(MUSIC PLAYING)
(TRAIN HORN HONKING)
Carly, are you really going to operate this entire train?
My whole life has been leading me here, I have to do this.
CHARLIE: Weird but true,
a locomotive engine on a train can generate enough energy
to power an entire town.
CARLY: And I'm about to harness all that power to fulfill my destiny.
It's time for Weird But True!
(TRAIN HORN HONKING)
CARLY: Whoo!
CHARLIE: Did you know there are more stars in the sky
than grains of sand on the whole planet?
-This is incredible. -I know, right?
-CHARLIE: Charlie here. -Yeah!
-CARLY: Carly here. -Yes!
CHARLIE: We're best friends.
-Let's go! -Let's go!
CARLY: We live here, in Chicago.
CHARLIE: With a little imagination...
For the rest of time.
-CARLY: And a whole lot of exploring. -CHARLIE: Oh!
CARLY: This is so epic.
CHARLIE: We're discovering just how weird the world can be.
-Hey. -We made it.
CARLY: This is unreal.
CHARLIE & CARLY: Trains!
MAN: Mail's here.
Oh! Charlie! The mail's here!
Hey, guys, Charlie here. You know my friend, Carly.
It's here! It's here, it's here, it's here, it's here!
So, you guys know how we're in Crafty Campers, right?
-Crafty Campers! -Crafty Campers!
-Well, next week Carly's going through... -CARLY: Career week.
Crafty Camper Career Week. It's a big deal.
Every Crafty Camper is assigned a career and then paired
with a real-life professional in the field for one life-changing week.
Just look at Charlie.
Last year, he was paired up with a world-renowned arborist,
to learn how to shape and care for trees.
Now, he's a board member of the International Society of Trees.
Career week basically determines the rest of your life.
-And I just got my assignment. -So, open it up!
-I can't do it, you do it. -Okay, okay, okay.
All right, Carly, during career week,
you have been paired with, and as a result,
will spend the rest of your life as...
-a train engineer! Yeah! -A what?
This is a disaster!
Oh, my grandpa must've had something to do with this.
Your grandpa?
(SIGHS) Yeah, he's a legendary train engineer, Vinchenzo Cabooso.
He's always talking to me about being a train engineer,
but I don't wanna do it.
Aren't you at least interested in trying it out?
(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
No, I don't want to be a train engineer just 'cause my grandpa wants me to.
I'm gonna skip career week.
Oh! Skipping career week? Nobody skips career week, Carly.
I'm not doing it, and it is gonna take a lot to convince me otherwise.
All right, guys. I guess that means today...
-Oh, no, no, no, no, no. -...we're unraveling the world
-of... -Come on!
-CHARLIE: ...trains! -CARLY: (GROANS) Fine. Trains.
-All right, trains. -Yeah, they are rusty old metal things
that run on rails. Huh! Wow. Well, I think that sums it up.
Thanks so much for stopping by, come by again next time...
-when we discover more things... -No, no, no.
-...that are weird but true! -No, no, no.
-We're not done. We're not done. -(GROANS)
CHARLIE: There's a lot of cool stuff we can learn about trains.
I think I know the perfect thing to get you interested.
Ha!
Trains Through Time: How Choo-Choo's Have Changed.
-A history book about trains. -Yep, and you're gonna love this, Carly,
because the history of trains goes way back, over 2,000 years,
to ancient Greece.
Back then, people needed a way to transport boats on land,
so they attached wheels to carts, put their boats on top,
and pulled them along grooves that were cut into stone.
The carts ran on tracks and it worked.
The Greeks were really onto something, and over thousands of years,
people improved the carts and the tracks they ran on.
By the 1500s, people in Germany were running wooden carts along wooden rails
to transport coal and supplies from mines.
Weird but true, these were the inspiration...
for modern-day roller coasters.
But the biggest innovation came a couple hundred years later.
In 1803, a British engineer named Richard Trevithick,
attached a steam engine to a cart and made it move all on its own.
He invented the steam engine locomotive
and trains were officially introduced into the world.
Hooray!
Oh, wait, see this, right here?
-Uh, yeah. -Okay, look.
This is Richard Trevithick. I want to be like him.
-Why him? -He invented something
that changed the world.
Imagine having that kind of an impact on history. (SIGHS)
Richard Trevithick invented the steam engine train.
After that, nothing was the same.
For example, weird but true, before trains,
people didn't vacation much at all.
Traveling was very slow.
Dear friend, please come to the beach for a swim.
Dear friend, I'll take my horse and carriage and be there,
in eight months.
CARLY: But once trains were invented, traveling became much faster.
