The wife and I were catching up on the last couple of episodes of Boardwalk Empire last night. For those unaware the story is about Corruption and organized crime in Atlantic City, NJ during Prohibition in the 1920's

We were watching the 2nd to last episode of this season called "Under God's Power She Flourishes." During a "flashback" when one of the main characters was attending Princeton, he's shown living in a boarding house next to the railroad tracks. There's a nice shot of a Steam engine and coach passing just below except the crossing is protected by a rather modern set of crossing signals and instead of a steam whistle they use the sound of a diesel horn. Later, during the same episode we again hear a diesel horn and train passing outside the characters window, although we don't see any train that time. For a story that they seem hard to be keeping the historical detail accurate, seems like a big mistake to me.

Of course, its still far better that that joke of railroad equipment they keep trying to pass off on "Hell on Wheels."

I have been meaning to bring that up, as well. Yeah, i laughed out loud when that episode got played. Clearly the sound people were told to "put in a train sound" with the image of the PRR steam engine going past, and didn't know it didn't sound like that.
Good unintentional comedy there!

Aside from the audio mistakes, could anyone tell what equipment we saw through the boarding house window? The train appeared to be pretty authentic looking PRR but I couldn't identify what consist they used for the shot.
Kevin

Keep in mind that this is a program with a budget, likely relatively small by entertainment standards. The rail footage could be stock material, models, or computer generated. Not having seen the episode in question, my guess is that it was some sort of stock footage.

I'd love to know where those scenes were shot and how much CGI was used for the backgrounds. Of course, a steam train has to be involved in one of the most disturbing TV scenes ever.