Cinerama! I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinerama when it came out. What a trip!
I might be late to the game on this, but I stumbled on this fantastic documentary of photographer/film maker O. Winston Link on YouTube. For those who have not seen this British production covering his work documenting the Norfolk & Western in the 1950’s, you are in for a treat. Gorgeous black and white night photography of the end of the steam era. I remember the photo of the train rushing past the drive-in movie theater. Fantastic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfId5bbfC2Y
(I would embed this but dont have the time to figure out how right now.)
Paste_video by Edmund, on Flickr
Just leave the other boxes blank. Don’t use the embed tab (some videos can be linked here but not YouTube, commonly).
Cheers, Ed
Once again, thank you Ed!
Watched Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with the kids last week and there are a few scenes of the Cohan family riding in turn-of-the-century passenger trains, and another short scene of the family waiting in a classic-era suburban Chicago commuter station. Very evocative interior sets. And I continue to encounter more trains in Buster Keaton films…
Brief Encounter starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. Made towards the end of WW2 and filmed mainly in Carnforth Railway Station England.
In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it as the second greatest British film of all time.
David
Everybody likes the Thin Man, or at least Myrna Loy
They traveled on the Sunset Limited in After the Thin Man
There was also train travel in Return of the Thin Man
https://obscuretrainmovies.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/the-thin-man-goes-home-1944/
“Outland” was a 1983 film starring the late Sean Connery. No trains, since it took place on one of the moons of Jupiter, but it is actually a remake of High Noon. Spaceships take the place of trains.
Just circling back to close the loop here.
At the time I started this thread I was not aware of this special edition from Trains covering this topic. I picked this up recently as an early Christmas gift. Many of the films mentioned in the thread are in here, but plenty I haven’t ever heard of.
Sidenote: I’m a little surprised that Fritz Lang’s Human Desire (1954) isn’t in the magazine. The first 5 minutes of the film are nothing BUT train. (I’ve only seen the first 5 minutes lol…) More, in fact, than you get in Bad Day at Black Rock for example. Kind of a strange omission imo. [*-)]
Here is the magazine issue:
https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/special-issue/tr7100101
Thanks for the link. I was also completely unaware of this special issue.
-Kevin
I’m going a bit outside of the “classic” film era here, but this one caught my eye. I have not seen it but this Italian/West German-made film looks perfect for a midnight cult-classic party!
By chance this morning, I was on a site completely unrelated to railroading that happened to have a picture link to this rail movie from the 70s with an unbelievable cast (O.J. Simpson undercover as a priest?!?). This looks like a bizarre one for sure!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cassandra_Crossing
This site (below) has an extensive write-up with screenshots and behind the scenes stuff. I can’t believe how many A-list stars are in this!
The picture of the orange passenger car barreling off of the viaduct is what drew me in. Also included in this link are pictures of the director planning shots with HO scale trains, men in full haz-mat suits, and a man impaled by a steel beam. Maybe George Romero was lurking behind the scenes.
http://www.moon-city-garbage.agency/cass-cross/index.htm
The amusing Wikipedia section on reviews of the film reads as follows:
The film holds a score of 30% on Rotten Tomatoes based on ten reviews.[10]
Oddly enough I just happened upon this clip from a 1945 movie Leave Her To Heaven. Can anyone name the train the obs car is from?
I’m not sure if any of you have access to METV. It’s on some cable systems and it’s over the air in some cities.
Tonight they are showing 1957’s “The Black Scorpion”. It’s one of those 1950s monster films. It’s on the show, “Svengoolie”.
The interesting part is that a giant scorpion attacks a train. If you watch closely, when the steam locomotive crashes, the tender clearly shows “Lionel Lines” on it.
John, Thanks for the heads-up. Got a kick out of the movie, especially the train wreck scene, those Lionel passenger cars with silhouetted passengers in the windows brought back some good ol’ memories. Glad to see ‘Svengoulie’ keeping the humorously hosted Saturday night monster movie tradition alive, its Americana.
Thanks again and regards, Peter
The Journey Of Natty Gann is a live action Walt Disney movie from the mid 1980s.
It features lots of Canadian steam locomotives and trains. The movie takes place in the 1930s, and from what I can see, the equipment is pretty much period appropriate.
-Kevin
Since this thread has nothing to do with modeling, I’m moving it to the Classic Trains forum.
Dinosaur’s eating boats have nothing to do with Classic Trains. Move it back.
This may be classic-era trains in classic-era films to MR posters, but Classic Trains, according to Kalmbach and its editors, has a 50-year rolling cutoff. Anything later than that (now, 1971) had better go elsewhere.
But it certainly makes “better” sense here than on MR, where it obviously has no business, and there are already too many classic-trains-in-classic-films threads on the Trains Magazine forums. With the alternative being… well, I think it may as well settle in here.
I saw this one on RiffTrax’s Twitch TV channel; Marriage Is a Partnership (1951)
According to IMDb, CB&Q Zephyr is featured (at the beginning, 03:29, and the end of the movie).
Sorry I’m late on this, I lost track of this topic!
That wasn’t filmed in an actual railcar, it was a set. There’s no way they could have fit the Technicolor movie equipment (among other things) in an real lounge car. But it’s a darn good recreation of one!