People could take quick vacations to places like New York,
Florida, Atlantic City, and San Francisco.
-Hi! (GIGGLES) -Hi! (GIGGLES)
CARLY: And by the early twentieth century, people were traveling
all over the country, but that wasn't the only problem
trains helped to solve.
Weird but true, before trains, there were no official time zones.
Each town had its own local time
and barely anyone was on the same schedule.
Hey, it's 2:30, my time on the track.
What are you talking about, it's 2:45, that's my turn on these tracks.
-No! -It's my turn!
-My turn! -(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
-CARLY: It was a mess. -(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
To fix the problem, train companies split the country
into four main time zones, each one hour apart.
Now, all train conductors were using the same time
and ran on the same schedules.
The train time zones worked so well that Congress adopted them
as the official time zones of the United States.
But the impact of trains didn't end there.
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
CARLY: By the late 1800s, railroads had spread out all over the country.
Suddenly, producers had a way to sell their goods
far away from their factories.
Hey, right now I'm only selling these here in Chicago,
but what if I toss a couple on your choo-choo train,
you take them to New York, sell them there?
Sounds good to me.
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
Great!
Shipping was cheap and fast,
which fueled an industrial revolution in the United States.
People began inventing brand new products to sell all over the country.
Light bulbs, elevators, movie cameras, and even refrigerators,
were all invented during this period of innovation
-and shipped using trains. -(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
CARLY: There you have it, vacations, uniform time,
an industrial revolution, and it all happened
because Richard Trevithick invented the steam engine train.
So, you'll become a train engineer.
-Not exactly. -Why?
(SIGHS) Here's the thing, trains already changed the world,
hundreds of years ago, it's been done.
There were trains and then cars and then planes and then even spaceships.
I mean, are trains even that important anymore?
(SCOFFS) Yeah, of course they are.
Trains are the number one form of transporting goods across the U.S.,
hauling around 40 percent of all freight in the entire country.
And people rely on trains to get around, too.
Weird but true, if you added up all the miles that people rode
on trains in 2016...
-it would be over 39 billion miles... -(GASPING)
CHARLIE: ...the same distance to the sun and back 209 times.
Okay. All right, maybe I was a little quick to judge the whole thing.
-So, you're going to career week! -Maybe.
(SIGHS)
Charlie, I think I just want some hands-on experience first.
I want to know what it's like to work on trains.
Okay, so you are talking about something like a pre-career week, career day, right?
-Yeah. -Yeah, I like it.
Where should we go?
Uh, I don't know, maybe...
-(PHONE RINGING) -Oh!
-Who is it? -Oh, it's my grandpa, can I take this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Go ahead. (WHISPERS) It's Vinchenzo Cabooso.
Hi, Grandpa.
Carly, my granddaughter. I hear you've been matched up
with a train engineer for career week.
Now, listen I set you up with a trip to Steamtown, Pennsylvania.
I got a couple of friends, they're going to take care of you,
and teach you everything you need to know about trains, okay?
Grandpa, that's perfect, thank you.
I'm so proud of you for pursuing the family business.
-I love you, okay? -Love you, too.
(SMOOCHES)
All right, Charlie, we are going to Pennsylvania
to check out some steam trains.
Perfect, we'll get the real Cabooso treatment.
-We'll see you guys there. -(SIGHS)
CHARLIE: We're off to Scranton, Pennsylvania
to spend time with some real trains.
Weird but true, the modern Ferris wheel was invented in Pennsylvania,
and so was bubble gum.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
CARLY: Yee!
-Behold! We have arrived! -Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
CHARLIE: If you could go anywhere in the entire United States
to learn about trains, this is the spot.
Come on, let's go.
CHARLIE: Steamtown has it all. Real locomotive trains,
a shop where they take care of the trains and do repairs,
and a cool museum all about train history.
Come on!
Oh, look at this!
There are like half a dozen cabooses out here.
Charlie, I don't think that these are cabooses.
One's a caboose, right?
-Honestly, I don't know. (LAUGHS) -Okay, this is something we should
definitely make sure we understand, the basic train parts.
Let's look into that a bit more closely.
Presenting a wonderfully standard train.
So, there are a few main parts here.
First, we have the locomotive, that's the front part of the train.
It holds the engine that provides the power to pull the rest of the train.
Next, we have the passenger cars that hold the people.
After those, you might find the freight cars that carry goods.
And at the end of the train, you have the caboose.
Cabooses used to be a nice shelter for the crew,
where they could rest or get some work done.
But recently they've replaced cabooses with a tiny box, called an ETD,
an End of Train Device.
