That cozy, old school cabin photo of a Delta Air Lines L1011 TriStar from the 1980s is getting people talking for one simple reason: it looks roomy. Wider looking aisles, big overhead bins, and that warm lighting that makes the whole cabin feel like a different era of flying.
Delta's own history of the L1011 explains why it felt that way. The airline called it "high, wide and handsome," noting a cabin about 8 feet high and 19 feet wide, plus wider aisles and large entry doors designed to make boarding and deplaning easier. Delta's first revenue L1011 flight was on Dec. 15, 1973 from Atlanta to Philadelphia, and the airline ultimately flew 70 of the type, the largest L1011 fleet in the industry.
Delta retired the L1011 in 2001, after decades of domestic and international flying, including transatlantic and transpacific routes. And over time, the industry shifted hard toward efficiency and packing more people into each flight, especially after U.S. airline deregulation in 1978 changed how airlines competed. Looking at this cabin, you can see why so many travelers say, "Yeah... they really don't make it like that anymore."
It's the most wonderful time of the year, and you know what that means? Time for heritage railways everywhere to shake us down for more money with some Christmas-themed excursions.
Post anything holiday trains related. Can be your local Polar Express, Christmas-themed model trains, Rule 34 of Santa Claus shoving a wooden train up his ass. You name it.
I'll start off with Niles Canyon Railway's Train of Lights, which I had the privilege of riding in first class of earlier today.
>be random fisherman on Florida's St. Johns River in 1980 >be on your comfy boat, catching some catfish as your Southern ancestors have been doing for generations >be anchored next to the local train trestle >Amtrak's Silver Meteor service passes by as it does every day >think nothing of it, continue fishing >suddenly a steaming fat pile of shit lads right on your fucking head >before you even have time to react to being covered in more excrement than an Indian swimming in the Ganges, the Silver Meteor disappears into the distance >go straight to the town sheriff to file a complaint >it turns out that Amtrak's Budd and Pullman-built rolling stock that was inherited from other railroads upon nationalization, are all equipped with direct-dump-on-the-tracks toilets that will literally dump piss and shit on the fucking tracks at high speed; and that this is a practice dating all the way back to the first passenger trains that has essentially remained unchanged in over 150 years >judge is no more amused than you are, win the resulting lawsuit easily >literal legal shitstorm ensues as now Amtrak is on the hook for whenever someone gets splattered by human waste from one of their trains >outfitting the entire Heritage Fleet with retention tanks that are periodically emptied at stations turns out to be too expensive, so most of the fleet is sent straight to the scrapyards as soon as they can be replaced >incoming Amfleet, Viewliner and Superliner cars all have to be redesigned from the ground-up to use retention tanks >thus the era of the classical American streamliner comes to an abrupt end >all because of a fucking toilet