Episode 175: The Marlboro Unlimited
en
January 31, 2025
TLDR: SMOKE podcast is going on a tour from April 29 to May 4 in various cities including New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC (some shows sold out). Additionally, check Gareth on RAILNATTER, their Patreon and send them stuff; please do not send letter bombs.

In Episode 175 of the podcast Well, There’s Your Problem, the hosts dive deep into the fascinating story of the Marlboro Unlimited, a promotional train that was never fully realized. The episode discusses the various engineering challenges faced, humorous anecdotes from the design and marketing process, and the overarching influence of tobacco companies on transportation.
Key Themes and Discussion Points
The Concept of Marlboro Unlimited
- Marlboro Unlimited was conceived as a luxury train experience meant to promote the Marlboro brand. The train was designed to include various amenities, such as bars, restaurants, spas, and even a hot tub, catering specifically to smokers.
- The train aimed to provide excursions through scenic areas of the American West, emphasizing horseback riding, mountain biking, and other outdoor activities as part of the allure.
Marketing and Promotion
- The Marlboro Unlimited was marketed heavily, with promotional campaigns encouraging smokers to participate in a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip on the luxury train. Participants had to affirm their smoking status, which led to amusing discussions about the creative ways smokers might prove their habits.
- The marketing strategy included not just typical advertising but building a lifestyle brand around smoking, showcasing the rugged and adventurous spirit associated with the Marlboro Man.
Engineering Challenges
- Significant engineering challenges plagued the project, including issues with weight and stability. The lofty design of the train led to worries about derailments, prompting an extensive search for appropriate trucks (or bogeys) that could support the weight without compromising safety.
- Quality control problems were highlighted by the hosts, with tales of mismanagement and poor construction practices leading to considerable delays and escalating costs.
- The episode provides anecdotes about the peculiarities of the train’s design, such as high maintenance requirements, inadequate fire resistance, and even the need for backups for the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems to combat cigarette smoke.
The Fallout and Conclusion
- Ultimately, the project was canceled due to ballooning costs and technical issues. Despite the initial investment of over $50 million, the train never ran, leaving a legacy of disappointment and speculation.
- Discussion about what happened after the cancellation reveals that some of the cars and designs later found use in more standardized rail service under different management, hinting at the potential of such ideas had they been executed successfully.
Conclusion
This episode of Well, There’s Your Problem weaves a narrative filled with humor and insight about how marketing, engineering, and corporate misjudgment can intersect over ambitious projects. The saga of the Marlboro Unlimited serves as a cautionary tale of excess and oversight in the world of promotional ventures within the tobacco industry.
Key Takeaways
- The Marlboro Unlimited represents an extravagant attempt to market smoking as a lifestyle.
- Engineering challenges can derail even the most ambitious projects, especially when trying to juggle corporate interests and public health concerns.
- The episode emphasizes the need for quality assurance and oversight in large-scale projects to avoid costly blunders.
Overall, the storytelling combined with expert commentary provides multiple layers of entertaining and educational content on how the Marlboro Unlimited train serves as a unique historical footnote.
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That's the same for me in the little one. She will have, she will have Serbian dual citizenship. So, you know, that's safe on that front, you know, no, no rhyming tendencies in Serbia. No, thank God. I let's not I have one citizenship. As I've said on this show, I believe the deal is if I'm ever in a position where I need to like the US government has to come and get me, that's the one deal I've cut. It's like, I pay my taxes and you come and get me.
Yeah, off the roof of the embassy, you're like clinging to the skids of the helicopter, you know. This says US citizen, you get out of here. I don't want to see it. I don't want to say it. I want to see it. Just like, I'm just like going overhead. Like, excuse me, what's your inflight menu like?
The movies on this thing suck ass. Just try to get me on my own cracked 4K rip of fucking 1917 to work like show I get to the pile so you can see the detail. Immediately crashing into a hillside. Sorry, we only show Vietnam movies on this flight.
Yeah. So my wife, the lovely and talented and beautiful lady she is, doesn't know the difference between Bridge on the River Quai and Apocalypse now. And you used to watch either of them. I know. Oh my God. Yesterday I tried to River Quai as the one with the bridge.
That's true. Famously. Yeah. Yeah. They're kind of the thing. I mean, I mean, she graphically, it's not the hugest separation, I suppose. Like it's it's not like not being able to tell the difference between like apocalypse now and I don't know. The guns are never owning or something. Well, I think the thing is she's a good, simple engineering movie. She hates one of them. Blew it up. No, that's not. You bastards blew it up. What is that? That's from Planet of the Age. Planet of the Age.
Now, Liam, you're doing it. So you're so rinsed confused. I don't know the difference. I don't know the difference. It holds my brain. Have you dropped this now? It's just Charles and Esther. Yeah, you're in that bed and bridge over the River Choir. We're there in that chariot race. And they're like whipping each other. Oh, my God. That's a good bit. That's a good bit. Everyone's in that movie. Jesus shows up. There's like some tri-reins. Oh, my God. God, I surely this was the bridge over the River Choir. Yeah.
But then we get confused with L Sid, which if we're going to really get into the Charlton Heston death in depth. And anyway, yeah, I'm not seeing my own waveform, which is a fun. Oh, that's a nice issue. Yeah, Zankaster is the biggest piece of shit in the world. Don't worry about it. I once I once
tweeted at them. I was like, like, I think I just mentioned them. I was like, fix your fucking product. Like hadn't tagged them. So they had a name search themselves. Oh, and like the CFO was like, uh, like, we'll, we'll set up a call and then they never did. Yeah. And now, now on their front page, like we've got the AI enabled tools and shit. It was a Zencaster call. That's why it didn't work. Yeah. Random drop 45 minutes into this.
Anyway, welcome to, well, there is your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters, which in and of itself is a disaster with slides. I'm Justin Rosnack. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.
I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns are she and her. I actually got them right this time. Yay, Liam. Yay, Liam. Hi. My name is Liam McAndrewson. My pronouns are he, him. I'm the person talking right now. I think I never say. I think you just are expected to know it's Liam.
with me are the two not hostages, not hostages. Can't see it clearly. Hey, no, I'm, you know, the next, the next in line of the, of the codes, although I'm very excited to say that Devon, they have, they are now a voiced co-host in the, in, thanks to our bit. That's true. A bit from a couple of episodes ago, which it will be a God, I completely, no idea what a recording schedule is. I think there is another one in between the last one and this one. So, so hi, Devon, voiced member of the, of the podcast now.
And no, my name is Garth Dennis, my pronouns are here. Devin was on the photography episode. Oh, yeah, that's right. That was a guest. That was a guest. Yeah, Devin was there and they were very funny because I was just like, you leave the burps in and they just go, no, I cut them out, man. And I was just like, oh, fuck you. How dare you?
And we have a bodus guest who once again is not under the rest. There's no bob collar here. No, I'm here willingly. My name is Jay B. Squykelhausen. My pronouns are he and him. And I've been invited back kindly with no coercion at all. Yes, perfect. Very, very well done. Please ignore the beefing in the back of the mix. Also, I enjoyed badly disrespecting Gareth by like cutting off half of his introduction.
That's all. That's that's to be fair. That's how you know you've arrived. Oh, well, there's a problem and we'll be welcome back as you just get talked over. That's it. So what you see on the screen in front of you is a train going whoosh. I need to be fair. It's going whoosh as fuck in there. Definitely really going whoosh. Yeah. This looks like lockback antique, which I was just I learned is not Lake Megan.
The copy reads for those of you on audio. Marlboro unlimited, the train, the trip, the gear. Oh, yeah, we're going to flavor country. Yes.
It literally took me. I've known about this train for a long time. It took me until like this podcast that it's a play on like the Malboro Limited. Like this is the train is with something limited. I had no idea. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, OK, that's a little clever, but it's not clever enough to make it like the last clever thing is going to happen.
Today, today we're going to talk about the infamous moral burrow unlimited promotional train that never ran. Too cool for this world. Yes. So I want to say I got a bunch of info on this from themetrains.com and also a trainweb.org site about ultra domes and all school Alaska rails.org and then various public tobacco industry document piles.
which they had to be like sued for. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The court ordered them to produce and the website is basically the equivalent of that scene in Pentagon Wars, where they just wheel in, you know, one ton of documents in like, you know, uh, banker boxes. Oh, you want, you want the documents about how we were knowingly giving kids cancer? Well, fuck you. Here's the train stuff.
And someone who's a real historian should go and look this up because this was just me, you know, searching for two days through, you know, a pile of night. Yeah, like a pile of submittals and meeting minutes and change orders to try and piece the story together. Oh, yeah. I'm just getting your like PhD on like the official train of smoking.
Yeah. I want to say, so Nova, you used to smoke. I did. I did. I used to smoke predominantly in fact. Me too. Okay. Gareth, I didn't get this noise from anything other than Marlborough Reds. And believe me, it used to be a lot worse when people are like, oh, it's so cool that you don't voice train. It's like, no, no, no. Anytime I even think about it, there are the thousands of cigarettes I smoked from the age of like 17 to 25.
Flinging on to me and dragging that vocal range and downwards. Yeah. I'm still actually not that ugly at scene from labyrinth. All those hands, but then all hands, they're like cigarettes. Just like grabbing you and pulling them. That's it. Gross. Yeah. Horrified. I would describe myself as a moderate smoker. I have a cigarette every 18 to 24 months.
And you hate it every time. Yeah. You are the person for whom all of the likes of the tobacco industries numbers are designed for. You're the person who's like, for whom smoking isn't that bad and four out of five doctors recommend camels or whatever. I was I was a heavy smoker. I was a two pack a day smoker. And like there did no favors for me. Don't smoke it.
Don't smoke. No, and I'm the weird. I'm the nerd of this group. And I'm including Jay within that. I'm even nerdier because I've never even taken a toke of a cigarette, not even once. You better off believe me. Yeah. Yeah, you're better off. That's not the point. The point is where's my snooze trade? I just I just quit cold Turkey and there's no cold Turkey train either. I guess that's all trains. Oh, that can be arranged. I'm sure there's I find positive there is a cold Turkey train somewhere.
Yeah, Amtrak won't let us have it. The plan will be revealed in all in due time. Yes. Well, I will say before we talk about the cigarette train, we have to do the goddamn news.
Welcome to this fucking the Hitler zone. It's the Hitler zone. It's Hitler's time. Look, this this inauguration was amazing. I'm sorry. I said the word can't mom, but he deserves it. I mean, listen, I'm gonna I really like the bit that we ginned up last time where we have Devon cover all the stuff that we can't say. Let it be absolutely clear. I was hoping that somebody was going to on this place. I was hoping they were all going to know.
Yeah, and that didn't that didn't happen instead instead. I was I was rooting for the you can't say that on YouTube. I yeah, I'm gonna have to take that out of the episode. I was rooting for like some kind of you can't say that writ large. I was rooting for a bunch of stuff. You can cut all of that. And like, you know, obviously none of that at least someone could have tried, right?
You get an A for effort. You could have just, like, weak, weak, like, we need now. What if I'd left that in? Now I'm trying to get a visa out of this federal government, so please come as much of that as possible and leave, like, two verbs and nobody dead.
