I caught the end of the show while waiting for the 11 p.m. news on the same channel. I was "impressed" with the empty backhead - no gauges, etc., woodfired, and the special powers of the guy pulling the wood out of the firebox. The camera work was good - I did not see any diesel powered baggage car? The rest of it was laughable - like a version of "Tough Guys" for TV or "Chattanooga Choo Choo".

Wesley

[quote="Tom Parkins"]Really, really bad TV.

Don't look at cable much do you. Fact: If cable companies went to ala carte TV, over 60% of the cable channels would go out of business. See when a company wants to start a new cable network, all of the cable companies pay them for thier content. This is why Comcast raises their rates every few months and when you ask why, they respond, "we've added six new channels: two foreign language, two religous and two shopping channels. But if we had the opportunity to pick and pay only for those channels we want, the rest would go out of business because their content is so lame. And on top of paying for that lame channel, there are the miriade of commercials to wade through. Thanks, but no thanks.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Chattanooga Choo Choo starred George Kennedy. At least the train scenes in that one were ineteresting, especially the Model T Ford inspection car chase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yszJ5ZmTCQQ

I just watched it on DVR. Pretty lame episode, but it was pretty neat to see #44 in "simulated" operation. Maybe SCRM will get enough money out of the deal to finally restore the locomotive so we can finally have some operating steam in SC.

New Hope Valley 17 isn't far away and did a bang-up job in Roanoke. Might be fun to see a 0-4-0T hauling rock cars on the old R&R.

Are there any rock cars left?

dave

More importantly, "Chattanooga Choo Choo" starred Barbara Eden! And that Model T inspection car chase is a personal favorite of 'filmography', as that was my dad in the driver's seat! Not the most memorable movie, to be sure, but it was a lot of fun to be on the set.

Brian Wise
General Manager
Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad
http://www.mrsr.com

No that is not how it works. Local stations are no longer getting paied to by the stations they are affiliated with to brocast there content so the local stations rase the rebrocasting fees on cable networks who in turn rase your rates.

Thanks for thinking of us, Dave. By all outward appearances SCRM already has a positive working relationship with the Gramlings. John and I spoke about this a few years ago when 75 visited Bonsal, and I explained that we really aren't in a position to compete in the travelling locomotive market. We just don't have enough volunteers to travel on a regular basis. Besides, John and Barney have a great thing going, and they have been very helpful to us and our organization.

That said, when the opportunity presents itself we do enjoy taking 17 on the road, perhaps once every year or two, and look forward to continuing to build our relationship with VMT, the Roanoke Chapter, and NS.

The Revolution people did talk to us about using 17, but it did not work out. We're happy SCRM got the opportunity.



Most production companies are working with relatively modest budgets, certainly an opportunity like Revolution is not going to fund a restoration. If you have a realistic rate sheet, movie productions can be a good, albeit sporadic, source of extra income, will provide your museum with some unique exposure, and give your museum staff something challenging, exciting, and certainly different to experience.

Mike MacLean
New Hope Valley Railway

If that's the film I'm thinking of, I recall two things that I got a good laugh out of.

1) The locomotive was "restored" by steam cleaning it on a turntable, using steam from it's own boiler! If only it was that easy...

2) The train ran from New York? to Chattanooga as part of the film. What I hadn't realized was how much all the stations on the east coast look exactly like Sacramento. Must have used a "standard plan" to build them all I guess. ;)

The Romans had "Bread and Circuses". Today's US has "Junk Food and Commercial TV".

Just took a glimpse at 1984's "Chattanooga Choo Choo," and was surprised to note a fairly solid cast (George Kennedy, Barbara Eden, Melissa Sue Anderson), with some interesting other people--football legend Joe Namath, and Parley Baer as the eccentric railfan Alonzo Dillard, whose fortune is the object of various characters' attention (Baer is most familiar to me as Chester Proudfoot in the radio version of "Gunsmoke," which starred Bill Conrad as Matt Dillon).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087041/

Baer had quite a resume.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0046373/

And yes, Eden was HOT, and surprisingly, still is today! (I must be getting old!)

I also took note of the hair and clothes styles, and couldn't help but think of how the movie is as much a period piece as, say, a film from the 1940s or 1950s--they seemed to scream out, "Who shot JR?" :-D (Never did watch "Dallas," so someone will have to tell me who that was.) But that opening music that just slaughtered the old Glenn Miller hit--ugh! I'm surprised Miller didn't come up from his watery grave in the English Channel to punch somebody in the nose!

Getting back to the "Revolution" episode in question, Wesley thought the camera work looked good. I think that tells us that trains, like cats, like sailing ships, are inherently photogenic (at least to us); even the railroad in that stinker, "Atomic Train," managed to look good.

Which again brings us to my bit of a joke about how come we can't get a decent TV series or movie franchise with a railroad theme. We have what are some really great stories to tell ("One Way to Eldorado," "The General Manager's Story," "Rio Grande Glory Days," and of course the stories you may have heard from various railroaders over the years), yet what do we get? Over the top stuff like the balancing train in "Unstoppable," or something that is at best a tangent connection to railroading ("Brief Encounter," "Murder on the Orient Express"), not to mention all sorts of inaccuracies in things so many of us are familiar with.

Which brings to mind--it seems to me that this sort of thing was relatively rare even in the old days. Outside of "Danger Lights" and "The Train," how many films deal with railroading from the perspective of railroaders? Indeed, the closest thing I can think of to what I have in mind was the old movie series "The Hazards of Helen," and that goes back to silent days! Most films, including such classics as "Whispering Smith," "Union Pacific," Disney's "Great Locomotive Chase," Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes," or "Narrow Margin," seem to involve all these weird incidents or things you normally would never see (crimes on trains, the Civil War, train robberies, and so on). One wonders why the stuff we think would be cool has been so rare over the years, even in the classic movie era.

(Yeah, I know, French railroaders vs. Nazis in WW II wasn't typical, and for that matter "One Way to Eldorado" is another variation of "The Great Train Robbery," but I think most here would understand where I'm coming from.)