It's a super fancy computer that monitors all of the brakes
and other mechanical things on trains.
So that's your basic train breakdown, the locomotive, passenger cars,
freight cars, and a caboose or an ETD.
CARLY: First stop, the machine shop, and meet up with Bruce Mowbray.
He's a train conductor and also in charge of maintaining trains.
His favorite weird but true fact is,
the longest train journey in the world goes from Portugal to Vietnam
and covers more than 10,500 miles.
-So, what do you do here? -Basically, we fix trains.
We do major repairs, total restorations.
-Amazing. -Well, Bruce, I gotta tell you
real quick. Sorry, Carly.
Uh, we're... we're in the presence of some train royalty.
Carly's grandfather is Vinchenzo Cabooso.
-The Vinchenzo Cabooso? -Yes.
-I am totally honored. -(CARLY CHUCKLING)
The man himself. But Carly's a little, uh, not... not convinced about trains.
Well, wait until you see what we do with trains.
-(MUSIC PLAYING) -(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING)
BRUCE: Maybe that'll change your mind.
-Perfect. -Okay.
What are these guys doing behind us?
Right now, they are going to inspect the wheels on this passenger car.
-CHARLIE: Mm-hmm. -BRUCE: And if they find
that they're worn out, they'll actually remove the whole wheel assembly out.
CHARLIE: It's super important that the wheels on the train are in great shape.
So, they get inspected regularly to see if anything needs to be fixed.
What I see here is what is called a "built-up tread".
The brakes caused the wheel to get so hot, the wheel actually melted
and as the brake shoe slid along, it actually smeared
-the metal on the surface. -CARLY: Whoa.
The next step is, we're going to bring the wheels back to the lathe,
to machine this defect out.
CARLY: This is a full sensory experience. I can actually feel the ground
underneath us rumbling because of how intense this is,
and see that smoke, that's burning metal and it smells... terrible.
CHARLIE: Mike Oprisko, uses the lathe
to smooth out the defects on this giant wheel.
That's a brand new wheel profile now, so this is like a brand new wheel.
-It looks great. -I need sunglasses.
CHARLIE: Next, Bruce shows us another process,
where they remove a wheel from its axle.
(THUDS)
-Ah! Whoa! -(CHUCKLES) Ah!
-That was so loud. -Whoa!
CARLY: Oh! It's free.
The wheel is so heavy, they need a big crane to move it.
CHARLIE: So, how much does this thing weighs right here?
-MIKE: It's about 750 pounds. -CARLY: Whoa!
This crane, you can operate with this remote control.
-That's pretty cool. -Yep.
-Can I give that a try? -Sure.
All right. I can do it.
CHARLIE: Carly's having fun working in the machinery shop
under Mike's close supervision.
Definitely couldn't do this without a qualified expert.
Yep, beautiful.
CHARLIE: Hanging out in the repair shop really appeals to her curiosity
about how things are put together.
Okay, I just moved 750 pounds
across this room with one finger.
Now that I'm operating huge machinery, I have to say, I am kinda feeling this.
And I'm super pumped about this next stop.
-Oh! This is the cutaway steam locomotive. -My grandpa talks about this all the time,
but I have never seen it before myself.
It's a full-size train model cut in half, so you can see how it works inside.
Let's check it out, follow me.
Okay, something to remember when we're looking at this.
The yellow parts, that's where fire is.
The blue parts, that's where water is,
and the white parts later on, that's where steam is.
So the first section right here is called the firebox.
So, the fireman scoops up coal, throws it into the firebox,
and it generates a giant fire,
creating tons of heat and sending it this way to the boiler.
That's right, the heat travels through these fire tubes
and the fire tubes are surrounded by water.
The water heats up,
starts to boil, creates steam which goes through the steam dome
-and over to the valve. -The steam travels all the way
to the valve, where there's a piston.
It shoots that piston back and forth, creating tons of motion.
Near the wheels, it's converted into rotary motion.
Cool science word, "rotary motion". That's motion in a circle.
-The steam makes the wheels turn. -This train is powered by steam.
-Weird but true! -Trains.
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
CHARLIE: The moment we've been waiting for is here.
Time to visit the steam train and meet Chris LaBar, the engineer.
His favorite weird but true fact is,
stray dogs in Moscow often ride the subway trains,
getting on and off at their regular stops.
-(STEAM HISSING) -Chris,
it's hot, it's loud, there's steam coming out of everywhere, what's going on?
Well, the sound you hear right now is the air pump, pumping air
into the tanks on the engine.
We'll use the air for braking later.
This will stop in a few minutes once the tanks are full.
-Let's drive a train! (LAUGHS) -Let's drive this train!
