The Auto-Train is celebrating it's 25th Anniversary this year. To promote the fact that they can carry something besides Grandma's Crown-Vic, they have two new images plastered everywhere, booklets, pictures & posters, some are 20' X 40' large. They are done in a water-color type picture. One depicts a classic motorcycle, while the other is a clearly a SUNBEAM Tiger or Apine. Why did AMTRAK pick an obsure 1960s British sports car over all the interesting cars on the planet for this special celebration? In October of '07, many Sunbeams used the Auto-Train to attend a Tiger-United sponsored by "Tigers-East / Alpines-East", in Daytona Beach. I suppose someone at Amtrak snapped a picture of one of the cars aboard & decided to use the image. Pretty wild, huh?
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May 1, 2009 6:20 a.m. Lionel None
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May 1, 2009 7:26 a.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor
Link?
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May 1, 2009 2:53 p.m. Lionel New Reader
Unfortunately, I could find no image on the Amtrak website for a link. Amtrak says the poster will be available in 6 to 8 weeks. I have a picture, but do not know how to add it to your forum. Sometime when you are in Sanford, stop by the Auto-Train station & check it out for yourself. thanks...
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May 7, 2009 5:04 p.m. David S. Wallens Editorial Director
I have heard about the AutoTrain artwork as well. Interesting.
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May 9, 2009 12:19 p.m. Marjorie Suddard General Manager
I have a tote bag emblazoned with the very image, thanks to a couple of longtime readers I met at Amelia Island this spring. They had taken the train and tried to get the poster to send me and Tim as Tiger owners, but were told it was not available yet. However, I had already seen one of the posters on the wall of the Willow Tree Cafe in Sanford (EXCELLENT German restaurant, btw, no matter how much of an oxymoron that sounds like).
It's a very strong Deco design that really says "golden age of train travel." The bag's in my office--I'll get a picture Monday.
Margie
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May 9, 2009 5:37 p.m. bikesnrovers Reader
Man, if they ever become available online somebody let me know!
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May 11, 2009 9:50 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Saturday was National Train Day. A friend called from Union-Station in D.C. to tell me that he was sending me a T-Shirt of the image that he found there. I just now checked the Amtrak website, but still no mention of anything with that image. Go figure...
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May 13, 2009 3:53 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Lionel wrote:
Unfortunately, I could find no image on the Amtrak website for a link. Amtrak says the poster will be available in 6 to 8 weeks. I have a picture, but do not know how to add it to your forum. Sometime when you are in Sanford, stop by the Auto-Train station & check it out for yourself. thanks...
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May 15, 2009 3:48 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Marjorie Suddard wrote:
I have a tote bag emblazoned with the very image, thanks to a couple of longtime readers I met at Amelia Island this spring. They had taken the train and tried to get the poster to send me and Tim as Tiger owners, but were told it was not available yet. However, I had already seen one of the posters on the wall of the Willow Tree Cafe in Sanford (EXCELLENT German restaurant, btw, no matter how much of an oxymoron that sounds like).
It's a very strong Deco design that really says "golden age of train travel." The bag's in my office--I'll get a picture Monday.
Margie
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May 15, 2009 3:53 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Margie,
My wife ate at the Willow Tree Cafe yesterday. She said she had to look hard in the restaurant to find the poster. She said it was tucked away in a hallway near the ladies room. I sure wish anyone would respond to my request on how to add a picture to this forum (PC challenged) that is not on a formal website, so that I could post the Auto-Train image that I have for all to see. Thanks!
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May 16, 2009 3:42 p.m. Marjorie Suddard General Manager
Lionel, You have to upload the photo to a website to post it, but if you go to flickr.com and click "create account" it'll walk you through the whole process.
Margie
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May 18, 2009 5:05 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Thank YOU, Margie. <img src="
" />
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May 18, 2009 7:50 a.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor
Thank you, Lionel. That IS cool.
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May 18, 2009 2:19 p.m. bikesnrovers Reader
Sweet!
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May 22, 2009 12:56 p.m. Lionel New Reader
The poster has just today become available. You must call to order one as the website says "none is stock", which is false.
http://store.amtrak.com/ProductDetail.aspx?did=5551&pid=60525 -
May 30, 2009 9:13 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Surprisingly, there are two versions of the Sunbeam poster. One says "Washington D.C. to Orlando, Fl. & the background is sunlight streaks & palm fronds. The other version has the cities reversed, & the background is a silhouette of the Capital in Washington D.C. Amtrak had 100 posters available on their website, but now they are not shown again, they must have sold the first lot completely out.
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Sept. 1, 2009 6:16 a.m. Lionel New Reader
A recent article in one of the Tiger club newsletter explains why they picked the obscure Sunbeam for the poster. The artist was contacted by someone named Sandy Ganz. His explanation was, "Amtrak's ad agency wanted a sporty car but not a recognizable current model. So I used my friend's Tiger as a reference. I have always really admired his car. The agency had me remove a couple of distinct Tiger details, like the bumper guards, to make it cleaner, graphically." So the answer to why they used the Sunbeam, is that they thought the general public would not recognize it.
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Sept. 3, 2009 8:08 p.m. Series6 New Reader
Lionel wrote:
So the answer to why they used the Sunbeam, is that they thought the general public would not recognize it.
Awww shucks. I was hoping he did it to just annoy Fiat and MG owners...
The one I got has Washington in the background.
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Nov. 6, 2009 5:32 a.m. Lionel New Reader
In reply to Series6: The poster available to the public is 18" X 24". Mine is a bit larger as you can see......
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Nov. 6, 2009 5:34 a.m. Lionel New Reader
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Nov. 6, 2009 6:24 a.m. mtn SuperDork
That last picture isn't working for me
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Nov. 6, 2009 6:29 a.m. Lionel New Reader
We have been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out how to get the picture to load. I have loaded images to this site before...it just won't work this morning. We are still trying. For now, the gist of the note was that I was very, very lucky to get a 5'x8' banner to display with my Tiger.
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Nov. 6, 2009 6:48 a.m. Lionel New Reader
We're sorry for writing the note at all as we could not get the site to accept the picture despite an hour and a half's worth of herculean effort on our part. We even tried uploading the previous poster picture that is included in an earlier posting and even that picture would not load. Margie, can you help me again? Thanks.
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Nov. 6, 2009 6:48 a.m. Tim Baxter Online Editor
It looks like you gave the URL to the page the image in on at yahoo. You'll need the actual image URL (you can always right-click to get it). And make sure yahoo's allowing it to be publicly viewable.
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Nov. 6, 2009 7:07 a.m. Lionel New Reader
Tim, we appreciate your input, but again nothing worked. We made it "publicly viewable" on Yahoo. The, we cut & pasted the URL that came up on the picture. We were not allowed to copy the URL from the Properties right click of the picture. It still did not work. This is what we pasted http://www.flickr.com/photos/38493866@N04/4080323656/
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