THIS TRAIN DON’T STOP HERE ANYMORE [463]

Among the most notorious flops in American television history, “Supertrain” is a 1979 science fiction adventure series I have known about for years, but only tried to watch recently, the details of its misconception being more interesting than the final show itself.

The “Supertrain” itself is a high-speed, pullman-style luxury train driven by no less than nuclear power and a steam turbine. This is not as wild as it sounds: the English Electric GT3 was a prototype steam turbine train, instead powered by gas, but didn’t move beyond test runs in the early 1960s, never carrying any passengers.

“Supertrain” carried more than a dining car: its double-decker carriages had hotel-like cabins, a gym, restaurant, infirmary, gift shop, dance floor and swimming pool. The opening scene of the first episode implies this is the future of train travel, not long after Amtrak had been formed to save US passenger routes in real life.

The sets were gargantuan, in both size and cost. Built at the MGM studio lot (now Sony Pictures Studios), a reported $6 million was spent constructing a full-size, non-moving train and interior sets, rising to $10 million with the completion of two scale-model trains for use in exterior shots. It is usually accepted that "Supertrain" was so expensive, its failure nearly bankrupted NBC, but failures of other shows, and lost advertising revenue after its scaling back of its coverage of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games following the United States' boycott, makes the show only one part of a larger-scale problem.

The full-size set had hydraulics to aid chase scenes on the train’s roof, pushing people back if the train accelerated, while a further copy of the roof was fixed to top of real train carriages, for stunts that needed a real moving train. Meanwhile, the interior is very 1970s in design, looking not unlike a cruise ship of the time, with velour carpeting, lots of lights and plenty of opportunity to wander the corridors with an alcoholic drink in your hand.

I have not mentioned the premise of the show so far because it is hardly worth the point. What initially captured me about the show were the opening titles, with Bob Cobert’s aggressively disco theme laid over various shots of the train and of its crew, forming the main cast. Watching the opening episode reveals a set of interweaving storylines featuring the passengers and their romances, a set-up relying on a parade of guest performers, and the crew interacting with them.

“Supertrain” is essentially “The Love Boat” but set on a train, a fact recognised at the time, but the show’s producer Dan Curtis, creator of the seminal gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows”, seemed to be more interested in photographing the train. Curtis was replaced after five episodes, and “Supertrain” was steered into being more comedic, adding a laugh track to its ninth episode before the show was cancelled.

“Supertrain” lasted for only nine episodes from February to May 1979. Creator credit went to crime and mystery writer Donald E. Westlake, and to Earl W. Wallace, former head writer of the Western TV series “Gunsmoke”, and later scriptwriter of the Harrison Ford-starring crime thriller “Witness”. Their only writing credit for “Supertrain” was the opening double-length episode, retitled to “Express to Terror” when released later as a standalone film to try recouping its costs – with Keenan Wynn, Steve Lawrence, Fred Williamson and Vicki Lawrence as guest stars, they become a solid cast for a 1970s TV drama. The following episode starred Dick Van Dyke as a hitman.

DON’T KEEP ME HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE [462]

Clear-bodied Trimphone, used for promotional purposes

Some time ago, I had the idea for a scene that would find itself in some sort of murder mystery film. A character would speak into a telephone, intentionally misleading whoever was on the other end of the line, then placing their hand over the microphone end of the handset as they describe what was really going to happen to the other person in the room, in much the way that villains always declare their plots out loud. 

At the end, as the detective puts together all the elements of the case, rewarding the audience’s attention as they go, it is revealed that the phone on which the villain was speaking was a Trimphone, the ubiquitous angled telephone found across British homes from 1965 onwards, the thinness of its receiver achieved by placing the microphone in the top section, next to the speaker – the other line heard the whole plot, then called the authorities.

Our family had one of these phones at home for years – once upon a time, you either had a standard-issue General Post Office phone in your home, owned by the provider of the phone line, or you rented a comparatively cutting-edge Trimphone for a few extra pence a week. Ours had a two-tone blue colour, the handset and cord in a darker blue than the base – modern reproductions always use one colour for the whole device, missing an important part of the design and aesthetic of the phone.

I now understand my murder mystery scene could not work in practice. It is easy as a child, using what felt like a top-heavy handset, to have thought the sound of your speaking must travel up the obviously hollow handset to the microphone at the top. That is what happens, but the sound is funnelled through a plastic tube running up the inside of the handset. While the speaker and microphone are installed in the top of the handset, with their backs to each other, the microphone fits into the head of the tube, sealing it off from the speaker – putting your hand over the bottom of the receiver will stop any sound coming in, just as the villain hoped.

While still weighing nearly a kilogram, and containing the same mechanism from other GPO telephones, I thought the Trimphone was named for its comparative lightness and angular design, making them a luxury. However, “Trim” is an acronym: “Tone Ringer Illuminated Model” referenced its use of a tone generator over the striking of bells, sounding like an unfamiliar bird or frog, while using a tiny tritium gas canister to make the rotary dial glow in the dark. Much safer to use than radium, tritium was also used by Rolex and other watch manufacturers on their dials, but despite this comparative weakness, and its average glowing lifespan of only twenty years forcing Rolex and others to find alternatives in the 1990s, enough of a worry existed over radioactivity as a concept for Trimphones to be replaced with dials that did not glow. A push-button version only arrived towards the end of the 1970s, requiring the base to be made slightly taller.

