Does anyone have any examples of the worst or best potrayal of railroads in tv or the movies? for me the worst example was nbc’ stinker atomic train from about 1999 i believe that had a train with a russian a bomb aboard and heading towards denver. one thing that stood out to me that made the film bad was the fact some of the freight cars looked too old to be on a major freight railroad in late 1990’s. or the gondola in the train that was hauling oil drums of toxic chemicals. i worked on a railroad and i never saw chemicals shipped that way thankfully.
Gonna have to go with a whimsical nitpickin’ donation to this thread. Don’t remember which season it was, but it was at least post-1972 when the TV show Emergency! aired part of an episode about a rescue in a freight yard in or near Los Angeles. Prominent in the shot was a boxcar from the great fictional rail line, The Chicago Pacific with lettering that looked eerily familiar to the SP.[:)] What nailed the scene, though, was the sound effects folks wanted the sound of trains moving in the background, so they used steam locomotive sounds! Now I wasn’t around LA in the early '70s but I’m guessing steam was no longer being used. (Hey that’s some sarcasm there, no need to explain to me when steam locomotives were retired…) Anyway, always enjoyed that tidbit.
Hitchcock was a stickler for accuracy whenever trains turned up in his movies. Listen carefully in “North by Northwest” to the train announcements in Chicago’s La Salle St. Station where Cary Grant disguises himself as a redcap in order to elude his pursuers. Then compare that with an old NYC timetable of the time.
That out of wack movie was NBC’s ATOMIC TRAIN. It made no sense. The locomotive and freight cars were strange and confusing due to Hollywood style invading British Columbia.
The best TV Series depiction was on the CBS Series “Early Edition”. It was shot in Chicago and the trains were real and accurate. They were shown as dangerous if people were careless.
Where do I begin
Lots of good documentarys turn up on local PBS from time to time. Great Railway Journeys Of The World, being one.
I can run off a laundry list of crap. Supertrain-pure 70s TV CRA*P! Supposed to be Loveboat on rail, more like garbagescow on skids.
Atomic Train has to be the single worst though, complete drivel.
All movies
Has anyone ever seen a movie or tv show where a train slams into a car or truck (or person) and then
stops? or at least goes into ‘emergency’? They all just keep going…
–Best portrayal in a movie: Bound for Glory
Rich
“Broken Arrow”
Wonder what Christan Slater is hanging onto under the QTTX flat car when the Travolta’s bad guys are looking for him.
I looked, and still cant find one with a platform under there…and still wonder why, when they cut the cars away, nothing goes into emergency.
And the cattle car is great…see those all the time, right?
Great for all your nuclear war head transportation needs.
Emergency was good for little gaffs like that - the fire apparatus sometimes changed sirens mid-response!
Petticoat Junction - The real Sierra RR, portrayed as - a railroad. No gimmicks or anything else. Some comic bits, of course, but nothing outlandish.
At least in the TV show NUMB3RS, they explain why you can’t stop a train instantly. It also portrays MOST engineers as responsible, caring people.
Ed, Thats an easy one. Model train cars aint got no brakes.
One of my favorites is the Doris Day, Jack Lemmon film “It Happened to Jane.” Whenever I run into it on television, I have to stop and watch it. Aside from its slice-of-1950s life look and a great performance by Ernie Kovacs as the megalomaniacal Henry Foster Malone running his rather New Haven-looking “Eastern & Portland” roughshod over poor Jane Osgood, the railroad star is “Ol’ 98” and its run around New England. It’s a delight whenever you can catch it. ------ Sometimes the trains just serve as a great backdrop. One of my favorite scenes is in the “Magnificent Seven.” In the scene where knife-throwing Rhett has a “shootout” with a fellow cowboy, Wallace, the backdrop is an idling narrow-gauge 2-8-0 FCI steamer with a string of NdeM stockcars. The movie was shot on location in Mexico. I suspect this was a local working train hired for the job, but don’t know the actual production facts to support that. For the longest time, I thought I detected a 3-28 mark on the side of one of the stockcars, but having just reviewed the scene, I can’t find it. Must have been one of those “I was sure I saw it” moments. Anyway, it’s a great train moment in a subtle way. ------ BTW, I just love my new MacBook Pro. I’m composing this note and can’t recall any real details, so I load the “Magnificent Seven” DVD and find the scene. Meanwhile I go over to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) for background on “It happened to Jane.” We live in a Great Age alright!
How about the 1986 movie “Tough Enough” with the SP 4449?
I think you mean Tough Guys. That’s a definate classic, but steam in the 80s…
Time for some good ones:
“Runaway Train” is one of the better portrayals, as real life as movie making is that is…
“Emporer of the North” is pretty reailistic
“The Train” also…
“Disaster on the Coastliner” is a good one from TV land…
Ready for some noob input? How about the 1994 movie “The War” with Kevin Costner? It’s set in 1970 Mississippi mind you. About 20 min. into the movie in one scene, I could have sworn the locomotive that went by was an “NS” gp38 high-hood. Have to agree also…“Emporer of the North” was a great movie.
One of the worst, Money Train, a stupid movie. There is one more that I can’t remember the name of it, it had Steven Sagal (sp?) as a cook in the train, at the end he outran the explosion from a head on collison.
Bert
Nearly every stinking movie Hollywood has made where they lose air and can;t stop the train.
I have no idea if it was prototypical or not but I want the armored Russian train from Goldeneye! I’d have to agree that Atomic Train was horrid, no matter how bad the train was, I believe the worst part was the idea that one could survive a nuclear shockwave by hiding in a concrete pipe that was open at both ends! That was almost as bad as the duck-and-cover drills I had to do in school. Also the other crazy NBC train moment was when an earthquake chased down the Amtrak Empire Builder in the movie 10.5, which was also the least realistic earthquake movie of all time. Cheers! ~METRO
They were making just a special run were they not? I may be wrong. It was like the 30 th anniversery of the train or something???
That Segal turd was Under Seige 2 Dark Territory, Which was incredibly stupid and now that I think of it, likely the WORST thing trainwise ever purported to be cinema …