Exactly! They aren't great at taking care of stuff, but they are good at paying.

When MRSR's F9 was used in Runaway Train, the paint scheme they used made black look good by comparison. It was a mud brown that pretty much looked like "Has been used as a lobster pot for a few years..."

The paint, of course, would "wash right off!" It, of course, did not.

Fortunately, the contract had a clause about restoring to the condition it was prior to teh rental, and the movie company paid to have it sandblasted and re-painted. It actually worked to our benefit as the paint scheme BN applied when they donated it was the simplified NP scheme, while the re-paint was done with the proper "Pine Tree" scheme.

Movie studios work in a completely different world than tourist railways. Many a tourist line would be happy to have the catering budget on a big production! So when you tell them "Hey, we're gonna have to repaint this engine..." the reply is often pretty much "OK, sorry about that, we'll send you a check..."

Granted, you want to be careful with artifacts that can be damaged in ways that restoration can't fix. But in some cases, it can be to your benefit to work with them.

All the money and time they spent to build that train and they could have just leased the movie train that the Reader Railroad sends out for movie work.

Definitely cheaper building a rolling mock-up, especially for a cable tv series (AMC). Leasing and moving a working steam powered trainset is expensive. Depending on the schedule it can run between $200k-300k.

Stephen

Looks like full-sized replicas for movies aren't that new:

http://www.drhs315.org/blog/projects/emma-sweeney-2/

http://www.drhs315.org/blog/projects/em ... 2/history/

http://www.drhs315.org/blog/projects/em ... storation/

It's surprising how good some of this can look on the screen, both in the old days (as in the case of the "Emma Sweeney") and today (in "Hell on Wheels").

Of course, there are the models that have been used over the years in film. A classic sequence, even if it is a disaster of a rear-ender, with a number of technical errors (such as having a second section in the same block, even if it is apparently an unsignalled railroad), from "Greatest Show on Earth," 1952:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUtf_RE6r5Q

A short segment starting at 5:26 in this opening clip from the horror spoof, "Transylvania 6-5000;" ugh, I thought 1970s hairstyles and clothes were awful even then!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vABa1kaWkUw

For the really low, low-budget movie people, there were, believe it or not, Lionel trains; from "The Giant Gila Monster," 1959, between 49:00 and 51:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Bcw35NWBI

Then there was "The Black Scorpion," from 1957, with what I am guessing are HO models, utilizing what I think is an American Flyer 4-6-2 mated to a tender lettered "Lionel Lines!" And the tender is, in best toy train tradition, coupled backwards, too! Running from 0:58 to 1:14:

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

Don't think you could quite get away with this today. . .

While we are on movie trains were the two locomotives derailed in unstoppable mock-ups or were the real (but hollowed out) SD40's? On this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM4WrlFm0d4 at 0:42 you can see on one of the damaged fuel tanks there is a pipe inside (for drawing up fuel I assume) and that leads be to believe they were real any thoughts?

Of course, there are the models that have been used over the years in film. A classic sequence, even if it is a disaster of a rear-ender, with a number of technical errors (such as having a second section in the same block, even if it is apparently an unsignalled railroad), from "Greatest Show on Earth," 1952:

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


[/quote]

I think they got a lot more right than wrong. The engineer on the first section acknowledges the fusee, then after stopping, he whistles out a flag. the flagman, upon hearing the signal, leaves the caboose and promptly gets clubbed in the head, trying to comply with the old Rule 99. According to my old rule book, sections of trains depart ten minutes behind each other..now that doesn't mean they always stay behind ten minutes..that is one reason why in the rule book which said if a train cannot make its schedule time a fusee must be thrown off to provide protection...and that is also why fusees have a ten minute burn limit on them...

"According to my old rule book, sections of trains depart ten minutes behind each other.."

But would that style of time-interval railroading still be current in 1952?

It's my understanding that that type of operation, especially on an unsignalled railroad, would have long been outmoded, having been replaced by timetable and train orders, or a manual block system. Of course, the ten-minute burn time on fusees and Rule 99 remained in effect, even in signalled territory.

Then, I could be wrong; the earliest rulebook I have is one for the Chessie System from the 1970s. Its writing style and some spellings still read very old, though; railroads understandably don't change things on a whim. In fact, there is a siding in Martinsburg, W.Va. that is still called the "pay track" or "pay car track," referring to when railroads paid in cash once per month out of what amounted to a rolling payroll office and bank.

How long did that practice hang around?

After seeing a bit of the show, I think using the fabricated engine was a good choice. They wanted to show track construction and run the train over tracks were hastily built of light rail and rough ties.

Had you been running an authentic historic locomotive over that stuff, anyone who understood railroads would have been tense the entire time, waiting for the inevitable derailments. What if the engine is damaged? What if it rolls over!?!?

Use a shop built replica of plywood and the like and your problem is solved. First of all, the weight is much less. Secondly if the thing falls off the track or rolls over, you don't damage an irreplacable historic object, you damage a prop and the solution is a simple call to craft services for repairs.

Yes, I think using a "stunt train" may have been a wise choice.

Buy/rent the deluxe Blu-ray DVD of the movie and you'll get a very nice "how we filmed this" feature with it, showing details of the wreck and a lot more.

Short answer... I'm pretty sure they used real locos, and they show the mechanism they built to have them derail on cue. But it's been a while since I watched it, so corrections are welcome.

At :42 you can see there is no fuel tank, no traction motors, and a PVC pipe that probably fed fuel to the explosion. I'm pretty sure you are looking at nothing more than dummy units.

Tom, I guess it depends on what you mean by "dummies".

I think they used real locos, and gutted them for the scene pulling engines and traction motors etc, or had somebody do that work. If that's a dummy, then you're correct.

What I meant is that they didn't build them from scratch, but started with a real loco and used the shell for the wreck. In Hell on Wheels, they built the thing from the frame up.

I like it. Naturally, the real thing would have been nice ... but hard to do. From a short distance the mockup looks pretty good. RGS 20 in "Ticket to Tomahawk" was a mockup in some scenes, too.

As to CGI computer animations, they are getting better but I can usually tell the difference between CGI and the real thing, so it isn't quite there yet. CGI turns me off in movies. Give them a couple more years ....

I've looked pretty close and will say I'm 99% sure that the Hell On Wheels running scene of the 2-6-0 is a CGI modified film footage of the Reader Railroad 2-6-0 #2 -maybe footage bought from the production of "There Will Be Blood". We ran a few scenes that they shot from that angle. But you can see the tender and cars have been CGI'd to look like they are built like wooden ore jennies or some narrow gauge gondola.
Also - the guys at the Reader told me last year that they had an interested TV production company come to Reader to look at the #2. They took hundreds of big format digital photos of every nut and bolt on the loco. Nothing further was ever discussed with the Reader - but maybe, possibly, maybe this constructed replica is the result.
I don't know for sure.
We had once considered changing the #2 from a 2-6-0 to a 4-4-0 for a proposed film production. It would be possible. Build an engine truck. Drop out the #1 driver and make 2 new side rods . . . . . . but now they've done even that on a computer too! And then build it out of wood and foam -wow!

All valid points, but people here seem to miss the most likely reason they built this thing:
It's reliable. You can't count on a steam locomotive to be ready the exact second the lighting calls for it and with a mockup, you know you can get the thing moving no matter what. Anyone who's ever worked on any movie or TV project can appreicate how important this really is.
You can also tell by comments from others that they have never even seen a movie being made in real life, otherwsie they'd get this, too...