Phantom Rides Still Rollin'
The heritage trains that could, and did, prevail.
By: TW Editors 02/01/2009
The floor swings beneath your feet. Steam whistles toot. Train wheels clatter over the rail joints of a track. Your body rocks in the train carriage, as you are propelled through the picturesque countryside scenery of the Rocky Mountains, traveling from Leadville to Aspen, Colorado. All of a sudden, outlaws have come to rob you at gunpoint. The other passengers around you scream in terror. Fear instantly consumes your mind. And then, the clapping begins. You wipe tears of surprise from your eyes. Last time, you toured the scenic gold-bearing Black Hills of South Dakota; this robbery is an unexpected, but thrilling, twist. Three years after Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, this film of his has hit what was the IMAX of the 19th century: Hale’s Marvellous Tours of the World.
Luckily, we don’t have to rely on such cinematic inventions today to enjoy the many places and scenes enshrined in Old West history. The epitaph for the real rail experience could have brought us dejectedly back to these virtual voyages, known as Phantom Rides. Yet thanks to some wonderful, preservation-minded folks, we still have the luxury of riding around in heritage trains across the American West on tracks that once carried ores from legendary silver and gold rushes, as well as the pioneers who were carving lives for themselves on their patches of the frontier West.
Admittedly, George C. Hale was one such clever pioneer. The heroic, award-winning fire chief of Kansas City, Missouri, first introduced his moving panorama at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Its success led to a permanent installation at the Kansas City Electric Park the following year. When he released patents for others to put on his “illusion railroad ride,” more than 500 installations appeared across the U.S. and Canada by the end of summer 1906.
This simulated travelogue was not Hale’s first venture, but unlike his theatrical spectacle about firefighting, the tour had not gone up in flames after two nights of shows at the 1900 Paris Exposition. His rail “motion” picture was so successful that it eventually ended up in exotic locales such as Europe, South America, Mexico, South Africa and Hong Kong. Seemingly anyone could enjoy the 10-minute films sending them rushing through sequences that included Pike’s Peak, the Columbia River, Lookout Mountain, Niagara Falls, Borneo and Ireland. The tours remained popular until the novelty gave way to the nickelodeon, pretty much disappearing by 1909.
Why would Hale, who died in 1923 with reportedly half-a-million dollars to his name, dream up such an experience around railroading? Likely for the same reason that our Old West saviors have reopened abandoned railroad lines today: to educate Americans, and the world at large, about the historic role railroading played in this country’s history, and continues to play, in our culture.
Prior to 1871, less than 50,000 miles of track had been laid in the United States. By 1900, another 170,000 miles were added, with five transcontinental railroads connecting the Eastern states to the Pacific Coast (the first such railroad met at Promontory Point in Utah on May 10, 1869). Rough and hardy rail crews laid tracks across rivers, canyons, mountains and deserts. The 19th century heralded in with a rail system pretty much in place, truly opening up the settlement of the West. True, planes and automobiles may be able to get us to our Western destinations today, yet the experience of traveling is often lost in freeways and blue skies. And we don’t need cameramen strapped on cowcatchers to bring that experience to us. The real heritage trains await us.
Comments (1)
There are also many tourist railroads where people can get a taste of steam travel. Check your favorite bookstore for a guide.
Norm Crocker
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