Internet search fails to turn up reasonably quickly any discussion of what business car was used in the Movie "Giant", and whether the car still survives.

Movie scenes purporting to show interior of the car were probably studio sets?

If the car survives, some Texas oil money might be interested in rescue and restoration. A project for www.texascompound.com

Movie filmed c. 1953.

- Wm Osborn

According to the ever-popular website Internet Movie Database, at least some of the movie was filmed at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, home of the Travel Town Museum even back in the 1950s.

Start with researching what PVs, if any, Travel Town had back then and look for a match.

BTW the movie was filmed in mid-1955 and released in October 1956.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049261/lo ... _=tt_dt_dt

A bit off topic, but I can't help but add in the opening sequence from the movie. This was shot on the Chesapeake & Ohio with a borrowed Norfolk & Western K-1 4-8-2; C&O didn't have suitable steam power available at this date. Ironically, the N&W engine is trailing a tender from a scrapped C&O 2-8-4, one of several acquired by the N&W as C&O was retiring its own steam power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07k8ebkPJKI

To add somewhat to the confusion, the C&O train in the opening sequence stops at a depot renamed "Ardmore" but the car that picks up the passenger sports Maryland plates and drives through what is quite plainly supposed to be Maryland "horse country" complete with "fox hunt" riders, emblematic of Baltimore County north of Baltimore between Baltimore and York (which would be the old PRR/Northern Central or the Maryland & Pennsylvania--but the mind boggles at the Ma & Pa ever seeing a big 4-8-2!).

IMDB says the studio did some filming on a farm outside of Charlottesville, and I have to say the topography of those scenes shown is far more Blue Ridge horse country in central Virginia than Maryland horse country. I wonder if anyone can ID the classic C&O depot, presumably somewhere in the Charlottesville area as well.

VERY interesting sequence with the K-1. I couldn't quite catch the engines number on my small computer screen. Anyone spot it? Also, the pops were going off introducing white smoke to the black smoke; I wonder if this was done at the request of the movies director? How many takes was needed? Is there other archived footage? I don't recall "Giant" being one of my favorite movies, but this opening sequence has made me re-evaluate!

Les

As it happens, a friend of mine is a model railroader and is working to reproduce the area around Gordonsville, Va. in HO scale, ca. 1970. It turns out his website has a page on the station at Keswick.

This was a relatively new station, built in 1947 following a track realignment. The station was still standing in 1998, in poor condition.

https://www.piedmontsub.com/Keswick.shtml

I must have a bigger or better computer screen (though I have to admit I froze the film and blew up the image to read the number)--but she's N&W 100.

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobas ... ailroad=nw

Alas, what you see is about all the worthwhile rail footage in the movie, except for one or two other scenes that are almost "blink and you miss them."

Found another photo of the station at Keswick.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=625872

J3a-614:

I just noticed another ironic thing from that opening sequence. Although the movie company did a pretty good of replicating a C&O passenger train (although having to use that N&W K-1 4-8-2), they failed to get the lettering correct on the ex-C&O tender. They used the more modern diesel era font instead of the correct Chesapeake & Ohio. You would think that the original correct lettering outline might still have been visible under the new coat of black that the N&W gave the ex-C&O tender!

Les

How likely do you think it would be that the repainting and lettering were done under contract by the C&O, in two different shops, and the car shop still had the right stencils, but the locomotive shop just used what they had?

And considering the worse things we've seen in movies, would the director or anybody else have known the difference?

Dang it, as interesting as this is, none of this is helping to ID the office car!!

The location in Texas was at a place called Marfa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa,_Texas

Part of the set representing the big mansion still is standing (03:05).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_qXq_Ejjno

Behind the scenes at the mansion set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln66CQmz3zo

Unfortunately, I can't seem to locate anything of the shot featuring the office car. It was another "blink and you miss it" scene, and shows the car on a siding by itself in desert country. Someone else may have better luck than I have so far.

EDIT: Somebody shot some 8 mm. footage behind the scenes, and our office car appears at about 03:30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE7qd4V ... 7TAObMKldq

Looking more at the film, a closer shot (04:00) that doesn't show the whole car does reveal a channel under the body, a characteristic that as I recall was common on equipment built for the Santa Fe.

But is she Santa Fe? Marfa is on what used to be the Texas & New Orleans, a Southern Pacific subsidiary, which is now part of the Union Pacific.

Maybe someone who's an expert on heavyweights can properly identify the car, or at least the class of the car.

For what it's worth, here is a movie still form "Giant" with Hudson and Taylor on the rear platform of the car used. The Texas and Western drumhead is most likely a prop...

https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/7c476693836a9d6ec278dfdcf31ea94b/mdo-29107.jpg

From viewing the 8mm footage, it looks like the private car scenes were filmed on location there in Texas, not out in California or another site. The back railing could also help narrow down ID of the car.

I'm not much of a heavyweight guy, but from the looks of that movie still shot, that car may be more of an Observation lounge than a business car. And it does look like it could be a Santa Fe car.

Many private/business cars of that era had the same rear platform configuration as observation cars, though.