I recall the really ground breaking tv commercials for a new Lincoln of a few years ago, where a man and his son are playing with trains, the scenes seemlessly swicthes from one to another where they are setting teh trains then they are in teh trains and a Lincoln roars by. Those commercials were so incredibly advanced they were highly praised in the industry for absolutely seemless merging of moving images. Scene changes are so fast in video that you don’t pick up on the blank spot from one scene to the next. These had no blanks and were shot in Europe at an astronomical cost.
Two that I think were movies but have not been mentioned.
-The begining sequence of Betelguise has a camera flying around a town then up to the house on top of a hill over looking town.
A huge spider crawls over the roof then an even bigger hand comes down a grabs it reveiling the whole thing to have been a model.
Later in the film the characters are shrunken down to be in the model as Punishment. In those scences every thing is clearly fake like
having green egg crates as the grass.
- Another movie that has toy trains in it is pretty bad. “Nothing but Trouble” with Demi Moore and Chevey Chase along with Dan Ackroid
and John Candy playing multiple roles. It is a gross out comedy / lite horror movie thast has a few scenes in a huge ramshacke dining
room with a table so big it has filth encrusted toy trains to deliver condiments in tank cars and gondolas.
Frank53
I remember those Lincoln ads, they were great. Still love the “See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet” ads from the 60’s. Wi***hey’d bring those back with a Chevy on top of that mountain/plateau.
The show Captin Kangaroo in the 50’s and 60’s had Lionel trains from time to time if my old memory dosn’t fail me.
It seems to me I remember trains on some other childrens shows of that time frame but I can’t remember which ones.
Today we have trains on the RFD and DIY network.
Oh I forgot in the 80’s there was a show called “Silver Spoons” that had a rideable live steam train that ran through the set of the mansion they lived in. The idea behind the show was that they were incredibly wealthy. Characters would ride in and out of scenes on it. One joke I remember was two charactors talking about the train and one saying that the Railway was so big they had never seen it all… “once it came back with snow on it.”
Also the childrens show Mr Rodgers had a trolly that ran through the set and interacted with the host and took the audience through the wall to the “Land of Make Believe”. It also had a model town that was featured at the begining and funtioned as a transition if they moved to another location in town this model featured Plasticville buildings prominantly. Mr Rogers himself supposedly lived in a Plasticville bungalow.
The seldom scene Christmas episode of I Love Lucy. Little Ricky wakes up on Christmas morning to a bunch of stuff and a good size setup of a SF F-3 with aluminum passenger cars with the set box in plain view. There might have been a zw powering it too.
My favorite toy train layout is on TV every year after Thankgiving into March. Of course it is my layout with live action (or recorded on VCR) from my homemade X-10 camera car. Very exclusive and by invitation only.
Charlie
I think there was an episode of Dallas that a killer was mezmerized by a lionel train layout and was held at bay until the cops got there.
The silver spoons show had some trouble with that ride on train creating smoke and I think two fires.
What show was it that Gary Coleman was on. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of that show.
A detective show from the 70s. An older guy has an HO layout in his detached garage. There is a tube ran underground between the layout in the garage and goes into the house. He has a single track running through the tube into the house and he sends notes on the train into the house to his wife and she replys back with another note and sends the train back into the garage.
Department store window display on A Christmas Story.
Gary Coleman = Diff’rent Strokes
On “Becker”, he is tied down to a railroad track running a large scale Christmas train.
Also the movie Holiday Affair (both versions) comes on each year and the Lionel passenger train is a main character in the story.
In the Robert Mitchum version (circa 1952) the trainset cost about $80 and in the later version (circa 1995) the same set cost $1,200.
The opening sequence in both versions is reminiscent of the department store holiday layouts that we older kids remember.
Stuart Little, the son has some LGB units, Santa Fe f7s, a steamer, streamlined passenger cars, and some freight, and a lot of bridges. Runs around the entire basement
I remember the I Love Lucy show where a Lionel Superchief runs through the front room on the floor in their apartment. There was also a 2500 series passenger car along with its box prominently displaying the Lionel name on the mantel. Very clever advertising.
In the movie People Will Talk, Cary Grant, a friend and the father in law set up a huge train set that runs through several rooms. Each (somehow) is controlling a separate locomotive on the same tracks. They have signals they are supposed to use, but comic mayhem ensues as they get mixed up and the trains all cra***ogether. I need to watch that one again (we have it on dvd) for more details.
One of the early episodes of Starsky and Hutch had the guys looking for someone naughty. They ended up in a hobby shop, where a Lionel layout can clearly be seen. A blue diesel was pulling a freight around the layout.
Jim
It was on cable this weekend and I got a real charge out of it. Of course you could not see the controls; however, it was nice watching the trains even though it appeared that they speeded up the action.
Ellery Queen, I think the third episode had a large Lionel setup.
Enjoy
Paul