Thanks for the information Erikem, I always wondered what happened to the "Carousel of Progress." I'm glad it was saved, it was too good to go out with the garbage.
My parents were in a square dance club and put on shows at the federal pavilion at the 64-65 worlds fair. Every single time, when we left the fair to drive home, my old man got lost. Once he drove over a highway median and tore the muffler off the car! He'd curse a blue streak each and every time we drove home. I do recall most of the main exhibits of GM, Ford, Chyrsler, GE and Bell telephone and the monorail that only covered one area of the fair but I sure don't recall a Marklin trains layout.
In Robert Caro's book about Robert Moses, "The Power Broker," the fair was the beginning of the end for RM. Worlds fairs are only supposed to be for one year, but it lost so much money in 64, they ran it for another year to try to make the money back which it sure didn't.
One thing I sure remember was finding new in the box laying in the middle of the sidewalk, a pre-built 1/24th scale model of the Chrysler turbine car. If not for firecrackers, I'd still have it today.
54light, that's what firecrackers are made for, spectaular disposal of car models or tank models that don't turn out right.
But don't feel bad. Remember my mentioning my mother and the 1939 World's Fair? She told me "I brought home so much crap from that Fair! I wish I held onto it all, it'd be worth a lot of money now!"
The hell of it is, she's right!
I brought home from the 64-65 fair a bunch of paper brochures and what not that I kept for over 40 years until I sold it all on Ebay. Wasn't doing me any good and I think I got $40.00 for it all. Just paper stuff but I imagine anything like a miniature Unisphere would be worth more.
54light15One thing I sure remember was finding new in the box laying in the middle of the sidewalk, a pre-built 1/24th scale model of the Chrysler turbine car.
Actually 1:25 scale.
There were a couple of the demonstrators at the Fair ... and you could get rides in them ... but I didn't see them. Which was a shame, as not only was this one of Elwood Engel's very finest achievements, it was also the subject of one of the best model kits ever made (Jo-Han, with the special Frame-Pak, molded in Turbine Bronze!) (I went through several of these restyling the front end to look more like my father's '62 T-bird, as those big owl-eye 'turbine' lights were alarming at the front, and the T-bird had better turbine exhausts at the back
It does have to be said, a bit grudgingly, that the coal-burning Eldorado was a cooler use of technology if you have to have a turbine.
I did not know that Elwood Engel designed the Chrysler turbine car. To me his finest achievment was the suicide-door Lincoln Continental. I have a mint 62 in my garage so I may be a bit biased. I used to see a turbine car occasionally where I grew up on Long Island. Remember the Adam West Batmobile? The sound it made was of the turbine car. the narrator of the video is wrong about the survival rate, all but a handful were destroyed so to not pay import taxes on them as the bodies were assembled in Italy, by Ghia, I think. There is one in the Chrysler museum in Auburn Hills, Michigan in perfect working order and Jay Leno has one in his collection. There may be others.
"coal burning Eldorado?" Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
A coal-burning Eldorado? Did it have a whistle?
54light15 I did not know that Elwood Engel designed the Chrysler turbine car. To me his finest achievement was the suicide-door Lincoln Continental.
I did not know that Elwood Engel designed the Chrysler turbine car. To me his finest achievement was the suicide-door Lincoln Continental.
The '61 is the right year for the Continental. They got the nose wrong after that; it looks too much like a Mercury. (Note how very similar the '61 Continental and T-Birds are -- and yes, those back doors are useful!)
But for sheer rocket fun, you can't top the lines of the Bird, especially with the top down and disappeared...
That's interesting, and I do appreciate the copier toner example. Most people don't realize just how fine the stuff is, finer than baby powder. Which is why it makes such a mess if people are careless with it and spill it.
Any idea what the exhaust emissions were like on a powdered coal engine, and would it pass muster with the EPA nowadays? Or maybe there's no data at all about the same? Back then no-one paid attention to those things.
Housewives, with freshly hung out laundry, paid attention to such things as coal smoke.
Johnny
Paul_D_North_Jr wanswheel It seems there were two of them. Maybe the same one - just changed the number board to match that year of the Fair ? That's what the caption on this photo you found says http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3119018
wanswheel It seems there were two of them.
Maybe the same one - just changed the number board to match that year of the Fair ? That's what the caption on this photo you found says
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3119018
Paul, thanks for ensuring my attempt at humor would fail to misinform.
Deggesty Housewives, with freshly hung out laundry, paid attention to such things as coal smoke.
Hence "the wrong side of the tracks..."
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
[quote user="Firelock76"]
Wasn't the theme song to the 1939 World's Fair "Hi-Ho, Come to the Fair?"
Which to my knowledge actually predates the '39-'40 World's Fair. Maybe DaveKlepper needs to sound off on this, he was there!
I've heard "Come to the Fair," I think it's actually quite charming. It' s a hell of a lot better than "It's A Small World After All" which I only mentioned because someone else did first!
"Small World" makes my skin crawl, it makes Lady Firestorm homicidal!
Thanks David, I was hoping you'd spot the thread and weight in on it.
All that wonderful stuff, it must have been magical for a 71/2 year old like yourself!
