Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 175: The Marlboro Unlimited

Starting point is 00:00:00 That's the same for me and the little one. She will have Serbian dual citizenship. So you know, that's safe on that front, you know. No right wing tendencies in Serbia. No. Thank God 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.

Starting point is 00:00:23 It's like, I pay my taxes 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. ALICE Yeah, off the roof of the embassy, you're like clinging to the skids of the helicopter, you know? SEAN No, this says, this says, you as citizen, you get me out of here, I want a seat, I don't want a stand, I want a seat! Just like, just like Chinook going overhead, like, excuse me. What's your in-flight menu like? The movies on this thing suck at just trying to get my own cracked 4K rip of fucking 1917 to work, like showing it to the pilot

Starting point is 00:00:56 so you can see the detail of immediately crashing into a hillside. Sorry, we only we only show Vietnam movies on this flight home. Yeah. So my wife, the lovely and talented and beautiful lady that she is, doesn't know the difference between Bridge on the River Kwai and Apocalypse Now. And refuses to watch either of them, I know. That's the- Oh my god. Bridge on the River Kwai is the one with the bridge. That's true.

Starting point is 00:01:21 Famously so, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of the thing. I mean, geographically it's not the hugest separation, I suppose. It's not like not being able to tell the difference between Apocalypse Now and, I dunno, The Guns of Navarone or something. Well, I think the thing is, she hates war movies. She hates war movies. It is.

Starting point is 00:01:42 They blew it up. No, that's not, you bastards blew it up, what is that, that's from Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes. Now Liam, you're doing it, so Rin's confused about it and you're confused about it. I don't know the difference, Charlton Heston haunts my dreams! Have you dropped this man? It's just Charlton Heston. Yeah, you remember that bit in Bridge Over the River Kwai where they were in that chariot

Starting point is 00:02:03 race and they're like whipping each other. JUSTIN 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 trirenes, oh my god. ALICE God, that, I just love that voice. ALICE Truly this was the bridge over the river kwai. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:19 JUSTIN But then we get confused with El Cid, which if we're going to really get into the Charlton Heston in depth and anyway. Yeah. Perfect. I'm not seeing my own waveform, which is a fun- Oh, it does that sometimes. Oh, that's a known issue. Yeah, Zencaster is the biggest piece of shit in the world.

Starting point is 00:02:37 Don't worry about it. I once tweeted at them. I was like, I think I just mentioned them. I was like, fix your fucking product. Like hadn't tagged them, so they had to name search themselves. And the CFO was like, we'll set up a call, and then they never did. ALICE & LIAM Oh, wow. That's interesting. ALICE & LIAM And now on their front page, they're like, we've got AI enabled tools and shit.

Starting point is 00:03:00 LIAM Maybe it was a Zencastr call, that's why it didn't work. ALICE Yeah, I can't wait for the random drop 45 minutes into this. JUSTIN Anyway, welcome to, well there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters. Which in and of itself is a disaster. With slides. I'm Justin Rosniak, I'm the person who's talking right now, my pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

Starting point is 00:03:26 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 McAnderson, 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. And with me are the two... not hostages, not hostages. Can't

Starting point is 00:03:48 say that clearly enough. I know I'm, you know, the next, the next in line of the, of the course, although I'm very excited to say that Devon, they are now a voiced co-host in the, in, thanks to our, a bit from a couple of episodes ago, which it will be, and God, I completely, no idea why I recorded this. I think there is another one in between the last one and this one. So hi, Devin, voiced member of the podcast now. No, my name is Gareth Dennis, my pronouns are he, him.

Starting point is 00:04:14 Oh yeah, that's awesome. As a guest. As 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, fuckps in and they just go no I cut them out man and I was just like oh fuck you Devin how dare you and we have a bonus guest who once again is not under the rest there's no bomb collar here no I'm I'm here willingly uh my name is Jay Bieskweichelhausen my pronouns are he and him and I've back, kindly, with no coercion at all.

Starting point is 00:04:45 Yes. Perfect. Very well done. Please ignore the beeping in the back of the mix. Also, I enjoyed badly disrespecting Gareth by like, cutting off half of his introduction. That's to be fair, that's how you know you've arrived on while there's a problem, and we'll be welcome back, because you just get talked over. That's to be fair, that's how you know you've arrived on while there's a problem and we'll be welcome back as you just get talked over. That's it.

Starting point is 00:05:05 So, what you see on the screen in front of you is a train going whoosh. And to be fair, it's going whoosh as fuck. It's definitely really going whoosh. Yeah. This looks like Locke-Megantique. Which I learned is not Lake Magentique. The copy reads, for those of you on audio, Marlboro Unlimited, the train, the trip, the gear.

Starting point is 00:05:33 Oh hell yeah, we're going to Flava 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 Marlboro Limited. Like the train for a long time. It took me until like this podcast that it's a play on like the Marlboro Limited, like this is the train is 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 it's the last clever thing that's going to happen.

Starting point is 00:06:00 Today, today we're going to talk about the infamous Marlboro Unlimited promotional train that never ran. Too cool for this world. Yes. Um, so I want to say I got a bunch of info on this from themetrains.com and also a trainweb.org site about ultradomes and also alaskarails., and then various public tobacco industry document piles, which those-

Starting point is 00:06:29 ALICE That they had to be, like, sued for, yeah. JUSTIN Yeah, exactly. The stuff that the court ordered them to produce, and the website is basically the equivalent of that scene in Pentagon Wars, where they just wheel in, y'know, one ton of documents in, like, y'know, banker boxes. ALICE It's like, oh, you want the documents about how we were knowingly giving kids cancer? Well fuck you, here's the train stuff too.

Starting point is 00:06:53 JUSTIN Exactly. Find it. Find it. PLEUGH. ALICE Someone who's a real historian should go and look this up, because this was just me, y know, searching for two days through, you know, a pile of submittals and meeting minutes and change orders to try and piece the story together. Imagine getting your PhD on the official train of smoking.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Yeah. I wanna say, so, Nova, you used to smoke. I did. I did. I used to smoke lageros predominantly, in fact you used to smoke. I did. I did. I used to smoke Marlboro's predominantly, in fact. Me too. Interesting. Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:30 Gareth... I didn't get this voice from anything other than Marlboro 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 seventeen to twenty-five clinging onto me and dragging that vocal range downwards. ALICE I'm still imagining the Oubliette scene from

Starting point is 00:07:55 Labyrinth, all those hands, but they're not hands, they're like cigarettes, just grabbing you and pulling you down. Yeah, that's it. ALICE Gross. Yeah. Horrifying. JUSTIN I would describe myself as a moderate smoker, I have a cigarette every 18 to 24 months.

Starting point is 00:08:08 ALICE And you hate it every time. JUSTIN Yeah. ALICE You are the person for whom all of the tobacco industry's numbers are designed for, you're the person for whom smoking isn't that bad and four out of five doctors recommend Camels or whatever. JUSTIN Exactly. five doctors recommend camels, or whatever. I was a heavy smoker, I was a two pack a day smoker, and, like, they did no favors for me. Don't smoke, kids.

Starting point is 00:08:33 LIAM Don't smoke. SEAN 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. ALICE You're better off, even once. So me too. ALICE Yeah, you're better off. That's not the point. The point is, where's my snooze train?

Starting point is 00:08:51 ALL LAUGH I just quit cold turkey and there's no cold turkey train either. I guess that's all trains. ALICE Oh, that can be arranged. I'm sure there's... In fact I'm positive there is a cold turkey train somewhere. Probably in Turkey. ALICE Yeah, Amtrak won't let us have it, but uh, when I... the plan will be revealed in due time.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Yes, Ragnar. RAKAN Yes. Oh. Well, I will say, before we talk about the cigarette train, we have to do the goddamn news. Oh boy. Welcome to the fucking... I fucking hate this cunt. The Hitler Zone.

Starting point is 00:09:32 It's the Hitler Zone. It's Hitler's time. Look, this inauguration was amazing. I'm sorry I said the word cunt, Mom, but he deserves it. I mean, listen, I'm gonna, I really like the bit that we jinned up last time where we have Devon cover all the stuff that we can't say, vocally, so let me be absolutely clear, I was hoping that somebody was gonna- Uh uh.

Starting point is 00:09:52 In this place, I was hoping they were all gonna- No. Yeah. And that didn't happen, instead, instead they're just still- I was rooting for the- You can't say that on YouTube. I, yeah, or like- I'm gonna have to take that out of the episode.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Uh, I was rooting for like some kind of- You can't say that on YouTube. I, yeah, well like- I'm gonna have to take that out of the episode. Uh, 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. Uh, and like, y'know, obviously none of that- At least someone could've tried, like, we need now. What if I'd left that in? Now I'm working everywhere. So, I'm trying to get a visa out of this federal government, so please, as much of that as

Starting point is 00:10:35 possible and leave like, two verbs, and nobody dead. So, yeah. 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. ALICE Trump back brackets gay brackets question mark? ALICE This motherfucker is going to remove all LGBT people from the military and he is saluting a man in assless chaps.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Which is, in itself, a little... Extremely confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Elon did, what is apparently not a Nazi salute according to... It's a Nazi salute. He didn't do it twice. Like, you are not this stupid, he did a Nazi salute, everybody saw it.

Starting point is 00:11:30 I think he was trying to make it more deniable. He looks like biting his lip because he's like horny, I guess. 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 turned like- He could probably be brewing himself up for it, because of how much of a fuss he made of it, right?

Starting point is 00:11:53 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 gotta stretch that bad boy out, you know? JUSTIN Well, some people were saying he did a Nazi salute because he had Asperger's. Which, let it be known, that is actually also a Nazi disease. So, you know, this is... SEAN Not gonna clarify that one any further. JUSTIN No, what a roll. Hans Asperger was a Nazi. SEAN Okay, good. not going to clarify that one any further. Hans Asperger was a Nazi. OK, good. We need to do that.

Starting point is 00:12:28 This is a train episode. If you just go. And that's over. No, no, no. So I like Melada Melania. I can never say her name right. I like the undertaker outfit she had on. The honey is hat is the most important part. I didn't know the Benadryl hat man was a woman.

Starting point is 00:12:47 I'm enjoying kind of like slightly surrealist, like, Tarseem directing the full 30s gangster look, that's something. 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, y'know? He got on stage and he signed like, 50 executive orders, all of which are about as terrible as you can imagine. The usual kind of focus on trans people, on like, DEI, whatever the fuck that's supposed to be, but y'know, you know what that's supposed to be.

Starting point is 00:13:23 You know what it means. Yeah, yeah. Well, he repealed the fucking Equal Opportunity Employment Act, which, I think that's supposed to be, but you know what that's supposed to be. ALICE You know what it means. ALICE Yeah, yeah. Well, he repealed the fucking Equal Opportunity Employment Act, which, I think that's pretty clear what the desire is there, and it's not about CIA officers wearing a rainbow lanyard to work, you know? JUSTIN A lot of these are just not gonna hold up in court, they're just gonna force organizations like the ACLU to waste a lot of money and time. ALICE Yes. I mean, I have thoughts on three, there's three things that I have thoughts on here. The

Starting point is 00:13:49 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 immaterial. It's just how much of a desperate for attention he is that really grants this. That's number one thing. But also he is actually a Nazi, of course. Number two thing is all the TERFs in the UK that were actually cheering on Trump. And this, at the same time as like all the abortion advice was taken off every

Starting point is 00:14:27 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 is, or at least every new citizen of the United States, all the kids born, are all gonna be classified as women, because the executive order said from conception, and we're all women from conception for like several weeks. ALICE 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 unilaterally repeal the Fourteenth Amendment and end birthright citizenship.

Starting point is 00:15:11 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 any lawyer could even claim that it was. So, we'll see where that goes. All of the other stuff? Yeah, it's not even like the Fourteenth Amendment that's the issue, I thought birthright citizenship was in just straight up the constitution. Well, I... Is it first? First? I don't know the... I don't remember. I thought first amendment?

Starting point is 00:15:46 What's... No, no, no, no, no, what is first amendment? Freedom of speech. Oh shit. Freedom of speech. Oh shit. The true religion of assembly. No, maybe it's...

Starting point is 00:15:54 The fourteenth amendment and like... It's a citizenship clause. It's a citizenship clause. Okay. That's the fourteenth amendment. In any case, right, 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, and in the meantime, factually rather than legally, many people's lives can be made miserable

Starting point is 00:16:16 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 ability to 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. I think that's true for anyone. Yeah. It's real easy to get Irish citizenship.

Starting point is 00:16:43 I mean, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, it really 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 gonna leave the World Health Organization, which, as someone who is married to a healthcare worker, I just... Yeah, you just...

Starting point is 00:17:07 Congratulations, China! Congratulations, China, on your victory. Congratulations, boys. 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 to violate every article and amendment of the constitution, yeah. Except the second, except the second.

Starting point is 00:17:30 Except the second. That's the only one that counts. I just think that, I just, yeah, I think a lot about the words from the, again, I know I do awful lot of crossposting, from the T TF episode, the Devon report, where cohosts in the behind the scenes Devon and the Unova and Abbey 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 you, 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.

Starting point is 00:18:05 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 keeping yourself alive and keeping your own motivation and will up, and it's also partly just like, you know, whether that goes from that to keeping a go bag 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 this stuff, I've been talking about it.

Starting point is 00:18:40 And yeah, it's... Four years is a long time, but I have no idea how this ends, and maybe we will see Trump getting executed on the White House lawn by the loyalist troops of woke General Milley. So, who knows. ALICE HILLSWORTH I've been. Strong chance he gets executed by Trump supporters. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:19:00 ALICE HILLSWORTH The strongest Trump supporters. But also, he might as well 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 a huge amount longer. Lips to God's ears. Especially not now that he's deep defunded the NIH. Well quite. Yeah, that's very true. The thing I was going to say, the last thing I wanted

Starting point is 00:19:19 to say on this is, is there a 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, when he, 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, if that, when that happens, it will happen. There is no succession really. There's not some other goon who's going to come in who'll manage to do as good a job of unifying everyone that he does right. And that, there's some hope in that.

Starting point is 00:19:51 Yeah. I mean they'll do auditions, but yeah. They'll have to like hook them up to like the eternal life machine, like the God Emperor in Warhammer. Ten thousand MAGA psychers a day. I mean, listen, 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,

Starting point is 00:20:18 we will outlive Trump. Like, pretty much all of us will. Yeah, I'm right. Yes. And you will get to see that man die. So, you know. ALICE Oh, that's a nice thing to think about. ALICE Hopefully sooner rather than later. But... RILEY And also, Tesla's gonna go to shit, because he relies

Starting point is 00:20:35 on China and a lot of Europe, and Tesla is, I have a suspicion, that's a company that is very suddenly gonna start getting valued more realistically fairly soon. I suspect that's also be nice to see Elon Musk go from most rich to extremely not most rich guy. There's some minor company. He's a guy who has a lot of money to the Saudis. Someone pulls a trading places on him. And outliving them all will be Melania, wearing precisely this outfit.

Starting point is 00:21:06 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 gonna be bad, right? It was like a, sort of like the full emergency alert system thing being like, there's 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 was just like, oh, okay, I wasn't expecting him to nuke somebody this quickly, but... I guess we're just going with it, fine.

Starting point is 00:21:47 And then I actually did look at my phone and I was like, you were telling me that I might get falling roof tiles landing on me. JUSTIN Yeah. Uh, Melania, just do us all a solid, you know, Slovenian power, you know, that's what we can do it. ALICE Yeah. F*** the sleep. F*** that man in his sleep. That's for when Mir, we can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it.

Starting point is 00:22:05 We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it.

Starting point is 00:22:13 We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it.

Starting point is 00:22:21 We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. So many words, YouTube words said here, thank you, Devon, for your service. And keeping me in my employment. JUSTIN You do have to look on the bright side, we will get to see some more insane, millennial White House decorations. ALICE Okay, that's true. I will say that, that lady has a clearer sense of, like, Christmas aesthetic, yeah. Yes. Evil Christmas? So you're for Evil Christmas?

Starting point is 00:22:47 Evil Christmas is great. 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. Or... That's the funniest thing. You still believe in Santa, cause at ten it's head, or... That's the funniest thing. You still believe in Santa, because at ten it's marginal, right? It's marginal. Four more years of that.

Starting point is 00:23:13 We gotta be able to laugh at the funny shit. It's all horrifying. But at least there's some stupid, horrifying comedy. To be scrounged out of it. Talking of stupid, horrifying comedy. To be scrounged out of it. Yeah, you have to. Talking of stupid, horrifying comedy. Ooh. Yes.

Starting point is 00:23:30 Ooh. The setup. Mr. Space Rocketman's Starship 7 exploded on re-entry. Masterful gambit. Masterful. Yeah, that's real deals. Yeah. They caught... Yeah, that's real deals. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:46 They caught the booster though, that's supposed to be the hard part, but yeah, re-entry, nah, it didn't work. I think re-entry was exit. Really? Yeah. It hit Mac, the second stage just blew up. Oh, interesting, okay. Pop.

