It’s so old it’s in the public domain. Neat site.
If you go to the Prelinger Archive section of archive.org, among other goodies you’ll find some rail industry films from the 1950s and 1960s - some AAR films, rail films produced by railroads, training films and the like. Plus, one I downloaded from there was a 1930s GM produced film that compared driving with operating a locomotive.
In fact, a search within the Prelinger Archives shows 50 films with railroad as a key word. All for download for free!
There are guys on eBay still selling this public-domain movie – $19.99 for a DVD plus shipping.
http://www.archive.org/details/danger_lights
Activate them links…!
Apparently, Turner has a copy, I caught the tail end of a showing the other night on Turner Movie Channel… Late at night.[sigh]
The movie I’d love to see is the one with the cross country run of the Burlington Zyphyr, I think Noah Beery was in it [?]…
Click here for film & cast info: The Silver Streak (1934)
Another golden oldie starring our boy Charles Starrett…co-starring…omigod…Gabby Hayes! I wonder what the plot of this gem could be…reincarnation?..it would be interesting to see what engines they captured on celluloid or where it was filmed…
BTW, I’m told the only film record of a Dynamometer car in use is part of “Danger Lights”.
I’ve heard there is a 1942 film called Kings Row, where Ronald Reagan is run over by a locomotive.
Was that before or after “Where’s the Rest of Me?” [:P] lol
al-in-chgo
One of the heroes in the movie Danger Lights is Dan Thorne, the “Superintendent,” who made everything run like a clock. In the movie, there is a landslide (very close to where there was a real landslide a few years later) in Sixteen Mile Canyon in Montana, and there is consternation that “The Olympian,” Milwaukee’s famous passenger train, may be delayed.
Of course, nothing can delay “The Olympian,” ever, even including a landslide across the tracks. Everyone is running around the division office, which appears to be in Miles City, trying to locate their Superintendent, one anguished clerk loudly lamenting “oh, where’s Dan Thorne…?”.
The whole scene is so hammed up it nearly becomes iconic of railroading and strong men and their impact on railroads. I had to laugh at a note from a retired dispatcher from the BN dispatcher’s office in Seattle a few years ago:
"As a train dispatcher I tried to emulate Dan Thorne but often failed. However, for a time, everyone in the BN dispatchers’ office who had seen the movie could be heard shouting, during times of crisis, "Where’s Dan Thorne…? " "
Most interesting in Danger Lights was how the train on its 600-mile emergency run to the Chicago hospital not only made it in six hours (or whatever it was) but never needed to stop for water. Or coal.
Just like how the heroes in movies could fire 20 shots from a six shooter without reloading!
In the movie, Robert Armstrong and Jean Arthur are at a dance in Miles City, and go outside for a romantic evening walk … on Eagle Nest Trestle 200 miles away!
Do you know which long bridge was crossed on the way to Chicago?
Oh gosh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie, but I believe the bridge was the Calypso Bridge crossing the Yellowstone River west of Miles City.
It was the 1907 bridge over the Missouri at Mobridge, SD, replaced by the current bridge in 1961 by USACE.
This shows the 1907 bridge under constuction with one of the three or four large through trusses.
Thanks Dale. I knew you knew.
Well, I could be wrong on this, and I should go back and look at the film, but my recollection that it is the Calypso Bridge was based on several thoughts: 1) the Calypso Bridge is an almost identical design to the one at Mobridge, (4, 270’ spans) 2) the film was made between Miles City and Lombard and the trains involved must have crossed the Calypso Bridge several times, 3) I am unaware that they did any filming at Mobridge, 4) the camera angle used has been used for photographs of the Calypso Bridge (there is a bluff to the west of the bridge), but I have never seen that angle at Mobridge and I don’t think they could have gotten it unless they had a crane or a hot air balloon at Mobridge. Now, memory is tricky, and if I went back and looked at the film again I might change my mind, but to me, it looked like the Calypso Bridge crossing, not the least of which because that was the area where they filmed the movie.
Micheal-
The scenes at that big bridge are not shot from a higher altitude, and the train makes a sharp right turn as soon as it comes off of the bridge. The track at either end of Calypso looks straight, http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=13&Z=13&X=292&Y=3237&W=1
They could have used film from both spots, Calypso and Mobridge.
Page 9 of the 11-61 Trains shows both Mobridge bridges.