In order of importance, things that occurred at the inauguration and just afterwards, the president saluted a man from the fake village people wearing assless chaps. No word on if the president was wearing assless chaps as well.
Trump back brackets gay brackets question mark. He's good. This motherfucker is going to like remove all LGBT people from the military and he is saluting a man and assless chaps, which is. And it's so extremely confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Iwan, Iwan did, uh, I was apparently not a Nazi. So it's, it's, it's, it's like, you are not this stupid. He did a Nazi salute. Uh, everybody saw it. Um, I, I think he was trying to make it more deniable. He looks like biting his lip because he's like horny, I guess. Yeah. I for Nazis.
I think he was trying to do something that was a little bit more deniable than this, but then it came out as just full-on Nazi salute times two and Everybody brought himself up for it because of how much of a fussy made of it, right? Yeah, and then everybody from the ADL on down was like, well listen, you know, maybe everybody gets a little bit of an arm cramp sometimes you got a stretch that bad boy out, you know,
Well, some people were saying it's he did Nazi salute because he had Asperger's. Let it let it let it be known that that is actually also a Nazi disease. So, you know, this is he's not going to clarify that. What a roll up on on Zasperger was a Nazi. Okay, good. We need to do that. This is a trade episode. If you just
I like Milana, Melania. I can never say her name, right? I like the undertaker outfit she had on. Yes, honey has had is the most important part. I didn't know the Benadryl had man was a woman.
I'm enjoying kind of like slightly surrealist like Tarsim directing the full 30s gangster look. That's that's something. Yeah, it's also of like no relevance to this. Trump is president now and is doing all of the stuff that he said he would do, which is.
It's all the Hitler stuff, you know, he got on stage and he signed like 50 executive orders, all of which are about as terrible as you can imagine. You know, the usual kind of focus on trans people on like DEI, whatever the fuck that's supposed to be, but you know what that's supposed to be. You know what it means. Yeah. Well, you reveal the fucking Equal Opportunity Employment Act.
Which I think that's pretty clear what the, what the desire is there. It's not about CIA officers wearing a rainbow lanyard to work. You know, a lot of these are just not going to hold up in court. They're just going to force our organizations like the ACLU to waste a lot of money and time. Yes.
There's three things that I've thought on here. The first is that this increases the likelihood that Musk is out on his ear quite quickly because it took all the attention away from Trump, which will have annoyed Trump extremely. That's the first thing I thought about when I saw him do the Nazi salute, other than what a pathetic little weed desperate for attention, because whether or not he's a Nazi is kind of a material. It's just how much of a desperate for attention he is that really grands me.
But also he is actually an athlete of course. Number two thing is all the turfs in the UK that were like actually cheering on Trump. And this at the same time is like all the abortion advice was taken off every single federal website, all of the like all of the protection on just
that enormous erosion of women's rights immediately. Number two thing awful. Number three thing is that it appears that every citizen of the United States or at least every new citizen of the United States or the kids born are all going to be classified as women because the executive order
Yeah, the executive order said for conception and we're all women from conception for like several weeks. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, this is the least enforceable one. This is the one that I think even this Supreme Court has a chance of not going for, which is just trying to kind of unilaterally repeal the 14th Amendment.
and an end birthright citizenship. This was in court in Seattle this morning. And the judge cut the Department of Justice off in their submissions to go, is this constitutional? And then ruled that it was flagrantly unconstitutional and said that he was ashamed that like any lawyer could even claim that it was. So we'll see where that goes. All of the other stuff.
It's not even like the 14th amendment. That's the issue. I thought birthright citizenship was in just straight up the Constitution. Well, I first I don't I don't know. I don't remember. I thought the first amendment was no, no, no, no, no, wait, what is freedom of speech? Freedom of speech. No, maybe it's a citizenship clause. It's a citizenship clause. OK, 14th amendment.
In any case, I think that's the thing that's least likely to stand up. All of the other stuff, there's a decent chance that much of this can get through. In the meantime, factually, rather than legally, many people's lives can be made miserable in the meantime.
Every trans person that I know in America is terrified right now. For good reason, I think, although I think you have to maintain some kind of sense of perspective and, you know, ability to, you know, plan and think about these things in terms of like these people are morons and will fail. They're just very dangerous on the way down. Yeah, I think it's true for any reason to get Irish citizenship.
I mean, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, it really, it feels like it's so bleak because if there's any aspect of policy that the federal government makes that you're at all interested in, there will be something to trigger and own you. Like the US is going to leave the World Health Organization, which as someone who is married to a health care worker, I just, yeah, you just.
I am personally very worried about the executive order to quarter soldiers in my house in a manner not prescribed by law.
Yeah, it's kind of speedruns of like every article and amendments of the Constitution, yeah. Except the second. Except the second. Except the second. I still know the counts. I just think that just, yeah, I think a lot about the words from the again, I don't know, too awful of cross posting from the TFF or the Devon report, where coast in the behind the scenes Devon and the Unova and Abby were talking about what trans people have to do right now, which is live.
And I'm not going to try and emulate the words. All three of you said it so beautifully. But that continues to inspire me in these depressing moments. And hopefully it's comforting for all of our trans siblings out there as well. Yeah, I think that anyone who is being targeted by this administration and they're not being shy about who those people are. It needs to be as resilient as they can be, right? And that's partly a function of just like
Keeping yourself alive and keeping your own kind of motivation and like well up and it's also partly just like, you know whether that goes from that to like keeping a go back by the door whatever it is you know, and i think you know, you just you have to think about that stuff you should have been thinking about the stuff i can talk about it.
And yeah, it's four years is a long time, but I have no idea how this ends. And, you know, maybe we will see Trump getting executed on the White House lawn by the kind of loyalist troops of woke General Millie. So who knows? I've been strong chance he gets executed by Trump supporters.
Yeah, but also you might also just die. He's really old and actually probably extremely unhealthy and not even not even the weird stuff that they give the US presidents can keep can keep that husk going for the huge one lips to go now that is deep-defunded the NIH. Well, quite. Yeah, that's very true. The thing I was going to say that last thing I wanted to say on this is
Is there succession? Is there someone else who can unify enough of an electorate in the same way Trump does? Because I don't think there is, which means that when he dies, whatever happens, let's face it, the fact that he will reach the last of his terms doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. The rules don't matter. But him dying would, if that went when that happens, it will happen. There is no succession really. There's not some other goon who's going to come in who will manage to do as good a job of unifying everyone that he does right.
And that, there's some hope in that. I mean, they'll do auditions, but they'll have to like hook them up to like the eternal life machine, like the God Emperor and Warhammer. Ten thousand maga cycles a day. I mean, the thing, the thing that I was trying to reassure people with, because I was in a room full of trans people during the inauguration, and I was very depressed. And I just, the way I tried to frame it was, if not politically, then actuarially, at least,
we will outlive Trump, like pretty much all of us will. And you will get to see that man die. So, you know, that's a, that's a nice, that's a nice thing to think. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But also Tesla's going to go to ship because he relies on China and a lot of Europe and then Tesla is
The value of a suspicion, that's a company that is very suddenly going to start getting valued more realistically fairly soon. I suspect that's all to be nice to see Elon Musk go from most rich to extremely not most rich guy. There's some minor comfort. There's a lot of money coming into the Saudis. Someone pulls a trading places on him.
And living them all will be Melania wearing precisely this outfit. What was really funny was that today, this morning, I got a, you will hear it in the next Trash Future episode, a non-mutable emergency alert on my phone informing me that the weather was going to be bad.
Right. It was like a sort of like the full emergency alert system thing being like, there's like a red weather warning. Don't go outside. Everything's closed because, you know, storms because of climate change. And I didn't look at my phone for a second because it's just like, Oh, okay. I wasn't expecting him to like nuke somebody this quickly, but I guess we're just going with it. Fine. And then I actually did look at my phone. I was like, you are telling me that I might get like falling roof tiles landing.
Yeah. Oh, Melania, just do us all a solid, you know, Slovenian power, you know, for me, we can do it. Yeah. That man in his sleep, like they did to Scalia. Listen, listen, right? Here's what I want. And I'm going to pitch this to you, right? Elon Musk. Whoa, come on, palace coup, right?
There's going to be so many words, the YouTube words set here. Thank you, Devin, for your service. Thank you. Me and my employment. We have to look on the bright side. We will get to see some more insane millennial White House decorations. OK, that's true. Yeah. I will say that that lady has a clear sense of like Christmas aesthetic. Yeah. Yes.
Evil Christmas? So you offer evil Christmas? All the bits where he has to actually be president and do the bullshit ceremonial stuff, like the time he at Easter put candy on top of a kid in a minion costume's head. For funniest thing. You still believe in Santa because it's 10, it's marginal, right? Like it's marginal.
Four more years of that. We got to be able to laugh at the funny shit. It's all horrifying. But at the least, there's some stupid horrifying comedy to be scrounged out of it. Talking of stupid horrifying comedy.
Oh, yes. The set up. Mr. Space rocket land. Starship seven exploded on reentry. Masterful. Masterful gambit. Yeah, that's real deals. Yeah.
They caught the booster though. That's supposed to be the hard part. But yeah, reentry. Now it didn't work. I'm going to reentry a bunch of exit. Really? Yeah. Yeah. This launched the thing. Yeah. It's just blew up. Oh, interesting. OK, pop. Technically, this is an MLRS. So, you know, send space to Ukraine. Have to reroute a bunch of airliners and crap.
Um, it was a new, a new fear for flying, even though I'm not flying over the Caribbean alive, but just like, oh, sorry, you're going to get hit by an exploded rocket. I feel like just a long way gets taken off by a one's like anti woke Mars colony ship that like gets up to like 30,000 feet and like hits a 737.
That that were all the Starlink satellites. All the batteries run out at the same time. They all deorbit simultaneously and what is like 175,000 like half meter size satellites, just like destroy aviation at what in one fell swoop. That's just kind of like mortaring the entire world with a bunch of garbage can sized satellites giving yourself castler syndrome, but inside the atmosphere.
Yeah, it's way harder to do that. You know, it's like letting loose a bunch of unmanned sesnas to just fly around randomly. In atmosphere, Kessler syndrome 20, 25. Yeah. I love that. I love that. I love that.
Yeah, there she goes. Look at that. Yeah. I don't know what else to say about this one other. It's funny that Elon's rocket blew up. It is. I watch for all of his failures, you know.
They're gonna, they're gonna probably launch another one sometime soon. We'll see if that one blows up and we'll report on it. At least this one just blew up over the Caribbean instead of blowing up in that wildlife preserve in Texas that he somehow allowed to keep blowing up. Well, I mean, essentially it does blow up there. That's what the rackets do. That's true.
controlled explosion. So how much of this expensive titanium, et cetera, is now littered through the rules of innocent people? It's made out of stainless steel. Oh, God, it is. Because it's a fucking side. God, he's such a fucking cunt. It's funny when they were first doing the prototype of this.