Right, so we're gonna have Bruce check the brakes now.
And we're ready to go.
I'm getting super excited. I did not think I would be this excited.
(BELL CLANGING)
We're moving!
This train is moving.
So we just backed out the train on to this turntable,
it can rotate the entire train onto a new set of tracks.
There are two people in charge of this train right now.
Chris, the train engineer, and then Bruce, the train conductor.
That's right, the train engineer is in charge of all these levers
and knobs over here,
whereas Bruce, the conductor, is in charge of the whole train.
When it comes in and out of the roundhouse,
how it works on the turntable.
Now, we're perfectly aligned with track number 12,
so, uh, I think we're ready to start this bad boy up.
-(MUSIC PLAYING) -(BELL CLANGING)
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
-(YELLS) -All aboard!
(BELL CLANGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
CARLY: There are three basic types of train whistles.
One toot means we're braking, two toots means we're going forward,
three toots means we're going backwards.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
Whoo!
CHARLIE: Here's another cool job, the fireman.
That's Johnny's job right here. He maintains the fire inside the engine,
which helps keep the train going.
So here's what he does, takes a shovel, scoops up some coal...
steps on that pedal, opens up the butterfly doors, and chucks it in.
The fire is maintained and it heats up water in there,
which generates steam, which powers the entire train, right, Carly?
That's right, a steam train runs on steam,
but there are lots of other types of trains.
Let's look into that a little more closely.
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
CARLY: Steam engines were common for a long time,
but they released a lot of pollution into the air and were super expensive
to take care of, so engineers developed new types of trains to replace them.
Like diesel trains.
They have big engines that run on fuel
to power an electric generator which turns the wheels.
They're much cheaper to run and fix than steam engines.
Engineers also developed electric trains with no engines.
Electricity comes from remote power stations
and makes its way to a motor in the locomotive, via overhead lines
or a third electrified rail.
Diesel and electric trains are most common today.
-That was amazing! -Chris, thank you so much.
That was better than I ever could've imagined.
-Thanks, Chris. -Thank you, guys. Thanks for coming by.
CHARLIE: All right, Carly, what do you think?
I had a lot of fun today,
and operating that train with Chris was incredible.
So, I have an announcement to make.
I will shadow a train engineer for career week.
-Ah! -(CHUCKLES)
Your grandfather is going to be so proud of you.
-I know. -I can't wait to tell him.
-Mm. Me either. -All right, guys, we gotta go back to HQ
to break the news, but we'll see you soon?
Perfect. See you there.
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)
Oh. That was a close call, Carly.
I'm so glad you decided to go through with this.
Can you imagine what those other campers would've thought, like,
bailing on career week. It simply isn't done.
For sure, but that's not why I'm doing career week.
Oh, it's 'cause your grandpa wants you to do it.
Mm. Not quite. I am doing career week because it's what I want to do.
Really?
By the end of our time at Steamtown, I started to think that maybe
this is actually the perfect moment in train history for somebody like me.
Think about it.
From little carts in ancient Greece,
to steam engines, electric trains, and diesel,
engineers have been changing and improving trains
for thousands of years.
And who says it has to stop now? You saw all those trains in Steamtown,
it's like they're all sitting and waiting for somebody like me.
An innovative, world-changing engineer to take them into the future.
Check this out.
-Look at this! Look at this! -Whoa. What is this?
A magnetically levitated train model. A maglev train.
So I put magnetic strips here and here, so the train floats.
There are only a few in the whole world, but maglev trains are the future.
Magnetically levitated trains are super-fast,
have no wheels, and don't even touch the tracks.
Instead, they float on air above rows and rows of super powerful magnets.
How cool is that?
Plus, they're incredibly safe.
The further a maglev train leans to one side,
the stronger the magnet force that pulls it back on track.
These trains are smoother, faster, and safer
than any trains in the United States.
But they are very expensive to build, that's why there's only
a few of them in the entire world.
Hmm. Well, that sounds like a problem for a super smart train engineer to solve.
Hmm. I think I know one who's up to the challenge.
But come one, we gotta go, it's career week time.
All right, guys, looks like we got a new project on our hands,
but thanks so much for stopping by.
Come by again when we discover more things that are weird...
-But true. -We'll see you guys later.
-Come on! -Yes, yes, yes.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Hello, everyone. Big train news coming out of Chicago today.
The Maglev Super Quick tunnel train from HQ industries
completed its maiden-voyage across the world.
The Maglev Super Quick was developed by rock star train engineer,
Carly, of the famous Cabooso train family.
And it's safe to say, she has truly changed the world.