Thanks for watching, glad you liked it.

Thanks for watching. The Hiawatha's are a treasured part of my collection, love to see them run.

Thanks. I tried to show as many Hiawathas as I had access to, though the modern era has provided even more. I understand that several pages of Hiawatha sets are shown in the new 2024 Lionel catalog.

Thanks John, glad to hear from you. It snowed all day yesterday, but I don't think we will catch up to you.

Hi Steve, the CMStP&P is my favorite RR and the Hiawatha (first gen) my favorite train. Doing this video has been on my bucket list a while and I finally got it done.

Well done Jim.@@JFLionelT-RailOperator

Thanks for watching, glad you liked it.

Good to hear from another fan of the CMStP&P's proud flagship train.

Thanks for watching. As you know, assembling such a collection is a life-long project. This production had been on my "bucket list" for a while. I finally got it done.

And your Westies are as enthusiast as you! @@JFLionelT-RailOperator

Thanks for watching my favorite colors orange/gray/maroon/ CMStP&P.

Thanks for watching. The Hiawatha has always been a favorite of mine.

Its good to have a hobby in retirement. I am supposed to be retired, but busier than I ever was. Thanks for watching.

I tell my friends that’s what all of the old farts say. At 58 I’m already solidly in the old farts group 😂@@JFLionelT-RailOperator

You are lucky that you are only 58! You have a lot of good years to go. @@FailureatRetirement

TY@@JFLionelT-RailOperator

Thanks for watching. Producing this video was on my list a long time and I finally got it done.

Yes it is a shame that important trains like streamliners and NYC Hudsons were not preserved. It is sickening to see videos of Hudsons and Mohawks lined-up dead waiting for the torch. It seems that the dieselization conversion happened so fast in the mid to late 1950's, that the preservation aspect did not occur to the owners and scrappers. The Illinois Railway Museum in Union is lucky to have one of the chrome Burlington Zephyrs, I think it is even operational. When I worked in downtown Chicago, the Milwaukee Rd commuter train went through the Bensenville yard where in the 1980's there was a string of 1940's generation Hiawatha coaches that were in Union Pacific colors. They were destined for scrap, as all had the numbers crossed out and "dispo" written on the sides. I think I have some pictures somewhere. There were no Skytop lounge observations, which had all been scrapped, probably due to maintenance issues. I believe that the 4-4-2 Atlantic was chosen to head the first-gen Hiawathas as the car sets were light-weight and the Atlantic gave CMStP&P the speed they wanted. As trains got longer during WWII and after, Hudsons took over to provide more power.

@@JFLionelT-RailOperator yes, they have the Nebraska zephyr although it’s not the same type of diesel that was used on the pioneer zephyr and Mark Twain zephyr. That being said the Mark Twain zephyr is actually being restored right now although there’s no word on when it will be finished. When it is we’ll be able to see it run the first time since the 1950s. I must say that I knew one or two streamliners were still around before I checked as I knew about 4449‘s existence and images of 611 before even though I didn’t know the name, or if it was the only one of its kind. Sometimes I wonder why Britain seems to have been so blessed with railway preservation, and America seems to have gotten the short end of the stick. My impression is that the reason why is twofold. First after nationalization in 1948 the newly formed British railways aimed to phase out steam quickly and the projected this would be done in the 1950s. Yet if this happened. Likely we would not see locomotives like flying. Scotsman survive today but at this early stage the preservation movement in great Britain was still in its infancy, even though it has started much earlier than the US. However, due to a combination of coal being cheap in Britain oil being expensive and multiple failed attempts to introduce mainline diesel traction dieselization really didn’t take off until a decade later in the early 60s. In fact, steam didn’t end completely on Britain’s railways until 1968, which is probably more than a decade after they had wanted it to end. As a result of a lot of extra time was available to save locomotives like flying Scotsman, blue Peter, and many many tank engines. It also perhaps is the reason why the blue bell railway was able to exist because the locomotives used on it are really old I think and probably couldn’t have survived if dieselization had happened to the 50s. The second crucial reason that so many British locomotive survive, compared to the United States, is ironically, because of a scrapyard. The Warren brothers scrapyard was contracted to scrap old locomotives and rolling stock but due to the vast amount of engines, coaches, and trucks that they had been contracted to scrap they couldn’t get to all of them in a timely manner and after scrapping a few locomotives early on they decided that it was just cheaper to scrap the coaches and the trucks over the course of several years and then leaving the engines on sidelines so that they would get to them later decades down the line. After a while, people started buying the engines, both at the scrap value price and the price of shipping them away from the yard and when asked about it, the scrapyard generously agreed to let people buythe engines, since it would save the money from scrapping them. After this happened, a few times the preservation put caught wind of this golden opportunity to save numerous historic locomotives and as a result very quickly, the scrapyard became the site of far more engines being saved than scrapped. Apparently the owners were extremely generous to the point that when the one potential buyer communicated to them in the 60s or 70s saying that there was a locomotive he was meaning to buy but he didn’t have the money yet but he could guarantee if he would get it in a few years he requested that they specifically put it aside to not be scrapped, and the request was granted. A couple years later he make good on this promise and was able to buy the engine. In the end out of something like 200 Steam engines that piled up at that scrapyard only something like 20 actually ever ended up getting scrapped. In my opinion, if we ever had something like that in the United States, and both the good luck and generosity that happened there we likely would’ve seen a few Hudsons Niagara’s, and possibly Hiawatha’s surviving as in the British example, numerous famous locomotives survive only because of that scrapyard. For example, numerous locomotives that have become famous on heritage railways in Britain owe their continued existence to that scrapyard, and the most famous example is that the steam engine used in the Harry Potter movies actually got saved there.

Wow, you certainly know your train history, don't know what more I can say. @@lucasquintanilla1673

@@JFLionelT-RailOperator you can chalk that up to me having been really bored during quarantine, and having nothing else to do but to look up stuff on the Internet. It’s also how I got into anime, since I had a lot of spare time on my hands.