Wheels of Progress (1950)

★★★★ · Driver 8 (Mm, gravy!) · Wilford B. Wolf · 2005-09-02

1950 film singing the praises of the Rock Island Line, a railroad centered in Iowa and serving the Midwest. Even if you didn't know when the film was made, the first half would undoubtedly tell you that the film was made during the heighth of Cold War rhetoric. The narrator talks about how America is the greatest country in the world because it has democracy and capitalism. This is illustrated with a typical family sitting down to dinner reciting hokey, echoy dialog. Naturally, this is all aided by having a great transportation system to move the "limitless bounty" of the land. Surprisingly…

★★★ · Shes a mighty good line · MediaWhore · 2005-09-03

"Rock Island Line shes a mighty good line, Rock Island Line shes the road to ride......."- What a great old Johny Cash song (I'm sure he covered it from someone else). What ever happened to the mighty Rock Island Line company? I found it interesting that they use to ship entire freight cars on shipping boats instead of the intermodal containers that we use today. If your not into the whole nerdy train scene like I am then this film will most definately bore you.

★★★ · Train keeps rolling (and rolling) · Spuzz · 2005-09-12

Almost endless movie about the Rock Island railroad and the cargo, the train types, the people, the paths, etc etc it has. After one of the most fabulous beginnings I have seen anytime (Amelie Moment!) with a family going for dinner and the young childrens.. well, fondness for gravy, the film takes a huge downturn from there and goes into train-talk, which is all right I guess, but provides nothing new that youve never heard before, eg, train transportation is gods gift to man, yada yada. Pretty unremarkable.

The Rock Island Horn of Plenty · Dodsworth the Cat · 2025-05-07

After marching music (likely a Boosey & Hawkes stock cue) and a ridiculous family dinner scene (with grammar corrections, a hectoring, tie-clad chastising father and a kid giddy about gravy), we get to the point. America is a "horn of plenty," the haven of free enterprise. Better than those foreigners. And why? Because railroads get cars, food, farm machinery, cows, furniture, oil and so on to YOU. Especially the Rock Island Line "which gives service that is unsurpassed." It's a "fabulous empire!" The Rock Island superlatives come from narrator is George Stone (heard on "What to Do on a…