They literally went and contracted the construction to like a water tower company. Just like these guys know how to do stainless steel and just went and get like whatever company puts up the ones that say safe ferris or whatever. They're just like they'll build my rocket. Do you know what's great is that all of us get to be smug about the fact that when Elon Musk was getting cameos in fucking Star Trek and popping up everywhere and all of us here and quite a lot of you folks listening knew he was a fucking wee Shanna.
Yeah, I never liked dancing. I can genuinely catch that one in now. I have never liked or admired or trusted that man. Never been a nice South African.
Shout to Pierre Novelli, how are you doing, boy? I've never met him either, so you're right, same. Let's just look at this beautiful firework dancing in the sky and think of how much money it will have lost Elon Musk for a little bit. Yeah, speaking of.
Money that was about their news. We need to make some money by you buying tickets to our shows. Oh yeah, we need that to pay to pay our rent and to, you know, pay for goods and services. That's the most monopoly guy Ross has ever sounded. Speaking of money as he grabs his hands together and falls back into like a bath of coins. Yeah.
Okay. Current state of the ticket sales, the two Somerville show shows are sold out. The later New York show is sold out. Washington DC just sold out. New York City on that Tuesday still has about half the tickets left. So if you want to come see us on Tuesday, I think it's Tuesday, you can do that or you come to Philly where I think we still have about a third of the seats open at the Fillmore.
What do we need to do at the film? We need to film more seats. What do we need to do at whatever the DC venue is called? Nothing. They're all sold out. Yeah. Tuesday. You're done. You're stuck. I'm so fucking excited for this. Yeah. This is going to be enjoying watching everyone get very excited for time square.
That's in New York City, where all the stuff has happened. New York City, that's the city where like you could, at any given day, you could see anything from a person celebrating a new business that they started to enjoy and just smashing into the world.
So yeah, New York, New York, I want to be a part of it, you know, and it could be a headache. Yeah, the big, the big town town. The New World Show is coming out of Lindy City. I don't know how the fuck we're going to book America's second city. The charm city in town. I need to play a fucking house show in New Orleans, if you'll have us. I don't give a shit. They say New York is the Chicago of America.
I think it's really fun. Who's the sixth borough now? To do another shit and then not play Chicago. We're working on it. We're working on it. Stay tuned for that.
I think things are cooking right now. The problem is if Justin enters Chicago, it tips the number of Polish people in the county over a maximum that was set by Mayor Daley back in the day. It's like an old odometer. It just turns out it's actually like a loose file and it does have a stack overflow there. Yeah. Yeah. Show my Norwegian card. That's going to be a problem if we go to Minnesota though.
I had to carry two passports like I'm trying to go to, you know, you see that on top gear. Yeah. Get the pass. I try to go to like Jordan after you've been in Israel or something, you know, you can do that. They have relatively friendly relations.
Yeah, what's the country you can't go most? I pick the only one shit. I think I think I think I'm right. I could be wrong. It's been a minute since I had to deal with I went on birthright. Sorry. And you didn't you didn't buy a condo there. So you cost them money.
Yeah. It's like you went to Israel's house where you left an upper decker there and you kind of ate all the snacks out of the fridge. So like, to be honest, like you were a guest there and that's not great, but like you're more of an inconvenience.
I am always more of an inconvenience. Sorry, my wife is here. You can't see it. No, but the hogs can't see it. Rins excitement is seeing Jay on screen was palpable there. Things are cooking, Gareth. You do not know my plan yet, but things are cooking. Wait, do I know your plan? No, no one knows. No one knows.
I have told this story before, but the last time Jay was on, but fuck you, it's been like 50 episodes. When I went to visit Jay at his parents' house at Underschoolers location in Underschoolers. Yeah, you were there. I know. Oh, my God. OK, bye.
She brought me more waters. I drank like six Celsius. I'm going to have to piss at some point. I'm going to be rods. But, uh, Corinne and her siblings met Jay, uh, who gave us, uh, many Coke zeros and they were just like, he's so nice and he's so handsome and he's so tall. And they were like, and they were just falling all over. I'm like, he's not that great.
He's the only one of them who actually knows me. So yeah, well, you are, you are nice and handsome and tall. You wandered around New York City with me that day when Ross was the most hug over. I think I've ever seen him. God, that was it. Yeah.
When you showed up and are just like, Ross didn't even get on the trade with me in Philly. It's just three minutes. Thirty three minutes. I don't care. I don't care. I don't know. No, fuck. Crayons.
We should do the episode for the nice people. Oh, yeah. I need it. I needed a half hour being cheered up by the company of my friends because I saw a bit of conclave for the second time. And anytime I see that movie, it makes me real sad. This is also why the Catholicism episode is taking 15 years to do. We're all confronting some shit personally about it. Also, it's like the Katrina episode, which I swear to God, I'm writing.
We want it. We want to do it right. And also we all have trauma. So leave us alone. This is a handsome train. It's a rock island line. It's a mighty good road. Rock Island line is the road to ride. Well, Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, notably several hundred miles from the Pacific. You'll know that New York doesn't have the Rock Island because it's an inferior city that we're very happy to play. Please buy those tickets. Yeah.
Chicago also doesn't have the Rock Island anymore, to be fair. I think the latest people have the Rock Island was Mississippi, because some farmer bought the trademark and named their short line, the Rock Island, or something like that. There's always been a lot of rocks. The first question we must ask is, what is a gallery car?
Can you look at pictures in it? It's a Wes Anderson type being where you're inside a beautiful car and it's full of like paintings and art and sculpture and stuff. I wouldn't say beautiful. These past two cars that this Rock Island line E unit are hauling are gallery cars.
And the gallery car is a labor saving device. And in the case of the Rock Island, I believe also a way to make their trains shorter because they were charged for access into Union Station by the car.
Is it a labor saving device because you increase the gauge of your tunnels by what appears to be about 75 centimeters by running these two wagons around your railway? Is that why? So it saves on civil engineers? Well, it's the Midwest, so no bridges to be found. Yeah, a little bit of bridges. That's about it.
You got that signal bridge in the back. You could do this thing another level higher if you want. Yeah, that's pretty strong. Yeah, but you could tunnel through the Rock Island, wherever that is. You could have Steven Seagal running on top of this thing. More on that later. Is that for sure? No, no, God, okay. Jesus Christ. So the idea of the gallery car
is it's a double decker car, but the conductor only has to make one pass through to collect tickets. And they do this by means of something wacky. Oh, it's a it's a bunk bed train, but with seats, not beds. Yes. Yeah. Just just to conduct to doing some Cirque du Soleil shit suspended and the thing just sliding through the zip lines. So do you appreciate my art?
I very briefly have to talk about the one time we did double-decker trains within GB Lood Engage, and it was bullied who did it, and it was on the southern region, and that thing looks like the shonkiest, weirdest thing to travel in of any train I've ever seen in my life. And it's not dissimilar to this to be fair. People's legs dangling down into your face, you know, things of this nature.
It's getting really hard in the face anytime you move. The Long Island Railroad also had some with a similar configuration where, you know, one, one booth was two steps up. The other one, the next one was two steps down. The next one was the knee knockers. Yeah. Let you see a lady's skirts. Oh, no. Yeah, exactly.
So it's a real real kind of like bridging the generations thing of seeing up a lady skirt there of like of being like that's boarding in like seaside postcard fun to that's a serious sexual offense.
So it's hard to photograph how the gallery car works. The lower level, you have sort of two by two seating. Lower level is normal. The lower level is a normal car, but you have a low ceiling over the seats. You can't fully stand up. In the middle of the aisle, you can stand up. And that's because the upper level is one seat and then an aisle and then a hole and then an aisle and then one seat.
This is deranged. This is the working of a madman. If you tried to like make my railroad pay for this, I would kill you. This is madness. It sort of makes sense when you think about it in a very 1950s way, right? You get a bunch of single seats. People don't want to sit in pairs anyway. So you get a bunch of single seats upstairs. You're not thinking about accessibility or how somebody who can't do a tight little spiral staircase can get upstairs. It's the 1950s.
and your guy just walks through and takes everybody's ticket. On knowledge and belief, the United States of America has one thing in abundance, and that's bad. No, it's what's that too, but like also space. Like things bigger in America, a meme not for no reason, right? They just make the 50s superiority. Yeah. Make the fucking trained longer, man, or do like an actual whatever that there has to walk longer.
I am more conductors. What the fuck do I care? That's Keynesian. That's expensive and their union. Okay. So all these have the same basic format. You have the center vestibule. That's the main door to the car.
From the center vestibule, you then go either left or right. You can either go sit in the normal seats downstairs or there are four tight winding staircases, which bring you up to one of the four galleries.
the mezzanine level, and you can sit up there. And then in the middle of the car, above the vest's fuel, that's where the air conditioning is. So these were actually the cars I rode when I commuted to school in Northern Virginia, a more modern type of gallery car than these. We're looking at some old buds or possibly Pullman standards. They ended up all over the country, and we're about to export a bunch to Peru because fuck you.
In particular, they were a Chicago area invention, and then they got imported to the Bay Area, and then eventually went to, I think Montreal used some for a little aisle, Washington DC had some for a little aisle, Nashville uses some old former Chicago area still uses them. Yeah, Nashville has some of the really old ones. Yeah.
We used them in the Bay Area up until like six months ago until we got actual good electric trains. Yeah, the one thing about, but the thing, the main thing about the gallery car, this is a labor saving device. It's designed to, you know, so the conductor does one sweep, although when VRE was taken over by Kialis, which is SNCF's like consulting division,
They actually started to send the conductor up through each mezzanine individually, which was very stupid. The creating device. Yes. Dumb French people. Anyway, don't understand how things work.
I'd be interested to see what the rollover strength of these are compared to more normal shape vehicles. I just don't fall over. Just don't do it. They're all post-naperville. So I think they're fairly beefy. I was about to say, I'm not sure if anyone has made one of these rollover. Well, we're going to be the first. Which is weird because there's a lot of them.
There are a lot of them. Yeah. So, okay, we've talked about what a gallery car is, who manufactures American railroad cars in the middle of the 20th century? But, yeah, it's on a screen, Pullman. Yeah. Pullman standard. But Pullman standard. Ozgrove, no. What's the company that made the ones in the Federal Express route? Ozgood, no. Ozgood Bradley. Yes. They were pretty much gone by now. But there was also, there was some smaller crapier ones too.
These are the only two you need to know. Yeah, these are the two, the two big ones. There's essentially a duopoly in railroad car construction. Oh, I'm sorry. Also British rail engine and limited manufacturers vehicles that were in the US in the middle of the 20th century. We saw our paces over fairly soon after this. All right, yeah, that's true. Christ, did we? But realize we were a net exporter of misery that late into the 20th century.
No, I got to see it at the Connecticut Charlie Museum once. Oh, yeah. Wait, it's still in the northern US? So it's sending traces to Indianapolis hoping they'll like them. It might be. It might be. I'm not sure what happened to that thing. We actually discussed that way back in episode three. Yeah. Anyway, three was it? Yeah, I didn't have all the osmosis, so I didn't even know what a train was.
So yeah, bud, made the cars out of stainless steel. Pullman standard made the cars out of regular steel, but also sometimes stainless steel. Yeah. Stained coal steel. Take a look at Pullman standards. Disgusting gallery. Oh, it's got a mildew on it.
