No more "Extreme Trains"?

[stokesda]

I just turned on the TV to watch "Extreme Trains" on the History Channel, only to find it wasn't on. I searched the TV listings, and it doesn't show any airings in the next 2 weeks. I even went to the History channel website and even though it's still listed as a show, it doesn't have any future airings listed either. No additional information about new episodes in the future or anything.

Has the show already run its course and is History now pulling the plug? That's kind of surprising, since they have only run through each one of the original episodes twice. The only episode I hadn't seen was the "ice cold express" (reefer train) which was supposed to be on tonight. Maybe I'll never get to see it now. What a bummer!

I guess they figured they desperately needed two dozen airings each of Monsterquest, The Universe, How the Earth Was Made, etc. and couldn't afford to give up one measley hour a week for us poor railfans

 

[midnightchief]

NO!!!! say it aint so, that was like my favorite show and now there pulling the plug, this better be only a temporary thing, there better be new shows, America's youth needs to learn the joys of the railroad, it is and always has been our future.

 

[suprduc]

Sounds like we had the same night Dan. I made sure to be home in just in time to watch Extreme Trains only to find out how the moon was made instead. I couldn't find any information on their website about future or re-aired episodes either. Hopefully there will be more or at least a rerun so that I can see the ones that I missed.

 

[jbaakko]

What about Ice Road Truckers?

You can watch episodes on the site, they change from time to time...

 

[Rogue]

I believe there are 8 episodes in all and I also believe a new series has not been commissioned which is a shame, from an other forum I've read a lot of so called "rivet counter" Railfans giving a lot of negative comments on the show particularly about the presenter. Perhaps the History Channel have taken these negative comments on board!

The show has only been shown here since last week and I've enjoyed both episodes so far. Last nights was the Coal Train and it was really interesting. I hope we continue to see the whole season and I hope it's eventually available on DVD. For me in the UK it's a great overview of North American Railroading!

 

[+Eric]

Sometimes networks produce a show and only initially produce a few episodes then air them to see how they do. Based on ratings they then decide to produce more episode to air later on - since producing an episode takes a bit of time. Hopefully that's the case.

It would be a shame if it's true about people complaining about the show. What whiners. Don't watch if you don't like. Personally, I was not a huge fan of the host either, but reality is you have to drum stuff up. I mean, trains are only interesting to railfans and to get others watching (which would be needed for the show to continue to run), you're going to have to get excitement out of non-railfans.

Something very similar happened with the show called the principles office on tru tv. One day it sorta just stopped airing after an initial run. It's back now, so who knows.

 

[el3637]

I believe there are 8 episodes in all and I also believe a new series has not been commissioned which is a shame, from an other forum I've read a lot of so called "rivet counter" Railfans giving a lot of negative comments on the show particularly about the presenter. Perhaps the History Channel have taken these negative comments on board!

History channel paying attention to what viewers think? Not likely. They don't care what anybody but A.C. Neilsen thinks.

I have a theory that the History Channel is actually a closet in some office building in Burbank. That closet contains a web server, a DVD player, a couple other computers, and an internet/sat connection. Once a day or so, someone opens the door to see if the power is on, and once a week somebody changes the stack of DVDs.

I've seen a DVD get stuck in a program and stick for as long as 45 minutes before anybody fixed it. Even my local one-man PBS station's record for a stuck CD was only about 8 minutes while the one-man was in the bathroom. HC seems to be a "no man" station. Certainly they have crews, hosts, production etc. to create the programs, but when it comes to operations, nobody's home.

Extreme Trains was ok. I've seen most of all 8 episodes. I can't stand the "fast forward" thing HC does on so many of their programs... from house movers to power shovels. It looks particularly ridiculous to show a stack train take off uphill on Cajon like a dragster. Reminds me of model railroading.... LOL. At any rate, Extreme Trains was not near as bad, nor as uninformed as "Full Throttle" - a show with a cool premise but just too hokey. I laughed out loud when one of the hosts claimed "Snoop Dogg made the 1964 Chevy what it is today". That's sort of like saying Garth Brooks invented the guitar.

Andy

 

[rentalguy1]

I laughed out loud when one of the hosts claimed "Snoop Dogg made the 1964 Chevy what it is today".

Ya...everybody knows that it was Easy E that made the Impala famous when he sang "Cruising down the street in my six-fo..." and that was before Snoop even came on the scene

 

[Boilerbuster]

I was lucky and got most of the episodes on my DVR and all in High Def.
I can watch them all the time and am planning to transfer them to an external hard drive that I have.

 

[el3637]

Ya...everybody knows that it was Easy E that made the Impala famous when he sang "Cruising down the street in my six-fo..." and that was before Snoop even came on the scene

Naah, it was Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke....

Another thing about that show is that some of the archival footage wasn't even of the right car. I don't remember which one was the subject, but it was a Ford or Chrysler and they're showing old test track films of a 65 Chevy or something like that. I mean the film wasn't the highest quality, but it was pretty obvious anyway.

