This video takes us east from Kingman, AZ, to Flagstaff, AZ, on a portion of what was once the Santa Fe’s main line across Arizona.  We are on the Seligman Sub which stretches from Needles, CA, to Winslow, AZ.  The area covered in this video is also known as the “Arizona Divide.”

The video quality is excellent and it is presented in wide screen format.  This combination of great image quality and wide screen format makes  the desert scenes come alive.  This DVD is very near 7idea quality and that says a lot.  A shortcoming must also be pointed out, however.  There needs to be a more detailed map than the one presented at the start of the video and it should be referred to as we progress along the sub.  It is impossible to visualize where we are as the scenes unfold.

The first geographic feature we are shown is Kingman Canyon where the double tracks are at different elevations; one set of tracks is located along the bottom of the canyon and one set of tracks is located part of the way up the canyon wall.  We see two trains running in opposite directions in the canyon, one on the lower track and one on the upper track.   We see another train meet a little further east in Crozier Canyon but the tracks there are side by side and at the same level.

As we make our eastward progress we gain elevation and eventually leave the desert behind us in favor of pine forests.  When we reach Williams, we are at 6700 feet in elevation, a gain of in elevation of 3200 feet above our starting point at Kingman.  The narrator informs us that this is the only alpine region along the entire Santa Fe main line from Chicago to LA and we continue our eastward journey until we reach Flagstaff.

This one gets a B.  It seemed that the further into it I got, the less impressed I was.  It was worth the price but could have been better.