Have a look at this story:

KOWB (Laramie, Wyoming): https://kowb1290.com/worlds-largest-ste ... -cheyenne/

The image at the top of the story depicts a locomotive in steam on the Harz narrow gauge system in eastern Germany. With all the great images of UP 4014 recorded in 2019, you would think these folks could have found an actual image of UP 4014 with which to lead the article!

Well, when "History Colorado" has a spot on local Denver TV, they as often as not use a D&S or CTS picture when the story is about the Colorado Central or C&S. And they use C&S pictures to illustrate stories about the D&RGW. You WOULD think they could tell the difference...

I've been noticing this "image creep" of non-North American railroad images being used in TV productions talking about U. S. railroading, including on the "History Channel". Could it be that when the producers do an internet search for railroad images, foreign ones come to the top of the search first?

Well, Japan, England and Germany have the most train freaks per capita of all the countries in the world, so internet searches might have something to do with it.

Another theory is that people who get to make TV shows know TV and are connected in that business. Railroaders do not get to make TV shows about much of anything most of the time, including railroads. One guy I like on PBS is named Zay Harding, and his series "Tough Trains" is pretty good. He is not a railroader, but his instincts are very good, and he gets the railroaders to tell their stories, and he doesn't get in their way.

Paul,

There are a few variables going on including the perpetual cause that most people don’t know the difference. I am familiar with these variables through my work with a global advertising agency and consulting with TV series and production companies.

1) Stock houses - most legit videos use licensed video and images from stock houses whose specialty is providing clips quickly and for far less cost than going out and shooting them. My experiences with stock houses is that they have a a global base of artists and when the assets are put into the database they are rarely tagged by country. Therefore, the average user only knows that “it’s a train.” Whatever is cheapest is best. History Channel productions are regular offenders that should know better but having worked with some of their producers (and their budgets) I know they don’t really pay attention to such things.

2) Search - less legit videos will often be filled out with whatever someone finds in search. Given that search results are only as good as the search request, broad terms will turn up a variety of results. Someone looking for “cool” is likely to pick the Flying Scotsman over a Rio Grande K-36 as it is colorful and looks cool.

There are some folks in TV and film who do care. These are the ones I consult with, as the ones who don’t care don’t... well... care.

Rob

It's like Stephen King said about his work: “I’m a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami.”

I'm really amused that a station in Laramie - LARAMIE! - showed German narrow-gauge locomotives when images of the real thing could be easily obtained from UP.

Probably more easily than the images they got.

Phil Mulligan

Didn't the US postal service include the image of a British locomotive to help celebrate the completion of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad (gold spike) bicentennial?

Yes, I understand it was a "Jubilee" class Ten-Wheeler.

I have seen an image of a PRR GG1 used on a PKP notice to passengers on a Polish rail station in the past.......