They both built gallery cars for what it's worth. Yes. I think Pullman did more and both of those built in the 50s are still running in Chicago. Yes. Incredible. So railroad passenger traffic dropped due to a variety of reasons, bad service, bad regulations, bad investment, so on and so forth. Most passenger rail is taken over by various government agencies that's outside of the scope of this podcast on this episode.
This introduces a few new factors for how the new passenger rail customers are acting, right? People buying passenger cars. They're either doing something like MTRAC, where they have pooled together every piece of existing passenger car, a passenger rolling stock in America, and they are selecting all the best of them. So they don't need to buy anything for a long time, and they're trying to unify their fleet as much as possible.
Or if they are, you know, sort of a commuter rail agency or something like that who's getting some of the rejects. If they want new cars, they don't have a lot of money, but they may also be subject to regulations, which require them to accept the lowest responsible bidder in acquiring new railroad cars, right? Or again, they might just not order new railroad cars at all.
The thing about products from butter, Pullman Standard is they were usually a little bit premium. They're not the bottom of the market. Admittedly, there are duopoly, but it was not difficult for other manufacturers to come in and try and undercut them as a loss leader. Exactly.
Yeah, fun. So these big manufacturers start to struggle in the 1970s and 1980s as a few manufacturers from overseas start to try and muscle in. And also, again, there's just less orders.
The Surface Transportation Act of 1982 creates this by-American clause, right? This attempts to sort of shut the gate, do protectionism after the horses have left. You know, Amtrak and transit agencies are forced to purchase American-made trains just as Bud and Pullman standard both eggs at the market. Whoops. Beautiful. What a beautiful set of incentives and responses.
Yeah, so but in Pullman standard, both eggs at the market in the late 1980s, after filling their last absolutely massive orders. I think for but it was subway cars of some kind Pullman standard. It was the super liner twos. I want to say but it was the CTA cards, right?
That could be the, yeah, that sounds about right. And then, you know, there's clearly no more orders that could keep the companies afloat that were forthcoming in the next couple of decades. So it was like, time to close up shop, I guess. You made the same as the sound of the UK at the same time. And your punishment is no more product ever. Yeah.
But there are still people who want to buy new train cars, right? So we have this flood of manufacturers. All right. Come in, you know, efficient. Yeah. So these two regulations, low bid and buy American, both resulted in extremely expensive cars from overseas being the norm. OK. Well done. All right. You know, I've got it. Sorry. Real quick, I got a game for you. What do you think that M and MBB stands for?
Oh, MBB. The BB puts me in mind of like all of the German speaking train companies. Correct. Yes. What's that German company starting with? Ah, Mercedes. No Mercedes.
It's Messerschmitt. It's Messerschmitt. I mean, listen, one of my other guesses here was, because I know Messerschmitt kept, obviously, as from this, making stuff after the war. Mengele, as in Josef Mengele, literally his family's company, still make combine harvesters and shit and tractors. Oh, God. They changed the name at least. No, you can still buy one.
It was brand recognition, you know. So, yeah, why have you changed that? The thing that came into my head when you said that it was Messerschmitt is the Bf125. Is that a thing? Is that a thing? No, no.
was. It was a it was a gag. So, right, Jay, what that was, you see, was what I took the BF 109, which is an only HS team. I combined the two of them in as a bit, but didn't didn't land. They did show up. They made exactly one type of railcar for the Boston area. It never made another railcar to us again. Yeah. OK, fine. It's still running.
Yeah. So you have like Nip and Shiro comes in. They may kind of take that again. Nip and Shario. There we go. They come in. They started building new gallery cars. You got Bombardier coming in. They make a new double deck cars. Messer Schmidt. They make those nice cars for the MBTA. Hyundai Rotem makes double decker cars for the T and also for what you call it.
Not, no, it was a mark. That's right. Yeah. You guys have a Rotem cars. Well, yeah, we, uh, oh, we did get the Rotem silver liner fives. Yes. Um, but that was, that was a separate plant from the first one that opened up and shut down for the first order. Then we had a second plant that opened up and shut down for septa efficiency.
Yeah, we have Mafersa from Brazil. They made some cars for VRE and later Shoreline East Commonwealth Engineering out of Australia. They designed some cars for the Long Island Railroad, which were then produced by Tokyo Car Corporation, as well as, you know, the M3s for Metro North. The fun part is of these companies, I believe most of these are producing
Bud or Pullman standard designs with Bud or Pullman standard technology under license. Yeah, they were just not allowed to enter the American market after Bud and Pullman standard disappeared. So now you can pay a lot more money for the same product. My first hold is that if Bud and Pullman are gone, who actually holds the IP for those licenses?
I think now, Bud is Bombardier or Alstom. I want to say that Coleman is also Bombardier Alstom now, which is because of course. But Mafarisa was the Brazilian license builder for Bud. So they already have the licenses for when they got listed and then they just counted. Was the license holder for Australia? Tokyo was the license holder for Japan. And then once the parent company, once Bud died, they were all able to bid
Basically, I mean, you can see if you look at those Mafaresa cars, they clearly like share components with Bud cars. They're basically just Bud cars. They look great as a result. Bud knew what they were doing. And I love the look of those Mafaresa cars, but it's embarrassing.
But one of the things that happens here is that, okay, when these manufacturers want to make cars for the American market, they're based in foreign state code FN. So, they have to open up a factory in the United States, hire people, train them, manufacture the cars, hope they get a second order, then they don't, then they close the factory, and then
Everyone gets laid off and then they, you know, maybe sort of idly try to bid for another order. And then, you know, in order to sweeten the deal for the politicians, they try and open a new factory in a new location, close to where the contract is, you know, rinse and repeat over and over again. It's a very efficient way to distribute resources. Like train builder. Yeah.
Yeah, the nomadic of the gallery car building culture. Yeah. This shuts out most like small passenger car. People who want like a small order of passenger cars, you just can't do that, right? If you want to, if you have a small commuter railroad, you only need a couple cars. No, sorry, we can't do that. That's impossible.
Maybe you can buy some used cars. But as discussed in another episode, we don't really have used railroad cars. They're all spoken for. Yeah. Yeah. So one man thought he could change that.
One company will rise from the ashes and build real American railroad cars. And that company was Raider rail car. Like the BTK killer. Good question. Dennis Rader getting into like a side gig aside from all the murder where he's like, I'm going to build right.
I so I have comments on the top left hand vehicle because that just looks like they've hollowed out a deltic and put windows in the top. Yeah. And I do travel in it. This is I believe a pole in standard super dumb getting super dumb in the Pullman standard. Yeah.
And it's an Alaska railroad car as well. Like I don't tell man. Yeah. We're going to talk about the Alaska railroad a lot today. Hell fucking ass. Yeah.
So in 1982, Tom Rader was a man with an idea, opening up the heart of Alaska to tourism, right? The Alaskan cruise industry was getting into its stride with most cruises stuck to the Alaskan panhandle, right? Usually you left Vancouver, you stopped in like Ketchikan and Juneau, got as far north as Skagway, then you turned around. The one I took a long, long, long time ago also stopped in Rangle. I think that's usually off the beaten path. That town was a shit
No offense to no offense to anyone in wrangle who listens to this podcast. I'm sure you also know that. If you want to like the double down had one store.
You liked some Pierre Mucalata. That had one store. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Yeah. All I know about Alaska's small towns of that size is they have a store that sells mattresses. I've learned this from a podcast that I enjoy listening to. Thanks. So I take it. It was a mattress selling. It was kind of like a... Oh, yeah. Was silly, yes.
If you wanted to go into the interior of Alaska to go go see like Denali or go meet Sarah Palin, you boarded a bus. She's from like 20 minutes north of Anchorage. Yeah. Yeah. You boarded a bus in Skagway. Then you spent four days traveling. You took a picture of the mountain. You shook hands with Sarah Palin. Then you spent four days going back all on sort of rough mountain roads, you know, the Alaska highway.
with no services, no nothing for like hundreds of miles at a time, no less than four border crossings because you had to go through the Yukon territory to get there. So I'm just I'm stuck on Skagway because that sounds like a word for the seam on my testicles. It sounds like a location in Borderlands 6.
It's actually, it's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It looks beautiful. Yeah, well, yeah. It's quite fast and you come out. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It looks beautiful, yeah. It's quite fast and you come out. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It looks beautiful, yeah. It's quite fast and you come out. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice, pretty little town. It's actually a really nice
So anyway, you know, Raider was aware of an underused and now state owned asset, the Alaska Railroad. Oh boy. If cruise ships bypass Skagway and went a little further to the much less scenic town of Whittier, that's the town where everyone lives in one building. Yes. Yeah, I know about this because no one mentioned it in the previous episode I mentioned.
It's so cool how the list of facts about Alaska is so limited. It's all I know comes from a very recent episode of the customer. That's my entire Alaska knowledge. That's it. You betcha. Then passengers could board a charter train which would whisk them to the big city of Anchorage and then on to Denali and then to Fairbanks. Excuse me, Denali, thanks to Trump is now back to Mount McKinley. Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus. The National Park is still Denali, though.
That's a good point. Yeah. So you hear Florida is already of the Florida weather service is already calling it the Gulf of America. So they actually do. Yeah. You saw the executive order. I'll accept a limited trade where the Gulf of Mexico becomes the Gulf of Denali. And then as a result, you get to call it Mount Mexico, but Mount, Mount, Mount Mexico. And then you have Mexico becomes America. Shit.
So yeah, you take the train up to Anchorage and then on to Denali, and then you go on to Fairbanks. You can enjoy the beautiful scenic Fairbanks, then return home by air. So Raider rehabilitated these four X mil walkie road super dome cars. That's these guys up here.
For this service, it proved to be an instant hit, right? This revolutionized the Alaskan cruise industry. These were actually just attached on the back of regular Alaska railroad passenger trains. You know, so he built a business on this called Tour Alaska, and eventually he sold it to Princess Cruises. But he wasn't done yet, right? Because there was a flaw in the super domes. They weren't big enough.
And I was getting super dope. Yeah. The super dome, actually, not super enough. Yeah. There's this big panel on top and away the windows were curved. It meant that it was pretty difficult if you were on one of the inner seats to see out the windows, right? Rubbish. Yeah. So clearly we did a new type of train car that rectifies this, the ultra dome. Yeah. Fucking hell.
So the concept is very simple. You take an old busted gallery car, you cut the roof off, you extended upwards a bit so you could stand up on the lower and upper floor. You cut the holes in the side for bigger windows, right? You add a shitload of glass over the new roof. Hey, you got an ultra dome.
And so these ultra domes are some of the largest pass in your car has ever built unless you like count like I don't know articulated diners or something like that. No, we don't. Fuck those guys. These make the full use of American loading gauge. I've had it too. Yeah.
You know, a lot of, a lot of, um, a lot of double decker cars. Um, the, the floor is actually lower in the middle to make more room. Not on these guys. It's a full 48 inches above the rail. And then the next floor is higher. Um, I mean, you can see there's a super liner to the left and the super liners on that bottom left image, super lines, big ass railroad car and taking a photo can see clear over the roof.
