Speed Graphic Film and Video | Scenes of American Railroading in the 1930's - Lorentz/Crosby - Volume 1 @SpeedGraphicFilmVideo | Uploaded April 2021 | Updated October 2024, 59 minutes ago.
In the late 1930's, director Pare Lorentz (The Plow that Broke the Plains, the River) and cameraman Floyd Crosby (the River, High Noon) hit the road to take documentary footage for a planned feature film. The film was never made, and the hours of footage they took ended up in the U. S. National Archives.
Unfortunately, there is no information in the Archives about where or when any of the scenes was shot. All the descriptive information below is based on what's in the film itself.
0:00 Chicago: Northbound on South Torrance Avenue where it crosses the Calumet River. The Interlake coke plant is in the left distance, the Wisconsin Steel Works is on the right. The railroad is the Chicago & Western Indiana. And yes, the streetcar line really ended at the foot of the bridge!
1:04 A 2-8-0 Consolidation shuffles by with freight of all types in tow. Unknown location, unknown railroad.
1:38 A beautiful distance shot of a Southern Pacific cab-forward. Probably the San Joaquin Valley.
1:59 A passenger train flashes by. Unknown location, possibly on the Southern Pacific.
2:06 In Washington's Yakima River Canyon, looking down on a Northern Pacific freight train. The locomotive is definitely an articulated, likely a Z-3 2-8-8-2. In the final shot, you can see the locomotive's exhaust plume in the far distance.
If you have additional info about any of these shots, leave a comment and I will update this description. Thanks to Thomas R. Schultz, Dale Sanders, Jan Hilbrand Brink and Oren Helbok for their identification work.
The original 35mm footage is silent. The National Archives has done an excellent job digitizing the original film. I've added some music, but feel free to mute it if it's not to your taste.
This is the first in a series of videos I plan to do using Lorentz/Crosby footage. Stay tuned.