Well, "Unstoppable" is due out in October:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/

Oh, wait, you wanted to get AWAY from runaways.........

I do have an interest in seeing this one, despite the cliche of a runaway, because part of it was shot around Wheeling, W.Va., where I'm originally from.

"Fools' Parade," shot in 1969, was also filmed in this area. This movie is based on a book by regional writer Davis Grubb, as was an earlier movie, "Night of the Hunter," ca. 1952. Much of "Night of the Hunter" was filmed around Captina, W.Va. (which is no longer there, the whole town having been demolished for a power plant). This movie has a brief guest appearance of the Delta Queen (nice touch, even if the boat didn't show up on the Ohio until 10 years after the time period of the movie), but doggone it, why did the movie men have to use stock footage of a Southern Pacific train when nearly identical two- and three-car locals behind correct B&O 4-6-2s were running through Captina at the time?

Speaking of the wrong equipment on the route in the film--what about Southern Pacific trains in "Narrow Margin" (1950 or '51?) on a route from Chicago to Los Angeles via a routing that is Santa Fe? And how about the footage of a Daylight from this movie later being used in "Dear Heart" to represent a train going to New York--in 1960? "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers," ca. 1946, is interesting with Daylights and Cab-Forwards in Pennsylvania!

That in turn reminds me of a cartoon that appeared in "Model RAilroader" in the early 1960s, in which some railfans are making caustic comments about a train robbery scene in a western that features a GG-1!

What are some other memorable bloopers you've seen?

If you include TV stuff, there's a lot more to choose from. There was a documentary on the Civil War which included troop movements in the 1860's using a (I think Canadian) Pacific and a string of riveted steel 1920's commuter coaches. Some damnfool Willie Nelson movie shot on either D&S or CATS hauled boiler water by horse drawn bathtub from a creek, 25 gallons at a time.......and wasn't there a series called "Supertrain" or something like that? I purposely didn't watch it. Then there was Dale Robertson in "Iron Horse" with the cheesiest sets, including a steam mockup. Not much recently - maybe the 0-4-0 in "Dr. Quinn, Politically Correct Woman".

The ubiquitous UP and SP footage was probably "stock" stuff, shot near Los Angeles at minimal cost, and used in whatever picture needed a train establishing shot, over and over again.

dave

The horror, the horror. . .

http://nbc_supertrain.tripod.com/

http://periscopedepth.wordpress.com/200 ... upertrain/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUERtAe73NI

Going in the other direction from this forum, High Speed Rail, I wonder if this series didn't set that cause back for 30 years. The Reason Foundation has even used clips and part of that cheesy soundtrack to argue against HSR; they even throw in a steam engine at 1:41!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xyUg4J7Sf8

High speed rail is not a normal subject here, but I do wonder about the Reason Foundation's wisdom in suggesting we need more roads in the face of more expensive gasoline in the future. I have a great deal to say about that, including some comments about my efforts to establish a modern interuban as an alternative to a 4-lane highway in West Virginia (and I got called a Communist for suggesting it), but I don't want to get thrown off the forum--and it may not really belong here, anyway.

I will comment that some of the criticism came from people who thought I was "trying to take their cars away," and I "wanted to bring back the horse and buggy," along with comments about "an outmoded technology from the Victorian age."

Paraphrasing Lucius Beebe, I have to ask, "And what was so wrong about train and trolley travel back in 1900?"

Then there was this television series from 1958. Considering its intended juvenile audience, and the time period it was shot, and a presumably limited budget, not really bad. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCScGd0z ... re=channel

I'll concede that any discussion of the ludicrous political football of high speed rail is outside the "jurisdiction" of this website and forum, at least until we're up to preserving an AEM-7 and/or Acela trainset.

But I'll say this to stay "on topic": using the imagery of "Supertrain" to rally against the current administration's HSR fantasies is no less disingenuous than using imagery of the (heavily subsidized) TGV, JNR "bullet trains," and mag-lev to push the fantasy that an $8 billion appropriation will actually bring HSR to America, as opposed to being the partial down payment to a program that would eventually cost over $100 billion if brought to fruition.

(Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do read Reason Magazine. Got a problem with that?)

The 8 car SuperTrain was acquired by Bernie Paul of Associated Hobby Manufacturers (AHM), Philadelphia, Pa. and operated at some of his Big Buying And Selling Hobbies (Big BASH) train shows at the old PhilCo plant in the late 1970s. It was about 12" gauge, and only came with straight track. The 1st 4 cars contained the batteries, hydraulic drive, remote radio control, and dry ice powered leaking "steam" generator. At least those 4 cars had to be in the train for it to run.

We've been involved with a couple of "interesting" films. But, they provided us with a fair amount of money.

1) "Pearl Harbor." (filmed in 2000) One scene, supposedly Grand Central Station, was shot in LA Union Passenger Terminal, with ATSF 3751 sitting there with "Hollywood smoke and steam" coming out of various openings. The next scene, the "same" train running across the open countryside, is pulled by our 4-6-0 SP 2353. Since then, we've referred to 2353 as 3751's stunt double. Incidentally, that was the last day that 2353 operated.

2) "Greyhounds," a pilot for a TV show (1993). Our RS-2 is pulling a very mixed freight. There is a small container, about 10' X 10', on a flat car near the rear of the train. A helicopter drops the bad guys onto the top of a box car, a couple of cars ahead of the flat. They work their way back to the flat, where they put plastic explosive on the leading knuckle of the flat, and blow it up. The front half of the train continues on its merry way, while the back half rolls to a gentle stop. Of course the bad guys then get into a shoot-out with guards who come out of the caboose. The bad guys put a sling around the subject container, and the chopper come back and takes it away. And the director actually asked us if certain aspects of the filming look authentic! We told him that yes, what he was asking about was authentic, but his basic premise of the train continuing after the knuckle is blown certainly was not authentic. But, that was what was in the script, so that was what was shot. And, if you looked closely at the explosive on the knuckle, you could see that the angle cock on the car ahead of the flat was closed.

Nothing says that the bad guys weren't smart enough to close the angle cock--now if the footage showed it open, then the cheese factor would be on.