I mean, this is epic. Good God. Do I want to be in this? I assume that they are still running today and I can have a fantastic trip. Yes. Quite a few of them are still running. In fact, I think basically all the ones that rolled off the assembly line from the series of companies associated with Tom Rader, if they made it out of the factory, they're still running. Incredible.
We'll get to that later. Okay. Noted. Just don't think too, too hard about how like the frames and shit are all like 50s coming out of railroad cars. That I know. What's it gonna run into a moose? Yeah. That's what the low to most of his fall. That's the point. We don't have a cowcatcher. We have a moose catcher. You're not catching that fucking thing. You've got a moose obliterator.
Yeah. The first order of cars was four cars that were designed to operate in pairs. One of them had an 18-foot observation platform, an elevator, a gift shop, and the other car had a full-width kitchen on the lower floor, and dining above. No, you don't understand. I need to see a cussaway, dawling, kindlessly style illustration of this motherfucker immediately. Full, full DK book dedicated to this vehicle solely.
You can see here. This is the elevator right here. It's just a platform that went up and down. It was for wheelchairs. That's good. So cool. Yeah. And then it had like a narrow spiral staircase. Otherwise, that's good. But yeah, you've got not just fine dining, but also luxury shopping on rails. I don't know what you need the line for. Yeah. I wouldn't even move. Yeah, exactly. Rolls around.
This could also operate alongside standard single level equipment, uh, unlike the roughly, you know, equivalent M tracks, super liners, which required this special transition car. If you wanted to hook it up to normal stuff, right? Um, these were just chucked onto the bat. These were essentially just like they paid the Alaska railroad just to chuck these four cars on the back for a land cruise. Yes. So the fact that you could get between to, I don't know if they even let people use the regular train, but at least let crew get around is pretty important.
Yes. Um, one of the flaws was because they were essentially greenhouses. They needed really beefy HVAC, but they were enough of a hit, you know, with, uh, with the tourists that they make loads of money, right? Sure. So these, these are big successes. So Raiders like we could probably sell more of these cars. So he founds his own company, Raider rail car, right? And decides we're going to design the most late 80s cocaine train cars match.
Oh my god, but it's taken the furniture out of like my great auntie's house from 1992. Yeah. Grandma had this chair. This is.
I actually, I, I wrote this slide and I realized the notes for it are actually a little bit inaccurate here. This should probably go later on in the podcast, but these are just demonstrator cars to show what a Raider could do. And the answer he wanted. Yeah. Yeah.
This is, this is small place restaurants, but the A2s. Yeah. Exactly. You want a car? You want a car with a mezzanine and it's got a grand piano and a dance floor. And look, it's got all these nice plush chairs. Do you guys have like a area and it's got, you know,
Um, again, you can look down the hole and see the people below. Um, yeah. This is very, this shows who this is pitching to the right because this is actually very nostalgic. This is super nostalgic. This is like, like kind of old timey sort of saloon type stuff for, for people who are used to cruising around or, or going to like slow bars that look like this. So it's kind of interesting in a way to see who the market was at the time.
And timing wise for this, the whole like rail cruise idea was happening all over the place. And a lot of times with shitty old gallery cars, just because those are the only cars available. But it was because all of the, you know, this was when the boomers first started getting money and they had remember, you know, their, their train trips and things from their use and now wanted to do it again, but fancy.
Yeah, it's when Heritage Railways of the UK started growing quite rapidly. Yeah, exactly. This is your greatest generation are now retiring and can travel and your boomers who did it as a kid were starting. So it's like, oh, shit, there's this whole new age of luxury train travel. And Tom Rader said,
like between huge bumps of Coke. I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. I can be the guy. I can see that guy. I got to stop this. So I'm so awake. All kinds of stuff for these cars. You can do sleeping cars. You can do coaches, you do cars with balconies. You can do cars with mezzadines, downstairs lounges, upstairs lounges. Any hairbrained idea you have, a braider rail car could supply.
They were just putting anything on rails at this point. And I don't just mean this company. I mean, you know, the government's like, what if we ship nuclear weapons around just at random? And we still do that. And this guy is like, what if we ship grand pianos around basically around them?
And so, you know, Raider quickly cars out of niche for itself and building like luxury railroad cars, you know, a couple of year, not, not anymore, not any less. Unlike other builders, builders, they are able to fill small orders, right? From their facility in Denver, they both convert old gallery cars and build brand new cars from the ground up using a lot of off the shelf equipment.
Right? Customers included Holland America lines, celebrity cruises, the Rocky Mountaineer, which is the sort of luxury cruise train through the Canadian Rockies. Even eventually the Alaska Railroad orders some of their own cars because they were sick of hauling around the cruise line cars. You know, because this train out of Whittier was like now pulling out with like 14 cruise line cars attached to it. Oh, wow. But.
Rader wants people to know they could do more, right? I bet he does through the massive pile of cocaine on his desk that will put the scar face to shame. Yeah. And I will note again, some of the, some of the cars in this image are actually from the successor company, Colorado rail car. Well, what's the second? That's the second successor company.
Uh, we'll get to why there was a successor company in a bit. Uh, the other connection this company has, uh, which I think is important. Um, is they supplied the cards for under these two. Oh my. It's the episode of kill James. I'll be on it some point in the next sometime. Oh yeah. It'll happen. Believe me. It'll happen.
I love this poster, by the way, you know, like he's, he's, he's clinging on to the side of this, this, this stainful steel going at like some speed and he's still OK. Well, so that much the best of them and serving face like really like put together, you know, kind of like mid career segull. It's really funny looking at the train in this as like a train nerd because you can really see they tried to make it look like brand new Amtrak superliners, whatever.
Yeah, but they didn't quite. It's just this weird ass cheap, shitty and uncanny valley, shitty gallery cars up front. They added, I understand this is supposed to be stainless steel fluting here, but they actually use tin roof material. Got him in that budget. Yeah.
Um, you know, these are just really shitty gallery cars that, uh, Raider owned dressed up to look nicer, repainted, um, added stuff to make the stunts easier. There's some trap doors and plywood platforms on there. I think that's grip tape on the roof too. Yeah. Yeah. It's got to be. Yeah. Technically making this a skateboard. There's one. God, that's a coolest skateboard. It is both technically and legally a skateboard. Let's see a kickflip that Steve.
But yeah, they supply. They supply the whole train. Most of the cars were scrapped after the film, but not all of them will get to that in a bit. OK, so that's the train portion to start out with. That's the context that we talk about smoking.
Yay! It's a cool thing the president's still. If only it were good for you, but science hasn't got there yet. It's not likely to now that Trump's paused basically all research in the US. It's a great shame. Check down the cigarette that's good for your project. I hope the National Institutes for Health had one day away from a real breakthrough on the cigarette that's good for your project.
It's like David Lynch, R.A.P. said about smoking, and it's a guy who died of smoking in large part, but all we want as an adex is for the subject of your addiction to be good for you, right? And it's not, in fact, it's actually terrible for you.
Yeah, they're going to you guys remember from mere cigarettes? No, there was a it was a smokeless cigarette that RJ Reynolds came out with that hemorrhage, just a shit ton of money. I think they lost like a billion dollars on it, but it tasted like garbage. Apparently, when they did research in Japan, they told the research to shoot to the face, this seems like shit. But yes, we are. That was an 88. So there's been 37 years of working on the cigarette that makes that's good for you. So we'll get there.
What's about to say, you know, if it if the people in Japan say it tastes like shit, you know, it tastes like shit because those guys are really good at smoking So yeah cigarettes there's some tobacco you buy him a pack you smoke it you feel a little nice It looks cool if you're in high school, you know Yeah
Well, having it on a stick does make you look cool. Worth pointing out that filters are complete pseudoscience. They make absolutely no improvement to do anything. That was an invention of the cigarette industry to make you think that cigarettes were healthy and it really worked.
No, I think we should bring back having a big long holder like your FDR. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is good for you. They've invented the dip that is good for you.
So yeah, cigarettes are they're bad for you. And they're not. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. We must say, I'm not going to get shut down by you. The thing that got us on the COVID disinformation tag.
Phil, Phil Morris sponsor our podcast. We got the furnishes to our somehow. Phil Morris, RJ Riddle. Anyway, cigarettes, in order to get people to smoke them, you need to do advertising, right? So there is this brand called Marlboro. Marlboro.
Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough Marlborough
The last thing already is that he died of all of the cigarette-based cancers, despite never having smooths. That is the painful irony. Marlboro is interesting because it was one of the original filtered cigarettes, and as such was marketed to women. Mild as May.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Philip Morris. It's like the Wolf of PPK, right? It's a little bit of masculinity that's actually originally intended to be like gay shit for women. Exactly. Ivory tips protect the lips. Anyway, so they don't, folks. No, no, it does not. I mean, eventually there is this book not smudging your lipstick. Exactly. Yeah.
Eventually, there is this push to like, okay, we got to have market filtered cigarettes to men, right? A lot of the marketing was based on, here's the science of why the filter is good for you. The companies were making the horrible mistake of acknowledging that smoking was bad.
Well, it was actually, it was after the fact that it was after the first surge of, wait a minute, this might not be good for you. And the response of the entire tobacco industry was, okay, well, filters. So it was a response to the first wave of science saying, oh no, the smoking will fucking kill you. And so the tobacco industry as, and continues to be one of the largest lobbying groups on the planet, on the planet, and was like, oh, well, filters, that's, now it's fine again. And it worked. Yeah, exactly. But it worked.
But then men were fine filtered cigarettes. So they decided, all right, the Marlborough's aren't selling well with women. What if we turn them into a product for men? We are the dumbest creatures on earth. Yeah. I voluntarily smoked for like eight years. I fucking stupid.
And that's how Marlboro becomes the cigarette for the manly man, the Marlboro man. He's outside. He's a cowboy. He's whatever. He's doing all kinds of, you know, manly man shit all over the place, right? I was saying when he's a manly man, but this is not suggesting that skincare routines aren't manly, but he is looking care. He's taking great care of that skin. Lovely, slight oily sheen, but some lovely skincare and some very careful manscaping on those sideburns as well. There we go.
Look at that edge. Beautiful. I'm just enjoying the man on the picture, the Marlborough man. He's handsome. Doesn't it make you want to smoke cigarettes? It does the most wrinkles around. This is before the invention of retinol is the thing. But not before the invention of smoking, which will fuck up your skin, something awful. Look at those lashes.
Yeah. Yeah. They're lovely. I'm very bushy. Extremely bushy eyebrows. They looks like it looks like my dad. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know he was a man was Armenian. Yeah. Check out how much Harry has on his shoulders. Yes. So.
Anyway, these are different ways you could bark at the cigarette, cigarette advertising. It used to be you could just say, hey, more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. Then regulators started to crack down on cigarette advertising that was just blatantly dishonest and fake.
So you had to do things like sponsor F1. Yeah. You had to create a bunch of extremely cool liveries for things. Everything since has been trying to evoke this and failing. I don't want to see a car covered in fucking like cryptocurrency logos or like shit that's being marketed to the like full cybersecurity executives that they think might be watching. Why the fuck is cloud strike sponsoring a car? Fuck you. Crowd strike.
