

First, the narrator said FDR was the first President to fly in an airplane. He had the last name right, but it was Franklin's cousin Theodore who flew in a Model B Wright Flyer on October 11, 1910. Smithsonian: Theodore Roosevelt - First Presidential Flight, 1910. Then again, you can't really be "in" a Wright Flyer. TR was sitting on the lower wing next to the pilot.

Then the narrator said President Truman would "ask the engineers to get the train up to 80mph if they could." In the book, The President Travels by Train, by Bob Withers, Margaret Truman recalled they were running across Kansas toward Denver behind UP 835 when she noticed her father was distracted by something in the car. It was the speedometer with the needle pointing at 105. Truman noted how heavy the Magellan was on the rear of the train and the potential effect of a heavy brake application and a slack run-in. He requested they hold it to 80 mph. That would get them to Denver in plenty of time. (pp 203-204)

Phil Mulligan