Thats the one I was thinking of.
Bert
I think in “Tough Guys” they said it was the final run of the train…I don’t remember if it was supposed to have been steam-powered all along, or if they brought the steam engine out just for that final run??
In “Bound for Glory” there’s a scene of Woody Guthrie (played by David Carradine, who was maybe 10" too tall) coming out of a 1930’s hobo camp and hopping a train of 60’ high cube boxcars from the 1960’s-70’s.
There was a Charles Bronson movie…don’t remember the name, but it was about fighters in New Orleans in the 1930’s - yet in the opening scene, he arrives on a train pulled by I think an SW-1500 diesel switcher.
In one of Hitchcock’s early c.1933 UK films, someone reaches down and by pulling a lever disconnects several passenger cars from the train. The railway it was filmed on went to some lengths to inform people that it really wasn’t that easy to uncouple a train on their line!! BTW the British film “The Titfield Thunderbolt” is good.
“Emperor of the North” is generally very very good. OK a couple of wood freight cars are in paint schemes 10-15 too new for the era, and a 2-8-0 is a little unlikely to be running a passenger train, but still it’s got some great realistic scenes in it. Plus everyone goes by their ‘moniker’ or job name (hoghead, shack) and not actual names.
Unfortunately “Danger Lights” is hard to find on video or DVD in it’s complete length - somebody bought the rights to it a while back and made a “railfan edition” version that only included the scenes with trains, thereby destroying the story. It was actually a pretty good movie and was filmed on location on the Milwaukee Road’s electric and steam lines in 1930, one of the very first sound movies shot on location. The bit about the young engineer getting his foot caught in the switch points is a little goofy though, as is the race to Chicago to save his life. Couldn’t they have stopped at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN on the way from Montana??
I kind of remember in a $6,000,000 Man show there was a forest fire and and he couldn’t outrun the fire. ( strange for a man who could pull a hellicopter down and not have his feet come off the ground ) He and some woman found an old logging loco ( I think it was a Shay? ) and managed to fire it and get enough steam to run it through the fire.
The Emperor of the North allso had an strange rout from Cottage Grove to Portland, Oregon through Corvallis? If you ever watch it, take note of how slow they are going vs. how fast the sound of the crossing bell sound goes by, for crossing that are not there, and how many times the wistle is blown for them. We were wondering too, just when it was that crossing bells were commonly installed vs. the era the movie is set in? But it is fun to watch and see the things in the movie that I can remember being in Cottage Grove in the '70s and '80s that aren’t there now, like the whole OP&E RR.
I had forgotten all about that-caught it on the late show a zillion years ago (now 99 cable stations are on 24 hours but do you think anyone will play any movies anymore-NOOOOOO just those dratted infomercials… Ugh! Thus ends today’s sermon) and it was great.
One I didn’t see mentioned so far-another Charles Bronson movie, I believe it was Breakheart Pass which I’ve only seen in bits and pieces, never all at once. Great movie on the D&RGW narrow gauge (if I recall aright) but every change of scene was accompanied by an almost constantly blowing whistle. You’d think there were more grade crossings in the middle of the Colorado Rockies than the middle of Appleton, Wisconsin (inside joke).
the name of the steven seagal movie where he was aboard the train was called undersiege II: dark territory filmed on the D&RGW moffat line in colorado i believe
I liked Silver Streak. Realistic? Nope… not in the least. Jill Clayburgh was enough to make any man jump between passenger cars!
Erik
How about atomic train it was a movie. Which had in one of the boxcars a nuke warhead in a crate. It looked like it was filmed in canada.
UNDER SIEGE II was the name of the movie starring Steven Segal. The story contained such stupid and brutal tactics that it was completely unbelivable as a whole.
Hell-O Chicago! Gotta drink to that!
–from Silver Streak
[(-D]
It was also the birthplace of smokeless interior fire, so the cameras could show the actors.
I reckon the movie: “Murder on the Orient Express” based on the Agatha Christie murder mystery novel of the same name was excellent. I’m not an Orient Express expert but it sure looked authentic! Great “atmosphere” - a train trapped deep in snow drifts in central Europe with high drama inside! Albert Finney did a great job as the detective Hercule Poirot! [:)]
Dave
Loved that one, too! Some of the best shots of a moving train that I’ve ever seen on the silver screen. I’ll agree with you about Albert Finney but the star of that all star cast, to me, had to have been Lauren Bacall-I’d pay to watch a film of her crossing the street. Always thought she was a class act.
Another Late Show find from years back-Flame Over India. I don’t know how accurate the scenes were but it was all on or around a train, steam, no less! I was happy with that.
Someone mentioned finding Danger Lights…has anyone ever run across a Lon Cheney film Thunder Below? Some of the scenes were shot in my neck of the woods and there is a simulated destruction of a bridge (now a trail) just south of town. I’ve always been curious if a copy ever survived…
Let me add one to the dog list-Cassandra Crossing. A European express train is filled with people infected with a deadly virus that will sweep across the world if they are allowed off the train. So the train is deliberately routed over an abandoned bridge that will collapse-and does, dropping all the infected people out of the train onto the river…brilliant way to quarantine.
You got to be kidding! If so this is one of the stupidest Hollywood boners ever…lets see, Steve Austin…who could run 60 miles an hour ( I know cause thats what the little red meter lights say on the titles)…instead takes a SHAY,
which has a blazing top speed of…
wait for it…
almost…
15 [censored][censored] MPH!!!
The original “Silver Streak” from the 1930s is good, as is the “Phantom Express” from the same era. I have a VHS tape of “Danger Lights” and the story is hokey, but the railroading is great.
Big mistake: In “Groundhog Day”, there are modern stack carriers rolling by on a train even though it is set in the 1960s.
Three that I like…“Other Men’s Women” (1931) unfortunately not on vhs/dvd, but was shown recently on Turner Classic Movies. “The Train” (1964) Burt Lancaster as a French railwayman trying to keep the Germans from sending a trainload of art out of France in WWII.
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) William Holden & Ernest Borgnine & steam in Mexico.
Very suspenseful but (according to imdb) has a lot of errors is “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974) about the hijacking of a subway train in New York.
arent you only able to see the BN lead unit and the first car when bill murray quickly swerves off the tracks on a crossing and the train rolls by?
bigger mistake: in the recent film “cars”, the vehicles are designed to look modern. the race track, trucks, stadium, even the blimp, all supposed to look modern. after Lightning Mcqueen falls out of Mack on the freeway and goes to chase a truck he thinks is Mack, the truck crosses a railroad crossing that activates before Mcqueen reaches it. the crossbuck looks NOTHING like the modern ones do. i dont even think it was the white X-shaped sign even. and i KNOW there werent 2 lights flashing, just one over the weird sign.
add that to the approaching train. the locomotive looks like an F7 or something, a Carbody A unit. yeah i’m SURE we still use those on trains in 2006…
Don’t forget the classic turkey that is Con Express…
The stuff used in Groundhog Day is not that modern at all. The railroad part of the movie was filmed at the Illinois Railroad Musuem, using their equipment. It you look hard you can see the trolley wire in one of the shots.
Bert
Groundhog’s Day was shot entirely in Illinois. It was a movie contemporary to the time it was shot in the 1990’s. The Television Van had a satellite communications! The locomotive appeared to be a BN SD40-2. Yes, there were auto carriers in that train.
Andrew
The locomotive was an ex BN SD24, and there where no auto carriers in the train. I think you might be thinking of the Thrall all door box car that was in the train. The majority of the film was shot just up the road from IRM in Woodstock.
Bert