I don't I don't I don't even I don't even give a shit give bring back the Gulf oil livery and bring back the Marlborough livery and in fact it's good for the claren because you know fuck fuck Ferrari here they don't know shit. It's the Marlborough McLaren livery. Oh the white with the orange across
My favorite fun fact about the Ferrari at this time is Ferrari didn't sponsor with like AMD or Acer and Vodafone directly. They just sold, they sold the whole car to Philip Morris. Incredible. And then sold the pieces and parts on. What?
I sold the whole car at once. This is my most crank belief in one that I can empirically say is false with data. I believe that having the cigarette delivery on the car makes it go faster.
And it doesn't it doesn't this is historically slow compared to now, but like I believe in my heart of hearts, you know, I love the I love the AMD. I just that's that's what I want to go to work in. It's just the best with all my PC parts on me.
Here's my theory, all right, because most of these cigarette companies, they adopted a cigarette-packed design in 1940 to 1970 and never changed it, which tells me that objectively that's when the best graphic design was because they got nothing else they can advertise with. That's why the cigarettes are the best-looking packaging in the entire convenience store.
The F1 era where some countries let you advertise cigarettes and some didn't was so funny too. Because you ended up with all of these graphic designers, people having to figure out, okay, we can't have it say Marlborough. How can you make everybody think it says Marlborough?
So like Ferrari had a barcode that like every vertical line in the barbar logo was just drawn on. And then other ones, it's like West cigarettes for the West Monster McLaren just replaced it and it said East. And it's like, it's not cigarettes, guys. It's all taken care of. It's the car. It's the car. It's no direction. What are you, what are you complaining about? It's actually put some duct tape on the side and write earn airlines.
But when the Cardiff beer brains sponsored the world's rugby team, but I think when they're playing in France, you can't sponsor alcohol through sport. And so they changed the word brains with brawn, which I thought was quite fun. That's very clever. Similar vibes. Oh, is it the Jordan team had the buzzing hornets instead of Benson and Hedges? It looked like a B. Nice job, guys.
And like, I had toys of this stuff with the cigarette ads on it. We all, yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So another way that you could advertise your brand, uh, subtly or through things that weren't considered advertising was, of course, to create a lifestyle brand around your cigarette. Yeah. Red bull. Oh, it's just, uh, you're still allowed to do this. Yes. Red bull.
What we're looking at is the Marlboro adventure team. Although I believe these guys are like, because this was a multinational campaign, this is the Marlboro adventure team from Indonesia, I want to say. This is not as cool as the camel trophy, sorry to tell you, but that's some of the coolest a car has ever looked is the Land Rover defenders going through
of swamp that's filled with 50-50 mud. It is like simultaneously also on like a 70-degree angle and like covered in wet leaves. Yeah, big, big, all while also laden down with a shitload of supplies and spare wheels and stuff. That's aesthetic to me. I remember when I realized that you couldn't just be an amateur to enter the Dakar rally.
I got a DAF twin turbo, I bought off ebay. Look, I got some old weathers on this thing.
You know, you know, it's weird. And like, they pussied out of doing it any further because they, you know, because they suck now. But like, for a second, they tried to modernize the camel trophy stuff beyond defenders. So they had Range Rovers and they had one Freelander within like the livery and then nothing after that. And it's like a huge, huge shape that looks cool as fuck.
Yeah, that's my little contribution. Camel trophy. Yeah. A lot of people are going to be doing a lot of googling through this episode. I'll just have to googling through this. I'll just have to googling through this. Some Google image results up, you know? So here's the Marlboro Adventure team, right? You save up your cigarette box tops. You mail them in. You get cool gear for outdoor activities, which you do as a smoker. Yeah, you definitely will do that. Standing around. Yeah.
I feel like some of these attacks are pointed. If you smoke enough, you may be selected to go on an all expenses paid trip to the American West to smoke and ride some horses or something. How do they all fit in the Jeep as my question?
Yeah, sort of a clown car situation, but let's smoke here. Yeah. But when they go out, they make a source sound. Yeah, that's it.
This promotion was active from the late 80s to about 2006. Wow. But, you know, they're bringing all these groups on tours of the American West. Philip Morris is like, okay, what else can we do? Can we make this special somehow? Someone comes up with a great idea. This is where I'm going to ask you to turn to your YouTube link. And hopefully Devin will be able to patch this in somehow. All watching the YouTube link. Okay.
Marlboro country. The land without limits. Sunrise to sunset. Summer to spring. Adventure rolls through Marlboro country.
Whoa! Shit! Dude, what's wrong? Unlined. Unlined. Holy shit, boss. It's the cool train. It's got guys cowboy hats on it. It's got, like, hard girls. It's got beer. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
I don't want to.
It's got meat. It's got meat on it. It's got the meat train. Yeah. This is like too many cooks. It's like the next big. It kicks off. There are so many horses involved in this. Oh, it's marvellous. It's marvellous. Why not? OK, that's the Marlborough Grand duffel. That looks good as hell when I was one. Yeah, it does. Yeah, I'll give you that. That's dependable. That's the people. It's marvellous. Oh, the Marlborough Grand Chet. Sorry. No, the merch is cool.
I hate to say it, it's physical. Yeah, I'm gonna cheat the duffel bag. I need the justle guy. Holy shit, I am hard as hell.
They're showing more times than the train. They know it's the coolest thing I've ever come up with. It's just that you only have a model of the train. All the shots of the train in this are a lot. It says in the disclaimer, limited to smokers, 21 years of age or older. I think it'd be really funny to go on this as a non-smoker. Just never smoked in your life.
Okay. One second. I have to Google Marlborough duffel bag by wear. Wait, this video is of an age where they have to put the smoking warning is to have hilarious. I guess the same narrator to buy one for 50 quid on eBay and I might. Yeah. I was going to offer if you couldn't find any, I have a Marlborough backpack, a friend of mine bought me at Salvation Army for $13 that I was willing to mail to you.
This is cool. Oh my goodness. Nova now googling everything you can imagine. The one problem and his branded. The one problem right is you buy this. You know, it's got to smell off.
It's like a gym bag that you haven't cleaned in quite a while, and you come over your friend and you'll get a smell list. No, it's cigarettes instead.
scale 35 year old sicker. My piles of laundry and shit that I still haven't done. I have a ring bought me a sign of this Copenhagen snuff. And I'm just like, just like when we got here to like, clean the lair, what was clearly like, you have stays off of it. You're just like, Oh, we have we have we have much dip memorabilia in my house, but it got it's it's it's it's not around us. It's like all the third floor. That's where it has to live.
And to be fair, I also had to do that with my Yugoslav Airlines ashtray. I did have to scrape quite a lot of yellow scum off it as well.
I mean, this wouldn't be the worst thing that I've got second hand in my house as someone who ends up like collecting gas masks because I'm a normal person. I do think there's a decent chance that one of them is kind of slowly killing me. I got one that every time I go near it, I get a weird like tightness in my chest that lasts for a couple of days. I should probably like, I don't know.
Oh, that's that's that's probably because it said some sort of plastic that releases. Oh, I would sign it into your blood or something. I would sign it around. I'm just I don't know if there's someone you can like call about that or something to make it not my problem because I want to just throw it out. Just line the inside of Vaseline. You'll be you'll be right.
Yeah. You probably get the tightness in your chest because it works so well that when you go away from it, you feel the toxins from everywhere else. That's smart. You consider that. Yeah. That's true. I have an increasing amount of crap in my office that's covered in like transit system brake dust. That's probably killing me slowly.
That's getting back into Nova's brown theory of railway grind. It's the same brown. It is. It's the same railway brown. Yep. And I'm trying to figure out whether I clean it off or whether that's part of the authentic look. You can probably put a pen card on your diet if you want. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no.
You're not supposed to be in your diet. It's supposed to be there. It's good. That's like what my traffic engineering professor said when he explained criteria pollutants. We don't count CO2 because it's supposed to be there.
I mean, while I'm just looking forward to the comments of people typing furiously like, no, no, no, no, but you're going to die. You need to see a doctor. Yeah, please for the love of God. Don't use that mask anymore. Yeah. I mean, we should probably say that to you as well as we'd rather you didn't die. I literally, this is the thing I haven't because just going near it or like touching it makes me like chest just close up enough that I'm just like, OK, well,
you know, I'm not going to not going to push the push the issue on that one. So it just like it just sits in storage with me and this uneasy truce with it where I'm like, well, I don't want to throw it out and kill somebody else. I don't want to take it out and kill me. So do not open. Yeah, do not open dead dove inside, except instead of dead dove, it's like whatever the fuck port and down and trips you've ever seen with, you know,
Yeah, it's the same. Whatever problem was murdered in it. Important down. Yeah, exactly. What? Yeah. That's, yeah. It's found its way to you. I mean, the good thing is because, because I got off Ebay, I can trace back exactly with the guy who sold it to me. So like, if I die, avenge my death on a guy in my like Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two years ago. I'm going to leave him a negative feedback on Ebay purchases section about two
Yeah, it's like 99.8% positive, you know? He's a dramatic moment. So yeah, Philip Morris comes up with what they internally refer to as Project Thunder.
This is the Marlboro Unlimited. The Marlboro Unlimited was to be a train like no other, a brand new double deck luxury train with bars, restaurants, spas, movie theaters, any you can think of that would travel the American West for one season, offering excursions with horseback riding, mountain biking, off-roading, Conestoga wagon rides, fishing, whitewater rafting,
More horseback riding. Hot air balloon rides. It doesn't feel like stuff. That's too much stuff. I think. More horseback riding. I just want to smoke, man. I just want to smoke, man. You don't have the breast aid coach rides. More horseback riding, ski shooting, alpen slides, horse shoes, and horseback riding. That's what the fuck it's fucking funny. That horse takes two steps and you're just like, ooh.
The horse is smoking too. It's a horse-sized cigarette, so it's equal. It's the coolest horse I've ever seen in my life.
Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month, and we give you an extra episode once a month.
Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but it's two bucks to get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.
Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com forward slash wtyp pod. Do it if you want. Or don't, it's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show.
We do have pictures of some of the t-shirts. Holy shit. When I was looking up some of this, somebody's trying to sell that top left t-shirt for $300. That's a $300 t-shirt if I've ever seen that.
It does kick ass. It does really kick ass. Also the audacity for the Marlboro Unlimited smoking train to sell a white t-shirt on the right. I particularly enjoyed the one wolf moon. That's a big fan of that one. Yes. Why is it so long? Why is it so long? Why is it so long? It's for Jay specifically. I think it's just a giant shirt that's second-hand store on eBay who had ever found their normal models for.
Look, we don't have anybody else who can try on this triple XL. So we know that this train fucking whips, right? So we know we know this is the coolest thing that humanity has ever created. So I presume it's running today successfully, right? Of course.
Yeah, we'll get to that part of it is actually. But we'll get to that in a moment. Now, how do you enter? Oh, this was going to operate for one season in 1996 for a total of 2,000 lucky passengers.
