After I posted the time I realized I did not add the hour difference in time zones.
We were in Chicago for perhaps a week as I remember seeing the Museum of Science & Industry and taking the elevator to the "coal mine" in the lower floor. Fascinating.
The RR fair probably was two days of viewing for us.
In the 70s and 80s I crossed the country several times on Amtrak, about 3 1/2 days to Springfield, Massachusetts, though I had a bedroom or roomette. One trip was on a transcontinental sleeper, L A to New Orleans, then using the sleeper as a hotel for a stroll down Bourbon St.
I think it was the Southern Crescent that took the same car up to D.C., leaving in the AM, and then on up to NY City via Amtrak. That was when the Southern RR ran the Crescent, not Amtrak. I think Santa Fe and Southern were the holdouts, not "joining" Amtrak until later years.
I hope I'm not getting too far off topic,
Sid in Sarasota

I'm enjoying the conversation. I hope you said hi to my Dad :)

Steve

Although no reference to the fair I'm confident my Dad picked it up there as it was included with the rest of the fair literature. Guessing 1948 from the "148" engine number.

Steve

This finishes the EMD brochure.

Steve

It would appear that the Facebook address for all of the previous images have been changed by Facebook. It looks like I need to switch to an online photo album. Here are some of my father's photos from the fair taken in July of 1948.










Steve

I'm glad someone took pictures.

I was there the second year (1949). The thing that I remember best is that Timken car. It was being pushed from one end of a short track to the other and back by one man. There were so many other things I might have concentrated on, but I was just a little kid.

Glen
Railroad Glory Days

My Dad was a photographer at heart and loved trains. He documented so much of what he did and I am lucky to inherit his work. He left a ledger in which he documented the month/year, camera/lens/film plus shutter and f-setting.

These photos were taken with an Argus Model A-2 with built-in lens Wollensak 50mm f4.5, Daylight Kodachrome, 1/50 shutter at f5.6.

These are all color slides that I am scanning with a slide scanner.

Steve

More from July 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair:









Steve

One fascinating fact that I have come across in my economic research is that the Illinois Central Railroad was the nation's first "Land Grant" Railroad. It seems that previous private, free market attempts and then private/state collaborations to establish a successful railroad in Illinois failed due to a number of factors, not the least of which was a sparse population that could not economically support a railroad from the immediate adjacent population.





Pretty fascinating history about private versus government involvement in our capitalist economy.

Steve

Actually, the State of Georgia was very proactive in planning for transportation infrastructure. In the 1820s they sent a surveying parry through the entire state to determine what transportation improvements might be needed to populate and develop the land.....and would it be canals or those newfangled railroad things?

The surveyors proposed a set of 5 railroads as an interconnected system, with the proviso that only 4 of them would be likely to reap enough revenues early in their life to repay construction costs. The fifth - the Western and Atlantic - would need to run through costly and difficult hilly country into the mountains, and the state would need to subsidize that accordingly. They did, and found it very worthwhile in the long run.

Our government still subsidizes highways, waterways, air transport, AMTRAK, commuter rail, bus lines, oil companies, insurance companies, coast guard, auto and truck manufacturers, and developers of suburban sprawl among other transportation related benefits to the private sector, just as they always have and probably always will. Provision of public goods is necessary to allow for private success. The idea that there's an either/or involved is simply simplistic and so far off it isn't even wrong.........which doesn't stop it from being a driver of political reaction in people who don't know any better, and like to see complex issues as black and white instead of twisted shades of all colors woven together.

dave

Steve -

The ICRR line was built, through the middle of the state, from the north end to the southern end, and was known for years as "the Charter Line". Most of it is now torn up, but one thing that survives is the depot/division office structure at Amboy, Illinois:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7742224@N ... otostream/

This building was built in 1876, to replace the original structure lost in an 1875 fire. BTW, neither the locomotive or the caboose are actually ex-Illinois Central.

Les

Another aspect of the building of the railroads which I just learned about this year I added to my Wiki edit of this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... ant_Marine

What is below is just part of the edit. If you look at the footnotes, everything coming from Faulkner is what I added.



Harold Underwood Faulkner
American Economic History, Harper & Brothers Publishers, Copyright 1938
p. 672-673

All of which came from this book that I paid a couple dollars for in a used book store. A used book is a bargain.



Steve

Dave, I could not have said it any better.


Steve

Thank you Les, I have been to that depot. I did not appreciate at the time the history behind the Illinois Central. I am changing . . .

Steve

All photos from July 1948.

Steve