A Romance of the Rail.

A series of railroad scenes of novel and amusing interest. It opens with a view of an imposing station showing a pretty girl, dressed in white, seated on a trunk awaiting the arrival of her train. A young man approaches, also dressed in white, and the two immediately fall in love. The Lackawanna Limited then rolls into the station and the Pullman porter helps the couple aboard. As the Limited pulls out the pair are seen on the observation platform waving adieu to their friends. The picture later shows the train rushing sixty miles an hour through the famous Delaware Water Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with the young couple enjoying the passing scenery. As Delaware Water Gap station is reached a porter appears with his brush, but the young people protest that the journey has been so free from dust that there is no need for his services. The climax comes when the young man, who has become more and more infatuated, secures a minister and the marriage ceremony takes place on the rear platform. The picture shows them leaving the train on arrival at the Gap, and a little humor is added at the end by the appearance of two tramps from beneath the trucks of the observation car dressed in full evening clothes, who become indignant at the offer of the porter to brush them off, as their trip has been entirely free from soot and dust. The series is full of snappy train scenes and is certain to provoke a laugh.

According to Edison film historian C. Musser, this film parodies an advertising campaign developed by the Lackawanna Railroad to counter its reputation as the "Road of Anthracite" coal carrier. The campaign featured passenger Phoebe Snow, dressed in white, who rode the rails and praised the line's cleanliness with such slogans as: "Says Phoebe Snow, about to go upon a trip to Buffalo: 'My gown stays white from morn till night upon the Road of Anthracite.'"

Filmed in August 1903, along the Lackawanna Railroad.

(Video courtesy of Edison Manufacturing Co./Library of Congress/Tehrkot Media)

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