The northern plains, where the wind seems to never stop blowing and the winters can be brutal, are also the home to several fascinating regional railroads. Thanks to the importance of agriculture there, this is one part of the country where the presence of railroads is perhaps more appreciated and indeed more necessary than the rest of the country. For the northern plains are a long way from the coastal ports and navigable rivers that bounties of the land usually need to get to customers in Europe and Asia. Just like the rest of the country, the large railroads operating on the northern plains began to sell off or abandon their maze of branch lines in the 1980s and early 1990s. This left the northern plains with a number of spin-offs from the larger roads that seemed to have neither the traffic nor the resources to rebuild their worn-out track and survive the harsh climate and the vicissitudes of the weather on crops. Yet some of these smaller railroads have not only survived but seem to be thriving as they are in far better condition than that which they were left with by their class I parents. This program shows the trains and operations on four northern plains Regionals – the Northern Plains Railroad, the Dakota, Missouri Valley, and Western, the Red River Valley and Western, and the Twin Cities and Western in November of 2008. These four railroads between them operate over 1700 miles of track in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana. Length = 76 minutes. Price = $30.95 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling. This DVD has the option of being watched with or without narration.
Price: $30.95 The twenty five miles of track between Moorhead Junction, Minnesota, just across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota, and KO Junction Switch, west of Casselton, where the former Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines split, is as busy as any section of track on BNSF’s main line between the Twin Cities and the Pacific Northwest. All trains on BNSF’s main line from Chicago to Portland and Seattle and all trains on the former NP main to Montana traverse this strategic section of track. At KO Junction Switch, the transcontinental main line, often referred to as the Hi Line because much of it is close to the Canadian border, heads northwest towards Minot and the West Coast on former Great Northern track, while the former Northern Pacific main, now part of BNSF’s northern coal corridor, heads straight west towards Jamestown and Bismarck. This funnel also sees a lot of grain headed to ports in the Pacific Northwest. A manned tower that was taken down shortly after the Burlington Northern merger, used to control the grade crossing of the two main lines at Casselton. Today, all of this track including the junction is controlled by BNSF’s network operations center in Fort Worth. This program shows all of the trains for 24 hours on the BNSF’s North Dakota Funnel around Casselton and KO Junction Switch in October of 2008. Length = 2 hours and 23 minutes. Price = $38.95 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling. This DVD has the option of being watched with or without narration.
Price: $38.95
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The producer, Dick Eisfeller, and his better half, his wife Barbara at the Big Train Show in West Springfield, MA in January of 2009
Welcome to Big E Productions at TrainVideos.com!
Our Big Summer Sale is now on – Buy 3, get 1 free. Ends 9/1/09.
The big news this month is that our summer sale is on. Buy 3 tapes or DVD’s and get 1 free. Two or three DVD sets count as one. There is no restriction on the cost of the free DVD, so this can be quite a deal. Order as many times or as many programs as you would like. This 4 for 3 sale ends 9/1/09. This is your best opportunity to replace your favorite tapes with DVD’s! We now have 212 programs available in DVD. End of VHS Sale – we have only a few VHS tapes left. If interested give us a call or check the web page. All but nine programs have been converted to DVD and all should eventually be made available in DVD format.
Two new programs have been released this month. The first shows BNSF action around one of my all-time favorite train watching spots – Casselton, North Dakota. In the 1960s I used to go up there to see freight trains on my then favorite railroads – Great Northern and Northern Pacific. The second covers four regional railroads in the northern plains. These new programs have been edited digitally and are available only in DVD-R format. Two additional older programs have been converted to DVD – “Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor at Speed” and “CN’s Eastern Mountain Main Line”. There is a lot of older, now retired, passenger equipment on the Amtrak program shot in 1994 and there are many Alcos on the CN program, and unfortunately, many more trains on that line then than what CN runs today. All of our DVD’s have chapters and menus and the 56 newest ones – everything videotaped from 2004 on and a few programs from 2003 - have a choice of being watched with narration and without narration by using the audio or language button on your DVD player controller.
Our library of videos contains
212 programs in DVD
2 copies of Logbooks
- Our programs show the whole train
- Most programs show all trains for 24 hours or more
- Train symbols, origins, history, and operations covered in narration
- No train video producer does a better job of explaining railroading than we do
- Our programs are truly documentaries of railroading
- Years 1992 to present
Our mission is to document the incredible changes going on in today's railroading. Our programs are aimed at customers interested in operations and fans and modelers that want to know what is truly going on in railroading and to see the whole train. We are the only train video producer who makes every effort to identify and show complete trains. Expert commentary tells about the changes in operations over the years, schedules, and what a particular train is carrying and where it is going. Most of our DVDs and videos show 24 hours of action on a particular line or at a given point. These programs give a 24 hour "look" at today's railroading that is unprecedented in the train video industry and will become more valuable as time goes on. Our programs are documentaries that cover contemporary railroading from 1992 to the present and were shot in locations all over the United States and Canada. These DVDs and videos are not simply a collection of runbys of locomotives and a few head end cars taken at different places. That is why original slogan was "No More Mindless Runbys."
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