So I learned something else new today. I never knew that Illinois Central had to put steel plates over where the front and rear dome glass was on their dome cars as well as the upper glass, greatly limiting visibility. They did this because of the local rug rats throwing concrete blocks off overpasses. If you look closely at the picture of the IC Dome in the link below you can see the steel plating on the front.......very sad.
https://www.hodrrm.org/Body.cfm?id=938
They have also a restored C&NW Gallery car repainted back in Yellow and Green which is interesting that would be in a Alabama Mueseum.
See the charmingly-non-politically-correct (I can't say non-PC for obvious reasons) "ghetto bars" that were introduced on New Haven in the Boston area and quickly extended to other "urban" regions. You'll hear interesting stories from contemporary engineers.
As I recall the rear 'power dome' windows on some of the TurboTrains were plated over for similar reasons.
Then there was the excited push to that miracle polycarbonate material, "Mister, can you break this for me?" Lexan, to keep the little rats from stoning out car windows on a grand scale. Did not occur to the 'agencies' that strong didn't also mean 'hard' so a few passes through the bristly car washer and you got that scratchy frosted sheen; it didn't occur to them that UV stability wasn't free so you got tinted windows free after a while -- just not pleasant or consistent tint...
I continue to be glad the '70s are over.
OvermodI continue to be glad the '70s are over.
Remember Amtrak's original red and purple toned paisely seat covers in the 1970's.
Anyone in the know as to why this site has not been updated for over 10 years?
http://trainweb.org/web_lurker/WebLurkersDOMEmain/
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Not saying it was all bad by any means -- I liked the Baldwins with purple trucks and anything Chessie System. And the 'short shorts' were fun while they lasted.
But I thought for many years that 567s were supposed to accelerate like those going out of Harmon in the early '70s!
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