Lost America: Big Trains Rolling (1955)

As a youngster, your Head Trucker was fortunate enough to travel many times on some of the fine old streamliners before passenger service was all given over to Amtrak. Here is a classic film, intended for showing in elementary schools, about the complex operations of the railroads before passenger trains were done in by airlines and Interstates.  Notice the colorful paint jobs of the sleek diesels that were rapidly putting steam locomotives out of business.  Note also the beauty and the optimism of an America that is now long gone.

But this happy picture was not to last - for the times are always a-changing in human life. Who could have believed that in the next decade, Carol and Jimmy would grow up to despise the neat, tree-lined neighborhood they grew up in, denounce their parents as capitalist pigs, and demand to overthrow the Establishment and smash the system to pieces?  Where are they now, I wonder?

-----