OK, I agree, but it was ‘hollywood’ we are talking about,…where fantasy is their funny uncles middle name. I’ve seen worse stretching of the truth.
But in addition to the issues you brought up, I have a few questions too, lets take a closer look, shall we?
BINGO, this bothered me too. I missed the first 45- 60 minutes of the movie, and just assumed that the guy blew off all his air with improper applications before I tuned in. I guess you are saying THAT wasn’t the case? Then obviously the writer had no clue about how Air brakes work.
That occured to me as well, but not all loco’s have Dynamics, do they? Are we sure these loco’s had DB?
I especially thought this was fishy as well. The movie presents the train as having finally gotten the brakes working, slowed the train down, just in time to have the chase engine slam into the back of them, with the inertia of the impact causing the functioning brakes to catastrophically fail. Anybody know if this can even happen? The impression the story gave me was that the inertia transfered from the chase train to the train with brakes applied, caused the applied brakes to “snap”, which with a brake system for every axel on the train to fail simultaneously, seemed beyond far fetched
Yes, but they weren’t real BIG piles of sand
What I kept wondering about was all the manual brake “wheels” I kept seeing on the caboose and o
Yeah I did notice that to and i did note on all trains have hand brakes on every car and even the. Engnies have hand brakes that Rob lowe could have turned to slow or even stop the.Train
What a brutal movie! All of the guys I worked with at BC Rail were truly embarrassed by the end product. Even grumpy old #1 seniority trainman Clyde Mulhall (the Movie Train Service conductor for this one) was left shaking his head in wonder! For you useless info buffs, you can see Clyde’s mug on the X Files episode where a BCR Budd car was blown up at Porteau Cove. He was turning an angle***prior to the explosion scene.
The BC MOT railway inspectors were postively mortified by what took place on their watch. I hope that the regulatory fines that BCR incurred did not outweigh the revenue derived from that Movie Train.
As for the BCR website, CN took the bcrail.com domain name down for good in May.
Now, the only place to find “British Columbia Railway Co.” on the web is as follows:
If I remember correctly, wasn’t there a scene in the caboose, when the train first lost its brakes, where some sort of fluid was leaking out of the brake pipe. The crew member was mumbling something about brake fluid…
Atomic Train was the most embarrasing movie with a railroad theme that I have had the displeasure of witnessing, although the errors are so glaring to someone with railroad experience, It made me actually sit and watch, and drive my wife up the wall pointing all them out.[:D].
Emperor of the North, on the other hand, was very enjoyable, to the point my late father, who worked as a brakeman then conductor for 38 years starting in 1944, got me to see this movie as he really liked it. I too hope to see this again someday and on DVD.
They are - sort of. Bombardier purchased MLW around 1980 and the M420 became the HR412 with minor carbody changes. CN’s M420s and HR412s were numbered in a common series.
BTW, these locomotives are not equipped with dynamic braking. That’s about the only thing the movie got right, no doubt by accident. Hearing reporters try to get their heads around dynamic braking in discussions of hybrid or stright electric cars is always good for a snicker. [:)]
**Atomic Train was the most embarrasing movie with a railroad theme that I have had the displeasure of witnessing, **
Hey, did any of you guys see “War of the Worlds”? I got news for ya,…flying saucers don’t fly like that, If you saw 'Beverly Hills Cop" - cops really aren’t that clever (or dedicated) and if you saw “Bad Santa” well I hate to tell you this,… but there ain’t no such thing as santy claus…
IT’s HOLLYWOOD we are talking about here…they’ve been known to stretch the truth for a storyline a few thousand times before… lighten up…
I remember watching Atomic Train on TV. Undeniably, the single worst train movie of all time. Period. When I was watching it, there was some guy who was “hosting” the movie and made brief appearances before and after commercial breaks. In one of these appearances, he said that in the past, Rob Lowe had written a screenplay about railroads and that as a result, knew more about trains than anyone else working on the movie. Considering how it turned out, that knowledge must have been extremely limited. A six-year-old that’s into Thomas The Tank Engine probably knows more about trains than whoever wrote the script for this stinker.
There is one scene from that movie that sticks in my mind. In it, some big general and other guys grom the Pentagon are going to see the dispatcher to discuss the situation. The dispatcher is sitting at the CTC board when the general and guys come in. The dialogue goes like this:
Dispatcher: Know anything about trains, general?
General: (Trying really hard to do a Jack Nicholson “You can’t handle the truth” voice.) They run on tracks, don’t they?
Dispatcher: (Pauses. Then looks away, speaking slowly with fear.) On good days…
As a big fan of Hogan’s Heroes, I’d like to just set the record straight about some things. There are numerous episodes of the show that involve the heroes blowing up trains (they also blew up many factories, etc.). The messge here is not that it’s really cool to blow stuff up for fun. They’re fighting a war and there are reasons for doing this. In war, there are many casualties. It’s not pretty, but it’s a fact of life. Sure, it
Sorry I lost my tickets to the annual Area 51Airshow last weekend so I missed the flying saucer flyby…can you tell me just how does a flying saucer fly [?]
Ah ha! I already know the answer, they fly just like Santa Claus…[;)]
Are you referring to the 1950’s version of WotW or the new one where Tom Cruise cruise tries to defeat the aliens by converting them to Scientology…[;)]
I thought the 50’s version was outstanding given its time and place, and the explaination of what supports the Martian war machines (there NOT flying saucers as they dont “fly”) was scientificly plausable, at least far more plausable than the stuff of contemporary or even later sci fi storylines.
heh, now THAT would be a novel twist to the plot [8)]
I dunno man, I’ve seen hollywood murder the truth so often, it almost seems comical to see folks “calling out” hollywood for the inaccuracies of a movie.
“IT” is “WHAT” hollywood does for a living, yanno? they are in the fantasy business.
Just like Dorothy said to toto: “those munchkins in west hollywood seemed kinda masculine to be women, something tells me we’re not in kansas anymore”…
war of the worlds where not flying saucers…they where ground attact mechines…and if thier is life out thier in the deep cold darkness of space…thier is nothing saying that some other alien race dosnt have war mechines that look like that…lol
csx engineer
If there’s life out there in the deep dark cold darkness of space…there nothing saying that some other alien race doesn’t have trains that operate like the ones in Atomic Train.[;)]
true…but i think the universal laws of physics wouldnt alow it…lol… since they tossed out all the physical laws regarding train dynmaics when makeing atomic train…the only way an “intelligent” race of ETs would be able to pull it off would be if it was bizzaro world…lol
csx engineer
Almost all train movies may suck, but video/PC games featuring them are at least slghtly better. Grand theft auto san andreas comes to mind, the only exception is that doors on engines in the game open on the sides like car doors- not front and back like on a real SD40/40-2/ whatever. still cool that they put drivable trains in the game[8D]
Well man, I worked for a property management firm whose specialty was hi-rise office buildings,…and the movie “Towering inferno” was just as crammed full of inaccuracies…I’ve known airline pilots personally, and they assure me that “auto-pilots” are not inflatable manform balloons as in the movie “Airplane”, and does ANYBODY think christopher reeves could patch himself in with his leg, backbone and shoulder as a missing section of rail in the movie “Superman”? (gee, if he’s so tough I wonder how they got the spikes hammered into the ties without bending them?) etc.
What you’ve got here is a group of fairly knowledgeable railroad folks complaining because they are more knowledgable than the skript writers even cared to be, because they were making a movie for mass consumption, and needed a STORY more than they needed accuracy…
If Accuracy was important to Hollywood they sure as heck could have afforded a consultant infinitely more knowledgeable than all the naysaye