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The story of TRAINS' 1975 Bicentennial diesel shoot
In the 1970s, most American railroads were arguably at their nadir, and many hadn't made serious public-relations efforts since the halcyon passenger-train days of two decades before. The nation's bicentennial year of 1976 was approaching, certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event, yet the lackluster railroad industry as a whole had no apparent plans to celebrate it, so the task of emphasizing the critical importance of railroads in the building of our nation fell to individual railroads, outside firms, and imaginative people.
Promoter Ross Rowland, who orchestrated the American Freedom Train tour of 1975-76, was one such person. Another was my boss, Harold A. Edmonson, books editor for Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS' publishing firm, in Milwaukee. By fall 1973, I'd been an associate editor under Edmonson for two years, and when you're only 25, as I was, time seems to crawl, so 1976 still seemed a long way off. Even in the dreary months of the winter of 1973-74, events commemorating America's 200th birthday were in the works throughout the country, from small towns to big cities, from mom-and-pop local businesses to major corporations.
A few roads were making their own Bicentennial gestures. The first was Seaboard Coast Line, which, when it "realized we were having a locomotive built that would bear the number 1776," as SCL advertising copy on the rear cover of November 1971 TRAINS stated, "offered us a genuine opportunity to reaffirm our faith in the principles of freedom and free enterprise that have given this country its strength and values."
General Electric delivered new SCL U36B locomotive 1776 - red-white-and-blue livery, carpeted control cab, and all - in June 1971, and SCL sent it out "to a working part of the railroad fleet ... but its greater destiny is a symbol of patriotism that will proudly fly its colors across the nation, calling on all industry to join in the Sprit of '76." Curiously, it was routinely operated as a trailing unit, to keep it clean. It also made a 35-stop, 39-day publicity tour of the SCL in August and September 1971.
This was followed by the "Spirit of '76" special train - SCL 1776 and three similarly repainted cars: Santa Fe steam-generator car 133,...