There was the opening scene in Beetle Juice. A decent HO layout is used throught the movie. been forever since I have seen it, but the “Dad” who works on it, if I remember correctly, was protrayed as pretty normal guy.
There was a good movie with Cary Grant (the biggest male heartthrob of the 60s), IIRC it was the “Batchelor and the Bobisoxer”. Cary Grant plays a respected pediatrician and one of his hobbies is operating lionel trains with his friends—other doctors and a judge. Of course this movie was made back in the sixties or so.
How about Mr. Rogers??? I always considered the trolley to be a model railroad. I don’t think you could get any more positive than that, even if it didn’t actually display prototype modeling.
Although not a real model railroad, My 4 year old son has a DVD of some old Chip & Dale( 2 chipmunks ) cartoons and in one episode Donald duck has a large live steam layout in his backyard, The trouble starts when Donald uproots there tree because it’s “not to scale”.
bill
One might speculate that this particular cartoon’s storyline was generated as a result of Walt Disney’s own experiences with his backyard, 1/8th scale, live steam, garden railroad. Walt altered his backyard dramatically, even to creating a large hill for a 90-foot tunnel and valley crossed by a 46-foot wooden tressle, to meet the needs of his miniature railroad.
CNJ831
I remember a shot of vintage car traveling down the highway under a rail over pass during a movie that was making a credible earlier time period.
When that stack train started crossing behind the auto it totally added 35+ years to the film and destroyed the illusion.
didn’t ALF play with the Lionel trains in the first episode? As far as Hollywood dipicting us as " wierd and mad", well , we are sort of…
There was a hospital series, can’t remember if it was St. Elsewhere or ? but Mandy Patinkin used to run some of his huge personal Lionel collection on his office floor.
The Whos have a cool layout in How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
How about the Large scale layout in Prehysteria i think it is. The layout from End of Line was pretty awesome. You want ugly, The latest Zorro movie crashes a train, of course its not real. Looked like a bachman 4-4-0 and some bachman cars that crashed
How about Roy Neary’s layout in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? An Amtrak F7 plows into a DL&W 40’ box car.
Anybody mention Gomez Adams’ layout? Let’s not forget him.
There is a Christmas Lionel scene in the beginning of “A Christmas Story.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/
Matt
Its not really a model Railroad “layout” but in Under Seige 2 they use models (larger than G guage) to do the train crash scene off of a large steel trestle. it is a pretty spectacular train wreck.
Also Back to the Future 3 has a model railroad that they use to plot Marty’s return to 1985 from 1885.
Saw this recently…The layout in Beetlejuice is just of the buildings in the town, no trains…guess thats why he’s portrayed as “normal”[;)]
I remember an episode of The Man From Uncle where Napolean Solo (Robert Vaughn) was captured and he had to direct two model trains around a layout so that they wouldn’t collide. He couldn’t control the speed or stop them. He could only throw switches to keep them from colliding. If they did crash a vial of deadly nerve gas that was being carried on a flat car was going to spill and would kill him.
The web is a wonderful tool for finding details on things from a long time ago. Go here: http://www.manfromuncle.org/episode2.htm if you want the details of Episode 41 titled The Children’s Day Affair which ran in season two in 1965 - 1966.
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember that episode!
Anybody ever see a show called “Strip Mall” on Comedy Central a few years ago, with Julie Brown and Victoria Jackson? Julie Brown’s character was married to a model railroader. Somehow he fell and crashed a train into his head, and forever after he had a model loco sticking out of his head.
Gary
Maybe a model railroader needs to create a story with a model railroader as hero. How about a normal everyday model railroader who, while taking a train ride or researching a model, stumbles upon some horrendous crime or plot to destroy the world. Using the knowledge, skills and perception derived from years of modeling, the train nut–OOPS, I mean hero solves the mystery and saves the world.
There could even ben a series of such mystery books, just as there is one about a rabbi who solves cases using rabbinical knowledge, etc. etc.
that wasn’t a layout; it was an HO scale diorama. And; the “Dad” was played by Alec Baldwin.
I was just watching the third Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban) and there is a model train in it. In one scene where Harry is talking to the wizard teaching the “Dark Arts”, a rotating display of the universe is shown with all of the planets and such. And, also part of that rotating contraption is a model train. Not EXACTLY a model train layout, but at least it is there.
this doesn’t really have much to do with the topic; but in the movie “Von Ryans Express” with Frank Sinatra, I heard once (on AMC back when they were a GOOD channel. Now I don’t even watch them; I’d MUCH rather watch TCM) anyway, that the director-John Frankenheimer-coordinated (planned) the train scenes with model trains.
For those who never saw the movie, I highly reccomend it. It’s a WWW2 action-adventure.