Starting point is 00:24:02 Technically this is an MLRS, so, you know, send SpaceX to Ukraine. You had to reroute a bunch of airliners and crap. It was... That's a new fear for flying. Even though I'm not flying over the Caribbean a lot, but just like, oh, sorry, you're gonna get hit by an exploded rocket. I feel like... It just one wing gets taken off by Elon's anti-woke

Starting point is 00:24:25 Mars colony ship that gets up to 30,000 feet and hits a 737. RILEY That or all the Starlink satellites, all their batteries run out at the same time, they all de-orbit simultaneously, and what is it, like, 175,000 half-meter sized satellites just destroy aviation in one fell swoop. That's the other alternative. ALICE Just kind of, like, mortaring the entire world with a bunch of garbage can sized satellites. Giving yourself Kessler syndrome, but inside the atmosphere.

Starting point is 00:24:58 ALICE Yeah, it's way harder to do that, y'know? It's like letting loose a bunch of unmanned Cessnas to just fly around randomly. In Atmosphere Kessler Syndrome 2025. Yeah. I love that, that's all down to t-shirt sessions, love that. Phew. Yeah, there she goes, look at that.

Starting point is 00:25:25 Yeah. I don't know what else to say about this one, other than it's funny that Elon's rocket blew up. It is. I watch for all of his failures, you know? 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

Starting point is 00:25:47 in Texas that he's somehow allowed to keep blowing up. Well, I mean, essentially it does blow up there. That's what the rockets do. That's true. Controlled explosion. Yeah. How much of this expensive titanium, is now being is now like? littered through the rooms

Starting point is 00:26:08 People Yeah, God is I got he's such a fucking cunt It's like the funniest thing when they were first doing the prototype of this They literally went and contracted the construction like a water tower company It's like these guys know how to do stainless steel. I just went and get whatever company puts up the ones that say save Ferris or whatever. They're just like, they'll build my rocket.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Mason- 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, all of us here, and quite a lot of you folks listening knew he was a fuckin' wee shanner. You all knew he was a wee dancing crit. ALICE Yeah, I never liked him. I can genuinely catch that one in now. I have never liked or admired or trusted that man. LIAM Never met a nice South African.

Starting point is 00:26:58 ALICE Shout out to Pierre Novelli. How you doing, boy? To be fair, I've never met him either. So, you know, you're right. Same, same. Let's, let's, yeah, 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 the goddamn news. We need to make some money by you buying tickets to our shows." ALICE Oh yeah, we need that! To pay our rent, and to pay for goods and services.

Starting point is 00:27:35 METE That's the most Monopoly guy Ross has ever sounded. Speaking of money, as he rubs his hands together and falls back into like a bath of coins. Yeah. Okay. The current state of the ticket sales, the two Somerville 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.

Starting point is 00:28:11 What do we need to do at the Fillmore? We need to fill more seats. Fill more seats. What do we need to do at whatever the DC venue's called? Nothing, they're all sold out. Yeah. Tuesday on N1C. You're done.

Starting point is 00:28:23 You're stuck. I'm so fucking excited for this. Yeah. Tuesday on NYC. You're stuck. I'm so fucking excited for this. Yeah. This is, I, ugh, gonna be enjoying watching everyone get very excited for the tour. It's like Times Square. That's in New York City, where all the stuff happens. 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 a dragon tree smashing

Starting point is 00:28:53 into the world race. So yeah, New York, New York, I wanna be a part of it, you know? And, uh, yeah. The biggie. The biggie. Old town. Oh, the New World Show is coming. a part of it, y'know? And, uh... It can be a headache. Yeah. The big... Tall town. Oh, the New Orleans show is coming.

Starting point is 00:29:08 Wow, the windy city. I don't know how the fuck we're gonna book that out. America's second city. The charm city. Bean town. I will play a fuckin' house show in New Orleans if you'll have us. I don't give a shit. They say New York is the Chicago of shit. JUSTIN They say, New York is the Chicago of America.

Starting point is 00:29:25 ALICE I think it's really funny to- LIAM Who's the sixth borough now?! ALICE To do all of this shit and then not play Chicago. LIAM We're working on it! We're fucking working on it! JUSTIN Working on it. Stay tuned for that. Um.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Ah. Yeah. 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 just doesn't roll over. Turns out it's actually like a loose file and it does have a stack overflow there, yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:08 JUSTIN Yeah. Yeah. ALICE That's why I show my Norwegian card. That's gonna be a problem if we go to Minnesota, though. I had to carry two passports, like I'm trying to go to... You know, I... JUSTIN You've seen that in some Top Gear. Yeah. AL. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:28 Get the passports, get the other passports. 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 to if you have an Israel? I picked 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.

Starting point is 00:30:54 And uh... JUSTIN You didn't buy a condo there, so you cost them money. ALICE Yeah, I just... ALICE It's like, you went to Israel's house, but you left an upper decker there, and you kind of ate all the snacks out of the fridge, so like, to be honest, you were a guest there and that's not great, but like, you were more of an inconvenience.

Starting point is 00:31:14 GARY I am always more of an inconvenience. Sorry, my wife is here, you can't see it. GARRETT I can, actually. GARY No, but the hogs can't see it. ALICE Rin's excitement of 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?

Starting point is 00:31:36 No. No one knows my plan. We'll see you in April, Jay! We'll see you in April, Jay! 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 and undisclosed his location in undisclosed.

Starting point is 00:31:56 Yeah, you were there. I know. Oh, my God. OK, bye. She brought me more waters. I drank like six seltzer, so I'm going to have to piss at some point. I'm going to be rods. But I credit and her siblings met Jay, who gave us many coke zeros, and they were just like, he's so nice

Starting point is 00:32:18 and he's so handsome and he's so tall. They were like they were just falling all over him like he's not that great. Wow. Wow. 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.

Starting point is 00:32:36 God, yeah. When you showed up and are just like Ross, didn't even get on the train with me in Philly. Yeah, I was just like, Ross, didn't even get on the train with me in Philly. Yep, it was just me. 33 minutes. 33 minutes. Speaking of... I don't care. I don't care.

Starting point is 00:32:51 Speaking of... No, fuck you! Cranes. We should do the episode for the nice people. Oh yeah. Hello nice people. Sorry, I needed a half hour being cheered up by the company of my friends, cause I saw a bit of Conclave for the second time, and any time I see that movie it makes me real

Starting point is 00:33:13 sad. This is also why the Catholicism episode is taking fifteen years to do. We're all confronting some shit personally about it, alright? SEAN Yeah, also, it's like the Katrina episode, which I swear to God I'm writing. ALICE We want to do it right, and also, we all have trauma, so leave us alone. This is a handsome train.

Starting point is 00:33:35 It is. ALICE Rock Island, baby. RILEY Yeah, Rock Island Line, it's a mighty good road. Rock Island Line is the road to ride. RILEY Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific. Notably, several hundred miles from the Pacific. You'll note that New York doesn't have the Rock Island, because it's an inferior city,

Starting point is 00:33:51 that we're very happy to play. Please buy those tickets. Chicago also doesn't have the Rock Island anymore, to be fair. I think the latest people to have the Rock Island was Mississippi, because some foamer bought the trademark and named their short line the Rock Island, or something like that, and just painted it red. People will always be doing that. There's a lot of islands with a lot of rocks.

Starting point is 00:34:10 The first question we must ask is, what is a gallery car? Can you look at pictures in it? Wes Anderson type beat, where you're inside a beautiful car and it's full of paintings and art and sculpture and stuff. JUSTIN I wouldn't say beautiful. Passable? JUSTIN These two cars that this Rock Island line e-unit are hauling are gallery cars.

Starting point is 00:34:35 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. Mason- 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? Steve- Well, it's the Midwest, so no tunnels to be found.

Starting point is 00:35:06 Yeah. Little bit of bridges. That's about it. ALICE You got that signal bridge in the back. You could do this thing another level higher if you wanted to. JUSTIN Yeah, that's true. That's pretty tall. ALICE Yeah, but you could tunnel through the Rock Island, wherever that is.

Starting point is 00:35:18 JUSTIN You could have Steven Seagal running on top of this thing. ALICE More on that later. ALICE Is that for a shoutout? Oh god, okay. Oh god. ALICE Jesus Christ. JUSTIN 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.

Starting point is 00:35:40 And they do this by means of something wacky. ALICE Oh, it's a bunk bed train, but with seats not beds. Yes. Just a conductor doing some Cirque du Soleil shit, suspended from the thing, just sliding through the ziplines. Do you appreciate my art? I very briefly have to talk about the one time we did double decker trains within GB Loading Gauge, and it was Bullied who did

Starting point is 00:36:05 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, things of this nature. ALICE It's getting kicked really hard in the face anytime you move. JUSTIN The Long Island Railroad also had some with a similar configuration, where, y'know, one booth was two steps up, the other one was two steps down.

Starting point is 00:36:34 ALICE Knee knockers? JUSTIN The knee knockers, yeah. Let you see up ladies' skirts. ALICE Oh, no. JUSTIN Yeah, exactly. ALICE So, the gallery car. ALICE The real kind of bridging the generations thing of seeing up a lady's skirt there, of being like, that's bawdy and seaside postcard fun, too, that's a serious sexual offense.

Starting point is 00:36:57 So, it's hard to photograph how the gallery car works. The lower level, you have sort of two by two seating. Lower level's normal, basically. 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.

Starting point is 00:37:27 ALICE 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. JUSTIN It sort of makes sense when you think about it in a very 1950s way, though. 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

Starting point is 00:37:49 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 tickets. It's easy. On knowledge and belief, the United States of America has one thing in abundance, and that's space. Don't drive it. No, it's... What's that, too? But like, also space.

Starting point is 00:38:10 Things bigger in America, a meme not for no reason, right? Just make the- F-350's superiority, yeah! Make the fuckin' train longer, man, or do like an actual double decker thing. But then a conductor has to walk longer. Higher, more conductors, what the fuck do I care? That's Keynesianism, what's that saying? That's expensive and their union.

Starting point is 00:38:30 That's expensive. Expensive and their union. You can't say that. Mmm, okay. So all these have the same basic format, you have this center vestibule, that's the main door to the car, um, 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,

Starting point is 00:38:58 the mezzanine level, and you can sit up there. Um, these are, so the, the, and then in the middle of the car above the vestibule, that's where the air conditioning is. Um, 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. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:29 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 while. Washington, D.C. had some for a little while. Nashville uses some old, former Chicago ones now. VRE 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

Starting point is 00:39:51 until we got actual good electric trains. Yeah, the one thing about, but 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 Chialis, which is SNCF's consulting division, they actually started to send the conductor

Starting point is 00:40:11 up through each mezzanine individually. Which was very stupid. ALICE And a labour creating device. JUSTIN Yeah, a labour creating device. Dumb French people. Um, anyway. Don't understand how things work. Dumb French people. Um, anyway. Don't understand how things work.

Starting point is 00:40:27 ALICE I'd be interested to see what the rollover strength of these are, compared to more normal shaped vehicles. Because I just... Just, uh, just don't fall over. Just don't do it. JUSTIN They're all post-Naperville, so I think they're fairly beefy. ALICE I was about to say, I'm not sure if anyone has made one of these roll over. Well, we're gonna be the first.

Starting point is 00:40:48 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 But.

Starting point is 00:41:03 We have But. Oh, it's on the screen, Pullman. Yeah, and standard but pull the standard Oz Grove know what's the company that made the ones in the Federal Express route all's good no I was good yeah I was good Bradley they were pretty much gone by now but there was also if there were some smaller crappier 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, and sorry, also British Rail Engineering Limited manufactures vehicles that were in

Starting point is 00:41:32 the US in the middle of the 20th century. We've been selling our Pacers over fairly soon after this. Oh right, yeah, that's true. Christ, did we? I didn't realize we were a net exporter of misery that late into the 20th century. No, I got to see it at the Connecticut Trolley Museum once. Oh yeah. Wait, it's still in the northern US?

Starting point is 00:41:54 I thought we'd sent a case to Indianapolis, hoping they'll like them just for the name. 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. Episode three, waz three. ALICE & JUSTIN Yeah. ALICE Anyway. Episode three, why was that? ALICE Yeah, long time ago.

Starting point is 00:42:09 ALICE Back then I didn't have all the osmosis, so I didn't even know what a train was. JUSTIN So, uh, yeah. Bud made the cars out of stainless steel. Pullman Standard made the cars out of regular steel, but also sometimes stainless steel. ALICE Stainful steel. JUSTIN Yeah. Stainful steel. Yeah, Stainful steel. Close, disgusting steel. Take a look at Pullman's standards, disgusting gallery car. It's like, oh, it's got mildew on it.

Starting point is 00:42:36 They both built gallery cars, for what it's worth. Yes. I think Pullman did more and but both still do and both of those built in the 50s are still running in Chicago. Yes. Incredible. So you know railroad passenger traffic dropped due to a variety of reasons, bad service, bad regulations, bad investments, 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

Starting point is 00:43:10 how the new passenger rail customers are acting, right? People buying passenger cars. They're either doing something like M-Trac where they have pooled together every piece of existing passenger car, 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:43:41 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. And the thing about products from Bud or Pullman Standard is, you know, they were usually a little bit premium. You know, they're not, they're not the bottom of the market. Admittedly, there are duopoly, but it was not difficult for other manufacturers to sort of come in and try and undercut them as a loss leader. Yeah, calf.

Starting point is 00:44:20 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 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 track 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, M-Trac and transit agencies are forced to purchase American made trains, just as Budd and Pullman Standard both exit the market.

Starting point is 00:44:56 ALICE. Whoops. Beautiful. What a beautiful set of incentives and responses. JUSTIN. Yeah, so, Budd and Pullman Standard both exit the market in the late 1980s, after filling their last absolutely massive orders. I think for Budd it was Subway cars of some kind, Pullman Standard it was the Superliner

Starting point is 00:45:14 2s. I wanna say Budd it was the CTA cars, 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 decades, so it was like, time to close up shop, I guess. That's exactly the same as what's happening in the UK at the same time. And your punishment is no more product ever. But there's still people who want to buy new train cars, right? So we have this flood of

Starting point is 00:45:41 manufacturers. Hooray! That come in. Efficient. Yeah, so, these two regulations, low bid and buy American, both resulted in extremely expensive cars from overseas being the norm. Okay. Well done, boys.

Starting point is 00:45:57 Alright. You know, no vibe. Sorry, real quick, I got a game for you. What do you think that M in MBB stands for? Oh, MBB... Mmm, the BB puts me in mind of all the German-speaking train companies. Correct. So...

Starting point is 00:46:17 What's a German company starting with M? Mercedes? No. Not Mercedes. It's Messerschmitt. It's Messerschmitt. No, no, no. Fuck it. Mercedes? Nah. Not Mercedes. Um. It's Messerschmitt.

Starting point is 00:46:25 It's Messerschmitt. Nooo. Fuckers. I mean, listen, one of my other guesses here was, um, because I know Messerschmitt kept, obviously, as from this, making stuff after the war, uh, Mengele, as in Josef Mengele, like literally his family's company, still make like, combine harvesters and shit, and tractors. Oh, dear.

Starting point is 00:46:48 Did they change the name at least? No! You can still buy one! Yeah, it's brand recognition, you know. So, 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. What?

Starting point is 00:47:07 It was a gag. So right, Jay, what that was, you see, was I took the BF 109, which is a no name. And the HST. Combine with the HST. No, it was the 125. Combine the two of them in as a bit. But didn't didn't didn't land. I didn't know. I thought it was pretty good. They did show up, they made exactly one type of rail car for the Boston area. It kicked ass, and they never made another rail car in the US again.

Starting point is 00:47:34 Yeah, okay, fantastic. The sun is still running. Oh god. Yeah, so you have like, Nip and Shiro comes in, they make uh- Sorry, I want to take that again. Nip and Shario. There we go. They come in, they start building new gallery cars.

Starting point is 00:47:47 You got Bombardier coming in. They make new double deck cars. Messerschmitt, they make those nice cars for the MBTA. Hyundai Rotem makes double decker cars for the T and also for what you would call it. Zapda. Not. No, it was Mark. Mark, that's right. I thought you guys used Rotem cars. Yeah, we did get the Rotem Silverliner 5s, yes.

Starting point is 00:48:13 But 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 Mifursa 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 the uh, you know, the M threes for, uh, Metro North. The fun part is, um, of these companies, I believe, uh, most of these are producing Bud or Pullman standard designs with Bud or Pullman standard technology under license.

Starting point is 00:48:58 Um, 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. So who holds that license then? 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 Pullman is also Bombardier or Alstom now.

