Slightly off the main subject of “model” trains, but nevertheless…“trains”. I received the DVD " Emperor of the North" and got to watch it last night. I was very puzzled by one scene. #19 was racing against time to reach a passing siding in order not to have a head on crash with a fast mail train headed straight for them on the same single mainline. #19 made the siding under full speed, and the caboose just cleared the mainline when the mail train roared past nearly clipping the Caboose. So the big question is…who threw the switch so that #19 could enter the passing siding under full speed, and certainly there was “0” time for anyone to return the switch to mainline position!!! So was this more of Hollywood’s “photographic license” in thinking that most people are too ignorant to realize that a turnout needs to be thrown to enter a passing siding? And, must then be reset to normal for mainline trains to run straight through???
Did anyone see the movie " 8 Below"? Everyone was rushing to leave the South Pole because Winter was setting in, and the last flight out was ready to go, but did you notice that the Calendar said “January”??? This was the SOUTH pole not the NORTH pole, which meant that SUMMER was beginning in the South Pole.
Are movie producers all “D” students in school, or, do they feel that “we” are all “D” students and don’t know any better.??
First you can “kick” a switch…That means if a switch is thrown you can “kick” the switch by running through it and the switch WILL throw its self to the route the wheels has “kicked” it to…Of course this practice is frown upon by the management but,happens from time to time…
As far as the switch being thrown? Good question unless a dispatcher or tower operator had lined the switch.
Now,we have 2 trains speeding toward each other and whistling and NEITHER engineer applies the BRAKES!! Ridiculous! Both engineers would have applied the brakes as soon as they heard the other locomotives whistle…Another question why didn’t 19’s engineer sound warning whistles? That is a series of short fast whistle blasts which alerts other train crews or people on the track of a immediate danger…
Did any of you ever hear the term “Entertainment Business”? Movies are supposed to entertain - not educate or explain the theory of relativity![xx(] I’ve seen “Oscar winning” movies that bored me to death, and remember hearing critics say that Clint Eastwood couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag![:P] Lighten up - enjoy the d—ed movie and stop counting rivits![:-,]
You mean like movies where flight attendants fly jumbo jets (“Airport 75”, “Turbulence”), supposedly UP trains pulled by D&RGW K-28 2-8-2’s get robbed by Butch and Sundance or astronauts exposed to severe radiation become superheroes (“The Fantastic Four”)?
Or were you referring to movies where giant tarantulas terrorize desert towns (“The Giant Tarantula”), nuclear enhanced ants threaten LA (“Them”) or women grow to immense size (“Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”)?
Then again, there was “Pearl Harbor”, which actually went beyond Pearl Harbor and two fighter pilots suddenly got their multi-engine rating in time to join the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. That was a real howler.
LOU, I see your point, however, it still bothers me big time when they make such a mistake on purpose just for effect. All the other monster movies and other science fiction movies, etc, we all know are fiction, so let their “creativity” run wild, but other films really get me going when I see obvious dumb things that are so easy to correct and film properly without losing the action.
So. . . You don’t think it would’ve changed the action any if the race to the switch was between a train and a brakeman standing off to one side rather than two trains on the same track? Maybe if the story was changed to focus on the brakeman character somehow, and his actions stopped the second train from colliding into a “nuns, puppies, and orphans” excursion, and he became a hero, and . . . . Seems like a lot of work just to make it realistic enough to please 100-odd RR fans who might watch the movie over the next 50 years.
I guess they could’ve made it a race to a diamond - thereby eliminating the switch unreality - but no doubt somebody would’ve found a problem with that, too, like maybe a semaphore was set to upper quadrant when it should’ve been lower quadrant.
Reminds me of the USENET post I saw when Star Wars Episode I came out. Some poor bugger wrote about four screens of text dissecting the fighting scenes shown (in the trailer, no less), describing the various oriental fighting techniques he saw, how this one was developed from that one, thus making the type of parry anachronistic, how it didn’t make sense to use a two-handed sword with a technique that was developed for battle-axes, stuff like that. There was an atypically long period where no one wrote anything in reply, broken by: “Dude, you do know it’s a movie, right?”
To that I add: Everything you see on the screen is done "just for effect&
Maybe it was a model train and they knew no one would be hurt, so they took the risk of destroying a perfectly good model for the sake of entertainment.
The switch was thrown in advance since #19 had to be routed into the siding to clear for the express. This was likely performed by an earlier crew, or a dedicated on site switchman who was in charge of the passing siding. I doubt automatic, dispatcher controlled, switches were an option here.
