NBC Instructional Video on "How To Steal a Steam Train":

http://www.nbc.com/revolution/video/how ... /2782307#i

Is all that knob turning necessary to make a locomotive move?

My daughter and I have enjoyed Revolution but I understand the need for ratings to be good. On the other, less tasteful, side... NBC has never had a good track record when it comes to shows like this or fantasy or sci-fi... just look at where the NBC show Star Trek has gone, leaving NBC behind.

Oh, well, just another reason not to watch NBC.

Revolution was recently cancelled. I couldn't get past the overall premise of several laws of physics being repealled...

It was television in all it's glory....but...it also exposed millions of people to the newly overhauled TSRR 7 in Rusk....

ONE thing can be said about it...the blonde is fairly attractive.

She can steal my steam train anytime!!

Ross Rowland

I could feel my IQ drop as I watched that clip. Now I remember why I quit watching TV.

Ok, I went into that trying to be optimistic, but for crying out loud, the guy running the thing wasn't even standing on the right side of the cab.

I'd kind of like to hear TSRR's GM explain what really would happen if you started spinning all those knobs and valves.

On the other hand, at least we know any outsider who watched this show knows exactly how not to steal a steam engine...

And the creepieness factor of RYPN just increased......

Hey, it's Hollywood (or in this case they came from Austin...) it's fantasy and supposed to be ENTERTAINMENT - not reality.

To answer the knob twisting stuff, it's not as bad as it looks (quite by accident I must say):

First I like his cheat sheet on a piece of paper.

Then the fireman, turns the atomizer valve and opens the oil valve.

The soon-to-be-departed engineer, starts working the water glass valves (to blow down the glass?)

The fireman turns on the tank heater, then turns up the blower (getting the nice big cloud of smoke lifting straight up.

Weird thing I just caught is someone else's engine shows it's drivers at 3:31.....

If I was forced to run the thing, the last place I would be is on the right side where all the bullets were flying (I'd be on the floor)...

....and lastly, that N&W inspired hooter is NOT #7's 3-chime. Too bad it's a prettier sounding whistle.

Interesting to see that the gratuitous-violence level in TV is back up where it was with those Nazi shows in the '60s, when wiping out the perceived enemies wholesale was crackin' good fun. Now the ladies join in, too!

I found myself wondering:

When did he open the cylinder cocks ... and when did they close them?

Musta closed the firing valve at some point, and turned off the blower... when?

Didn't see much chance to follow items on that little checklist of his.

Nice TV reference with the station name!


Note to Ross: Will you get 614 in running condition if I contract her to steal it on-camera? (Otherwise her train-stealing scene will have to look like the Niagara publicity pull in s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w motion...) ;-}

I thought I had heard that type of whistle before!!! Ironically back in the good old days I was woke up from a nice dream by the sound of a ghost all of the sudden showing up, completely off spec for the dream. I remember asking the woman in the dream if that was a ghost and then I woke up to hear more of the whistle... I knew it was N&W 1218 heading home from the excursions out of Asheville, N.C. two days before.

I hurriedly put on my clothes and jumped in the car and headed to Hildebran, N.C., where I was hoping that I would have a chance to see the train, and there I sat for roughly 45 minutes waiting on the train to show up. I was almost convinced I had missed it until I heard the same whistle blowing for the crossing about two miles to the west and I got excited. Didn't have a camera with me (still usually don't) but boy did it put on a show with roughly 20 cars in tow, with Virginia Rail Investment Co.'s former UP dome and a NS business car on the end.

Definitely a day I can say it "was not" a rood awakening... but I had gone a bit farther than I really needed... when I heard the whistle it was blowing for the crossings 10 miles or so to the west of my home, for crossings in Morganton, N.C. If I had only known... but boy was it well worth the wait!!!

Okay, let's remove 'real world' nitpicking from this and focus on the reality within the show itself...
How can the headlight be working from the dynamo if all electrical fields are disabled on earth (hence the whole, 'no electricity' thing)? There was a previous train episode from what I've heard and I was told the headlight was a lantern. I've never watched the show personally (again, never could get past the impossible overall premise) but a train fan pal of mine did watch the show and gave me a heads up about a previous train episode (and also told me the engine in that one wasn't really running, you could apprently see a B unit a car or two back, ironically).
If they could run the headlight at all, they should have been able to fire up a diesel!

Certainly not the best "train job" in recent television.

The concept is nanites, or micro-machines, which have two functions: absorb electricity, and replicate themselves. The number extant is in the "hundreds of quadrillions". Now recall the problem the Internet is having with running out of Internet IP addresses. They're going to a new system called IPv6, which is four times larger (128 bits) than the existing space (32 bits). Comcast (right now) allocates every consumer a /64 block, so you can give separate IP addresses to your computer, phone, tablet, Roku, and all of the aforementioned nanites.

The writers also forgot about nuclear power plants.

But my disbelief is that society would just fall to pieces like that. That is not how Americans act. Shelter would be fine, and we have so much food we export it and feed it to ethanol plants (all of which would end). That would buy us a year to do a WWII type industrial mobilization. We could make it.