And I'm not surprised you remember "Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis," I think all of us do, thanks to Judy Garland's bang-up rendition of it.
tree68 Deggesty Housewives, with freshly hung out laundry, paid attention to such things as coal smoke. Hence "the wrong side of the tracks..."
The phrase has nothing to do with smoke or laundry; rather it relates to class status.
According to CITE: Wrong side of the tracks
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
In the classic film, "The Best Years of Our Lives," early on in the film, Dana Andrews character, Fred Derry is shown going to his parents home. You hear a train whistle. This, I suppose tells you just who he is.
Thanks for that little bit of time travel Wanswheel!
Excerpt from The Age of Steam by Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg (1994)
Of the three major railroads which set out across the Great Plains in the post-Civil War ‘sixties—the Kansas Pacific, Santa Fe, and Union Pacific—the Union Pacific was immeasurably the best publicized. The Kansas Pacific, building out of Kansas City with the Cherry Creek diggings of Denver as its proposed objective, was shortly merged with the competition as part of the UP, but not before it had contributed notably both to American folklore and to the language. It was at Abilene that Wyatt Earp* reportedly banished the town’s bagnios and fandango houses to a district south of the Kansas Pacific right of way and evolved the phrase “the wrong side of the tracks.”
*not Earp, possibly Wild Bill Hickok
https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-abilene-first-of-the-kansas-cow-towns/12833
Firelock76 Thanks for that little bit of time travel Wanswheel!
Gosh if only time travel was real. Heck with the World's Fair, I'd go to a Met game at Shea again.
Terrific stuff Wanswheel.
I sure remember that commerical and the trains. Weren't they light green and white? Only 15 cents!And speaking of Soupy Sales, Firelock, I do recall him playing a detective called Philo Kvetch and driving near the fair. That's about all I can recall of it but he was filmed driving a car on one of the parkways and you could see the fair from his car. I guess a camera was in the back seat.
I remember Soupy's "Philo Kvetch" character, also his arch-nemesis "The Mask" and "The Mask's" henchman "Onions Oregano." Don't remember Philo driving past the World's Fair, (can't remember everything at this point) but it was some funny stuff just the same. Considering TV technology at the time I'd suppose there was an WNEW cameraman in the car with a hand-held 16mm movie camera taking the shots. Good times!
wanswheel What impressed me in seeing that footage is the people (actors) getting on and off the moving equipment and the speed at which the last train went across the stage with the people walking around the (albeit choreographed) stage. Looks like a safety issue. That said, I wish I had been there to see it.
Electroliner 1935 wanswheel What impressed me in seeing that footage is the people (actors) getting on and off the moving equipment and the speed at which the last train went across the stage with the people walking around the (albeit choreographed) stage. Looks like a safety issue. That said, I wish I had been there to see it.
The action may not have been happening as fast as you think. It looks like that footage was shot with a 16mm silent home movie camera which operates at 18 frames per second. The problem is, if it's played on a 16mm sound projector which operates at 24 frames per second it speeds up the action and produces the "herky-jerky" effect we see on old silent films. It's only recently, say within the last 20 years or so, that vintage films have started to be shown at the proper projection rate, say on Turner Classic Movies or the various history channels.
I can speak from personal experience. When I was in the Marines I shot some 16mm movies of the outfit I was in, and when I showed them to the troops on the in-house projector we had for training films I got that "herky-jerkey" effect. The guys got a laugh out of it (imagine 1970's Marines moving like World War One Doughboys!) and then I noticed a switch on the projector labeled "silent." Threw it and low and behold, everything was back to normal.
In addition, a good-quality 16mm silent home movie projector should have a speed adjustment on it, I know, I've got one. I used to enjoy shooting 16mm movies until the cost got too prohibitive in the 90's. $50 for a 100 foot roll, that's six minutes! Developing cost almost as much. No wonder video killed conventional home movies, but it took a while for picture quality to catch up. 16mm Kodachrome made the early home videos look sick!
Many more home movies by Mr. Martens
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63D7CF4C8827457A
wanswheelGosh if only time travel was real. Heck with the World's Fair, I'd go to a Met game at Shea again.
What, to watch Throneberry and colliding outfielders? It was hard enough being a Giants fan in those years!
I'd go see the Beatles again, except it would be just as irritating to hear the girls scream through half the numbers again as it was the first time.
There were other things going on in '64 that would make the trip worthwhile.
I confess I repeatedly found myself thinking of BART in the section after Bob Moses pointed out how stainless steel was the perfect symbol and cy-no-shoa of the Fair, and the description of the enduring beauty of the stainless Unisphere started to roll. What we got was, it seems, quite radically different from the assumption and the clever publicity... How did we get from a shining world to burnt porkchops so quickly?
Nice job Wanswheel, that's what I'm talkin' about, glorious 16mm Kodachrome!
Not sure what kind of 16mm camera that is, but it looks very similar to the 1928 Cine-Kodak Model B that I've got and shot most of my movies with. What the picture can't show you is how heavy the thing is, at least a good five pounds. Hey, that weight helped you to hold it nice and steady!
Nice titles Mr. Martens made to go with his films, the man knew his stuff.
wanswheel
Why not put in more of the cantata? And have even more fun with it?
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