Starting point is 00:49:19 Yes. Which is... Because of course. But Mafferra saidifasa was the Brazilian license builder for Bud. Oh, I see. So they already had the license from when they existed and then they just kept. Exactly. Conning was the license holder for Australia. Tokyo was the license holder for Japan.

Starting point is 00:49:35 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 Mifasa cars, they clearly like share components with Bud cars. They're basically just Bud cars. Just Bud cars. And they look great as a result. Bud knew what they were doing. And I love the look of those Mifasa 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

Starting point is 00:50:06 based in foreign state code FN. So, you know, they have to, 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, closer to where the contract is, you know, rinse and repeat over and over again. M- It's a very efficient way to distribute resources. Itinerant.

Starting point is 00:50:45 Like, train builder. Yeah. And the nomadic visuals 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 have a small commuter railroad, you only need a couple of cars. Nah, sorry, we can't do that. That's impossible. Maybe you can buy some used cars. But as discussed

Starting point is 00:51:14 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 Railcar. Like the BTK killer? Good question. Dennis Raider getting into a side gig, aside from all the murder, where he's like, I'm gonna build rail cars.

Starting point is 00:51:46 ALICE 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. And allowed you to travel in it. JUSTIN This is, I believe, a Pullman Standard Superdome. ALICE Getting Superdome in the Pullman standard. And it's an Alaska Railroad car as well. She's super on my door till I call, man. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:52:13 We're gonna talk about the Alaska Railroad a lot today. Hell fucking hell. JUSTIN 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, but most cruises stuck to the Alaskan panhandle, right? Usually you left Vancouver, you stopped in like Ketchikan and Juneau, got as far north

Starting point is 00:52:39 as Skagway, then you turned around. The one I took a long, long, long time ago also stopped in Wrangel, I think that's usually off the beaten path, that town was a shithole. No offense to anyone in Wrangel who listens to this podcast, I'm sure you also know that. If you wanted to... I like the double down. Had one store. You liked San Pierre Mucalata, that had one store. Yeah, that's a good point actually.

Starting point is 00:53:21 All I know about Alaskan small towns that size is that they have a store that sells mattresses. I've learned this from a podcast that I enjoy listening to. Thank you. So I take it it was a mattress selling shop. No, no, no. It was kind of like a... It was kind of like a...

Starting point is 00:53:37 Oh yeah, that was silly, yes. If you wanted to go into the interior of Alaska to go see Denali, or go meet Sarah Palin, you boarded a bus in Skagway. ALICE She's from like twenty minutes north of Anchorage. JUSTIN 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

Starting point is 00:54:09 Alaska Highway, with no surfaces, 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. ALICE So I'm just, I'm stuck on Skagway, because sounds like a word for the the seam on my testicles. It sounds like a location in Borderlands six. It's actually it's actually a really nice, pretty little town. Looks beautiful. Well, yeah. White House and you've come out in Italy and Skagway. I do apologize for that.

Starting point is 00:54:41 And if you live there, you know that. Yeah. Strong opinions on towns I do apologize for that. And if you live there, you know that. Strong opinions on towns in the Alaska panhandle on this podcast. It's rich coming from a guy who grew up in Inveruri. I will give you that. It's okay. So anyway, you know, Raider was aware of an underused and now state-owned asset, the Alaska Railroad.

Starting point is 00:55:08 If cruise ships bypassed Skagway and went a little further, to the much less scenic town of Whittier, that's the town where everyone lives in one building. ALICE Yes! Okay, yeah, I know about this. Because Nova mentioned it in the previous episode I mentioned. RILEY It's so cool how the list of facts about Alaska is so limited. All I know comes from a very recent episode of No Custom Acts, that's my entire Alaska knowledge, that's it.

Starting point is 00:55:33 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 Trump is now back to Mount McKinley Oh my god The National Park is still Denali though. That's a good point. Yeah You hear Florida's already the Florida Weather Service is already calling it the Gulf of America Fuck you!

Starting point is 00:56:01 That's embarrassing for them. Before 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 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.

Starting point is 00:56:29 You can enjoy the beautiful scenic Fairbanks then return home by air. So Raider rehabilitated these four ex-Milwaukee Road Superdome 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. So he built a business on this called Tour Alaska,

Starting point is 00:56:57 and eventually he sold it to Princess Cruises. But he wasn't done yet, right? Because there was a flaw in the Superdomes. They weren't big enough. And they had this big- I was getting Superdome. Yeah, the Superdome actually not super enough. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:14 There's this big panel on top, and the way 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 need a new type of train car that rectifies this. JUSTIN The Ultra Dome! ALL Yeah! JUSTIN Fucking Alex Garner.

Starting point is 00:57:34 JUSTIN So the concept is very simple, you take an old, busted gallery car, you cut the roof off, you extend it 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 passenger cars ever built. Unless you like count like, I don't know, articulated diners or something like that. We don't. No, we don't. No, fuck those guys. These make the full use of American loading gauge.

Starting point is 00:58:10 I bet they do. Yeah. You know, a lot of a lot of a lot of double decker cars. 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. I mean, you can see there's a superliner to the left and the superliners on that bottom left image. Superliners are big ass railroad car and taking a photo can see clear over the roof.

Starting point is 00:58:39 I mean, this is epic. Good God, do I want to be in this. I assume that they're 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. Oh, okay. Noted.

Starting point is 00:59:04 Just don't think too too hard about how, like, the frames and shit are all, like, factory, they're still running. incredible. we'll get to that later. um. ooh, okay. noted. just don't think too too hard about how, like, the frames and shit are all like, 50s commuter railroad cars. yeah! y'know, unless you need to be full-utorially tested. what's it gonna run into, a moose? that's what the locomotive is for.

Starting point is 00:59:15 yeah, that's a good point. if we don't have a cowcatcher, we have a moosecatcher. no, you're not catching that fucking thing, you've got a moose obliterator. yeah. the first order of cars is a mo cowcatcher, we have a moose catcher. You're not catching that fucking thing, you've got a moose obliterator. 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 the lower floor and dining above.

Starting point is 00:59:45 No, you don't understand. I need to see a Cuss-A-Way-Dawling-Kindersley-style illustration of this motherfucker immediately. Full DK book dedicated to this vehicle solely. You can see here, this is the elevator right here. It was just a platform that went up and down, It was for wheelchairs. That's good. Still cool. Yeah, and then it had like a narrow spiral staircase otherwise. But yeah, you've got not just fine dining, but also luxury shopping on rails.

Starting point is 01:00:14 I don't know what you need the line for. Yeah, that one doesn't even move. Yeah, exactly. This line rolls around. This could also operate alongside standard single level equipment, unlike the roughly, you know, equivalent M-Track superliners, which required this special transition car if you wanted to hook it up to normal stuff. Right.

Starting point is 01:00:35 Yeah, the one these were just chucked onto the back. These are 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. 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 the Taurus that they make loads of money,

Starting point is 01:01:02 right? Sure. So these are big successes. So Raider's like, we could probably sell more of these cars. So he founds his own company, Raider Railcar, and decides, we're gonna design the most late 80s cocaine train cars imaginable. ALICE & LIAM Yeah! Oh Jesus! The cow attack of train cars?

Starting point is 01:01:21 Yeah. Oh my god, but it's taken the furniture out of like, my great auntie's house from 1992. Yeah, grandmother Agnes had this chair, this is stupid. I actually, 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.

Starting point is 01:01:47 You can see anything he wanted. Yeah. Yeah. This is small place restaurants, but the 80s, yeah. Yeah, exactly. 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 and it's got a dining area and it's got, you know, again, you can look down the hole and see the people

Starting point is 01:02:13 below. Yeah. Mason- This is very, this shows who this is pitching to though, right? Because this is actually very nostalgic, this is super nostalgic. This is like kind of old timey sort of saloon type stuff for people who are used to cruising around or going to like slow bars that look like this. So it's kind of interesting in a way. You can see who the market was at the time. Jason Kuznicki 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 were the only cars available. But it was because all of the, you know, this was

Starting point is 01:02:47 when the boomers first started getting money and they had remembered their train trips and things from their youth and now wanted to do it again, but fancy. Yeah. It's when Heritage Railways in the UK started growing quite rapidly. Yeah, exactly. This boomers got the money. 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'd imagine.

Starting point is 01:03:19 Yeah. I can be the guy. I can be that guy, yeah. I got this. I'm so awake. And Raider says you can do all kinds of stuff for these cars. You can do sleeping cars, you can do coaches, you can do cars with balconies, you can do cars with mezzadines, downstairs lounges, upstairs lounges, any harebrained idea you have, Raider railcar could supply.

Starting point is 01:03:43 They were just putting anything on rails at this point. I don't just mean this company, I mean, the government's like, what if we ship nuclear weapons around just at random, and this guy's like, what if we ship grand pianos around basically at random. You gotta nail that shit down. And so, you know, Raider quickly carves out a niche for itself and building like luxury railroad cars, you know, a couple of years, 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

Starting point is 01:04:24 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. Um, even eventually the Alaska railroad orders some of their own cars because they were sick of hauling around the cruise lines cars. You know, because this train out of Whittier was like now pulling out with like 14

Starting point is 01:04:51 cruise line cars attached to it. Oh wow. But Raider wants people to know they could do more, right? I bet he does. Through the massive pile of cocaine on his desk that would put the Scarface to shame, yeah. And I will note again, some of the cars in this image are actually from the successor company Colorado Railcar.

Starting point is 01:05:08 That's their successor company. Why, what happened? That's the second successor company. We'll get to why there was a successor company in a bit. The other connection this company has, which I think is important, is they supplied the cars for... Under Siege 2! Under Siege 2! Dark territory. Oh my god. important, is they supplied the cards for Underscene's 2 Dark Territory.

Starting point is 01:05:25 It's the episode of Kill James Bond that I'll be on at some point in the next, sometime. ALICE Oh yeah, it'll happen. Believe me, it'll happen. I love this poster, by the way. You know, like, he's clinging onto the side of this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,

Starting point is 01:05:42 this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this STAINFUL STEEL going at like, some speed. STAINFUL STEEL. And he's still- That's stainless. Oh, okay, well, so, that much the best of them. And Serving Face. Like, really, put together, y'know, kinda like, mid-career seagull. It's really funny looking at the train in this as like a train nerd. Cause you can really see they tried to make it look like brand new Amtrak, Super Linus,

Starting point is 01:06:03 whatever. But they didn't quite. It's just this weird ass, cheap looking uncanny valley. Shitty gallery cars up front. They added, I understand this is supposed to be stainless steel fluting here, but they actually used tin roof material. Got to hit that budget, man. Yeah. Um. Gotta hit that budget, man. Y'know, these are just really shitty gallery cars that Raider owned, dressed up to look

Starting point is 01:06:30 nicer, repainted, 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. It's gotta be. Yeah. Technically making this a skateboard. There's one-

Starting point is 01:06:44 God, that's the coolest skateboard. It's both Technically making this a skateboard. There's one... God, that's the coolest skateboard. It's both technically and legally a skateboard. Let's see a kickflip that, Steve. Yeah. But yeah, they supply the whole train. Most of the cars were scrapped after the film, but not all of them. We'll get to that in a bit. So that's the train portion to start out with, that's the context.

Starting point is 01:07:05 Now we have to talk about smoking. It's a cool thing that presidents do. ALICE If only it were good for you, you know, but science hasn't got there yet. It's not likely to now that Trump's paused basically all research in the US. And so it's a great shame. JUSTIN Shut down the cigarette that's good for your project. I hope the National Institutes for Health are like, one day away from a real breakthrough

Starting point is 01:07:31 on the cigarette that's good for you project. Because, like, you know, it's like David Lynch, RIP, said about smoking, and it's a guy who died of smoking in large part, but like, all we want as an addict 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. And... SEAN Yeah, they're gonna...

Starting point is 01:07:53 Do you guys remember Premier Cigarettes? No. It was a smokeless cigarette that R.J. 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 researchers straight to the face, this tastes like shit. But yes, we are, that was in 88, so there's been 37 years of working on the cigarette

Starting point is 01:08:20 that's good for you. So we'll get there. We'll get back to say, 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 them in a pack, you smoke it, you feel a little nice. It looks cool if you're in high school. You know.

Starting point is 01:08:41 ALICE I think FDG looks pretty cool there too. ALICE You die instantly. Yeah. Yeah. Having it on a stick does make you look cool. Worth pointing out, the filters are complete pseudoscience, they make absolutely no improvement. They don't do anything, yeah. They don't do anything, that was an invention of the cigarette industry to make you think that cigarettes were healthy and it really worked.

Starting point is 01:09:01 Stop shooting at girls, shut shut up you joyless dick. Yeah. Nah, I think we should bring back having a big long holder like your FDR. Yeah, like Cruella De Vil, that's always the vibe. Yeah, you get the way back to Cruella De Vil. Learn to dip. Dip is good for you. They've invented the dip that is good for you. Copenhagen Wintergreen long time baby.

Starting point is 01:09:25 So yeah, cigarettes are are they're bad for you and they're not. Okay. 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. Philip Morris sponsor our podcast. We're going to have to furnish this tour somehow. Philip Morris, sponsor our podcast. ALICE We're gonna have to furnish this tour somehow, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, are we?

Starting point is 01:09:51 RILEY So, anyway. Cigarettes. In order to get people to smoke them you need to do advertising, right? So there's this brand called Marlboro. ALICE Marlboro. RILEY Marlboro. ALICE Marlboro. ALICE Marlboro.

Starting point is 01:10:04 ALICE White triangle, red background. I've heard of them for reasons that I believe we might get into. Yeah. Very effective branding. Cowboy shit. The original Marlboro man died of like, every kind of cancer. All of the Marlboro men didn't smoke. Was that smarter, yeah?

Starting point is 01:10:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The irony is that he died of all of the cigarette-based cancers, despite never having smoked, you know, 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. A cigarette created by Philip Morris. It's like the Warthog PPK, right?

Starting point is 01:10:44 It's a little, there's a bit of masculinity that's actually originally intended to be like gay shit for women. JUSTIN Exactly. Ivory tips protect the lips. Um, anyway. So... ALICE They don't, folks. ALICE No.

Starting point is 01:10:57 JUSTIN No, it does not. Eventually there is this push. ALICE In the sense of, like, not smudging your lipstick. ALICE Exactly, yeah. JUSTIN Eventually there is this push to like, okay, we gotta 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.

Starting point is 01:11:16 You know, 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, uh, okay, well filters. So it was a response to the first wave of science saying, oh no, smoking will fucking kill you. And so the tobacco industry as and continues to be one of the largest lobbying groups in the planet on on the planet, and was like, Oh well filters, that's, now it's fine again. And it worked. It worked.

Starting point is 01:11:51 But then, but then men were buying filtered cigarettes. So they decided, all right, the Marlboros 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.

Starting point is 01:12:18 He's doing all kinds of, you know, manly man shit all over the place. Right. I mean, saying he's a manly man, but this is not suggesting that skin care routines aren't manly, but he is looking care. He's taking great care of that skin. Look at that lovely, slight, slightly sheen. But some some lovely skin care. It's a very careful manscaping on those sideburns as well. There we go. Look at that.

Starting point is 01:12:38 Look at that edge. Beautiful. They just don't. I'm just enjoying the man on the picture, the Marlborough man. He's he's he's handsome. Doesn't it make you want to smoke cigarettes? Beautiful. I'm just enjoying the man on the picture, the Marlborough man. He's handsome. ALICE Doesn't it make you want to smoke cigarettes? JUSTIN Yeah. ALICE It does.

Starting point is 01:12:50 ALICE It has the most wrinkles around it. 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. JUSTIN Look at his lashes! ALICE Yeah. JUSTIN Yeah, they're lovely. ALICE They're very bushy. JUSTIN Extremely bushy eyebrows. It looks like they're're lovely. They're lovely. Very bushy.

Starting point is 01:13:05 Extremely bushy eyebrows. It looks like they hurt. Looks like my dad, yeah. Yeah. I didn't know the marble man was Armenian. Yeah. Check out how much hair he has on his shoulders. So anyway, these are different ways you could market the cigarette.

Starting point is 01:13:28 Cigarette advertising, you know, 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. ALICE 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 wanna see a car covered in fuckin' cryptocurrency logos, or shit that's being

Starting point is 01:13:59 marketed to the four cyber security executives that they think might be watching. Why the fuck is Cloudstrike sponsoring a car? Uh, fuck you. It's Crowdstrike. Yeah. I don't even give a shit. Bring back the Gulf oil livery and bring back the Marlboro livery. And invent this as well.

Starting point is 01:14:19 I just think bring back the Marlboro McLaren, because, you know, fuck Ferrari here, they don't know shit. It's the Marlboro-McClaren livery, aw, the white with the orange across it, aw. Well, it was white. My favorite fun fact about the Ferrari at this time, is Ferrari didn't sponsor with like AMD or Acer or Vodafone directly, they just sold, they sold the whole car to Philip Morris.