The switches were also “spring” switches. I’m not going to go into what a spring switch is here. If you are more than a beginner into trains and model railroads you should know about them…otherwise try a Google search on them, I bet there is some information out there.
However, the open switch that 19 goes into had to be “kicked”, as stated above, to the right position by the express. Not too uncommon for the steam era.
In fact this movie is surprisingly pretty good for accuracy, at least the train parts of the movie.
Having a friend of mine who has worked at the South Pole twice for one year duty tours, NOTHING comes or goes once it reaches 50 BELOW ZERO< which is quite common, it often
I must amend your statement. Only switches equipped with the proper switch stands can be “kicked”. They are known as, oddly enough, “run through stands”. In a run through stand when a train passes through the stand with the points set against the train, the points will flop over to the other stock rail and stay there. The spring switch mentioned elsewhere above will flop over to the other stock rail, and then the spring will pull the points back to the original stock rail after the wheel has passed.
We paint the run through stands orange to indicate that the stand is run through. They are used only on slow speed track. Spring switches are marked with a sign saying “S/S”. They are very much in the minority. Most switch stands are not run through, and cannot be kicked. If you do run through them you’ll bend the operating rod or switch rods, break the gears or spindle of the stand, damage the switch point itself, or any combination of the three. Management really frowns on that.[;)]
DAW,I know about spring switches but,any standard switch can be kicked…Its a violent throw that rattles the whole switch and makes a LOUD THURRRAMMRUPPTT! as the switch throws. The reason I know this when I was a student brakeman on the PRR I was near one that was ran though one one night and it scared me so bad I though a car had derailed and gave the engineer a wipe out signal…Now imagine my embarrassment when it wasn’t my train but another switch crew that ran that switch!! Of course the conductor explain to me what happen and he said that happens a lot during the night.There was NO damage to the switch because we used it several times that night after that incident.
About Butch and Sundance robbing a train pulled by a 2-8-8-2??? Don’t think so. BUT, according to western author Louis Lamour they both retired and died of old age , living out their golden years back in the western USA, and DID NOT DIE in South America or Brazil or Mexico.(Once again Hollywood took free reign to rewrite history) Sooo maybe they got bored of rocking chairs and playing checkers and got together and took out a 2-8-8-2 just for the fun of it! LOL!
Apparently, Hollywood’s not the only one who gets it wrong. I said nothing about 2-8-8-2’s, but D&RGW K-28’s, which are narrow gauge 2-8-2’s. The UP is standard gauge.
I’m, sorry to be bullheaded, but that is not correct. NO standard switch can be run through without damaging something. There must be a run-through stand on the switch. You most likely heard a run-through stand in action. They do make quite a noise as the points slap over. I assume you were a student in a yard? That’s where they are used.
Can a train run-through a switch with a regular switch stand, and keep going: absolutely. But the next facing point move over that switch will most likely derail.
DAW,Let’s agree to disgree…I knew what happen that night and several times after that.I will stand pat on those experiences and I can assure you those WAS NOT spring switches.
I started as a yard brakeman and later bid on the road pool extra board.
If this were the case, wouldn’t it imply some sort of train order dispatching system was in use? In that case the express’s clearance would be contingent upon meeting #19 at the passing track. My point is that the express would be required to approach the passing siding on the main and be prepared to stop prior to crossing the switch fouling point if #19 wasn’t waiting for him “in the hole”.
Well, I learned something from this thread that I started quite innocently…I had never heard of a “spring” switch or a “kick” switch. I did some searching on the web, but could not find anything useful on a “kick” switch. There was some good info on the “spring” switch, but I want to see a diagram, and a better explanation of exactly how they operate.
So, with that said, I am NOT an expert on turnouts of ANY kind. All I know is that you must throw a switch by whatever means, to the direction of which you want the train to traverse, and if the points are set wrong for an oncoming train, it is going to be very bad for some people. I never worked on the RR, I am a retired EE. So if you kind gentlemen would stop fighting for a minute and please educate the masses, we would greatly appreciate your kind effort. In the spirit of the New Year, with good will and peace to all men…please educate us.
Basically, a spring loaded switch has the points held in place by the tension of the springs, so in most cases the train traveling east, lets say, always goes straight, or in the case of the movie, into the “hole”. Then the trains coming west will hit the switch and the wheels will automatically set the points to the other rail without having to throw the switch, as the springs have enough give to allow the points to travel acoss. After train passes, the switch automatically closes to the other side.The O &W and later the NH used these switches.