A popular complaint about the Trimphone was its comparative lightness caused the base to easily move if you were walking around while speaking to someone – the official answer was to wet the rubber feat to stick it down. Without the need for anything mechanical, I am sure the modern reproductions are lighter still – they may now even have a microphone small enough to fit next to your mouth.

SO HOT THEY'RE COOL [461]

“Kellanova?!”

This began upon seeing a headline: “Shares in Pringles maker Kellanova jump on Mars bid talks”. The subheading on the article then talks about the “cereal and snacks company formerly known as Kellogg’s”.

If there was ever a time to think “I beg your pardon”, and realise you’ve completely missed something, this might be it. Kellogg’s is so synonymous with breakfast cereal that their products having been made of basic food ingredients has prevented the brand from becoming a verb, in the way “Hoover” and “Sellotape” have done.

However, the article led with their ownership of Pringles, bought in 2012 as a way of pushing Kellogg’s appeal through the rest of the day. That hadn’t necessitated a name change up to now.

I was initially wrong-footed in my understanding of this situation when I looked at an American story which confirmed that, in October 2023, Kellogg’s had split their snacks portfolio from their cereal business: WK Kellogg Co. would remain in the company’s historic base at Battle Creek Michigan, while the everything-else arm would be based on the other side of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois.

Jerry Seinfeld had made the point that Kellogg’s were unaware, until a couple of weeks before its release on Netflix, that he was making a fictionalised retelling of the birth of Pop-Tarts in his film “Unfrosted”. However, it now appears that Kellogg’s no longer own Pop-Tarts, so it hardly would have mattered to them anyway, and their brand no longer appears on its boxes...

...in North America, at least. A cursory glance in a local supermarket confirms the Kellogg’s name still appears on boxes of Pop-Tarts, Nutri-Grain bars and Fruit Winders in the UK, and that is because the cereal-snack split happened only in North America, where the market for cereals is not growing as quickly as demand for everything else Kellanova makes. On the other hand, Kellanova has a hand in one American market that I have not yet seen it try in the UK: plant-based foods, through its ownership of Gardenburger vegetarian burgers, and of Morningstar Farms, which makes soy-based “meatless meat” burgers, patties and pieces. 

I am not sure whether this is all due to changing tastes or changing times. I don’t have enough time in the morning to sit down and eat a bowl of cereal each morning, and when I do, I still don’t do it. However, I will have a Nutri-Grain oat bar, preferably with raisins.

Going back to the interest in Kellanova by Mars, I found it interesting that the headquarters of its confectionery decision, through its previous purchase of the Wrigley chewing gum company, is also in Chicago, so I expect that Kellanova’s offices there is on a short lease. Furthermore, Mars is synonymous with snacks, but does not make breakfast cereals. In purely business terms, consolidating the two businesses together may provide savings, but there is – I hope – very little crossover between the brands: someone will be paid to develop a future box of cereal with some M&Ms chucked into the bag.

RUNNING IN THE FAMILY [460]

from a 1967 Renault brochure

While I have previously written about Citroën’s ingeniously designed 2CV, and their spaceship-like CX, the only Citroën my family has owned was a Xsara MPV, or “people carrier” – remember them? – that licensed the name of Pablo Picasso, presumably to mean something.

However, the only car my family has owned more than once – we had two of them – was also French. Made from 1965 to 1980 in a factory near Le Havre, the Renault 16 was one of the first imported cars to sell in big numbers in the UK, a country that rarely bought from outside its own shores before then – we later benefitted from the second-hand market it opened.

As a child, I remember it being big, roomy and comfortable. The ride was also very smooth, which I now know is due to independent rear suspension using torsion bars that spanned the width of the car, requiring the rear right wheel to be placed slightly forward of the left rear wheel. One of the few front-wheel drive cars on sale in 1965, and with its gearbox placed in front of its aluminium engine, there was no transmission, gearstick or handbrake invading the interior space and separating the front seats. Instead, the handbrake was a pull-out lever under the steering wheel, and the gearstick grew out of the steering column. Oddly, the windscreen washers were activated using a button on the floor, near the clutch.

The 16 was Renault’s biggest and most luxurious car when it went on sale, competing with the Ford Cortina and the Austin/Morris 1800, and made various features available in a family car for the first time, like central locking, powered sunroof and driver windows, and air conditioning. Just as taken for granted in new cars today was the split rear bench seats, with many advertisements for the 16 displaying the sheer amount of luggage it could hold.

This leads to the ultimate innovation of the Renault 16. It was not the first car to have a “hatchback”: Citroën had the “Commerciale” variant of its Traction Avant, and various Austin and Morris cars, included the Mini, had “Countryman” versions that had single or split rear hatches. Even the small Renault 4, the 2CV competitor introduced four years before the 16, had what would be described as a hatchback. 

However, all these cars were usually described as estate cars, or station wagons. The Renault 16, with its rear more raked than squared off, and with a tall profile and large windows, fell between a standard saloon and an estate car. “An entirely new breed of car” was what its brochure said, but only Renault’s American division branded it as the “Sedan-Wagon” during its short time on sale there. I guess as a family, we didn’t think anything of it because most new cars were hatchbacks by the time we had our first 16, the avant-garde having become the standard.

According to www.howmanyleft.co.uk, only eighty Renault 16s remain on British roads as of August 2024. How many cars influenced by it remain? Millions.