Starting point is 01:14:43 Incredible. Who then sold the pieces and parts on. What?! God, boys. They sold the whole car to Philip Morris. ALICE Incredible. ZACH What. What? ALICE God, boys. ZACH Listen. ZACH They sold the whole car, at once. ALICE This is my most crank belief, and one that I can empirically say is false, with data, I believe that having the cigarette livery on the car makes it go faster.

Starting point is 01:15:01 And it doesn't! This is historically slow, compared to now. But like, I believe in my heart of hearts. Y'know. I love the AMD. That's what I want to go to work in, it's just the best with all my PC parts on me. ALICE Here's my theory, alright, because most of these cigarette companies, y'know, they adopted like a cigarette pack design in like

Starting point is 01:15:27 1940 to like 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 so, you know, that's why the cigarettes are the best-looking packaging in the entire convenience store Yeah, yeah. It's science. It's inaudible. 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 Marlboro, but how can we make everybody think it says Marlboro? So, like, Ferrari had a barcode that every vertical line in the

Starting point is 01:16:08 Marlboro logo was just drawn on, and then other ones, it's like, West Cigarettes, for the West sponsor of Reclairs, just replaced it and it said East. And they're just like, it's not cigarettes, guys, it's all taken care of. Don't worry. ALICE It's the capital, it's the cardinal direction. What are you complaining about? It actually puts some duct tape on the side and writes, earn airlines. When the Cardiff beer brains sponsored the Welsh rugby team, but I think when they're playing in France you can't sponsor alcohol through sport, and so they changed the word

Starting point is 01:16:43 brains with brawn, which I thought was quite funny. That's clever. That's very clever. Similar vibes as the. Oh, is it the the Jordan team had the buzz in Hornets instead of Benson and Hedges? They just made it look like a bee. Yeah. Nice job, guys. And like I had toys of this stuff with the cigarette ads on it. We all. Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:04 So another way that you could advertise your brand 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. Oh, 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

Starting point is 01:17:32 the Marlboro Adventure Team from Indonesia, I wanna say? ALICE 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, like, Land Rover Defenders going through a sort of swamp that's filled with 50 foot deep mud, that is simultaneously also on a 70 degree angle, and covered in wet leaves. Yeah. Big, big... While also laden down with a shitload of supplies and spare wheels and stuff.

Starting point is 01:18:05 That's aesthetic to me. SEAN I remember when I realized that you couldn't just be an amateur and enter the Dakar rally. ALICE Yeah, you can't just buy like a used car and say, hey, I got a DAF twin turbo I bought off eBay. ALICE I got some all weathers on this thing. I'm 85. ALICE You know what's weird, they pussied out of

Starting point is 01:18:32 doing it any further because they suck now, but for a second they tried to modernize the camel trophy stuff beyond Defender, so they had Range Rovers, and they had one Freelander within delivery, and then nothing after thatelander, in like, delivery, and then nothing after that, and it's like a huge huge shame, but it looks cool as fuck. Um, yeah, that's my little contribution. Camel Trophy. Yeah. A lot of people are gonna be doing a lot of Googling through this episode.

Starting point is 01:18:58 I'll just have Dev flash some Google Image results up, you know? So here's the Marlboro Adventure team. 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 would do that. Most of them are standing around. I feel like some of these these attacks are pointed If you 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

Starting point is 01:19:38 How do they all fit in the Jeep is my question Sort of a clown car situation, but a lot smokier. Yeah. But when they go out they make a... Sort of sound. Yeah, that's it. This promotion was active from the late 80s to about 2006. Wow.

Starting point is 01:19:56 But, uh, you know, they're bringing all these groups on tours of the American West. Philip Morris is like, uh, 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 Devon will be able to patch this in somehow. They're all watching the YouTube link. Okay. Marlboro country.

Starting point is 01:20:32 The land without limits. Sunrise to sunset. Summer to spring. Adventure rolls through Marlboro country. Okay. Oh shit! You betrayed me! The Marlboro Unlimited. Holy shit balls. It's the cool train.

Starting point is 01:20:57 It's got guys with cowboy hats on it, it's got like hot girls. It's got beer? Oh! A third of a mile of sweet red steel ready to take on the West. There's some nice P-Wed shots in. They knew who the audience was in advance. They knew I would watch this and get excited about the track.

Starting point is 01:21:17 Get on board. 2,000 guests on board and off the Marlboro Unlimited for five days and nights of non-stop adventure. It's got meat. It's got a lot on the track. It's got the meat train. Yes. This is like too many cooks. It's like the next bit. It kicks off. So many horses involved in this. Hot air balloons. Why not? Cooks is like the next bit kicks off so many horses involved Okay, that's a mulberry brand duffel bag looks good as hell and I want one Sorry, no, the merch is cool. I hate to say it The duffel bag I need the duffel bag

Starting point is 01:22:16 Holy shit, I am hard as hell More times in the train because they know it's the coolest thing they've ever come up with. But it's just that they only had a model of the train. Duffelbag's probably real. All the shots of the train in this are a model. 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. Alright, I'll be out in a second.

Starting point is 01:22:41 Okay, one second, I have to Google Marlborough duffel bag by where? Wait, this, this video is of an age where they have to put the smoking warning in still. That's hilarious. I get the same narrator too. Holy shit. You can 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

Starting point is 01:23:04 of mine bought me at salvation army for $13 that I was willing to, if you couldn't find any, I have a Marlboro 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 that is the whole stuff and is branded Marlboro. The one problem, right, is you buy this, you know it's gotta smell. Oh. Oh. It's not the right thing. Yeah, weird. It comes pre-scented from the factory.

Starting point is 01:23:25 Yeah, they've kind of like, they've run it in for you by smoking a couple of packs into it. Oh, god. It's like, uh, it's like when you got a gym bag that you haven't cleaned in quite a while and you come over your friend and you you like, hey, smell this. Except no, it's cigarettes instead. Just a stale 35 year old cigarette. I got it in my piles of laundry and shit that I still haven't done.

Starting point is 01:23:55 I have a ring bought me a size this Copenhagen snuff. And I'm just like, just like what we got. I had to clean the layer. It was clearly like the abstains off of it. You're just like, oh, got in, I had to clean the layer, it was clearly like, you have stains off of it, you're just like, okay. We have much dip memorabilia in my house, but it's not around us, it's like on the third floor. That's where it has to live. To be fair, I also had to do that with my Yugoslav Airlines ashtray, I did have to scrape

Starting point is 01:24:23 quite a lot of yellow scum off it as well. ALICE I mean, this wouldn't be the worst thing that I've got secondhand in my house, as someone who ends up collecting gas masks, because I'm a normal person. I do think there's a decent chance that one of them is kinda 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, so I should probably, like, I dunno.

Starting point is 01:24:48 Oh, that's late, that's probably because it's some sort of plastic that releases spares. I would hope so. Like, a ureic thing that uses cyanide into your blood or something. I would hope so. I'm just, I dunno if there's someone you can call about that or something to make it not my problem, cause I wanna just throw it out. Just line the inside with Vaseline, you'll be right. You probably just cut it in a layer of nicotine.

Starting point is 01:25:10 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, that's wonderful. 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.

Starting point is 01:25:28 That's probably killing me slowly. That's getting back into Nova's brown theory of railway grime. It's the same brown. Railway 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

Starting point is 01:25:45 look. You can probably put a pent-up curtain on that, if you want. Yeah. But yeah, no, I... Iron's 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." ALICE AND TOM LAUGH ALICE And meanwhile I'm just looking forward to the comments of people typing furiously

Starting point is 01:26:11 like, no no no no no, but you're gonna die. You need to see a doctor. METEOROLOGIST Yeah yeah yeah, please, for the love of God, don't use that mask anymore. Yeah, okay. I mean, we should probably say that to you as well, as we'd rather you didn't die. TOM I literally, this is the thing, I haven't, because just going nearer to touching it makes my chest close up enough that I'm just like, okay, well, I'm not gonna push the issue on that one, so it just sits in storage with me in this uneasy truce with it, where I'm like, well I don't wanna throw it out and kill somebody else, I don't wanna take it

Starting point is 01:26:43 out and kill me, so... RILEY Do not open. ALICE Yeah, do not open. Dead Dove inside. Except instead of Dead Dove, it's like, whatever the fuck porting down Captain Trips shit is in southern with, you know. RILEY Yeah, as I was saying, whatever Prager was murdered in it, in porting down, yeah, exactly. It's found its way to you! ALICE I mean, the good thing is, because I got it off eBay, I can trace back exactly the guy

Starting point is 01:27:07 who sold it to me, so if I die, avenge my death on the guy in my eBay purchases section about two years ago. I'm gonna leave him a negative feedback on eBay, it's so negative. Fuck up his horse and murder, yeah that's it. It's like 99.8% positive. Okay. He's... That's a thematic moment.

Starting point is 01:27:30 So yeah, Philip Morris comes up with what they internally refer to as Project Thunder. Hell, fuck yeah dude. 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.

Starting point is 01:28:05 Whitewater rafting. More horseback riding. Hot air balloon rides. Tours of Yellowstone National Park. Hiking. More horseback riding. Rodeo classes. I just want a smoke, man.

Starting point is 01:28:16 I just want a smoke, man. Gold panning. You don't have the breath for this. Concerts. Stagecoach rides. More horseback riding. Ski shooting. Alpen slideslides, horseshoes, and horseback riding.

Starting point is 01:28:30 I just wanna fucking smoke out of here. That horse takes two steps and you're just like, HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU It doesn't harm them as badly, they've got bigger lungs. Oh, I was gonna say, it's a horse-sized cigarette, so it's equal on the mark. It's the coolest horse I've ever seen in my life. Hi, it's Justin. Uh, 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 you know, it's two bucks, you get what you pay

Starting point is 01:29:21 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.

Starting point is 01:29:54 It's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show. We do have pictures of some of the T-shirts. Holy shit. That you might get. That's top left. When I was looking up some of this, somebody's trying to sell that of the T-shirts. Holy shit. But when I was looking up some of this, somebody's trying to sell that top left T-shirt for three hundred dollars. Oh, that's a bargain. I was going to say, that's a three hundred dollar T-shirt if I've ever seen.

Starting point is 01:30:17 Yeah, that's it. It does kick ass. It does. Also, the audacity for the Marlboro Unlimited smoking train to sell a white t-shirt on the right. Oh, ho ho ho ho. Aww. I particularly enjoyed the One Wolf Moon.

Starting point is 01:30:33 That's a big fan of that one. Yes. Why is it so long? Why is it so long? It came up with it big. Yeah, why is it so long? It's for James specifically. I think it's just a giant shirt that some second hand store on eBay would ever have

Starting point is 01:30:46 found their normal model for. It's like, look, we don't have anybody else who can try on this triple XL free promotional t-shirt from thirty years ago. So we know that this train fucking whips, right? So 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, we'll get to that part of it is actually, but, um, we'll get to that in a moment. Now, how do you enter?

Starting point is 01:31:14 Oh, this was going to operate for one season in 1996 for a total of 2000 lucky passengers. There are some anecdotes online. You had to smoke 1000 cigarettes to enter, but it was a sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Okay. But to enter, you did have to be a smoker. Twenty one years of age or older.

Starting point is 01:31:35 How did you prove that you're a smoker? I just smell you. That guy just takes a big sniff and just like, yeah, this one counts. I love this rarely seen freight track. Yeah, that's a little foreboding. Oh, because it was going to go through. Oh, what's what you call it? The old Rio Grande main line.

Starting point is 01:31:57 I can tell you this. Yes, that's the one. Orienting this advertising it me specifically. Rarely seen freight track. Good grief. OK. Well, 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.

Starting point is 01:32:14 Yeah. Day two of the Marlboro 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 watch. I'm trying so hard. I feel like my dad is punishing me. Like creating some sort of contraption out of things in the kitchen, like Apollo 13, to just get as many cigarettes into you as possible.

Starting point is 01:32:40 You're doing the reverse, you're like a normal style smoker, unlike everyone else who goes for this, and you're like, I'm not prepared to compete at this level, you're trying to create some pocket of clean air to hold out in a mind collapse. JUSTIN We'll get to that. ALICE Imagine working this! JUSTIN Everyone else is like that, the file photo of Homer with like a thousand cigarettes. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 01:33:07 That's what I was gonna say. I worked as the executive chef on the Marlboro Unlimited and completely destroyed my sense of smell and taste. More so than already happens from working in a kitchen. Oh my god. More so than already happens from working in a kitchen. Oh my God. Here's how the Marlboro unlimited sweepstakes works. 2000 prizes of six day, five night trip for two on the Marlboro unlimited train plus $1,000 cash will be awarded in random drawings.

Starting point is 01:33:39 The first 1000 prizes will be awarded from among all eligible entries received by blah, blah blah blah blah Uninvited official entry form in the space is provided hand print your complete name address Including zip code your date of birth and your current brand of cigarettes. How additionally Lucky strikes won the war in all caps 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 are just like huge weed smokers. Never touched a cigarette.

Starting point is 01:34:17 Also when you said win this thing I forgot it was a sweet steak. I imagined it as a kind of a squid game of smoking, which would have like, smoking themed elimination events, in order to discover who was the best... who wanted it the most? Wow, my grandparents really did not commit to the squid game of smoking. They didn't have what it took to make it through, you know? Two thousand 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 one thousand dollars in cash.

Starting point is 01:34:58 Approximately retail value six thousand dollars each. That's pretty cheap for a luxury train these days. Yeah, train with us be some like horse 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.

Starting point is 01:35:22 It is August 4th, 1996, and October 11th, 1996. ALICE The way you do dates in your country is so fucked. JUSTIN Oh, yeah, hey, sorry, what language are you not speaking right now? Okay, alright. ALICE I'm raising my hand politely. I have a question. Why did they have to warn competition and entries about which States the train had like an active war? The guy who tries to go on this absolutely is like, I can't go to Idaho anymore because

Starting point is 01:36:01 I had some like problems out there. Yeah, same happened there. I don't want to tell you. I don't want to tell you. I'm gonna go to my outside of Boise, yeah! 30 DUIs. This... yeah. Oh god. This turns out to be a bigger deal. Yeah, custom built luxury cruise train, unique in the world, 20 cars total, 2 locomotives,

Starting point is 01:36:21 3 staff cars, 8 sleepers, 5 dining activity cars, and a spa car. Double decker, glass dome, double cabins with full bath, red... ALICE Oh, the spa car on the Marlborough tour? Just shoveling. Shovelling. Yeah. They don't make moisturizers strong enough to upset us. They're putting, like, polar bear urea on you or some shit like that.

Starting point is 01:36:47 Causing you down. Oh my goodness. Here's where we start getting some questionable decisions by Philip Morris. Philip Morris' marketing department has two options. They could refurbish old equipment, because M-Trac 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.

Starting point is 01:37:14 ALICE Hell yeah. I mean, I guess they were making enough money off of giving people cancer, they could just do that anyway. JUSTIN Yeah, 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, but... I disagree. Well, they go bad once you've smoked them.

Starting point is 01:37:31 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... Good for you! Thank you. I gave the emergency pack of cigarettes in the house away when I was drunk, so. I hate you. The opening case of an emergency pack of cigarettes, it should be in your go bag, but it's like buying a gun, right?

Starting point is 01:37:56 You gotta make sure you've got the mental fortitude to not harm yourself with it, you know? to not haunt yourself with it, you know. ALICE I thought you were saying it better to have an emergency pack of cigarettes and not use it. ALICE The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a cigarette is... well, I mean, in my experience there's not a lot of good ways of stopping. SEAN That's not a good thing. JUSTIN Nah, the bad guy with the cigarette and the good guy with the cigarette both go have a smoke break and either come back both bad or both good.

Starting point is 01:38:28 ALICE That's what the movie High Noon is about. JUSTIN Oh, long enough timescale I think the cigarette stops the bad guy. ALICE Like, you're facing up against Lee Van Cleef, he's got the little Cigarillo in, and you don't draw and you don't draw and you don't draw and you're just like, I'm just waiting. How are your lymph nodes feeling there, Lee? Ah, so...

Starting point is 01:38:52 Still good? Alright, I can be patient. For the sake of consistent quality, Philip Morris wants to go with all new trains. They want a sleek locomotive with a bullet train shaped nose. Right? Now, for the benefit of the audio only viewers and listeners... No, audio only listeners, that's how that works. This is a very fetching shiny train we've got on screen right now. 8 mile delivery by the way, so it looks sexy as fuck. It's fresh off the lines, it's painted and beautiful. And it's also, most importantly, on some... the track might be crap, but the ballast is okay.

Starting point is 01:39:30 So, you know, all around, a very nice picture here. ALICE Yeah. This is the official train of smoking. RILEY Yeah. So, the question is, who supplies the train? First they go to Bombardier, right? They're in the process of finishing M-Trac Superliner 2 cars. For whatever reason this falls through, they couldn't like tack on an extra 20 cars to the order, right? They make some headway with the locomotive very quickly.

