I recently purchased Extreme Trains and now have extreme buyers remorse. How is it that such an interesting industry can be distilled down to this? If you watch it you're left with the view that all railroaders are mentally deficient and constantly on the edge of having their train derail, explode, tear apart, or just generally kill them and everyone else. I ended up having to turn the sound off, but then the awful cinematography became very apparent. Oh well I guess I should just be happy they had a railroad show on a popular television station. Course they probably had to cancel it to make more room for Swamp People.

Taylor

I cannot tell you how many people I know in the industry (including myself) that HATED this show with a passion. Two of the worst moments:

1. When host Matt Brown asked the helper engineer if he was scared

2. The description of what happens to a train if the locomotive runs out of sand (catastrophic wreck!)

This show was a clunker from the start.

Lately, most of anything that comes on the History Channel is dissapointing. This show was one of them, but at least it was neet to see the 844 and Steamtown on there. I could've done without the host...but that's another story.

As a Civil War fanatic, I would watch this show anyday versus that special they had on Gettysburg last year....Again, another subject and not the right board for that.

However, I will say that I did enjoy Trains Unlimited when that came on, a llllllooooonnnngggg time ago...

Martin

I just took a look at two small segments on YouTube (No. 1 and No. 3 of the "Empire Builder" episode), and based on this sample (that is perhaps too small), I came away with mixed feelings. On the positive side, its host seemed quite enthusiastic, perhaps overly so, but I still thought that was OK. More annoying was a combination of trying to make this overly dramatic in spots, and also to make it "contemporary," i.e., that bad photography Taylor Rush alluded to. Too many !!@#$%^&!!! jumps, film speed-ups, photographers couldn't sit still with the camera, and that awful music, too!! Basically, the producers/directors/photographers tried to make long form music videos. Bah!

Much of what made "Unstoppable" less than ideal was due to the same "outlook" on how "action" film should look--and I won't go into the sequence that has the train balancing on one set of wheels as it comes off the Ohio River bridge into Bellaire, Oh.--whooee! Curiously, a person I know who is sort of into film work (he's an aspiring television writer, and has a production company that makes commercials and radio spots, some of them pretty good), but is not a rail enthusiast, liked the movie immensely, though even he didn't think a train would do that balancing act. I wonder if it was because he is a fan of both the stars and the director.

I didn't get to see it, but I think "Rocky Mountain Express," based on its trailer, would have worked better (having one of the most photogenic steam locomotives around running on a spectacular railway in Canada certainly helps).

Somehow, somebody needs to do a railroad film, or a series of films (i.e., Star Trek or other film "franchises"), or a TV series, that gets it "right." We have the stories, both in our general history (think of the Harrimans, the Hills, the Golden Spike, and even Credit Mobilier), and the people in operations (Eddie Sand in Harry Bedwell's fiction, Edward Custer in "No Royal Road," Herbert Hamblen's fictional-but-reads-true "The General Manager's Story"). Someone needs to do this and with some luck have a good commercial success out of it (and hopefully it will make trains cool enough that we don't have to share so many experiences of being thought nerds and squares when we're younger).

The problem, at least as I see it, is how do we get it made? Even if you have a great script or set of scripts, I don't think we can go through a main-line studio or television network; they wouldn't have the confidence that they could make money. I was recently reading that in television, only about 20 or so people actually make decisions on what to produce (basically, these are the programmers and their assistants of the networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, perhaps HBO, etc.), and they are swamped with all kinds of material, and at the same time are "conservative" in the sense of playing things safe as far as formats are concerned. To them, it would be something almost totally unknown, or exotic--it wouldn't be a cop show, doctor show, likely not a western, or any other category you would normally have. Their (over)valuation of their time doesn't help matters. They supposedly need to decide on something on the basis of a three-minued or less sales pitch. My commercial producer contact asked me, "How would you categorize this? Can you describe it in one or two sentences?"

The carriers themselves, who might have backed something like this as a promotion in the old days, either have no interest or would actually be hostile, especially if it were a period piece with steam power.

I attempted to sell such a series about 20 years ago, and must confess I couldn't even get anybody to look at it, much less buy it, so you don't want to look to me for advice--but perhaps there is some sort of alternate way, even if it would involve a lot of model work, even if it were to rely on an ad revenue stream from YouTube.

