I’m sorry to be off-topic, but I don’t know who else to ask about this.
I just saw a trailer for next year’s “The Lone Ranger” movie, and in it, there was a very beautiful 4-6-0, getting some VERY rough treatment. How rough? They had it flopped down on its side and sliding across some rocky-looking ground towards a collision with another piece of rolling stock, with the pistons still churning the drivers. It hurt to watch!
Was this an actual preservation / museum-piece locomotive, or some fresh-built fake? If it’s fake, it’s a really good fake!
I seriously doubt they could get someone (private owner or museum group) to allow the studio to wreck any preserved steamer. Likely this is a full scale prop augmented with a large scale model and alot of CGI. Aside from the recent use of CGI, its a long tradition in the movies to do this, not many know that the Hooterville Cannonball in the later years of Petticoat Junction was actually large scale model for the running shots and then a full size model (actually a wood/fiberglass replica of a real locomotive built for the movie Ticket to Tomahawk and that has a amazingly interesting Hollywood career in itself) for the station scenes. The last Zorro movie did this effectively, Night at the Museum also used a large scale model to crash into Ben Stiller’s foot.
BTW I can tell you this Lone Ranger movie is NOT using the Hooterville Cannonball/Ticket to Tomahawk replica as its currently undergoing restoration in Colorado.
That last Zorro movie did indeed have me believing the equipment was real … until they did those aerial shots of that ridiculous track layout, with the Popeye-cartoon arrangement of switches, and the railroad-to-nowhere non-terminal. The decorated interiors of the mostly-empty boxcars were pretty funny too. And don’t get me started on the trampoline -enhanced fight stunts.
That said, thank you, and I hope you’re right, and your explanation sure does sound right.
Remember Hollywood built a 1" scale live steam model of 4449 for the the wreck in “Tough Guys”. It looked convinsing on film like they did wreck 4449. So I suspect it is a 1" or a 11/2" Live steam model that was used.
Well on the other hand the locomotives and rolling stock in Buster Keaton’s The General and the great Burt Lancaster film The Train really were destroyed, just as you see on screen.
There are so many train scenes in The Lone Ranger that the filmmakers built their own period train. “It was a modern train clad in a steam engine just to get through all the work we had to do,” says Verbinski. “The train sequences are really entertaining.” The train robbery is an iconic Western shot. “But we turn it on its head.”
Well, it was a little bit of a different situation with Keatons “The General” and Burt Lancasters “The Train”. Those locomotives and rolling stock were headed for the scrappers anyway, the filmakers gave them a chance to go out in a blaze of glory. No problem back then, but seeing that equipment destroyed, especially the 4-4-0 in the “General” makes my blood run cold, even if it was doomed anyway.
I’ve never seen mention of a live steam model used for that movie but I have seen the full size model that was built for the movie. The model was built to scale right down to the rivet heads on the tender shell.
As of circa 2000 it was still in protected/enclosed storage at Desert Center, Ca. If you know where to look you can see in the windows of the building that it is still in fair shape but starting to show age and lack of attention.
Very true, Sierra #3 was used as the original Hooterville Cannonball early in the series, but in the series later years to save money, they simply used stock footage of the #3, then augmented it with long distance motion film of the large scale model and then the studio leased the wooden/fiberglass Tomahawk mock-up for the in-station shots or cab shot of the actors, they even built an in-studio copy of the Sierra RR shorty combine. By the end of the series they hadn’t returned to the Sierra RR for several seasons.
A quick Google search will find that Keaton use a logging railroad that was ready for scrapping with the locomotives way obsolete at that time. Lancaster’s The Train used realy French steam all being sitting in the scrap line. I belive the reason the movie was made was the “actors” were had for the “cheap” and no one cared what shape they came back in. The derailment scene where the steamer comes to rest on top the camera is an all time action shot. The camera being set up as an ‘extra’ which I recall the camera director didn’t thing would make it.
If you have not seen these moves, they are well worth the price of a used CD.
In a documentary on Buster Keaton, it noted that the scene of the steam engine collapsing the bridge was the most expensive single “shot” in the history of silent pictures. It noted that if you look carefully you can see some local people who got into the shot to see the bridge/train crash, and you can see a film crew man pulling a rope to remove a support from the bridge at the key moment to make the bridge collapse.
I saw a TV show not too long ago where the filmakers went to the site of Buster’s bridge collapse scene from “The General”. There’s still some remnants of the bridge there to be seen in the riverbed, and some assorted relics on the river banks. If anyone goes to the site remember, “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” Leave the relics for others to enjoy.
There are fewer and fewer Cecille B. DeMille type stunts being done in modern film-making. This is largely due to the rapid advancement of computer generated imaging techniques but also because it is extremely difficult and expensive to get the insurance coverage necessary for “live action spectacular” type stunts, especially if live actors (or even stunt people) will be in the danger zone. Most directors and producers would rather put the money saved into more CGI…
