I vaguely recall reading many years ago that the grand finale wreck in "The Train" had to be filmed twice. The first time, one of the engines fell on one of the cameras, so they had to clean up the mess and get a few more surplus engines to wreck. Or did I just imagine that scenario?

I'm surprised that "Unstoppable" hasn't made the list. Just because a movie is new doesn't mean it isn't impressive...
But yeah, "The Train" is heard to beat.
"Tough Guys" is a personal favorite (and is on DVD if you know where to look) as the model of 4449 running off the end of the track is very impressive once it busts through that shed...
I recently found a link from a Russian website that has clips of movies of train wrecks, some staged and others were news productions. One had a locomtoive rolling on its side down an embrankment in a WW2 movie that was filmed in Eastern Europe, but I have no idea what production it was for...

Oh come on! The best has to be when the rubber tired shunt engine rammed a tree on the Titfield Thunderbolt! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fMe1a2Ukmw

About 58 minutes into the movie.

Oh my, "The Titfield Thunderbolt!" One of the most delightful movies I've ever seen, and you don't have to be a rail enthusiast to enjoy it!

Can you imagine an American variant, perhaps taking the preservation of the Silverton line or the Cumbres & Toltec as its theme, with perhaps someone to play a variant of Lucius Beebe as an outside journalist reporting on the fading narrow gauge? I'd do it as a period piece, set in the 1950s of course. . .

Not a wreck sequence as such, but one of the wildest comedy sequences you could have with a train is this bit from "Go West." Of course it's as zany as can be--this is a Marx Brothers film. Railroad is the prewar Sierra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOUC_D2DAn8

Another spectacular staged wreck, a train of gasoline from a 1970s WW II flick called "Walter Defends Sarajevo:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crZZCGY_C-M

Another, from 1968, "Hannibal Brooks," a comedy about an officer transporting an elephant to neutral Switzerland, again set in WW II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCLGia4y ... re=related

Cut of runaway log cars from "The Big Trees," actually stock footage from an earlier version of the same film from 1937:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG7pqRelukw

Oh my, another helping of cheese--from the Irwin Allen disaster film, "The Swarm" (killer bees):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RrWkxJ5hcQ

I have to wonder, having looked at this thread and looking up these clips, would it be possible to do a rail movie without a wreck? We do have so many other stories, you know. . .wouldn't have to cost $200 million or more. . .wouldn't need a blue tank engine. . .

Sure looks like models to me in the actual wreck.
As for the "Ring of Fire" wreck, all that equipment is still at the bottom of that ravine! http://www.brian894x4.com/RingofFire.html

I had never seen 'Titfield Thunderbolt' until just now; I thought it was some sort of British joke, like our Toonerville Trolley. Agreed, a delightful movie. I can see where it may have influenced some of the Thomas the Blue Piggybank stories, or vice versa. The fact that the engine crew was clergy was perhaps a nod to the Thomas stories. I also had thoughts of the twenty-odd founding vice-presidents that rescued the Strasburg. Some real interesting parallels, to be sure.

The Brits were big on using tank engines on branch lines. The 0-4-2 (1401) actually looked pretty modern. It appeared to have roller bearings on the trailing axle (as did the rest of the stock). Was there an actual class of pre-nationalization engine like that? It seems like just the thing for a small tourist line, even over here.

Ah, yes, the 14XX series (what we would call the 1400s)--four survive in preservation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_1400_Class

Of interest is that these locomotives were fitted for "push-pull" service, which is to say they were equipped to be run from a leading cab coach, like a modern diesel commuter train. This was a mechanical system--and I wonder how those Brits kept the control system tight enough to avoid a lot of lost motion and slack, and still easy enough to operate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_Autocoach

Looking up the history of the film, it seems the principle source of inspiration was the Talyllyn Railway, and a book on its revival by L.T.C. Rolt. In addition to that, two British Railway employees were considered "interesting" enough by the director to get parts in the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Titfield_Thunderbolt

Alas, the real locations are now abandoned:

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

Partisan fighters against the Germans again, from "Battle for the Southern Trail:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr-gxKboYks

And there is a big wreck scene near the end of this postwar French film, "La Battaille du Rail," which like Frankenhiemer's "The Train," is about the resistance of the French railroaders against the Germans in WW II. This film was an interesting enough find for me that I set it up as its own thread some time back.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32463

There is a color version of the wreck sequence in the link above, which for some reason is labelled on the site where I found it as being in Russia. More interesting to me, however, is the sabotage of a wrecking crane in the movie. This starts at 4:18 in the third link in the topic above. Besides a somewhat different subject matter in the field of railway destruction, it's also interesting to see how American the crane and its tender look, with arch-bar trucks under both!

Let's not forget the incredibly bad "Disaster on the Coastliner" TV movie with William Shatner in 1979. How Amtrak agreed to this one I'll never know. And let's see, once the locomotive becomes uncoupled from the rest of the train it goes out of control?? Really??

Don't forget that the "Bridge Over the River Kwai" was a train bridge. Of course, the bridge gets blown up just in time for a steam locomotive and train to plummet into the river.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PskoqCtRFD4&feature=related

This clip has had the original audio dubbed over, and the end of it is cut off, but it's all I could find of the wreck scene from"Breakheart Pass". You gotta admit, those cars had a pretty good trajectory going off of that "jump".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2Em-BtAqw

I always have enjoyed Silver Streak and the way the wreck fairly closely mirrors the Washington, DC Federal Express runaway wreck of Jan. 1953. Yes, there are some liberties with reality, but compared to a couple of the turkeys mentioned here it could almost be an instructional film.

As for Unstoppable, a local railway preservation group got a nice payday out of leasing the film company equipment, so you can't complain much about that. However, I could write up nearly a page of errata in the movie, starting with the fact that desktop throttles do not move from dynamic set-up to notch 8 by themselves!

Might I also add to the list of turkeys a 1973 Movie of the Week starring Martin Milner (Adam 12) - can't remember the title - about a runaway passenger train. I believe Van Johnson co-starred as the locomotive engineer. Filmed on the Rio Grande.

As for accuracy, a mixed bag with an episode of Breaking Bad earlier this season, where our anti-heroes have to stop a freight train to steal a chemical used to make meth. The one detail that they did get right was when the engineer of the freight train got back on-board the locomotive to depart, they showed him putting the isolation switch on the back panel up to "Run", a practice that most engineers would have followed in turning it down when leaving the unit for any reason. Then there is the whole "idiot premise" scenario for that program, as well as the previously mentioned Steven Segal movie - the wholesale abuse of the term "dark territory" to mean a black hole for communications of any kind, and not just being an unsignalled piece of railroad.

I think it would be interesting to hear what an airline pilot might have to say about the new Denzel Washington film Flight in terms of accuracy, and how that compares to the "accuracy ratio" in railroad related movies? Looks like Denzel might have a new career as a jack-of-all-transportation-modes operator, since he was the main locomotive engineer in Unstoppable. What next, captain of the Exxon Valdes?

I'm sorry, but I fail to recognize the connection that this thread shares with railway preservation news. Would someone be willing to explain this to me without getting their overalls in a bunch? Thank you.