Anybody have any ideas?

I found what I was talking about!

Check out what he says starting at 13:00 or thereabouts regarding sand (or lack thereof):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPh0kNc8wjM

A "What!?" question for the helper engineer at 16:10:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTsfQREy ... re=related

It's just weird how railroads fail to be a marketable subject in this country. There have been incredible series and specials on ocean liners, planes, and a plethora of automotive productions. I guess they just try and dumb everything down with railways because they don't believe people will watch a show loaded with facts. Kind of odd as the military programs are filled with facts and are incredibly entertaining. I dunno. It just seems like the magic formula is simpering stupidity with a loud mouth host who is a toadie to wherever he is. On the opposite side, there is a fantastic episode of the British program Top Gear where they race the Tornado against a Jaguar X120 and a Vincent Black Shadow from London to Edinburough. It is funny, exciting, and also respects the machinery and the people who build and maintain it. You come away feeling that the Tornado is an incredible piece of technology instead of...."It goes real fast, unless it crashes, I like the color green, smoke makes me sneeze, trains are sometimes called wingless land planes, DURHHH!"

Taylor

I hate to say it, but the closest we may get for awhile ( and this makes me sick ) might be "Hell on Wheels" . But...it also may be the seeds to getting one made. The cable networks would be the best bet to sell a good railroad story, IMHO. As someone said earllier, there are so many good stories ready to be told."The cancelled "Night Ride Down" might be revived, and there is a current play touring the country about two generations of Pullman porters. Also, I just finished reading "Pelican Road" and that might be a possibility for a cable movie...just thinking out loud.....

I've had this discussion many, many times over the years with booksellers, librarians, curators, producers, and whatnot. The overall conclusion I've come to is that this has to do with one simplistic fact in the United States: You can easily own and operate some form of any kind of transportation except railroading--cars, motorcycles, boats, bicycles, even airplanes. If you're a wannabe railroader, your easiest outlet is model railroading--and I believe both Carstens and Kalmbach will tell you that their respective model RR magazines have double the circulation of their prototype RR magazines. The Walter Mitty impulse is stronger than we give it credit.

I have been approached by producers for projects similar to the ones described above in unflattering terms, and rejected them when it was apparent they didn't want facts to get in the way of a good story. (One of the ones I rejected flat-out was the crew that put together the much-lampooned "secret siding in GCT/FDR's secret auto car?" special.) But like it or not, history is often preponderantly dry, boring, and stodgy without sex, explosions, drama, and human interest. And human interest, to be blunt about it, is often an alien concept to everyone in railfandom, from the rail photographers to the rail modelers to the rivet-counting roster geeks to the restoration craftsmen. (I think it's no accident that the nearly robotic/"Vulcan" character of Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory" is also a railfan...)

To be fair, we hardly have a lock on such problems. Have you ever read through the "historical bulletins" of county or state historical societies? Many of those in years past contained some of the driest, stalest writing conceivable. I've read some that were almost a parody of how to write to put people to sleep. For a real exercise, pull up articles from NRHS or R&LHS Bulletins 50 or 70 years ago, and compare their presentation with the current content of said society's publications.

I've long fantasized about attempting to pull together a project that combined railfan interest/knowledge and respect for history and accuracy with the production knowledge and skills to produce some rail enthusiast based production with mass market appeal. The best prospects seem to be some music-video or rail-themed, country-music show or mini-series.

"I've long fantasized about attempting to pull together a project that combined railfan interest/knowledge and respect for history and accuracy with the production knowledge and skills to produce some rail enthusiast based production with mass market appeal. The best prospects seem to be some music-video or rail-themed, country-music show or mini-series."--Alexander D. Mitchell IV

That's what the TV series I tried to put together would have been, or at least what I was shooting for.

Actually, we have had that over the years--the problem is that the material is, at best, almost 50 years old, and most of it much, much older.

The youngest example I'm thinking of was "The Train," directed by John Frankenhiemer, and that goes back to 1964--48 years ago! At that, it was set in occupied France late in WW II--a great movie, but not along the lines of what some of us would like to see.

