You shop for a house by the tracks instead of away from them!
When planning your next vacation, you choose your travel route based upon the location of active railroads and railroad museums.
When you blow your horn two longs, a short, and a long through every intersection.
Speaking of intersections, you call the signals as you go through them.
You call zoning to ask if you can use a boxcar for a shed.
You wonder why automobiles don’t come equipped with couplers.
While engaged in intimate relations, you suddenly find yourself mentally debating the relative merits of Shay vs. rod engines.
Your wife tells you her water burst, and your first reaction is, “My God, her boiler will be ruined!”
When you wire up the fog lamps to flash alternately when you blow the horn
When being served dinner, you say, “Easy, easy, that’ll do!” as you’ve gotten enough.
When riding with someone who’s backing into a parking space, you say, “two cars, one car, that’ll do.”
When you get a shopping cart with a bad wheel, you tag it and set it aside for the shops to repair, or park it in an aisle and put up a blue flag in front of and behind it.
You curse the dispatcher when you’re held up in traffic.
You’re test driving a hot V6 and think, “This thing can really move in notch 8.”
While driving your car, you put your arm on the window sill and wave your hand and blow your horn to all kids standing on the street.
Your wife opens her wallet to show the relatives photos of the children while you open your wallet to show them your latest rail photos from last weeks fan trip.
You install a pedal operated bell in your car and ring it while driving across railroad crossings.
You open your refrigerator door only to find it full of film for the next fan trip.
You find yourself looking for old locomotives and color sch
I find myself guilty of #'s 19 and 20. The old tv show “The Fugitive” has some great shots of Kimble running through the yards, including a running-straight-to-the-camera shot of a Santa Fe PA.
I too am probably one of the biggest nitpickers when it comes to trains on TV/movies. Incidentally, the introduction of The Fugitive has a scene which is supposed to be of a train derailing, but is actually a Lionel train coming off the tracks, you can even read “Lionel Lines” on it.
I can think of a couple of bad trains scenes on TV. I once saw a movie (can’t really remember the title or what it was about) that took place in the 50’s and featured a BN train. Also, in an episode of Hogan’s Heroes (which incidentally is one of my favorite shows) there was a scene of an SP GS-4 northern that was supposed to represent a German train. Things like this can just wreck watching television.
I can relate to points one and two. I’m not looking for a house yet, but when I do I’ll be looking for one by the tracks. As for #2, when my family goes on a vacation I always make sure we see all the railroad museums that we can. When we come back and get all the pictures developed, there’s more pictures of trains than anything else.
I actually did see all these points on the internet once before.
Ever seen “The Recruit?” There’s a scene with a chase through Washington’s station…and you see Acela…but then the chase goes into a basement area…where for some reason a bunch of VIA Rail RDCs are parked there.
I too am probably one of the biggest nitpickers when it comes to trains on TV/movies. Incidentally, the introduction of The Fugitive has a scene which is supposed to be of a train derailing, but is actually a Lionel train coming off the tracks, you can even read “Lionel Lines” on it.
I can think of a couple of bad trains scenes on TV. I once saw a movie (can’t really remember the title or what it was about) that took place in the 50’s and featured a BN train. Also, in an episode of Hogan’s Heroes (which incidentally is one of my favorite shows) there was a scene of an SP GS-4 northern that was supposed to represent a German train. Things like this can just wreck watching television.
Quote from Sask_tinplater
How about when Steven Segal ‘outran’ the wreck at the end of “Dark Territory”?
What I get from the innacuracies of railroad stuff in movies is the idea that all professions are depicted innacurately.
It is easy to tell the derailment shot in the opening sequence of “The Fugitive” was from models. The movie version starring Harrison Ford had a great shot of the train hitting the prison bus and chasing Kimble down the tracks. Trains magazine ran a story on the locomotives used for the scenes. I can’t remember the exact issue. CRS is kicking in. LOL
I can think of some other train scenes in movies/TV that make me cringe.
One of the worst I’ve heard about was a movie called “The Ghost Train” from 1941, and while I’ve never seen it, I don’t think I want to. Apparently there’s a sequence that’s supposed to represent a short train joruney and includes scenes of a train leaving a station, heading down the line and arriving at it’s destination. However, there are clips of FIVE different trains shown! That’s pretty bad, even if you don’t know anything about railroading!
I also once watched a documentary on the Great Train Robbery in Britain back in the 60’s (quite interesting to watch actually). However, for the reenactment, it showed the robbers holding up what I believe may have been a GP40 (it was at night, so it was hard to tell).
not sure of the title of the movie… “Battle of the Bulge” i think… i know it was about the battle of the bulge… when they have the steam engine run (for like five minutes in the uncut version), enter a tunnel, and get blown up by a tank on the tracks at the end of the tunnel. there are some points you can tell that’s is a model train.
Well, that’s still much better than actually wrecking a real train. In some cases a model train can be very convincing. In the 1986 movie, “Tough Guys”, near the end of the film SP Daylight GS-4 4449 is supposedly run off the end the track and into the Mexican desert. There was an article in an issue of Railfan & Railroad that talked about how they did the filming and for that scene they used a live steam model. It was very real looking and could have fooled a lot of railfans.
… when the wife complains that you spend more money on film for more train pictures than you do on her
… when you know the dates of railroad mergers, but never remember your anniversary
HA! Guilty as charged, #23! I was once talking with a conductor from UP who worked out of Proviso. He told me I probably knew more that him, and he’s been with the railroad for almost 30 years. LOL, hey anyone out there looking for a motiviated individual to help crew a train!?