There are some anecdotes online. You had to smoke 1,000 cigarettes to enter, but it was a sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Okay. But, Tanner, you did have to be a smoker. 21 years of age or older. How did you prove that you're a smoker? They just smell. Yeah. That guy just takes a big sniff and just like, yeah, this one counts. I've rarely seen freight track.
Yes, that's a little foreboding. Oh, because it was going to go through. What's what's what you call it? The old Rio Grande main line telling you this. Yes, that's the one. They're orienting this advertising. It may specifically rarely seem freight track. Good grief. Okay.
I think the idea is like, you got to do this. You got to smoke like crazy. You're not just going to be able to do this by getting some Amtrak ticket, like some suck ass loser. Yeah. Day two of the mover unlimited. And you're like, I don't know if I can keep pace with this kind of competition. You know, they keep handing me more cigarettes. I can't lie. Another one.
I feel like my dad is punishing. Like creating some sort of contraption out of things in the kitchen, like a poll of 13 to just get as many cigarettes into you as possible. You're doing the reverse. You're like a normal, stable smoker. I'm like everyone else who goes for this. And you're like, I'm not prepared to compete at this level. You're trying to like create like some pocket of clean air to hold out in like a mine collapse.
We'll get to that. Imagine one. Everyone else is like that. The file, the file photo of armor with like a thousand cigarettes. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I learned as the executive chef on the Marlborough Unlimited, it completely destroyed my sense of smell and taste.
More so than already happens from working in a kitchen. Oh, my God. Here's how the Marlboro Unlimited Sweepstakes works. 2,000 prizes of six-day, five-night trip for two on the Marlboro Unlimited Train plus $1,000 cash will be awarded in random drawings. The first 1,000 prizes will be awarded from among all eligible entries received by blah, blah, blah, blah.
unofficial entry form in the space that provided handprint your complete name address, including zip code, your date of birth and your current brand of cigarettes have additionally. Lucky strikes won the war. Important in order to be eligible for a prize, you must sign your name in the space provided certifying that you are a smoker 21 years of age or older as of date of entry.
I think there are any people who just, like, huge, like, weed smokers never touched a singer. Also, when I could win this thing, I forgot it was a sweepstakes, but it was a kind of a squid game of smoking, which would have, like, smoking-themed elimination events. It also discovered who was the best. Who wanted the most? I think that's just smoking. My grandparents really did not commit to the squid game of smoking. I think just smoking didn't have what it took to make it through, you know?
2000 grand fries is a six day five night trip for two on the Marlboro unlimited train including round trip coach air transportation to and from point of embarkation debarkation meals aboard train lodging one room double occupancy and activities plus $1,000 in cash approximate retail value $6,000 each. That's pretty cheap for luxury train these days. The whole bullshit. Yeah, train will travel through the states of
Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Winners must agree to travel on scheduled dates specified by the sponsor. Winners selected for the first sweepstakes drawing must accomplish travel on dates designated by sponsor between what's eight. It is August 4th, 1996.
October 11th. The way you do in your country is so fucked. Sorry. What language are you not speaking right now? I'm raising my hand. I have a question. Why did they have to warn competition entries about which states the trade? Okay, she had like an active war.
To be fair, the guy who tries to go on this absolutely is like, I can't go to Idaho anymore because I had some like problems out there. It just happened there. I got all the time. I'm tired of Boise, yeah.
this. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go ahead. This turns out to be a bigger deal. Okay. Yeah. Custom built luxury cruise train unique in the world. 20 cars total to locomotive three staff cars, eight sleepers, five dining activity cars, and a spa car, double decker, glass stone, double taverns with full bath, red and a mauper tour. Yup. It's shoveling. They don't, they don't make moisturizers strong enough to us.
They're putting like like polar bear you're on you or some shit closing you down. Oh my goodness. Here's where we start getting some questionable decisions by Philip Morris, right? Philip Morris's marketing department has two options. They could refurbish old equipment because Amtrak was getting rid of a lot of their old heritage equipment they inherited from the other railroads back in the 70s, right?
Or they could buy brand new trains and they decided for the sake of consistent quality to do the latter. Hell yeah. I mean, I guess they're making enough money off of giving people cancer. They could just do that anyway. Yeah. Those those cancer sticks are consumable. So you make money off of them every time. They also don't really go bad. I mean, they do.
Well, they go bad once you've smoked them. I'm sure I have like half a pack left in the back of a filing cabinet somewhere. And even at my lowest, I haven't been desperate enough to consider that shit. So for you, I gave the emergency pack cigarettes in the house away when I was doing so.
like the opening case of emergency pack of cigarettes that it should be in your go back, but it's like buying a gun, right? You got to make sure you've got the like mental fortitudes and really mean yourself with that, you know? I thought you'd better not use it. Stop a bad guy with a cigarette. Well, I mean, in my experience, there's not a lot of good ways of stopping.
No, the bad guy with the cigarette and the good guy with cigarette both go have a smoke break and they either come back both bad and both good This will the movie high noon is about You're facing up against like Lee Van Cleef. He's got the little cigarette low end and you don't draw and you don't draw and you don't draw and you don't draw and you just like I'm just waiting
All right, I could be patient for the sake of consistent quality. Philip Morris wants to go with all new trains. They want to sleek locomotive with a bullet train shape nose, right? Uh huh.
Now, for the audio, for the benefit of the audio only list of viewers and listeners, no, audio only listeners, that's how that works. And this is a very fetching, shiny train we've got on screen right now. Oh, yes. Marlborough livery, by the way. So it looks sexy as fuck. Fresh off the lines is painted and beautiful. And it's also most importantly on some, if the trap might be crap, but the ballast is okay. So, you know, it all rounds a very nice picture here. Yeah. This is the official train of smoking. Yeah. Yeah.
So the question is, who supplies the train, right? First, they go to Bombardier, right? They're in the process of finishing MTRAC's Superliner II cars. For whatever reason, this falls through. They couldn't like tack on an extra 20 cars to the order, right?
Um, they, they, they, they make some headway with the locomotive very quickly. Originally they were thinking, we're going to buy a shitty locomotive and add a fiberglass, a fiberglass nose cone to it. But no, they buy these EMD F 59 PHIs, which were still in production at the time. A lot of commuter railroads bottom. It looks very nice. The shitty fiberglass nose. It does have a shitty fiberglass nose. And even better, the shitty fiberglass nose was mass produced.
Nice. Yeah. Well, you need to, because it gets dented every time it hits something at a great crossing. Correct. But I've realized is that this thing has quite a class 91 look to actually win the kind of the setback level, just with the fiberglass nose is a bit rounder on this than a 91. But no, that's a very, very fetching looking.
I hope you realize, look, the class 91 next to this thing would come up to, like, a lot of times from different gauge, like two different scale trade sets. Yeah, no, I'm aware of that. Already recorded that episode. Well, actually, I want to say some of the same locomotives that went down to Mexico, they're the same model locomotive just with a different nose. Yeah, the less sexy version. The F 59 pH. Yeah, that just has a regular looking cab.
So these were ordered from EMD, Electromotive Division of General Motors. These are the only, almost off the shelf equipment on this train. And I say, almost because they had some wacky modifications to the generators, we'll get to that in a second. And they had to instill really good air filters.
EMD delivers these on time and on budget, no problem, nothing, nothing, no job too small for EMD. Can you imagine the smears on the inside of these windows? You think they made the engine crew smoke too? You have to be 21 years or older and a smoker to run the train.
Just just trying to get down the aisle, whatever asshole is smoking, like three cigarettes at once and what's another fucking pathetic bourbon on the rocks because you drink it neat like an adult. And just like, how can I take your order? Just collapse. So Philip Morris is second choice for new cars because Bombardier couldn't do it was this upstart company in Denver, a Raider rail car.
Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, cocaine. Yeah. Let me play the grand piano. If I can see the keys through the fog in here. Let's see what they ordered. Oh, God. Here's a schematic of the train. Yeah. They were so serious about this. They were really like, we want to do a whole last train, like an under siege to. I got to say, that bottom right project, you know, just being in the normal format of the blueprint and thunder in big letters next to it.
I understand when these documents were created, um, Raider railcar was in the process of switching from an older CAD program to this new program called AutoCAD. Wow. Yeah. Also got volume and like AutoCAD version 1.0. I think it was already at 12.
AutoCAD is fucking stupid. I hate it. We're just program imaginable, except for all the other ones. Well, yeah, that too. Yeah.
The unholy abomination that would be the barrel burrow unlimited train would cost $27,860,000 without factoring in the locomotives. It consisted of eight sleeper cars, federal court over this over the secret. We used to build things in this country. Okay. Eight sleeper cars, two dining cars, three lounge cars, three crew cars, one power car, and of course, the infamous spa car.
I want to hear about the spa car so badly. We'll get to the spa car. I don't like that you're saying it like that. Depending on the source that you believe these were either brand new cars, but I believe as far as I can tell, these were built from cut down Southern Pacific Gallery cars, including some of those previously used in the filming of under siege to dark territory. Hell yeah.
A representative sample of the train was due to Philip Morris on January 1, 1996 for an early promotional tour with the full train required by March 31, 1996, the day I turned three. The contract was signed sometime in 1994, giving greater precious little time to design and build the most luxurious train in the history of mankind.
Philip Morris would then attempt to find a buyer for the train when the season was over. What? Yeah, they were only going to use it once. What? What? I think they're actually going to use it for like one summer season, one winter season. Jesus, that's incredible.
Let's take a look at this. We've got our brand new F 59 PHI locomotives producing 3200 horsepower each. This seems like a lot of horsepower for an 18 car train, but this train uses ultra dome tech. And everyone is smoking. The air filtration required for this thing is.
Jesus. Can you imagine? Can you imagine this thing pulls up at your local station briefly because there's a freight train in the way or something? And you're just at the station next to the air vents of this thing and just the clag coming out of just one of the H5 vents. It makes East Palestine look like a fart.
Oh my god, the train is smoking too. Oh, we've killed Liam already. I have been podcasting nonstop since 2 p.m. This is my third of the day. Oh, god. We got to do it all again tomorrow, so yeah.
The result was a requirement for really, really, really beefy HVAC systems, right? Yeah, really was there. Was that a requirement? Yeah. So the two locomotives were not enough to provide electricity to the whole train, which leads to the first car, right? The generator car.
And I just think you're going to need to create an entire new union just for the little boys that will have to run up and down the trade, cleaning, replacing the HVAC filters. You're going to create a whole new society in there. It's going to be like a smoke piercer in there. So on almost all trains, they're powered by something called head and power, right? This is supplied by a dedicated unit in a locomotive.
There's multiple locomotives in a long train. A whole locomotive can be dedicated to the purpose of just providing power to the train, right? On this train, a whole locomotive was not enough. So a separate generator car with two 1000 horsepower Detroit diesel engines powered to generators. Wow. So you called it head and power. Also, some of the people might know as hotel power. Hotel power. We call it hotel power. Yeah.
Usually in the United States, I think it's only called hotel power when you're connected to a line from a station. Oh, interesting. It's a weird nomenclature. I think we refer to it more broadly as just the train the train draw when it's not that the non traction power, but actually maybe I'm wrong. People correct me in the comments. Who knows?