Starting point is 01:39:58 Originally they were thinking, we're going to have to buy a shitty locomotive and add a fiberglass nose cone to it. But no, they buy these EMD F59 PHIs, which were still in production at the time. A lot of commuter railroads bottom. It looks very nice. It comes with a shitty fiberglass nose. It does have a shitty fiberglass nose. And even better, the shitty fiberglass nose was mass produced. Nice. Yeah. Well, you'd need to, because it gets dented every time it hits something at a great crossing. Correct.

Starting point is 01:40:26 And what I've realized is that this thing has quite a Class 91 look to it, actually, with the kind of the setback level, just with the fiberglass noses a bit rounder on this than a 91. But no, that's a very, very fetching looking... I hope you realize the Class 91 next to this thing would come up to like the little black stripe on the side. Yeah, with like two toys from different gauge, like two different scale train sets. Yeah, no, I'm aware of that, yes.

Starting point is 01:40:51 Already recorded that episode. We did do that, yeah, that's true. 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 F59PH, yeah, that just has a regular looking cab. So these were ordered from EMD, Electro-Motive Division of General Motors, these are the only almost off the shelf equipment on this train, and I say almost because they had some

Starting point is 01:41:23 wacky modifications to the generators, we'll get to that in a second. And they had to install really good air filters. EMD delivers these on time and on budget, no problem. No job too small for EMD. Can you imagine the smears on the inside of these windows within like a week of the train riding. You think they made the engine crew smoke too? Why not?

Starting point is 01:41:49 Of course they did. Mandatory, yeah. You have to be 21 years or older and a smoker to run the train. Just trying to get down the aisles, whatever asshole is smoking like three cigarettes at once and wants another fucking pathetic bourbon on the rocks, because you drink it neat like an adult. And just like, how can I take your orders? Collapses. So, Philip Morris' second choice for new cars, because Bombardier couldn't do it, was this upstart company in Denver.

Starting point is 01:42:20 Oh no. Raider Railcar. Oh yes. Yeah! The big pile of 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.

Starting point is 01:42:34 Here's a schematic of the train. Yeah! They were so serious about this, they were really like, we wanna do a whole ass train, like in Under Siege 2. I gotta say, that bottom right, project, y'know, just being in the normal format of the blueprint, and then THUNDER in big letters next to it. THUNDER. Yeah, it's nice.

Starting point is 01:42:53 I like that. I understand when these documents were created, Raider Railcar was in the process of switching from an older CAD program to this new program called AutoCAD. Wow. Yeah. Also got volume, like, AutoCAD version 1.0. I think it was already at 12. Ow.

Starting point is 01:43:14 AutoCAD's fuckin' stupid, I hate it. Worst program imaginable. Except for all the other ones. Zancaster. Well yeah, that too. The unholy abomination that would be the Barlboro Unlimited train would cost $27,860,000 without factoring in the locomotives. It consisted of eight sleeper cars.

Starting point is 01:43:37 Weren't they already getting lit up in federal court over this? Over the cigarettes? 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 wanna hear about the spa car so badly. We'll get to the spa car.

Starting point is 01:43:57 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 II Dark Territory. A representative sample of the train was due to Philip Morris on January 1st, 1996 for an early promotional tour with the full train required by March 31st, 1996, the day I turned three. The contract was signed sometime in 1994, giving Raider precious little time to design

Starting point is 01:44:41 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. JUSTIN What? JUSTIN Yeah, they were only gonna use it once. ALICE What?! JUSTIN What?! JUSTIN I think they're actually gonna use it for, like, one summer season, one winter season.

Starting point is 01:45:03 ALICE Jesus, that's incredible! I 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 F59 PHI locomotives producing 3,200 horsepower each. This seems like a lot of horsepower for an 18 car train. But this train uses ultra dome technology. And everyone is smoking air filtration required for the space. Jesus, can you imagine?

Starting point is 01:45:34 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 standing next to the air vents of this thing and just the clag coming out of just one of the HVAC vents. My god. The train itself. It makes East Palestine look like a fart. Oh my god, the train is smoking too.

Starting point is 01:45:57 Oh, we've killed Liam already. I have been podcasting nonstop since 5 p.m. I have been. 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. Mm hmm.

Starting point is 01:46:20 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. I'm just thinking, you're gonna need to create an entire new union just for the little boys

Starting point is 01:46:42 that'll have to run up and down the train, cleaning, replacing the HVAC filters. ALICE Yeah, you're gonna create a whole new society in there, it's gonna be like, fucking Smokepiercer in there. JUSTIN So, on almost all trains, they're powered by something called head-end 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

Starting point is 01:47:16 with two 1,000 horsepower Detroit diesel engines powered two generators. Wow. So you called it head-end power. Also, some other 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.

Starting point is 01:47:36 Yeah, it's a weird nomenclature. I think we refer to it more broadly as just the train, the train draw when it's not the non traction power. But actually, maybe I'm wrong. People correct me in the comments. Who knows? 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 extensively modified for fine throttle control. So the generators could all be synchronized so they could deliver power to the train without the whole thing blowing up.

Starting point is 01:48:10 ALICE 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. RILEY Yeah. On the train they're only gonna use once! ALICE Okay, 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 it 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.

Starting point is 01:48:37 Well the funny thing is that EMD takes one look at the requirements and they're like, yep, no problem. You know, and they just do it. They just did it. ALICE I suspect they didn't consult any mechanical or electrical engineers when saying yes to that. JUSTIN So, behind this were the crew cars, right? So we have a sleeper, we have the sleeper, and we have the sleeper slash diner slash

Starting point is 01:49:04 amenity car for the crew. Okay. Behind that, we have some sleepers for the passengers, we got four of them, we have the dining slash galley, we'll go into these in detail in a second. We have the dining... ALICE How many fires do you think they're getting from people falling asleep with lit cigarettes per mile?

Starting point is 01:49:22 JUSTIN Oh, the fire! Oh yeah. JUSTIN That was a significant concern, yes. It looks like that picture from the Under Siege 2 poster, but just without cigar in it, just flames pouring out of one car, yeah that's it. Except it's all of the cars. Dining multimedia slash library car. We have Big Sky Lounge slash office slash open platform.

Starting point is 01:49:42 Library? Don't do that to books! SEAN Yeah, books deserve better. JUSTIN They're all books about cigarettes. Lots of studies about how smoking is good for you, actually. SEAN Actually, yeah. JUSTIN Car number fourteen is just listening to Remington. ALICE My god, Philip Morris is a bleak bastard.

Starting point is 01:49:59 SEAN Good grief. This is crazy. ALICE I feel like he's got a shotgun. SEAN Yeah. JUSTIN Behind that is the- SEAN That's a bit Yeah behind that Heritage, yeah 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

Starting point is 01:50:19 So they could haul around a bunch of buses for the various excursions the train would not Know that's based actually. Yeah, I'm all for that. Oh, intermodal, 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 M track. Well, that stole they bought. It's like so much is like no expense spared unless you're the crew and you get some old garbage.

Starting point is 01:50:47 You get nothing. Well, yeah, it's like Dubai. Right. Yeah. I think I think I think the crew probably got a better deal. That's a 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 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.

Starting point is 01:51:11 What? What year is it? This is the mid-90s? 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. Thunder and Lightning. Yeah, that's true. It was on Raider's side, they called it 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 Raynor's side. They called it Project Lightning. Actually, you can see in handwritten sketch they've got on it says Thunder slash Lightning. You know what? 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.

Starting point is 01:51:45 Yeah. OK. This is that example 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.

Starting point is 01:52:03 You had a spiral staircase at the end. upstairs. You got a spiral staircase at the end, right? You got a spiral staircase over here. Okay, next car we have. 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.

Starting point is 01:52:22 There's a bar. Get all that smut straight out of the vehicle, yeah. There's the general store, over here, right, as well as the elevator, next to the spiral staircase, as well as the ADA lavatory. Jesus Christ. Okay, so when I was saying parallel society evolving in here, I was joking. No, this is gonna end up like Snowpiercer. Okay, right, I mentioned virtual reality over here, over here there's a whole half of the

Starting point is 01:52:49 bottom level of this car, devoted to virtual reality games. Right? Next, that is the multimedia room. The finest virtual reality of the 1990s. Yeah, yeah, imagine playing, I don't know, um, shit, what did they have in 94? Virtual Boy shit. Nothing! Star Fox.

Starting point is 01:53:07 Everything was like the first Pixar films, you know, like real shonky. There, you have the most beautiful scenery in America rolling by, you play Star Fox. I've just seen the spark-up. I've just seen the spark-up, 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, uh, excuse me, striped that, reversed it.

Starting point is 01:53:41 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 spa car, which has... Oh no. ...two massage rooms and six hot tubs. Three hot tubs just set on one side, three on the other, with like a maze between them. Oh, it's like a fun con. What the fuck? What is sloshing around full of cigarette butts?

Starting point is 01:54:21 What the fuck? Cigarette butts! You're going to get every possible waterborne disease. You are going to get G-ardia. You are going to get a non-smoking car. It's non-smoking car? I want the fun of that! This is tyranny, if you can't smoke in the hot tubs, what even is the point? Not being allowed to smoke at Jays is like not being allowed to pray in church. Excuse me, I got excited.

Starting point is 01:54:52 I got to use the restroom real quick. What? I just the thought of. I have some questions about. Yeah, I don't like. You get. Can you imagine getting stuck in that central hot tub? There's a welcome to the bitch top. There's like a.

Starting point is 01:55:12 It's just like, you know, what's going to look like each of those is going to be so dark with Tari Tari, you're going to be emerging every like a harkening. Yeah, just incredible. A hack in the butt with the cigarette butt stuck in the moisture, yeah, that's it. We're making a kind of broth. We're making soup. Cigarette, smoker, stew. Oh wow.

Starting point is 01:55:42 This is spectacular. And this is when you win. This is the prize you win. You have to be on here for like a week. God. And they don't even have enough water on board to like, change that out, either. Can you imagine how stale that would get at the end? Everybody's coughing. Yeah, weeks later, the same water. Oh.

Starting point is 01:56:03 Hey, it 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 the train roll away from me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, leave me to the kiosks. I just learned there's a handle on my gamer chair that allows me to recline. Have you just figured that out? I just learned there's a handle on my gamer chair that allows me to recline. So now I can use it. ALICE Have you just figured that out? Like, I've had this shit going like, there it goes.

Starting point is 01:56:27 LIAM Yeah, I'm way back. Oh, I'm way back. There we go. ALICE That's kinda too far back, to be honest. Like... LIAM Yeah, I'm way back. Voss isn't here to raid me in, so I can do whatever I want. LIAM Alright, I got back.

Starting point is 01:56:39 FUCK. JUSTIN Damn, you shouldn't have said it. You shouldn't have said it. LIAM What happened? JUSTIN Nothing, can't answer. ALICE Can't worry about it. JUSTIN Oh, okay. ALICE We discussed the hot tubs.

Starting point is 01:56:48 JUSTIN Yes. Well, there's gonna be more discussion of those to come. ALICE I don't like that. ALICE Oh, no. Oh, no. JUSTIN So, let's look in some more detail. Here's a sleeper car. Upper level, lower level.

Starting point is 01:57:01 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 got a steep ass staircase. I believe it was pretty steep, yeah. You have 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.

Starting point is 01:57:25 Oh my god. Only single bedstone. No fucking on the train. Well not in this car. Not in the air. They needed extra fire resistant fabrics and extra fireproof partitions because, you know, these chuckleheads are gonna smoke in bed. Probably while drunk and depressed from losing all their money at Blackjack, but we'll discuss

Starting point is 01:57:44 that in a moment. ALICE Just imagine this thing coming over the prairie, just like, one of these, just like, burning to, like, burning down to the trucks, right? JUSTIN Just the yellow haze coming off the whole train. ALICE Oh ho ho ho ho. JUSTIN I wanna say, one of the sleepers had an infirmary on the lower level. Yeah, you're gonna fucking need it for all the cancer you're getting. This is the first train to have an on-call consultant oncologist.

Starting point is 01:58:16 He's gonna get work. The amount of preparation that they did for what if somebody dies on this fucking thing was enormous. Crematorium at the back. For something they're using twice! They were certain somebody was going to fucking die. Every time someone says it, I auto-delete the fact that this thing is a single use tray. Double use.

Starting point is 01:58:41 I've said it and it's auto-deleted again. It's consumable. This is a consumable good. Philip Morris just cannot, these things get burned like the cigarettes. It's like, you don't keep a thing. You use it, you throw it away, done. Yeah. Incredible.

Starting point is 01:58:57 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 seating, booth seating, right? You got three, count em, three dumb waiters. Because why not? ALICE I'm just thinking about how big the kitchen... ALICE They're mostly doing steaks, they've got to be, right? RILEY Yeah, it's mostly... I was gonna say, I'm just thinking about how big the kitchen probably was on the royal yacht, and I'm gonna

Starting point is 01:59:23 guess maybe a third of the size of this. I will say it has fewer air ducts in the kitchen presumably because that's the least smoky part of the train. God, it's so weird. The weirdest part about this thing is that it was gonna have walkthrough 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 walkthrough 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 walk through on the upstairs here in the diner and on the

Starting point is 01:59:53 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 font. Project Thunder. More like Project Thunder. General arrangement 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 the same configuration, but backwards, right? Downstairs we have the multimedia room with large air duct. We have in the middle 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. Mason- No one's using that library, let's be honest.

Starting point is 02:00:32 Adam- Can you see it? Mason- Yeah. Mason- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like every time you turn a page and have to like waft your hand a few times to read every sentence. Yeah. Adam- Over here is something I don't know what it is. Mason- Oh, that's good. Classified. Adam- Classified. Mason- I feel like I'm't know what it is. Oh, that's good. Classified. You look like a lot of dick in there. This diner had a small, non-smoking section.

Starting point is 02:00:51 The shame box. The cuckstool or whatever it is. In case you brought a guest who was not a smoker. To torture them?! Hey honey, do you wanna come with me on the... like, you know my cigarette hobby, do you wanna come with me, and really share this with me, really enjoy my smoking together? JUSTIN I love with my spouse and Clisby and their hobbies. ALICE & LIAM There's so many human stories being implied here. And they're all bruised.

Starting point is 02:01:30 Oh my god. Yeah, none of them are good. None of them are happy. Oof. Isn't Sandi's the concentrated, like, bad vibe that radiates off these blueprints? There's like, not quite enough windows on some parts, there's not, it just doesn't look like a train should, it doesn't feel right, the blueprints look pretty fucked up. ALICE Between that, the area that we don't know what it does, the general implausibility

Starting point is 02:01:58 of all of this, are we sure this isn't some kind of, like, US Army secret experiment on these people. ALICE Yeah, it's true. It would all be experiment, but on wheel. JUSTIN They got surprisingly far, and we'll get to this later. ALICE My fucking god. JUSTIN Jesus, okay.

Starting point is 02:02:14 Here's a 60 seat observation lounge with downstairs open platform and ADA elevator. ALICE Yeah, that's why they call it an observation lift, because that's where they observe you secretly. ALICE I believe this area down here, called Purser's 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. ALICE Oh, I hate it. ALICE Oh, I hate it.

Starting point is 02:02:38 ALICE Oh, I hate it. Yeah. JUSTIN Yeah. Surely you only use the gift shop at the end. Unless they're selling like, I don't know, you're like... ALICE Well, no, because every time you board or disembark, you go through the open platform over here, which requires you to walk through the gift shop. Of course it does.

Starting point is 02:02:51 And also I suppose you need somewhere to buy the cigarettes. Oh, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta buy my own c- fuck you! No! Give them to me! Give them to me! You're losing it. You're losing it. You're losing it.

Starting point is 02:03:03 You're losing it. You're losing it. You're losing it. You're losing it. You're losing it. You're losing it. Just get dropped off in your room every night in a brown paper bag. They had people walking around with them pre-lit. Or nerves. You don't even need to smoke, 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 fritter. And just every single patient should smoke. Every patient should smoke.

Starting point is 02:03:24 They should do that at nightclub smoking areas. Everybody should have one big cigarette. They should do that at nightclub smoking areas. Should be one big cigarette that's lit all the time, you just go out, get a couple of deep breaths. Over here is the office, more on that later. 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

Starting point is 02:03:51 they'd go through the gift shop. Which is great unless there's a fire, so, yeah, good design. They have the smallest little, on all these cars, they have, I love it's like the upper deck here, those two tiny windows are marked as the emergency exit. The giant fuck-off windows? On the top deck? Permanent. The tiny little ones?

Starting point is 02:04:08 Emergency exit. So you gotta hoist your... Yes, you can sort of crawl out while hacking and coughing, and then fall fifteen feet and die. You're like, feet under this flaming train wreck in remote Wyoming. Oh no. It's like high enough up that you would notice you were falling. Like of like, cruise ships. What on the land?

