They were the corporate jets of their era.
Private railroad cars, homes away from home for business barons and the just plain wealthy, were outfitted with rare woods, brass fixtures and plush furniture. There were dining rooms and bedrooms and fancy silver, crystal and china and a staff. Fine cigars and wines. In the first half of the 20th century, they showed you had arrived before you arrived.
Richard Luckin, a 66-year-old Golden-based video producer and lifelong rail buff, revisits the long-lost days with “Luxury Rides the Rails: Private Rail Cars Through the Years” (8:30 p.m. Sunday, KBDI-Channel 12). The 30-minute program covers private cars from President Lincoln to modern moguls.
It’s his sixth rail-related video since 1999, all nostalgic looks at a time when getting there was more than half the fun. He’s done the Santa Fe’s star-studded Super Chief of the 1950s; the postwar popularity of dome cars; the Southern Pacific’s Daylight, dubbed “the most beautiful train in the world” in the 1930s; the California Zephyr; and the Winter Park Ski Train. Actor Michael Gross frequently narrates.
Luckin’s videos are a combination of romance and history.
“The thing is, I don’t do these as rail fan programs. It’s people talking about what they did,” Luckin said. “These people were there and did it. It’s a history that is slowly fading away. I couldn’t do these without the personal stories.”
They are also remarkable retellings of the trains’ histories through original movies. Several years ago, he hit the mother lode of promotional films from the 1930s and ’40s hoarded by a Chicago collector.
“He has the largest collection of railroad-produced footage in the world,” said Luckin. “He probably has a million feet of film. We will spend two or three days looking at film in his basement. Of course, I pay him to use it.”
Like famed film director Alfred Hitchcock, Luckin slips himself into every video, a stunt he learned while doing corporate production for Coors, where he worked for 20 years. “I’m in there somewhere. Why not?”
The videos, he admits, don’t bring in a lot of money, but there are other perks. First, his productions, done on some of the most luxurious trains still riding the rails, feed his love of rail travel. He’s been all over the world on trains, just got back from Hawaii and will go to Norway in May. All his train videos have been screened, without charge, on PBS but, he points out, “you make it on the back end,” when viewers get a chance to buy the program online.
Trains always have been a large part of Luckin’s life, beginning with the first HO model he received as a gift in 1952, which he still owns.
He was one of the nation’s premier collectors of railroad dining-car memorabilia before he sold it off five years ago; he’s written five books on china patterns used by railroads; he’s on the advisory board of the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden; he was one of the founders in 1977 of Railfair, a collectors’ show; he’s head of a company that re-creates early-day china for today’s few private-car owners; and, with his wife, Kathleen, rides trains wherever they can.
Next up is a one-hour video on the New York Central’s legendary 20th Century Limited, due out in the spring. On his wish list (he doesn’t have the money yet) is a major production on America’s cathedrals, its massive train stations. And, just for his satisfaction, a look at the Packard automobile. “My dad owned three Packards.”
