Main Street of the Northwest “Story of the Northern Pacific"

Comments · 109

• CO

  @cobraspottedwolf8791 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I meet a BNSF engineer that does glendive to Mandan and he said it's hills the whole way

  11

• SC

  @scottb8175 · 3 years ago

  The images and stories are historic gold. What I wouldn't give to go back in time and live in the time and place of some of these photos.

  32

• WI

  @winfieldjensen5967 · 1 year ago

  Idaho grew those spuds and it turned all desert into a miracle

  2

• BE

  @bearowen5480 · 3 years ago

  As a small kid, 5 or so, with my older brother, in 1950 we rode the NP from Spokane to Billings. It might have been a &quot;name train&quot;, possibly the Mainstreeter, but definitely not the North Coast Limited, because the consist was mostly heavyweight Pullmans. <br><br>Climbing the Montana Rocky mountains the next morning, my brother walked me back to the rear of the observation car, and to my astonishment and delight as a budding train buff, right outside, behind the observation platform, a monstrous steam locomotive just a few feet away was pushing us up the grade! I wanted to go outside on the platform to better hear the locomotive, but someone, probably the conductor or a brakeman, had locked the door for our safety. We watched for a long time. The impression never left me of all that mechanical motive power, with flashing drive rods and valve gear, smoothly pushing so much weight up that scenic grade while growling modern diesels pulled on the head end. <br><br>Later, as an O scale model railroader, that experience 73 years ago has made me a devotee of the steam-to-diesel transition era. At my age in 1950, i had no idea what an historic moment I was living through when the internal combustion engine and the electrical transmission of motive power was so quickly supplanting a hundred and fifty years of steam locomotion technology.

  26

• JO

  @josephschuster1494 · 4 months ago

  One of my favorite railroads! &nbsp;🎉 🇺🇸 🚂

  1

• MA

  @markkover8040 · 2 years ago

  My father was a forester for the Northern Pacific and later the Burlington Northern Railroads. &nbsp;We lived in Washington state and North Idaho. &nbsp;We traveled from Spokane to Chicago and back in 1968 visiting his relatives in Ohio. &nbsp;West to East we traveled on the North Coast Limited and East to West on the Mainstreeter. &nbsp;I still remember that trip.

  7

• DO

  @dongrainer6405 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Loved this video very much. Some of my family history involved the NP. &nbsp;At 32.51 minutes you will see a picture of my maternal grandfather looking out of the cab window at the Spike ceremony. He operated one of the four trains that met for that ceremony. He was later assigned to operate a passenger train between Livingston and Billings Montana. He started work as a switch engine operator in St. Paul for the Great Northern then joined the NP in 1883 a few months before the completion of the line and retired in 1926 &nbsp;after 43 years with a monthly &nbsp;pension of $85.00. My paternal grandfather and father worked on the NP railroad as well. That grandfather was an immigrant from Austria and my dad was his first born son. They worked at the maintenance facilities in Mandan, ND where I was born. I have a photo of all the guys who worked at the facility in the roundhouse in front of one of the dual driver locomotives. That photo is at 1 hour 22 minutes. I don&apos;t know which it was. My dad was laid off in 1956, after 38 years, &nbsp;because the line had been fulled dieseled and the facilities were being closed since they weren&apos;t large enough to accommodate the taller standing diesels. We traveled the train many times for vacations and I have loved trains ever since. Great way to travel.

  23

• SI

  @SignalLightProductions · 2 years ago

  Very well done documentary! Informative and interesting

  6

• CH

  @chris-d5e8u · 3 months ago

  The only NPR worth supporting.

• FR

  @frankmoreau8847 · 3 years ago

  My late father was on Bridge and Building crew for the NP in western Washington from about 1947 until the merger that formed the Burlington Northern. &nbsp;I found an NP decal online and put it on my hardhat in his honor. &nbsp;I am retired now but I still have the hard hat in my shop.

  12

• MA

  @marcsisk2454 · 3 years ago

  Very interesting. &nbsp;Thank you very much!

  10

• TH

  @thomas_fx_foto · 2 years ago (edited)

  My ancestor and his older brother (20 &amp; 22 yrs) rode a train from Ann Harbor to Duluth and in 1900 both jumped on a Northern Pacific train headed to it&apos;s terminus in the fairly new city of Tacoma on Puget Sound. &nbsp;That was 124 years ago and 5 generations of my family.

  3