Starting point is 02:04:35 What on the land? Okay. We got smoking, dining, drinking, what else do we need? This upsets me. This upsets me. That's too many angles. That's too many fucking angles. That's too many. I don't know.

Starting point is 02:04:47 That's not a blueprint shape. No, it is not a blueprint. I have the poker table somehow only one for the whole train. So you can get a fight. So you can get a fight. You smash a bottle over someone's head. Oh, big getting thrown out of the window like a Western saloon. But it's the 15 feet above the ground emergency exit.

Starting point is 02:05:07 The emergency exit. I had a hat. I bet the hats they I bet they sold some kick ass Marlboro cowboy hats. Oh, yeah. I did. That's going right on email. I was going to say Google that. All right.

Starting point is 02:05:26 Upstairs, obviously, we got another bar. We got a lounge section here. Right. And then we have this exciting area here marked open to below. Oh, this hat looks like it smells bad. Open to below. Also very fun next to the poker table for any fights that need to take more cinematic angle.

Starting point is 02:05:47 Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to put an image link in the Zencast chat and I want you to click on. Oh, God. Oh, impressively not like stained. That is that is a light khaki coloured Marlborough Adventure Team bucket hat. JUSTIN It was white when it was new.

Starting point is 02:06:08 JUSTIN Is this for the South Africa tour? ALICE Yeah. JUSTIN Alright, so, lower level. We have, uh, what does it say here? Something with cocktail swivel tables. Uh, bonkettes with horseshoe swivel cocktail tables, which- Naturally. These look on the thing like toilets, it looks like you're doing challenge pissing.

Starting point is 02:06:36 Yeah, I was thinking they were toilets. Like, eight of you all facing each other having a shit-off. That's for like, the Budweiser train. We got some strange looking bar seating here, around the dance floor, which is of course underneath, open to below, above. What do we imagine they're playing that you're dancing to, on this train? Country music. Yeah. We've got all kinds of music, country and western. Imagine they're playing that you're dancing to on on this train The sort of shit that you could buy in the hydroelectric shop on the high street in Veruri in 1994 that's what I'm in

Starting point is 02:07:19 1994 country music you're in a you're in a bad place, you know Yeah, you're in a better place than like, 2024. Okay, that's true. I mean, you did this like, even ten years later, and this is the train that plays big and rich non-stop. Yeah. Here's the answer. They play What's New Pussycat fourteen times a week, here is the jukebox! Oh no!

Starting point is 02:07:42 Oh my god, he's going for the jukebox. Oh, my God, he's going for the jukebox. Are you going to play the boys are back in town again? Absolutely not. That's how you get thrown out of a 15 foot window. No bad news. It's the lower floor. You're only probably going to fall like eight feet. No, bad news. It's the lower floor. You're only probably going to fall like eight feet. Oh, there is an additional bar adjacent to which there is seating

Starting point is 02:08:12 facing the window on saddles. Just in case you hadn't ridden enough horses. Yeah, you're not going to get a free free like permatuck from this yeah Who have only ridden the horses are like I can't sit anywhere else right now my legs won't go straight Can't afford the estradiol take the train upstairs. There is an arcade. Hell yeah Okay, yes Hell yeah. Okay? Yeah. Just like the grossest, most nicotine-encrusted game of Pac-Man you've ever seen in your life. All of the open to below's here are so striking in the sense of somebody is going through that and landing on a poker tape.

Starting point is 02:08:58 Yeah, absolutely. They are there to enable violence. Can you imagine the noise environment in this car? Where you have multiple bars, lounges, arcade games, smoking. You wouldn't be able to hear anything, it'd all be muffled by the thick smoke in every single one. And just like, the ambient train noise.

Starting point is 02:09:15 Yeah. Like, even the Amtrak lounge car now, which is like church compared to this thing, is a pretty loud place. Good god. But don't worry, there's another one of these. Oh Christ. The second lounge car. Okay, upstairs we got some lounge seating, right?

Starting point is 02:09:36 We have a second open to below, right? We have another- This one's almost disappointingly tame. Seating facing the windows, right? It's nice, it's reasonable. Over here, right? It's nice. It's reasonable. Over here. Yeah, this is nice. This is regional. Reasonable. Go downstairs. More lounge seating.

Starting point is 02:09:51 And then Blackjack. Oh, I can't wait to punch a fucking casino worker who survives only on tips with my with my with my cigarette hand made out of entirely out of cigarettes. Okay, wait. These blackjack tables are up above. You can definitely stand there and look down and see what cards people have. Oh, I don't do that.

Starting point is 02:10:13 Signal to your friend. I think, what are they gonna do if you're counting cards on the Marlboro train, you know? On the Marlboro train? You're gonna get thrown off the back of your windbag. You can like, break it in half, you know? They forced your head under the water in the spa car. Ugh.

Starting point is 02:10:30 Ugh. Alright, again, subor lounge seating, looks very nice. Then after this, there were four more sleeping cars, and then, the spa car. I will say. The revised version of this, very progressive, they had gender neutral dressing rooms. ALICE The Malka limited has gone woke. SEAN Then there were two massage rooms. ALICE That's out, that just feels like home.

Starting point is 02:11:00 ALICE Having to massage the most calloused skin in the world. Why do you... Why does your skin look like my leather couch? Why did the back of your hands have knurling? Then, six hot tubs and two groups of three. And finally, a large open platform. ALICE All of those hot tubs full of, like, lumpy charcoal milk. They're just jeans floating around.

Starting point is 02:11:29 ALICE All single beds, so if you wanna fuck anyway, you gotta do it here as well. JUSTIN Exactly, exactly. Oh, we'll get to that. ALICE No! I appreciate the- I appreciate the bench seats there, for, I guess, waiting your turn. Just sitting there very politely, in the spot car. Like daintily cross over the other, like hello boys. Give me three minutes!

Starting point is 02:11:52 In your speedo, your trunks, you know, whatever the hell. Goggles. You're gonna need them. I like to think that each of these hot tubs has a little lever that opens up like sluice at the bottom that just slops all the liquid down. ALICE Oh, like the Dave Matthews bad poop incident, yeah I got you.

Starting point is 02:12:09 I try to limit myself on this one, but I know it smells crazy in there. JUSTIN In the railroad press at the time, this was the most controversial car, despite apparently something similar already existing in Japan. That's cause all the Americans were jealous. And apparently there was also a hot tub on the Ringling Brothers' Barnum and Bailey Circus train, but only one. Why, Cate? For the Ringmaster, it's like an ancient privilege of the job.

Starting point is 02:12:41 They still fit all 80 clowns. You don't need more than one. 70 year old circus still washes clowns the old fashioned way. Cigarettes is good, but clown is more difficult. Sometimes maybe, right? Sometimes maybe clown. Who's to say? Which is worse, who could say? There's a lot of open questions here.

Starting point is 02:13:17 How would the hot tubs cope with the movement of the train? How would sloshing water affect, you know, the frame of the car? Was this thing too damn heavy? How do you ensure the passengers behave in there? These and more questions were unfortunately never fully answered. Mason- Oh, I was going to say, before you even get to those questions, you know, it's the insta-corrosion from all the cigarette smoke that I'm worried about. But anyway, we will never know.

Starting point is 02:13:39 Why, why, why would they never answer to us? Why? Steve- Before that, we need to see the itinerary. Jason- Oh, Jesus, what? Oh, you're edging me with the demise of this thing. Don't say those words to me in that order. There were a number of routes suggested, all of them were subject to various squabbles by the various railroads and also M-Trac.

Starting point is 02:13:59 Because M-Trac nominally has, you know, they, they, if you are running like a charter passenger train, you technically in some fashion always go through Amtrak. I want to say Amtrak was going to run this, like it was going to be an Amtrak crew in the engine. Would have been an Amtrak crew in the engine, yes. Amtrak conductor nominally running the train. Holy shit, the most chocolate. Most sausage-fishes.

Starting point is 02:14:21 Jesus Christ. It's like the Chernobyl miners, Jesus Christ. SEAN I'm strapping on my MBCR suit to give them... ALICE Yeah, I was gonna say, you have to dig out the bloody asbestos suit from those steam trains from way back. ALICE It's like that bit in the stand where they realize that none of the army guys are wearing wedding rings, so none of them are married and they're expendable.

Starting point is 02:14:43 It's like that, right? The guys, they volunteer for this? No dependents. Yeah. That's a Soviet Union. That's a Soviet Union. You deserve, you do deserve whatever the Amtrak or Colbert or the Medal of Honor is. One of the routes had the train starting in Phoenix, visiting the Grand Canyon, then proceeding

Starting point is 02:15:05 via several extremely scenic railroads to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and then back down to Denver. This was killed due to, I believe, clearance issues, right? These cars are very big. This was eventually shortened to one route from Denver to Billings, Montana, with many stops and excursions along the way. And then a second route from Phoenix to San Antonio for the winter months. We'll see later why this was never really hammered out, but a typical day on the train

Starting point is 02:15:32 was spent off the train doing excursions, while the actual travel with the- With what long capacity? And most of it was on the bus. The actual travel with the incredibly expensive Dom cars offering unparalleled views of the scenery happened at night. ALICE I see the paradox of that in the copywriting on the right there, of like, uh, the scenery's great, but you're gonna sleep through it really good?

Starting point is 02:15:57 JUSTIN Oh, this is actually an M-Track advertisement that was, uh, not contemporaneous, but, you know, same idea. JUSTIN Back when M-trak was doing clever ads Yeah, exactly sexy anime conductors. Are you not in no you guys? So yeah, if you want to if you want to be on this train when it's moving, okay Here's here's a sample itinerary up here 3 30 a.m. They depart Tabernash or Cheyenne time and half hours. Yeah, so 6 a.m. Breakfast and a half hours. Yeah. So, uh, 6am, breakfast, 9am, a ride in Cheyenne.

Starting point is 02:16:27 6AM BREAKFAST FUCK YOU! I WANT THIS TRIP! Have you ever tried waking up a smoker? Have you ever tried waking up a heavy smoker? I WANT THIS TRIP! I WANT THIS TRIP! Fuck you! Breakfast ends, you can show up as late as 9am.

Starting point is 02:16:37 You arrive in Cheyenne at 9am. Then you get on the bus. ALICE When I smoked, I woke up filled with a homicidal rage for all creatures. ALICE Yeah! Yep. Yep. Hard savin' there, bud. JUSTIN You get on the bus, and you go to the Terry Bison Ranch that takes twenty minutes. Right?

Starting point is 02:16:59 ALICE You try and wake me up at 6am, and take me anywhere, I'm putting a cigarette out on a bison again. No no no no no no no. You don't have to wake up then, but if you want breakfast you gotta get it before 9am. Alright, fine, I guess this is acceptable. But the buses leave at 9am, you either go to the Terry Bison Ranch, or you went to Territorial Park in Laramie, that's a 50 minute ride, or you

Starting point is 02:17:26 could hang out in Cheyenne, the beautiful city. The Terry Bison Ranch, of course you could do horseback riding, mountain biking, you could see bison herds, whatever a pedding pen is, jeep tours, private rodeo, Conestoga wagon ride, mountain man rendezvous, you could meet the mountain man. Fishing. Meet the mountain man. Do fishing. Oh, meet the mountain man. Private rodeo feels weirdly unwholesome, also sounds like a kind of 80s B-side. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:52 Private rodeo's are why they skipped, they only did single beds. For fear of the private rodeo's. They say my verse, private rodeo. Private rodeo! You get lunch at the ranch. I'm doing my belt. It's kind of immoral to have big Marlboro guys fuck each other, because the big belt buckle's swinging around, y'know? Like...

Starting point is 02:18:19 Yeah. 3PM, get on a motor coach, back to the train. 4PM, depart Cheyenne, Wyoming for Idaho Falls, 14 hour trip. 6PM, dinner on board, then the murder mystery. ALICE Yeah, the murder mystery is Philip Morris killing all of these... Don't gasp! Ah, shit it was that. JUSTIN It was Zempasina.

Starting point is 02:18:39 RILEY Who actually died? Who died at the Terry Bison Ranch today? RILEY 10pm to 2am, midnight buffet, dancing, bars, and hot tubs. ALICE My god, that's part of the story. ALICE Again, weirdly unwholesome to put hot tubs as an itinerary item. RILEY I'm surprised there isn't an item on the itinerary at like, 8am, roll call of those who died during the night of unrelated causes.

Starting point is 02:19:07 We do like a burial of C.E. except under a Marlborough flag you slide their bodies out off the moving train onto the track site. Until the C.E. she'll bury her dead or whatever. This is a real abuse of technology this is. An executive has made some addendums here. 6 to 8.30am. Breakfast on board. Arrive in Idaho Falls at 8am.

Starting point is 02:19:35 Or wait is that 6am? Okay. My annotations got in the way. 7am. Begin motor coach transfers to Jackson, Wyoming. Two and a half hours. Very scenic drive. I also like continental breakfast bus and bus for early departures for all the people

Starting point is 02:19:53 like fuck this. I'm out. I can't handle this. No. I want this trip. Jacksonary activities. Grand Teton Park National Tour, or National Park Tour, excuse me, Whitewater River Rafting on the Snake River, fishing, shopping in Jackson, Jackson Hole Ski Resort

Starting point is 02:20:13 Gondola, excuse me. Does this shit say box lunches? Fuck you. Horseback riding. Then box lunches. Fuck you. I won this trip. The Marlboro chefs have made me a box lunch.

Starting point is 02:20:24 It's a box of cigarettes. It's a box with a pack of cigarettes. Okay, that does kind of go off actually. That's a box but each compartment has a bunch of loose cigarettes in it. Try these other wonderful different length. Oh my god. Motor coach transfers back to train two and a half hours depart Idaho falls for Bozeman, Montana.

Starting point is 02:20:54 Dinner on board, midnight buffet, dancing bars, hot tubs. Right? So similar itinerary every day. You're not seeing the scenery in between. That's all at night. This also did involve significant investment in stations and tracks along the route. Most of that stuff actually happened. Oh, well I am all for this then.

Starting point is 02:21:16 Good stuff. The big part was a lot of these stations you didn't have the clearance to bring the train in. Yeah, I'll bet. We also had to upgrade the tracks for, y'know, because the cars were heavy. Which we'll talk about more in a second. They also had plans for various contingencies. This is one document, I found security what-ifs.

Starting point is 02:21:37 So this is incredible. I mean, partly because you know that almost every event has something like this, it's just... weirdly no one gets sued as much as tobacco companies, and so they don't get forced to release this in a giant document dump of... The rods had to go through, yeah. Yeah, someone has bullet pointed out, what if somebody rapes somebody on this train? Like... Exactly, yeah.

Starting point is 02:22:02 How do we handle? Do you think they're all called the operational operational nightmares brainstorming list? I think that's a bit of like 90s office culture, but like, holy shit, that is what they've called. That is a high-jacked. There's brainstorming list. There's a hostage situation. What happens if someone does under siege to to this?

Starting point is 02:22:21 I was going to say that. Yes. Steven Seagal, the save the fuckin' Marlboro train. Fight between passengers. Alcoholic issues with engineer. No show engineer. Oh, wow. Ultimate station on Monaco. We're stereotyping the engineer here.

Starting point is 02:22:33 There's a lot of stereotyping the engineer. You should see the- there are other pages of this document. The doodle that whoever did the notes on this drawing the jail is for the people who aren't listening. It's like a shitty rhizograph scan or whatever, but somebody's clearly doodled an unhappy stick figure in town jail next to, you're arrested. I really like the one where they worry, right, that they accidentally plan quite a good action, as is the thing for red teaming bad stuff, where they're like, what if anti-smoking protesters paint-bomb the train?

Starting point is 02:23:13 Can we carry paint on it to repaint the Marlborough livery? Yes. Obviously. This is interesting, because you gotta talk about this, because there are two types of secondary sources on the Marlboro Unlimited train. Either from train guys or from really anti-tobacco guys. This is what the anti-tobacco guys all talk about, right? You know, it's like, oh my god, this train had to carry an infirmary with a paramedic on board in case someone dies from smoking. Yeah, people do that, it happens, shut up.

Starting point is 02:23:46 JUSTIN Yeah, it happens, it's fun, y'know, it's probably like a wise idea. ALICE It's fine, we're going out on a trip. ALICE It is kind of just, this is, like, any cruise ship will have a book, like a big binder full of this shit, right? JUSTIN Yeah, exactly. They carried body bags on board, again, in case someone dies from smoking. ALICE It's the rich human condition, you know. Yeah, exactly. They carried body bags on board, again, because in case someone dies from smoking.

Starting point is 02:24:05 It's the rich human condition. You're carrying two thousand people overseas, and I mean, you know, this is not an unwise thing to have on board. The one that was always really big that people mentioned was, these trains had bulletproof glass, in case there were protesters who might shoot or throw things at the train. I mean... NARESH I know one could blame them, but also, don't shoot at my prize train, please. SEAN Here's the thing.

