The one-minute TV commercial filmed at Cape Horn (plus eight shorter videos focused on the GE employees featured in the ad).
Click the white “play” arrow on the block showing six workers’ photos.
When General Electric wanted to put its work on display, the showcase included a stretch of the Columbia River Gorge a few miles east of Washougal.
Cape Horn was where America’s sixth-largest corporation got its money shot in a nationally televised commercial starring eight employees of GE Transportation and a BNSF Railway locomotive they built.
The one-minute commercial is part of the “GE Works” series, in which employees see the real-world results of their labor.
BNSF Railway provided the eastbound freight train for the commercial, and also suggested the Columbia River Gorge as a possible location.
The one-minute TV commercial filmed at Cape Horn (plus eight shorter videos focused on the GE employees featured in the ad).
Click the white "play" arrow on the block showing six workers' photos.
“We also sent photos of Glacier and Stevens Pass,” said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. “When they saw the Gorge, they were sold because of the variety of the terrain: from the basalt cliffs, waterfalls and evergreens to the flat terrain east of White Salmon.
“We heard from people from the East Coast who said, ‘We didn’t know areas like this existed in America,’” Melonas said.
It was a wonderful location, confirmed Andy Goldberg, director of creative content for GE advertising in the United States and the United Kingdom.
While the terrain was beautiful, Goldberg said, the Columbia River Gorge also was a wonderful canvas for capturing the image of a train more than a mile long.
“We could capture the length and beauty of a train going down the track,” Goldberg said. “We could get an elevated look from a helicopter and capture the majesty of it in an epic location.”