The best car they built on that whole show was the 1972(?) El Camino with the crate motor. Just a lucky build I guess - an easy build too, but the car was pretty hot. The one where they matched up 68 Coupe De Villes was interesting, although wasn't much of a race when the blue one blew its motor. And they put N2O systems on, like, everything. Take some old bucket and throw an MSD ignition and nitrous on it and cross your fingers.

The Gremlin vs. Pacer show was a hoot if for no other reason than seeing the expression on the team members' faces when the cars were unveiled. You can hear them thinking, "I jumped through hoops to get on this show for a chance to win... a Gremlin?" They also did one with VW bugs, and they used some hot crate motors for those - I was actually impressed with the cars after that - although the crate motors probably didn't help the footroom any.

I know they had been planning to do a show with Ford flathead V8s when it was cancelled. That one might have run into money just to acquire a couple of viable fixer-uppers that could be considered relatively equal to start with.

Andy

 

[NYO&W]

Add me to the growing list of railfans who came up empty handed at the TV set last night.

 

[ICG/SOU]

One of the things that has always bothered me about the History Channel is that they are constantly shifting around regular shows, or preempting them for other regular shows or whatever. The earlier analogy to THC being in some sort of closet makes sense.

Since the programming changed several years ago, I find myself not watching THC very much since much of the programming is not historical. Sure, it may be contemporary history, but much of those shows could be shown on Discovery, TLC, or something else.

I missed the last episode, about the transcontinental railroad. I liked the show, and albeit I don't know even half of what many here have forgotten, I did learn something from it.

 

[stokesda]

...from an other forum I've read a lot of so called "rivet counter" Railfans giving a lot of negative comments on the show particularly about the presenter.

After I posted the original topic, I went to the HC website and looked at the forums for Extreme Trains. It was a shame, but there were many posters there who were die hard rivet counters and did nothing but complain about how poor the show/host was, and how the show had "lied to" and "misled" the public about trains. Some of the complaints were such as:

"They talked about going down Cajon Pass, but everybody knows if you're leaving San Bernardino, you go up Cajon Pass!" (Um, well, yeah, but don't you have to eventually come down the other side?)

"Even though they were going up Cajon Pass, the footage they kept showing was of westbound trains coming down the pass!" (So what? I don't think they were trying to insinuate they were all the same train. Besides, they've shown different footage of different trains in all the episodes, so this is nothing new.)

"The technical explanation of dynamic braking was wrong!" (OK, you got me. The gist of what they were trying to explain was that the locomotive uses its traction motors to slow itself down, and I think they got that concept across to the viewer.)

It's sad that some people can't just appreciate the show for what it is - Trains 101 for the general public. It's better than having no shows about trains on TV. Hopefully none of those negative comments weighed into History's decision to pull the plug on the program.

 

[NYO&W]

It's sad that some people can't just appreciate the show for what it is - Trains 101 for the general public. It's better than having no shows about trains on TV. Hopefully none of those negative comments weighed into History's decision to pull the plug on the program.

Excellent point.

 

[DirtyD79]

I agree stokes. It's not for hardcore rivet counting traindorks it's for the general public to have some kind of understanding of how trains operate, not a longwinded technical tome about the D3A 567 prime mover.

And yeah the host is kinda gonna have to ham it up a bit because I really doubt anyone including the rivet counters is going to sit through an hour of Ben Stein style monologue about how a petcock works.

 

[NYSW F45]

maybe they were taken by surprise at how well the show did? and now they are scrambling to film more episodes? i loved every bit of the show even the host. He's a kid in a grown ups body. He works for a small shortline/regional in new england that has now been given the opportunity to travel the US on the biggest railroads in the country and get paid for it. How can you not be excited about that?

 

[NYSW F45]

oh and when's kinda getting loud and such, its probably because he can't hear himself talk so he starts talking louder since its loud as hell working around trains.

 

[Southwest Chief]

"They talked about going down Cajon Pass, but everybody knows if you're leaving San Bernardino, you go up Cajon Pass!" (Um, well, yeah, but don't you have to eventually come down the other side?)

Um not really. The downgrade heading eastbound is nothing compared to the westbound downgrade. Being a Southern Californier you should know that

Anyway it was never mentioned that there would be more than 8 shows. And it takes time to record shows. So maybe we'll see more in the future. I liked the program and hope to see more. However, with what the History channel has done with their other rail related shows in the past, I'm not betting on any "new" Extreme Trains anytime soon.

 

[jtudor]

I went to the contact us page on thier website to send them an email asking about the program. There is a programming error in thier form so it will not allow the email to be sent.

Oh well I tried.

 

[Gino]

I think it was a great show. It was understandable for the average joe, there were great shots of the trains in the countryside. My boys came away with a better understanding of the industry and operation of trains than their dad ever would have given them. Additionally, the scene of a car getting ripped in half has made a lasting impression on them about rail safety. Dominic has told me about 10 different times when stopped at crossings "you would NOT want to be on that rail right now, because if you were... BAM".