Starting point is 02:24:34 Standard FRA type 2 glass is bulletproof, and cinderblock-proof. NARESH I was gonna say, it's probably bulletproof from a side effect of just having the ability to resist bullets like a flighted ballast. This is happy coincidence, not because they wanted bulletproof glass. It's just, no, all the glass is bulletproof on every train. They test, that's how they literally test compliance, though. They take a shotgun and shoot the glass point blank.

Starting point is 02:24:59 I would love to be the FRA shotgun person. Sweet. Let me take care of this. Break action. So, the official, it's, you know, painted safety orange or whatever. There was also, I believe, they developed a procedure in case people got frisky in the spa car. Yeah, you'd hope.

Starting point is 02:25:21 I mean, you'd all hope, but- It's a hose. Oh my god. No! No! Hank! Hank! Yeah, you'd hope. I mean, you'd all hope, but... It's a hose. Yeah, it's just a... Oh my god. No! No! Hank! Hank! You keep us behaving and you'll be dunked in the cigarette tank!

Starting point is 02:25:32 This is like... You wanna threaten these guys, you take them out on the balcony where there's fresh air, you know? Everybody who's taking this is like a kind of extremophile who can only live in very nicotine saturated air. You expose them to fresh mountain air of Wyoming or whatever, it's like, alright boys, take them outside.

Starting point is 02:25:52 JUSTIN, yeah. JUSTIN, when I was done they washed me out with a hose. ALICE, I was expecting a Randall Jarrell poll there, but hell yeah. JUSTIN, it's not the only type of ball gunner. But you could also see here, the reason why they had to list the states earlier, different states have different gambling rules. And since that was such an activity on the train, you had to make sure, a lot of states not allowed to gamble at certain times, certain days of the week. Same with alcohol policies. That's why every Amtrak train is legally Washington DC because they go through some dry states or states that

Starting point is 02:26:33 are dry on Sundays or whatever. Yeah. Or like a dry counties. I mean, sometimes they, technically I believe they are not supposed to serve you alcohol if you're going through a dry county. Now, I'm yet to see a crew that abides by that rule, but technically... God bless them for it. Yeah. Thank you. But like, these are the weird things you have to be worried about, especially when you're creating like, the fucking debauchery express.

Starting point is 02:27:00 Yeah. Like, what are we doing? What happens? Passenger arrested, property damaged from consumer, wants to give friend a tour of the train, brings a pad, seeing eye dog, someone shows up who didn't win, follow up to locating missing passenger, um... I mean, apart from the anti-smoking activist stuff, this is all pretty sensible. That's pretty normal, yeah, this is like, yeah, we should probably think about this

Starting point is 02:27:23 stuff. So, anyway. Construction on the cars begins. Oh, no, she's Okay. Yep. They're doing it. Yeah construction began almost as soon as the contract was signed and fell behind schedule almost immediately Engineering proceeded more slowly than expected and Raider needed to ramp up its staffing levels considerably to ensure completion on time. Keep in mind, they've been producing like one to three cars per year consistently. Now they're producing 18 in one year. Oh boy. Right?

Starting point is 02:27:59 How hard can it be? How hard can it be? Yeah. We've done cars before. As they continued to slip behind schedule, they hired more people, which meant they ate up more money in the contract, which meant they were under more pressure. That impeded progress, of course, which made them go more slowly. Okay. Building these brand new cars from used railroad cars meant that they ran into issues you might not expect.

Starting point is 02:28:25 Like as best as abatement. Which had to happen on some of the crew cars, and also the spa car. ALICE Yeah, you don't want to abate it too much though, cause otherwise shit's gonna catch fire. JUSTIN Yeah. ALICE As you go through the various status reports in the documents it's very funny because they'll be the same section each time, production staffing levels increased to 176 this week.

Starting point is 02:28:47 However, in order to meet future production requirements, staffing levels must continue to increase to 202. Then a few weeks later, it'll be like the new schedule requires at least 320 floor staff versus the current 267. Oh my God. It's just reaching the point where it's like that, that video of China doing a track renewal where they have a thousand people in this space, about a hundred meters.

Starting point is 02:29:12 All the just people crawling around like Spiderman on this train is like putting bits of it together. My God. This is a much later picture of the spa car down here. This is one of the lounges behind that, as one of the sleepers. So the other thing is, this is not the only large contract that Raider has taken on at the same time. The other one is for, of course, the Florida Fun Train.

Starting point is 02:29:38 What the shit? Yes! What's this thing? Wow, that's a bit of a Madeleine back to like, hit party buses from when I was a kid? This colour scheme, it's like the official colour scheme of fun as a concept. JUSTIN Oh, yeah, exactly. This is- ALICE So in the 90s, yeah.

Starting point is 02:29:56 JUSTIN The Lord of Fun train does actually sound pretty fun. Many people were asking in the 90s, why is there no train from Miami to the various theme parks around Orlando? And a company called First American Railways, which by the way, Tom Rader helped found, operated a few tourist railroads out West and they thought we could pull this one off, right? It would be fun for the whole family with brand new amenity cars from Rader Railcar, with huge wraparound windows so you could

Starting point is 02:30:25 take in the views of the various light industrial parks, used car lots and strip mall loading docks between just outside of Miami and 15 miles short of Orlando. The Disney episode is coming. Actually it's the floor episode. It's just gonna be me complaining to my wife about Disney World for four and a half hours. I married a Disney adult and I love my wife, but Jesus fucking Christ, Todd. Well this was, this was, this was, what's the word, non-denominational. You could also take this to Universal Studios. Why would you want to? Fuck you.

Starting point is 02:31:01 I don't know. I don't know what they had in Universal Studios back then. Why would you, the Nickelodeon world or whatever the fuck they called it. The Nick Studios, dude, I got slimed there once, yeah. You're gonna go get slimed, yeah. So these were composed of ordinary F40PH locomotives, leased from Amtrak, right? Glass dome passenger cars for seating around tables for four and meal service for up to 80 passengers, the adult lounge and entertainment car with full service bar, musicians and disc jockeys for listening and dancing, including the tiki bar.

Starting point is 02:31:33 ALICE I know it's not, but I wanna imagine those DJs on vinyl turntables that are just skipping like crazy and everything, just like, I'm trying my best, guys! ALICE It's the 90s, so it would still be CDs, even if it was digital. JUSTIN Yeah, it's true, they wouldn't be skipping. ALICE Still skipping, yeah. JUSTIN Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:31:52 You can see here, this is a much simpler modification than what they were doing for Marlboro, because up here this upper gallery is just the gallery car that they left in and painted fun colors, and removed the gallery from the other side. There were... You can kind of make it like a soft play, you know? There was the youth lounge and entertainment car, which provided sodas, shakes, and snacks, music and live entertainment provided by musicians, disc jockeys, magicians, comedians, clowns, so on and so forth.

Starting point is 02:32:25 ALICE Yeah, they got them all out of the hot tubs, and they're ready to go to work. ALICE That sentence is a very Matt Berry sentence. Provided by musicians, disc jockeys, magicians, comedians, clowns, etc. It's just a bit of a cadence to it, yeah. That's something. I've heard this described several ways. The space station arcade car for travelers to experience the latest high tech video and virtual reality games.

Starting point is 02:32:54 My understanding is this also included a large space shuttle themed like play place for the kids. It was a time of optimism. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There was an interactive and gift shop car for educationally oriented computer and video games with a unique gift shop using a wireless point of sale system, and a baggage car. For baggage.

Starting point is 02:33:18 Emotional or otherwise. You gotta put it somewhere. Yeah. I appreciate that they have... We didn't have emotional baggage in the 90s, everyone's happy. Alright man, yeah. Yeah, yeah, history time, remember? Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 02:33:31 The crew of 24 would dress in shorts and t-shirts with FUN Train written in vivid colours. They would be specially trained to be relentlessly helpful and cheerful for the entire five hour journey. I'm going to fucking dizzy. That is it, and Devon, I'm going to fucking Disney World. And Devon, you will have to bleep this. This is a hiding to mass YouTube. Mass YouTube, you said.

Starting point is 02:33:52 I remember. Mass YouTube, that's correct, yeah. Thisp relentlessly helpful and cheerful. That sounds like a description of me when I'm like, at my absolute, when I'm at my tiredest and therefore most unrestrained ADHD. This is... the thing is, this is now exactly how Brightline works. We've done this. They also have the relentlessly helpful and cheerful staff there.

Starting point is 02:34:13 They literally hire people from Disney who are used to having to put on the, like, relentlessly cheerful facade. Yeah, we both have friends who've taken that train and they're like, you know, they're used to m-track and you know It's it it's hard to tell the conductor. Please be normal Yeah, this is Brightline if Brightline had a tiki bar car We will be consultants on the tiki bar car Yeah Well I can get on it! We will be consultants on the tiki bar car. So this particular venture ran into some serious issues very early on, the company was very

Starting point is 02:34:50 undercapitalized, it could not get permission to run into Orlando proper, meaning longer bus rides to the resorts, but most seriously Raider Railcar was strung out with orders resulting in serious delays to delivery of the cars, which resulted in cancelling most of the first season, right? So First American Railways ran out of money and couldn't pay the full balance to Raider Railcar, which had already delivered the cars. So Florida Fun Train managed to run a second season and then went bust. OOPS. And then those cars were sold to Alaska Railroad, and Alaska Railroad did actually keep running

Starting point is 02:35:31 the Tiki Bar. Until 2006. YAY. When the car was converted to a normal boring cafe car. Having Tiki drinks in Alaska is a kind of like, y'know, God-defying hubris. I think one of the funniest parts about this fun train is these engines, the engines that they had were just leased from Amtrak, and when it died, they put them back in Amtrak service before they repainted them.

Starting point is 02:35:53 So there's pictures of this, like, insane Florida fun train, like, in Seattle, in just like the shittiest weather. Just like, y'know, filthy in Chicago in the winter, with the Florida fun train. Incredible. Hey kids, you wanna ride the Florida fun train? That sounds... Not ethical. That doesn't...

Starting point is 02:36:16 Yeah, I don't think we should say that. Dickens were only about $50, I think. That was a lot of money back then. Jesus Christ. So, engineering difficulties persisted, and Philip Philip Morris and Raider agreed to delay the promotion for a full year to 1997. Well they are truly getting sued into oblivion. Yeah, real serious cost overruns start to present themselves in the middle of 1996. More than 300 people were working on the train which was twice the workforce that was

Starting point is 02:36:46 budgeted for in twice the time. Philip Morris had so far paid $50 million for their $26 million train. So that's, whoa, 50 million. So that's, whoa, that's, well, this is one train and it's costing in today money, I think probably like the best part of $150 million. Please nobody look up how much like getting a normal Amtrak car is going to cost. They're going to make this much cheaper than that. True. No one look up the cost of the Intercity Express program fleet because yeah, probably less

Starting point is 02:37:16 than that. Good grief. The worst was yet to come. Here's a sampling of problems from May of 1996. No one knew how to write manuals for the cars. Engineering had not been completed on the steel tubes to hold the hot tubs in the spa car, despite said tubing already being under construction. They're just rolling around in there loose.

Starting point is 02:37:39 Quality assurance was shaky. The clowns are falling out. Improper batteries were installed which could not handle a railroad environment. Oh, let us. That's probably fine. ADA compliance was shaky, especially in the dining car. The office could only be locked or unlocked from the outside. There were tremendous amounts of drainage issues.

Starting point is 02:38:00 Oh, so it's wet in there as well. Yeah. Almost universal fit and finish issues. Oh, so it's wet in there as well. Yeah. Almost universal fit and finish issues. Oh, it's a Tesla. Many of the fabrics and all of the leather finishes were not fire rated. Definitely. It's got a job. There's so much fire in here already. Air handlers were so huge and heavy, they caused the floors to sag underneath them. No, I do not like that. And probably most intractively, the cars were too damn heavy, meaning a lengthy and difficult

Starting point is 02:38:32 search for new trucks, or if you're British bogeys, was required. Fantastic, so they created some extremely heavy steel tubes with no way of actually connecting them to a railway. Yeah. Pretty much. It's a bunch of ugly buildings Oh dear. Sunk cost fallacy prevails and Philip Morris just keys funneling cash into the company while offering $6,500 refunds to the winners of the first sweepstakes should they not be able to take the trip in 1997 I mean, he doesn't give a shit, he's just throwing them at us.

Starting point is 02:39:07 ALICE So like, that's like two thousand people each time. So your refund is gonna be thirteen million dollars, and instead you are paying fifty million dollars to build the train. And counting. JUSTIN Yes. Absolutely. How does the tobacco industry still exist?

Starting point is 02:39:27 One executive... Actually, I tell you what this explains to us, it's how much money the tobacco industry makes for this to kind of be a drowning arrow to them. Yeah, pretty much. Jesus. Yeah, this is just like part of the marketing budget, too. Oh, also, if you're, uh, if we were talking about the emergency windows earlier, here it is. Oh, god.

Starting point is 02:39:51 Just feed yourself out of that and fall to the ground below. The one right below it appears to be plated over with wall, which I don't think is how an emergency window's supposed to work. No, I, yeah. I would love an emergency exit that required me to punch through a really easy to punch through wall. I would feel so strong. JUSTIN That's sort of a... ALICE Yeah, that's a knockout.

Starting point is 02:40:10 JUSTIN Well, that's a knockout panel for when you get thrown out of the car in a comedy way after, y'know, getting mad at a poker game. ALICE Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's painted tinfoil for humorous effect, yeah, exactly. One Philip Morris executive who was on a site meeting, he took some notes at Raider in late August during this meeting, quote, Raider is an egotistical maniac. The chief operating officer, Mike Novak, has management experience, but he works for and fights with Tom Rader.

Starting point is 02:40:49 Quote, they don't know how to supervise people. This results in much of rework. Engineering also stinks. Quote, quality manual is excellent, but Rader doesn't follow it. He's the code guy, he wants to put more grand pianos in here. JUSTIN Yeah. ALICE Yeah. JUSTIN Noted structural issues under the car, on oil tanks, on the car bodies themselves,

Starting point is 02:41:12 on collision posts, lack of FEA or real engineering, that's finite element analysis, that's when you put the structure in the computer and there's all the pretty colors. Right? Um. the computer and there's all the pretty colors right they removed the exterior panels or they had to remove the exterior panels in order to remedy defective welds 800 welds per car for 14 cars I believe that's why there's no sheathing on this car they had this sort of truss system that was like the bulk of the structure right incredible you can see that seam where it was like the bulk of the structure right incredible

Starting point is 02:41:45 You can see that seam where it was like where the roof used to be on the gallery car And they just added that like three-foot panel in yeah, yeah Mas which is some kind of third-party service Previously inspected welds and passed them Tom Turner thinks they didn't inspect properly. Inspected through paint. Inspector who passed the cards now works for Raider." ALICE This guy's so cool. JUSTIN One of the favorite quotes, I found this document through a Oregon, I think OregonLive.com article, I'll link in the description. I was able to sort of reverse engineer this.

Starting point is 02:42:26 My favorite quote is, there's a fine line between stupidity and dishonesty, and I think we're on it. There was an issue on the ability to travel between cars on the upper level while the train is moving,ably because these cars were so tall and they would rock back and forth. The amount of movement in the upper sector would be enormous! Yeah, no wonder. Apparently even though these things hadn't turned a wheel there was some expectation there were gonna be some ride issues. No shit.

Starting point is 02:43:00 Quote, six foot horse statue for lounge car may not be able to be stabilized Look if you can't have your six foot horse Like what are we even doing here? 1997 comes around the trains still aren't fucking. The tour is again rescheduled to 1998. Oh dear. Philip Morris was still trying to limp this thing over the finish line, but they'd spent something like $78 million at this point. Holy shit.

Starting point is 02:43:36 And probably wound up subsidizing the Florida Fun Train in the process, because Raider was really bad at accounting. Then February 1997, Philip Morris pulls the plug on Raider Railcar. Things get a little murky here. You can see here the framing for the hot tub car. ALICE The hot tubs. JUSTIN Oh, yes. The Harkonnen tanks. ALICE The things this could have almost seen.

Starting point is 02:44:02 JUSTIN Yes. Yeah, the thing was really, it was saved. Oh, the places you'll go, and it's like Laramie, Wyoming, full of collapsed naked clowns. Yeah. Um, things get a bit murky here, the popular narrative is that Philip Morris took possession of the railroad cars, had them scrapped, swore raider desecracy to avoid embarrassment for all involved parties. Problem with this theory is that you can still see the cars on Google Street View in 2007, and everyone knew about it.