Um, now this results in this problem. The train runs on three phase 480 volts AC. That's being supplied from three locations and they all have to be synchronized. So I don't know how they did it, but the locomotives were as extensively modified for fine throttle control. So the generators could always synchronized so they could deliver power to the train without the whole thing blowing up.
It's like a legit, like, engineering problem. Someone had to put a lot of work into solving in order to let you smoke on the train. On the train, they're only going to use once. OK, so every time when I smoked, I was stuck in a situation where I couldn't. And I was looking at the no smoking sign, trying to stare at to death, thinking, how hard could it be to let me smoke in here? I apologize for all of those times because apparently pretty fucking difficult. Well, probably the most difficult. Yeah.
EMD takes one look at the requirements from like, yep, no problem. They just take a country. Yeah. I suspect they didn't consult any mechanical or electrical engineers when saying yes to that. So behind this were the crew cars, right? So we have, uh, we have a sleeper. We have the sleeper and we have the sleeper slash diner slash medity car for the crew. Okay.
Um, behind that, uh, we have some sleepers for the passengers. We've got four of them. We have the dining slash galley. We'll go in these in the detail in a second. How many fires do you think they're getting from people falling asleep with lit cigarettes, like miles? That was a significant concern. Yes. Yep. It looks like that picture from the under siege to poster, which is just without, without cigar and just pouring out of one car. Yeah, that's it. So it's all the cars.
Dining multimedia slash library car. We have Big Sky Lounge slash office slash open platform. What don't do that to books. Yeah. Books deserve better. They're all books about cigarettes. Lots of studies about how smoking is good for you actually.
Car number 14 is running faster. It's good grief. This is crazy. It's really cute with shotguns. Yeah. Yeah. Behind that Pennsylvania railroad heritage. Yeah. The cowboy bar for sleepers and the spa car. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Why not? So some version of this train also proposed, including several auto rack cars at the front of the train. Oh my God. So they could haul around a bunch of buses for the various excursions. The train would.
No, that's based actually. I'm all for that. Oh, it's a vocal, baby. Yeah. There's also a proposal for a baggage car to be added as well. All the crew cars were just regular passenger cars they stole from Amtrak. Well, that stole they bought.
Well, it's like so much is like no expense spared unless you're the crew and you get some old garbage. You get off. Well, you actually did buy, right? Yeah. I think I think I think the crew probably got a better deal. That's a step for point. Yeah. They didn't have their passports confiscated. But maybe they did. And that's what we're leading up to this whole state state line situation. But anyway, foreshadowing.
Here's, uh, here's some early concepts for some of the lounge cars. Note that, okay, we have such things as we are going to have the virtual reality game room. What? What? Here's it. This is the mid 19th. Jesus, there's 3D graphics.
Yeah, the date here, 13th, September, 94. It's also called project lightning on this one, not project thunder, which I didn't know this before. Oh, thunder and lightning. Yeah, that's true. It was on rainers side. They called it project lightning. Actually, you can see in handwritten sketch, they've got on it says thunder slash lightning. Yeah. So, uh, this looking at the order of the cars. Sorry again. I went too deep into this looking this up. This is the preamble train. This is the five cars they wanted to deliver earlier than the rest.
Yes. Okay. So you would have full set. You've got the first cars. You've got, you know, dining up here, lower level. You got a big ass kitchen, right? Next car, still pretty big kitchen, bigger than on most trains. That's just the service area. You got dumb waiters to bring everything up to the dining area upstairs. You had a spiral staircase at the end.
right? You get a spiral staircase over here. Okay. Next car we have, um, this is the big sky lounge, right? 60 seats unspecified here, right? There's a downstairs lounge as well. Note these large air ducts. Those will be a common theme.
Um, there's a car. All that spot straight out of the vehicle. Yeah. Here's the general store over here, right? As well as the elevators next to the spiral staircase, as well as the ADA lavatory. Jesus Christ. Okay. So when I was, when I was saying parallel society evolving in here, I was joking. No, this is going to end up like Snowpiercer.
Okay, right. I mentioned virtual reality over here. Over here, there's a whole half of the bottom level of this car devoted to virtual reality games. Right. Next, that is the final reality of the 1990s. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine playing, I don't know.
shit. What did they have in ninety four for nothing shit. Start the box picks our films, you know, like real shonky there. You have the most beautiful scenery in America, rolling by you play you play a star Fox.
I've just seen the spark. I've just see it. I've just seen this bar car and you are shitting me on top of this. On top of this is the big Sky Lounge. The other one, right? 60 seats with bar living room configuration. Okay. Next car. We got a bar on the lower level. We got a bar on Remington's bar on the upper level. We have excuse me, strike that, reverse it.
Um, there's a dance floor on the upper level on the lower level. Of course, you have pinball machines, right? And another dance floor and car dealers and lounge seating on the upper floor and more lounge seating, right? And then of course, we come to the low level domed spot. Yes, we do, which has, oh, no, there's a size rooms and six hot tubs.
Three hot tubs just set on one side, three on the other, with like a maze between them. That's where my god, that water is sloshing around full of cigarette but. You're about to get every possible waterborne disease.
It's not a smoking car. Well, it's still this is this is this is tyranny. If you can't smoke in the hot tubs, what even is the point? Not being allowed to smoke at Jase is like not being allowed to pray in church.
Excuse me. I got excited. I got to use the restroom real quick. What? I have some questions about that sequence of words. I don't like that. Can you imagine getting stuck in that central hot tub? There's a wall to the pitch top.
It's just like, you know what it's going to look like? Well, each of those is going to be so dark with Tori. Tori, you're going to be emerging out of it like a harkiness. It's just incredible. The harkiness, but with the cigarette butts kind of stuck in the moisture. We're making is a kind of broth.
We're making cigarette smokers do. This is spectacular. And this is what you win. You have to be on here for like a week.
Scott, and they don't need enough water on board to like change that out either. Get out stale, that would get the end. Oh, everybody's convicts later. The same water. Oh, hey, does have an open platform, though, and that absolutely rules. Yeah, I can throw myself off in the middle of the most isolated freight track in Wyoming and just let me try and throw away from me. Yeah, leave me to the coyosis.
Just I just, I just learned, uh, there's a handle on my, uh, my gamer chair that allows me to recline. So I just figured that out. Yeah. I've had this shit going like, there we go. Shit. Look at that. That's kind of too far back to be honest. Like, uh, I'm way back. Bosses are here to raid me in so I can do whatever I want. I gotta get back. Fuck. You shouldn't have said it. You shouldn't have said it. What happened? Nothing can worry about it. Oh, okay. We discussed the hot tubs.
Yes. Well, there's going to be more discussion of those to come. I don't like that. Oh, no. Oh, no. Let's look in some more detail. Here's a sleeper car, upper level, lower level. You notice the cars are wide enough that it's just like, yeah, you walk perpendicularly up and down the car to go up and down. Oh, God. It's a steep staircase.
I believe it was pretty steep. Yeah. Yeah. Private rooms with individual toilets and showers, big rooms on the top at each end. Lots of plumbing, lots of ducting, lots of complexity. All the weight, only single bedstone. No fucking on the train. Well, not in this car. Not in there.
Um, they needed extra fire resistant fabrics and extra fireproof partitions because, you know, these chuckleheads are going to smoke in bed. Oh, yeah. Probably while drunk and depressed from losing all their money at Blackjack, but we'll discuss that in a moment.
Just imagine this thing coming over the prairie. Just like one of these just like burning to like burning down to the trucks, right? Just a yellow haze coming off the whole tree. I want to say one of the sleepers had an infirmary on the lower level.
Yeah, you're going to need it for all the cancer you're guessing. Yeah. The first place to have an uncle consultant on colleges. He's going to get work. The amount of preparation that they did for what if somebody dies on this fucking thing was enormous. Crammatory with the back.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Um, here's one of the dining cars, the first dining car with the galley underneath this huge fucking kitchen on the bottom floor, right? And up above, you know, it's regular table seat, booth seating, right? You got three count. I'm three dumb waiters because why not? Sure. Mm hmm.
And they're mostly doing steaks. They've got to be right. Like, yeah, it's mostly, I was going to say, just think about how big the kitchen probably was on the, on the Royal yacht. And I'm going to guess maybe a third of the size of this. I will say has fewer air ducts in the kitchen, presumably because that's the least spooky part of the train. God, it's so weird.
The weirdest part about this thing is that it was going to have walked through on both levels, which I think has never been done on any train anywhere. I believe that was only on certain cars. You would have walked through on both levels, but yes. So like, yeah, there's walkthrough on the upstairs here in the diner and on the downstairs. Yeah. Good grief.
And of course, as we've seen on all these, every time I see it, it makes me laugh, particularly as they've chosen an italics fun. Project Thunder. Project Enrula Rangement Dome Diner with galley.
Okay, so we've got our second diner, right? This is the diner library theater car upstairs is the diner still in same configuration, but backwards, right? Downstairs we have the multimedia room with large air duct. We have in the middle the library where you can read a book. No one's using that library, let's be honest. Yeah. Yeah. You turn a page and have to like waft your hand a few times to read every sentence.
Yeah. Over here is something I don't know what it is. Oh, that's good. I don't know. This diner had a small non-smoking section. In case you brought a guest who was not a smoker.
To torture them? Do you want to come with me on the... You know my cigarette hobby? Do you want to come with me and really share this with me? Really enjoy my smoking together? I love with my spouse and chlismy and their hobbies. There's so many human stories being implied here. And they're all poor. Oh my God.
Yeah, none of them are good. The none of them are happy. Yeah. Oof. Isn't sand is the concentrated like bad vibe that really gets off these blueprints. Just like not quite enough windows on some parts. There's not it just doesn't. It doesn't look like a train shirt. It doesn't feel right. The blueprints look pretty fucked up. Like between between just the area that we don't know what it does. The general implausibility of all of this. Are we sure this isn't some kind of like
Like us on the, like, secret experiment on the, yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's a little experiment, but on wheel. They got surprisingly far and we'll get to this later. I'm like, fucking Jesus. Okay. Here's a 60 seat observation lounge with downstairs open platform and ADA elevator. Yeah. I believe the current observation lift, because that's why they observe you secretly.
I believe this area down here called Purser Square, which is next to the Purser's office, which is just a desk with a chair. I believe that's where there was a small gift shop. You could buy a full bag. Yeah. Surely you'll use the gift shop at the end. Unless they're selling live for you. Every time you board or disembark, you go through the open platform over here, which requires you to walk through the gift shop.
And also I suppose you need somewhere to buy the cigarettes. Oh, yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta buy my own safe fuck you. And dropped off in your room every night in a in a brown paper back. There's people walking around with them, like,
You don't even need to smoke like just the second hand is gonna be enough to keep anybody still going That's what they do. They just put a massive cigarette into the air They should do that at nightclub smoking areas should be one big cigarette That's late all the time you just go out get a couple of deep breaths
Over here is the office bore on that later. For some of the cars, if you were looking at the side views earlier, a lot of these cars don't have side doors because, yeah, again, they were trying to funnel everyone in and out of this car so they'd go through the gift shop.