This never before seen chapter on loading coal trains with color film shot 50 years ago as well as fresh material from 1996 and January 2000. The setting is the beautiful Wasatch Mountain range and its punishing 2.4% grades where helpers are a way of life. The town of Helper, Utah was still a stronghold for Rio Grande units with showcase helper action and sets up to seven units!
The chapter shown here focuses on the Utah Railway that shared the tracks in the region.
Here's a review of the overall production...
Model Railroad News comments: "Charles Smiley Presents captures some of these moments from the past through heritage film and contrasting those scenes with rail traffic of today in "Reflections on Soldier Summit. This is an interesting collection of images and anyone who is a certified Rio Grande fan will want to watch it. And if you're not a Rio Grande fan, this DVD will make you at least a little bit sorry it's gone."
"Tracking the evolution of the railroad through various avenues, his images convey the awesome territory that the Rio Grande conquered, and the brute force of the trains that did it. One of the hallmarks of the Grande was its use of huge helper sets of six, seven, or more sixaxle diesels, sinister with their paint sootblackened by tunnel dwelling, prowling the twisting, turning rails. Modern yellow diesels of the alldevouring Union Pacific are shown on the same passes, and even though the UP is touted as wanting to avoid helpers, an SD90 and a pair of high horsepower GEs still need extra oomph to get their coal up the gradeand sure enough, it's black and orange diesels doing the pushing. Smiley showcases vintage Utah Railway ALCO locomotives, first early RSDs and later, Alligators off the Santa Fe, mostly still in yellow and blue."
This is an interesting collection of images and anyone who is a certified Rio Grande fan will want to watch it. And if you're not a Rio Grande fan, this DVD will make you at least a little bit sorry it's gone.