Starting point is 02:44:37 And the unfinished spa car definitely survived until at least 2008, when they started trying to convert it into a business car. ALICE I mean, at least it was never used. Imagine having your business meeting in the business car and you're like, why does it smell like clown? JUSTIN Well, they never put the hot tub center. ALICE Exactly, exactly. JUSTIN The hot tub's still under there, it's just

Starting point is 02:44:57 like underneath the conference table. ALICE Some say that on a moonlit night you can still see... JUSTIN Like the White House press room that's still musty from the swimming pool. Yeah. I think you just put a big tabletop on there, if you hit a curve or a switch too hard, like the water sloshes out on everybody's lap. This is a giant waterbed car.

Starting point is 02:45:19 Hell yeah. And you said these had drainage issues. There are some documents I've found suggesting Philip Morris still tried to save the project by repossessing the cars and sending them to a builder called Transportation and Transit Associates in either Hornell, New York or Canona, New York. I couldn't quite figure this one out, but they specialize in refurbishing old transit vehicles. If the cars were moved, they were moved sometime that January.

Starting point is 02:45:54 I can't confirm or deny this actually took place. At any rate, the train never ran. Raider Railcar laid off almost its entire staff that January, having just hired them. Um, they lost the Philip Morris contract, and they were stiffed on the Florida Fun Train contract, they went bankrupt, and reorganized as Raider Railcar 2. ALICE. Oh, really, really like him, that renaming scheme.

Starting point is 02:46:20 LIAM. It's like Salt and Pepper Deli 3, what happened? Old house, what happened to the first two? Raider Railcar 2 then went bankrupt. Oh yeah? And they reorganized it into something called Colorado Railcar. Oh no, the sequel! If at first you don't succeed.

Starting point is 02:46:37 As for the rest of the train, the passenger cars, a lot of it is question mark. Very definitely, we saw the demonstrator cars before before I'm like 99% certain those were Philip Morris cars that were just left on the property and they finished them as like a demonstration, right? The locomotives that, uh, Electro-Motive division delivered, you know, like instantly they're like, you want locomotives? We got locomotives here. Have some so many of these. Yeah, they were absolutely fine. They were sold to Metrolink in Los Angeles, the commuter railroad there.

Starting point is 02:47:09 They were retired just recently, I think. Oh, nice. 2020, supposedly, because they were not emissions compliant anymore. Well, yeah. Yeah. They love they love retiring locomotives in California for hypothetical technology that doesn't exist yet. So, uh, Marlboro and Philip Morris decide to never do trains again, except in a weird financialized way where, um, a lot of the locomotives on the Northeast

Starting point is 02:47:37 corridor, most notably the M-Trac HHB8s are actually owned by Philip Morris and leased back to M-trak through some sort of bizarre financial agreement that I don't understand. Oh my god, I really need to train landlords. They got in a big trouble about this because the HHPH kind of sucked. So Amtrak set them all, they replaced them with newer engines and they tried to like start parting some out for other things. And Philip Morris is like, yo, we own these. You're still

Starting point is 02:48:10 making them. Yeah, exactly. You can't part out our trains. So I had to go put them all back together and just they sat there in Delaware or whatever for ages and ages. In case Philip Morris could find another electric railroad in the United States, it would take them. Yeah, I... It's all very stupid. So that's how trains, that's how a good number of trains in America are owned by a cigarette company. Colorado Railcar still shambles on. They were able to stay afloat for a while.

Starting point is 02:48:40 Post on sale, just let it die. They were actually still able to produce pretty good small batch luxury train cars for a long time. Wow. We showed some of them earlier in the podcast, right? Tom Rader was unsatisfied with the slow but steady business of building one or two large luxury railroad cars per year. He wanted to get into mass transit.

Starting point is 02:49:01 Oh no. Uh oh. Now that's a fast moving world of movers and shakers, let me tell you. Yeah, I can play. So the first was- Risk takers, really. The infamous Colorado railcar diesel multiple unit, shown here, advertises the only FRA compliant diesel multiple unit in the world, meaning it could withstand the insane FRA

Starting point is 02:49:22 buff strength test, right? It found no buyers But the capabilities of the company had been sort of proven right it looks Russian But nothing looks like a Russian Multiplier unit that's that's you can see how much he loves those wraparound windows up top like oh, yeah He loves those things just loves really really big windows. It are pretty good Oh yeah, he loves those things. Just loves them. Which, really big windows are pretty good. They're pretty cool, except that you need shitloads of HVAC even if you're not smoking

Starting point is 02:49:49 on these things. They get warm. This is true. Build a greenhouse, it gets warm. Eventually, Tri-Rail in South Florida bought several of these huge, ginormous, double-deck diesel multiple units for service out of Miami. And they worked okay. And they only needed four of them.

Starting point is 02:50:11 So Colorado Railcar was able to provide. These guys were retired in 2012. They also built one for Alaska Railroad, which is the only company that has ever had success with anything this company built. And that one also works fine. ALICE Yeah, only works in Alaska, due to a shared derangement field. Apparently still working.

Starting point is 02:50:30 JUSTIN I talked to a colleague who works for Alaska Railroad as a conductor, he's like, "'These cars sound like shit, how bad are they?' And he's like, "'Eh, they're a little high maintenance, but they're fine. Apparently you bring it into the, below whatever latitude, these cars don't work, but in Alaska, all the Raider cars are absolutely fine. ALICE As you do. ALICE Powered, their competence is powered by moose proximity, you know, you take them out of moose range, it just falls apart. ALICE And down, powered, their competence is powered by like moose proximity, you know, you take them out of moose range, it just falls apart.

Starting point is 02:51:06 SEAN And down they go, yeah. JUSTIN I think Via Rail has a few as well, that, again, work absolutely fine. SEAN Yeah, they've got I think some of the single- they have the ex-Florida Fun Train single level domes. ALICE It's like me, it only works in cold weather. SEAN I hear that. SEAN Oh, I thought you were gonna say a little high maintenance.

Starting point is 02:51:21 ALICE Yeah, a little high maintenance, only popular in Canada and parts of Alaska. We will play... Oh, what's that town? Ketchikan. We will play Ketchikan. Ketchikan. We'll talk about how the bridge to nowhere was actually a great idea.

Starting point is 02:51:35 Which I unironically believe. It went to the town's airport, come on. We don't have time for that, Roz. Yeah, okay, anyway. TriMet in Portland bought some of the single level DMUs for their Westside Express service in 2009. Styler's only got normal windows, though. Yeah, but I like it though.

Starting point is 02:51:55 TriMet's order went so poorly they wound up taking direct control over Colorado rail cars finances just to get the damn trains finished. This involved, among other things, trying to separate Colorado Railcar's finances from a Tom Raider side project, the American Orient Express. ALICE Should've moved all of Portland up to Alaska. JUSTIN Following delivery, poof. Colorado Railcar was done. It was over.

Starting point is 02:52:23 Finally. ALICE RIP. Except, their assets were bought by Value Recovery Group. Oh no. Who intended to move the plant and equipment to Columbus, Ohio, rename the company US Railcar, and make a bid to supply equipment for the 3C corridor. That's the train from Cincinnati, Columbus to Cleveland. Right?

Starting point is 02:52:44 This was just fully funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act You know the Obamas big stimulus package, right? Yeah Obama fund bucks for trains Yeah, this was this was the most obvious rail corridor in the nation that was not served at all It would have served over 7 million people along a flat dead straight 230 mile railroad, and it was unceremoniously cancelled by the new governor John Kasich in 2011, on account of no one in Ohio rides the train. ALICE & LIAM Shut up, Dickhead.

Starting point is 02:53:17 ALICE You do not measure the need to build a bridge by counting the people who swim across the river, you daft prick. JUSTIN Now hold on, there were trains in Ohio. Ohio hadn't trained before. One of them shows up at Cleveland at two o'clock in the morning, one of them shows up in Cincinnati at two o'clock in the morning three times a week. Incredible. So because this was cancelled...

Starting point is 02:53:38 You told me it many times and it makes me angry every single time. Because this project was cancelled, the plant in Columbus, Ohio was never built. The intellectual property for this is, who knows what happened. Valueless. The status quo remains today. You can't order small batches of railroad cars at all. And what's more, they don't even let you smoke on them. What a country.

Starting point is 02:54:02 What a country. We flew too close to the sun. JUSTIN Yes. ALICE The cars were too tall, we flew too close. JUSTIN Yeah, maybe a controversial point of view, but hand Amtrak over to the cigarette companies. ALICE Yes. I know, I'd ironically believe this, let it happen. JUSTIN Some of those Amtrak trains already don't smell very good.

Starting point is 02:54:25 I don't. I've been on some trains. I'm just like, yeah, what are the hot tubs like? You know? Yeah. I don't know if I'd trust an Amtrak hot tub, actually. Yeah, Joe Biden's just chilling. Horrifying. Oh, my God. Oh, this is just pure chlorine.

Starting point is 02:54:47 I would feel comfortable if it wasn't. What did we learn? It's one of the most stupid trends. I want a Marlboro Unlimited duffel bag. Yep. That's it. I just think it's really funny that funny that no they work fine in Alaska Feel different I really wonder why there's got to be a very boring actual explanation for it that I'm not interested in I want No, I guess it has something to do with the HVAC being less stressed and just like light-duty cycles or something

Starting point is 02:55:22 Yeah, totally boring. I want the exact answer Well, we was segment on this podcast called safety third And just like light duty cycles or something. Yeah, totally boring. I want the answer Well, we was segment on this podcast called safety third I'm not another medical one Hello gang fuck you After listening to your episode on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, it reminded me of a near-miss experience I had with helium, whilst I was studying for a PhD some years ago. ALICE That should be, that should be, whilst I was studying for PhD some years ago.

Starting point is 02:55:59 JUSTIN I was doing my studies in a medical imaging department full of MRI scanners, an obscure device known as a Magnetoencephalograph. Or MEG, for short. ALICE This thing doesn't give one the anxiety that an MRI does. Cause you're not fully encased, just your head is. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:56:18 I can watch Netflix, it's fine. JUSTIN Ridiculous. SEAN It resembles a 1950s salon hairdryer, except the bit on top is a tank full of liquid helium. Oh, never mind. Nope, I like this less. To keep the electronics cold, to detect magnetic fields from the brain. The helium tank was pretty basic, so it would boil off the helium quickly. Don't worry, we weren't wasting precious said helium, we would capture

Starting point is 02:56:46 it in a system for reliquification and use it elsewhere. But this meant we still had to fill the MEG by hand twice weekly. Filling was, for some reason, the responsibility of the PhD students rather than the technical support staff." ALICE Oh, they are nagging you while you fill up the MEG, for sure. The training consisted of a twenty minute safety presentation, and what can only be described as a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, on-the-job training from whichever more senior PhD student you were paired with on your turn.

Starting point is 02:57:22 This process was as follows. Number one, put a feed pipe into a 250 liter dewar, I think a dewar is a type of tank, of liquid helium, which when it is at 290 degrees warmer than the contents, it boils some of the helium in the tank and builds pressure. Number two, divert the evaporating helium from going back into the recycler and instead to the atmosphere

Starting point is 02:57:46 so there's no back pressure. Number three, connect the feed pipe to the mag, and number four, open the feed pipe and let physics do the rest for you until the mag is full again. Okay, full step plan, simple enough. Yeah. One below freezing January morning, we were about to fill but forgot two crucial steps. First, we didn't divert the evaporating gas and second, we forgot to open the lab emergency exit to let in fresh air from the outside because it was really cold.

Starting point is 02:58:17 Normally, the back pressure from the recycler alone just restricts the flow of the filling, but this day something unexpected happened. The back pressure in the dewar was so immense that the emergency pressure valve on the dewar opened, ejecting liquid and gaseous helium all over the lab. Oh dear. Oh no! After me!

Starting point is 02:58:40 Quick, somebody! Oh my god. After a short panic we realized we hadn't diverted the evaporated gas and pulled the lever to do that, bringing the dewar under control and resetting the emergency release. Now what happens when you flood a room full of cold, liquid helium? Two things I remember from that day. First it made all the normal air in the room condense into clouds on the ceiling. And then it looked like it was raining indoors, which for some reason I found uncontrollably

Starting point is 02:59:18 hilarious. ALICE Not for some reason, I suspect, for one very specific reason. Related to what gas was in your lungs at that point. JUSTIN The second is that when helium boils it expands to about 700 times its volume and starves the room of breathable oxygen. Yes. Not bad.

Starting point is 02:59:33 In that situation, you don't get the squeaky voice, but go straight to inert gas poisoning. That's way less fun! My party trick of getting inert gas poison. Where symptoms include disorientation, hallucinations and often a feeling of euphoria just before you die. Oh, that's what I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Luckily for me, the senior PhD student realized what was happening, opened the emergency exit and pulled me outside in the fresh air where I made a prompt recovery.

Starting point is 03:00:07 We quietly agreed not to mention this to the senior staff, changed the standard operating procedure and unofficially made our policy do as I say and do. Luckily, smarter people than myself have found a way to build a mech which requires no liquid helium, so hopefully this kind of nonsense can be soon left in the past. Boring. I'm still not sure- Of such things as scientific progress made of, y'know. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:00:31 Still not sure whether the raining indoors really happened, or if it was a symptom of oxygen starvation. I don't wanna find out again. Oh, that's a Peter Watt blindsight kind of fucking detail. I was fine with this until you throw in, and maybe this bit didn't happen. Yeah, I don't like that. It's an unreliable narrator trope, it's a useful tool. Keep up the good work from, please don't mention my name, the Meg world is quite small and

Starting point is 03:00:57 I'm somehow still a part of it. That's a strange name. Just Meg for sure. Hey, who are we judging? You need to do like, advice column. From Helium-Filled and Helena. Well, that was actually tame compared to the exploding cadaver in the recent episodes and other such things.

Starting point is 03:01:21 Yeah. For medical ones that was okay. At least you got out of it with both of your ass cheeks. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't want to have to think about that again. Oh, I haven't stopped. Oh, good lord. That was Safety Third.

Starting point is 03:01:41 Shake hands with danger. Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anybody have any commercials before we go? No. I have one thing to say, which is this is my last mainline episode as a, as a cohost, I believe, which is, which is really sad. I've had such fun. Gareth Dennis, job haver.

Starting point is 03:01:59 Job haver. I do have a job. It was made public today as of day of recording. No yesterday as of day of recording because it's 2.36 in the morning. I have a job. It was made public today as of day of recording. No, yesterday as of day of recording because it's 2.36 in the fucking morning. I have a child. Yeah. So not only do I have a family, I also now have a job again. So mainline episodeers, thank you for having me and apologies. You're back to your normal lineup. It is.

Starting point is 03:02:21 Next mainline episode. It was our pleasure to, you know, exploit your skills and humor in your time of need for our commercial gain. I had so much fun. It's very sad that it's coming to an end, but it means that I can do battle with Victoria Scott again. So, so it's all good. When I return as a guest for perhaps undisclosed future episodes, who knows.

Starting point is 03:02:46 But yeah. No, thanks for having me. Thank you listeners for allowing me to be on this podcast and not shouting immediately saying get this twat off our screens. ALICE They love you and they're right to do so. JUSTIN Well you're still scheduled for the bonus episode tomorrow, right? ALICE I am of course. I'm still here for bonus time.

Starting point is 03:03:03 JUSTIN You still have to show up to work one last time. ALICE Yeah, I still have to. SEAN Yeah, fucks, go subscribe to the Patreon so you can get one more Gareth. ALICE Yeah, I have to think of something fun and patronable to save at the end of that episode. SEAN One Gareth more. ALICE Yeah. ALICE That's it.

Starting point is 03:03:18 So all the Network Rail com staff listening to this episode to see what I said, subscribe to the Patreon to hear me make all the actual threads. ALICE You said YouTube quite a lot, as I recall. LIAM Wow. ALICE YouTube. LIAM Yes. ALICE YouTube. Sounded like someone else. LIAM Weirdest thing.

Starting point is 03:03:31 RILEY The usual podcast plugs, though, for everything else, of course. Listen to everyone's podcasts. There's so many podcasts out there. Also, subscribe to Jay's YouTube channel, there's always some fun stuff going on there. No, I haven't posted that in like a year and a half. Shut up. It doesn't stop us from plugging the Patreon, does it? Exactly. There used to be fun stuff on there. Maybe once they make some...

Starting point is 03:03:53 There still is. It's just not new fun stuff. You gotta let go of this toxic idea of being entitled to new content all the time. We used to have fun. Then along came some Finns and some Swedes. JUSTIN Yeah. Honestly, having just spent the past three hours, plus the time yesterday, looking at all these blueprints at trains, I already have the hard part of this thing done.

Starting point is 03:04:17 I've already made these engines. We might be able to get this business train in city skylines Gareth coughing just thinking about it Make for Cities Skylines 2. It's just my... Oh, shut up. You just sold yourself in it. This is what you get. This is your punishment.

Starting point is 03:04:53 Cities Skylines 2. Oh my god. Incredible. Alright. That was a podcast. What a stupid idea. Bye everyone. Stupid.

Starting point is 03:05:04 Bye! Bye everyone.

Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 175: The Marlboro Unlimited

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