Too bad you can't haul a 10 wheeler that easy, eh? Think of all the money that would be saved! Maybe if you fill the boiler with helium?

"That said, I am a bit confused, since I know somebody who's steam qualified that got a job on this production. Wonder why that was?"--Bob Harbison

May have been as a consultant, maybe was hired with the intent of using real equipment but that may have been aborted.

I still can't get over the money for this--$250,000,000.00, maybe more!! No wonder the studio executives are worried.

For that kind of dough, you ought to be able to shoot "One Way to Eldorado" (essentially a 1954 version of "The Great Train Robbery" on a road that's very much like the SP over Donner, complete with cab-forwards), "High Tension" (set on the Pennsylvania Railroad as it is being electrified in Maryland in the 1930s), and "The Long Trains Roll" (PRR in WW II against saboteurs, set on Horseshoe Curve and incorporating I1s')--combined!!

I'd bet Walt Disney would have approved of such a package. . .

Calm down, kids....I know several folks that were contacted and could have and would have supplied them with the appropriate engines, cars, ect.. for VERY reasonable costs. The reason they did it themselves was simple, and has nothing whatsoever to do with getting to keep the props.

They did it themselves to keep the expenses amongst the participants in the film ie letting the prop guys build the engines kept the money "in the family", so to speak. Any time you see these humongous budgets, what you can figure is those in the industry, on the ground, are going to get a BIG payday. Why pay someone else to use there stuff, when you can, in effect, "pay yourself" to do it? If you have a big budget, somebody gets a payday long before the first ticket gets sold.


Rest assured, they could have had real engines for a fraction of what they spent on props. Been there, done that, have all the tee shirts.

Go familiarize yourself with Hollywood budgets someday. IMDB says the estimated budget is actually $215 million. And after all the income at the theaters, they can STILL manage to use seriously-questionable-but-still-legal-so-far accounting to show how a movie grossing a billion dollars internationally "lost" money.......

The difference between a $2 million flick and a $200 million flick is brazenly apparent to anyone who watches "The Station Agent" or "Clerks" versus "Spiderman" or "Titanic," and THEN sees the huge number of theaters with packed houses at $10-20 a ticket for opening night. Given that the subject matter is "The Lone Ranger," I think it's safe to assume that a big check goes to Classic Media, the holder of the rights to the Lone Ranger character, having purchased them from the character's creator, Jack Wrather, or his estate. Another $10-20 million probably goes to Johnny Depp, the price you pay for having "star power" draw people to your movie.

Certainly, we can make a big-budget movie based on some rail story--Casey Jones, Emperor of the North, etc. Will it draw people to the theaters in enough quantity to pay for all the high-priced productions? Probably not.

Good luck getting that thing to run! I know she went down a couple of years ago with a cracked cylinder, and as I understand it, they cracked the repair to the cylinder on their test runs! The city of Grapevine seems to have hired a few people that really didn't know what they were doing.

I think damage may be an issue, plus you can digitize all this anyways if they had to
taking an old engine and be shot ready in a moment, I think they did the more correct deal for them moviemaking wise.

According to this newscast from April, it seems that one museum will benefit from the movie. One of the museum's locomotives is loaning some parts to the prop locomotives being used in the movie, in return for for having those loaned parts restored by Disney prior to being returned to the origianl locomotive.

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/local/southeast/historic-train-to-be-in-the-lone-ranger

I can't say I'd trust movie prop people to 'restore' anything, even to static condition.

Search Grapevine and 2248 here and you will find a wealth of information.

What ever the reason for building replicas, they sure look better then the "locomotive" they built for "Hell on Wheels"!

Looks like we might be getting a fair amount of (fake) railroad action in this one. Sounds like a "evil railroad baron" plot. Also looks like a runaway and train wreck sequence is in store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0PUiPexVQ

I'm not sure whether they're the same props that were photographed in Utah, but there's a big location set up in the parking lot of Santa Anita race track in Arcadia CA. The project started over a month ago, and it's still in place. There's a "locomotive" named Jupiter and a 148, and lots of freight and passenger car props. There's a trestle built on stacked cargo containers, and a "blue screen" wall about 40 feet high. Definitely not a "Poverty Row" production. Now for some questions: They hired Johnny Depp to play Tonto, and Armie Hammer to play the Lone Ranger. The "bankable star" is playing the "sidekick"? Then there's the dialogue. The old radio and TV shows were aimed at kids, and the language was "G" rated. I also recall that neither the Ranger nor Tonto touched alcoholic beverages. Will the mythology continues, or will things be more "authentic"? Will they still use the William Tell Overture at the opening? And who (other than curious railfans and horse opera buffs) will go to see it? I presume the company did all sorts of market surveys before sinking $215M into this effort, but right now, I'm glad that I don't have money in it.

I saw the trailer on the Tonight show, I think the movie is pushing what the Lone Ranger was to another level.

And there was a scene of a steam engine sliding on its side, I don't think you will do that to a museum piece, thats why the replicas.

But one of the old films did use real steamers for a headon wreck, but the engines were slated for the scrap anyways.

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Here's the Trailer that was just released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Fs-32- ... r_embedded