A few days ago, I purchased the movie “Silver Streak” (1976) on DVD. Trains Magazine send it was one of the 10 best train movies. Trains mentioned that it was filmed with VIA Rail equipment. So I assumed it was filmed in Canada. After looking around at some website, there is a error saying that on a grain elevator it says something about Canada. But near the end of the movies when they stop the train, it’s clear that it was filmed in Canada. There was a lot of CP Rail locomotives and box cars. But in the scene with the controller, in the background, you can clearly see a BN switcher pulling Amtrak equipment. that is surely a chance recording since the end was supposed to be in Chicago.
Whenever I watch a “train” movie, I find myself looking for safety violations,(plenty) and all the things Hollywood thinks a train can do. My personal favorite is “Dangerlights”, Filmed about 10 years before I was born. Some pretty good photography, and some great scenes of Milwaukee Road steam ,some under catenary.
I’ve seen “Silver Streak” featuring Gene Wylder and Richard Pryor hundreds of times. Always good for great comedy and of course trains [^]
Dangerlights is one of my all time favorite train movies because you can hear the real sounds of the Milwaukee Road steamers, especially right in the opening credits with a steamer pushing the flat car that the camera is on. Another great highlight is the big “push-war” between two steamers. Drivers spinning, whistles screaming, and bell ringing excitement [yeah][tup]
Gosh, all this is making me want to plop the tapes in the VCR now [:D]
The segment toward the end, where the runaway was heading through the lead tracks into the station, was filmed at the CNW’s terminal in Chicago. Then the impact sailed you clear to Toronto for the interior shots!
Silver Streak was a good and hilarious movie for scenes and the actors, Wilder and Pryor.
Runaway Train is also a good movie with Wilford Brimley.
The Fugitive has some really great shots of railroad action, especially in sloooowwww motion.
Would watch Silver Streak again if I had it recorded.
OOPS
Green Bay Paddlers you are correct, my mistake.
jmbergant you are correct also.
It has been awhile since I had seen the movie Run, I mean End of the Line. I don’t believe I saw the movie Runaway Train. Guess I had better find that one.
“Danger Lights” proves that a Milwaukee Road F3 Pacific was maybe the greatest steam locomotive ever built. It runs non-stop from the Rocky Mountains to Track 19 in Chicago’s Union Station. How’s that for fuel and water economy?
And along the way, the inside-bearing trailer truck morphs into an outside-bearing trailer so the heroic hogger can reach down, raise the box lid, and fix a hotbox on the fly.
It’s a great movie - but has anybody seen “Emporer of the North Pole”, with Borgnine and Lee Marvin? That one ain’t too bad, either!
A lot of it was filmed on the CP Acme subdivision out of Calgary. This leads down from a small town called Acme to Drumheller Alberta(noted for its large dinasour collection and digs). It is centered in a very unique bad lands type terrain. I worked this area for about six months in the 70’s. The grain elevators were maybe of town of Carbon, but I have not seen the film in a long time. That track has since been abandond. Regular crews were called to work the train to get various shots. I did not have a chance to be called. A lot of the yard shots are taken in the Aylth yards as I recognized the yard tracks and pull down tower etc. I believe some of the mountain shots were taken on the Laggan sub(main line west of Calgary ). I believe that at that time passenger service was still CP Rail and VIA did not come till later.
Much of the end of the movie was filmed around Toronto. It’s fun to watch it as the train comes down three different routes into Union Station. The crash scene ends with the loco in Union at right angles to the tracks (can’t crash like that at Toronto – you’d just come out the other side).
One of my friends has a slide of The Canadian looking extra long because the Silver Streak consist is tacked on the back.
G’day, Y’all,
Anyone seen “Train de Vie” or “Train of Life”? It is French with English subtitles. A village of Jews in early WW II France hears the Germans are coming to round them up so they buy an old pacific type locomotive and cattle cars, paint them to look like a German prison train, get the German-speaking Jews to dress as SS and highball it to Russia. The train is prominently featured throughout the movie and the scenery is beautiful.
And a quesiton: the bus/train “race” in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Number 17”. Is that a stop motion toy train scene? It looks just like Thomas and Bertie the Bus in the children’s videos.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A