Other classic examples, not in any particular order but all good in my opinion, would include "The Titfield Thunderbolt" (British film, ca. 1952, and a jewel--could it be adapted to tell the story of the Silverton or the Cumbres & Toltec?), "Union Pacific" (1939, Cecil B. de Mille, director), "Whispering Smith" (I'm thinking of the 1947 version, which I've seen, and which is based on a book by railroad writer Frank Spearman if my memory is right), "Danger Lights" (1930), "Other Men's Women" (1933, have only seen bits of it), and "Silver Streak" (1933 version). No doubt there are others readers here would add to this short and incomplete list.

All of these have the (perhaps) unfortunate commonality of being older movies (we've seen'em already). Others are stuck in the 19th century ("Union Pacific," "Whispering Smith"), or have ridiculous elements in them (undercranked cameras for high-speed effects in "Danger Lights" and "Silver Streak"). In fact, it's weird that American classic era railroading (ca. 1910--1950) is so under-represented in film, unless it's a setting for crazy antics in a sleeping car, or a train wreck. You can have a really good movie set on a train (two excellent examples are the original version of "Narrow Margin," a crime thriller set on a train in 1950, and "The Tall Target," about Lincoln's journey to Washington in early 1861, with an attempted assassination by Southern sympathizers), but in both cases the railroad is only a setting, not the story itself.

We have some classic material--"One Way to Eldorado," "Rio Grande Glory Days," "Fiddle Hill," "The Long Trains Roll"--and other things, including even the possibility of more material from Spearman ("Held For Orders," maybe even a remake of "Whispering Smith"). I even think we can overcome the "easy to own" argument (how many people can privately own an F-14 as used in "Top Gun," or an ocean liner, the latter often a setting for a disaster movie of some sort?) Our main problem is that what we wan to do could be expensive--and it also is something that is also "common" (think of occupations like plumbers), and at the same time, "unfamiliar" (how many people--including Hollywood execs--are rail passengers, much less rail enthusiasts?)

About the closest we have come in recent years is one--one!--music video--Restless Heart's "Big Iron Horses:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2uVhNJ_JE

How do we do better?

The video "Daylight Express" by Skyfire is a good example of how to do a railroad show for the general public. Entertaining with good interviews, great soundtrack, and only a few minor inaccuracies. Creative camera angles without going all Hollywood or overly dramatic. It is what I show non-railfans to show why I am involved with steam locomotives.

... and if you go to the forums related to cars, ships, and planes, you'll find the same complaints. "Everyone knows the DC-8 has a max flap setting of 15, but the show makes it look like they can take off vertically!" (Or whatever somebody who actually knew something about planes would say...)

Heck, tune into "Dirty Jobs" some time. Last night he was trying to make pulling weeds looks dramatic! "OH NO! We've plugged up the grinder!"

You should hear the fisherman scream about "Deadliest Catch". But let's face it, a "real" day in the life of an engineer is pretty dang boring. "We left on time, had a good run, and made it in 5 minutes early" is a great day, but it won't steal a lot of viewers from American Choppers.

Moral of the story? It's called "Reality TV", not "Documentary".

Quoting Springsteen: "57 channels and nothin' on..."

I haven't seen that in at least 10 years, it was a great movie. The local library used to have a VHS copy of it.

I've always thought the railroad would make a good "soap opera" because of the drama. Literally, I've joked with co-workers that there would be a show called "As the Extralist Turns".

"Tensions grow when John bumps Seth, the first out crew in the hotel gets to d/h home, Charles is furious when his claims get denied, and Smitty gets taken out of service".

Or imagine the horror when the home-terminal girlfriend finds out about the away-from-home-terminal girlfriend!

....just another day...

Do it yourself. You can make an independent feature for $30k assuming you can get a lot of enthusiastic folks to volunteer, or you do an even lower cost web series of short episodes. Collaborate with film students and a railroad museum. If it is good enough, you can get funding for your next project.

Ultimately, setting means little, especially with something as routine at railroad operations. People want to see compelling characters facing challenges in well-told stories. The technical stuff has only been getting easier, but the writing and acting needed to tell a good story still depend upon talent.

Also, Supertrain.

Here is my review..posted on another forum a few years ago when the show was running on the History Channel:



That show just could not suck enough..

Scot

Or both the home and away wives find out about each other! That is the sort of thing that would hold a general audience. There's fodder out there on the railroad for the non-nuts and bolts people, mostly about the soap opera that can be life on the railroad. Most of it would not interest those of us on here.