Dose anyone know what locomotive was used in the film Gods and Generals. It is a 4-4-0 painted green and it was lettered V. & T. R. R.
It pulled two yellow wooden passenger cars. Also was the locomotive under steam or was it just made to look like that in the movie. If anyone knows anything about it please share with me.

-Eric

It's the B&O Museum's "William Mason" 4-4-0, still in green from its appearance as "The Wanderer" in "The Wild Wild West" movie. Those scenes were filmed in the middle of Baltimore on the Museum's trackage (former CSX Mt. Clare Industrial Track, AKA The First Mile). The locmotive was in steam for the shoot.

Eric, The railroad sequences in "Gods and Generals" were filmed at the B&O Museum in Baltimore, using No. 25, I believe under steam, and the 1867 vintage cars. The rural setting was good set building and computer graphics. Check your local bookstore, there was a book that came out about the time of the movie that told the story of filming the movie, it has some interesting shots and info on how the scenes were created.

Seems to me that we've been over this once before, or maybe I'm thinking of a different discussion group. Anyway, a couple of extra bits of info to show the Hollywood's absolute obsession with historical accuracy:

The location of the scene, as you know, was in Virginia on, I think, on the RF&P. So the side of the tender that faced the cameras was lettered "V&T" -- for Virginia & Truckee. Well, it's Virginia isn't it? (The museum staff tried to correct them, to no avail.)

Second, the station mockup was an exact duplicate of a standard New York & Northern (later NYC Putnam Div.) station dating to the 1880s. (Yorktown Heights, NY, is a fine surviving example.) What the heck, that's close enough to Virginia in the Civil War. Besides, it was a very picturesque Victorian design -- and that I certainly agree with.

Herb Harwood

In this case V&T represented "Virginia and Tennessee", one of the lines used when the South (and in a similar effort) the North both tried reenforcing their western armies with eastern troops.

As noted before the loco was the William Mason, built by the Mason locomotive works for he B&O in 1856.

Sometimes the movies get it right.

Ditto to Randy's comments. Speaking as both a rail preservationist and a Civil War reenactor, "Gods and Generals" got it a lot closer to "right" than most of what we see on TV and in the movies, including a lot of the programming on "educational" channels. Yes, it would have been more authentic to letter #25 for the Virginia Central, rather than the V&T, but at least the railroad sequences were correct for the period. I still cringe when I remember that Hallmark TV movie a few years ago that had one of Jack Showalter's CP G-5's wearing a god-awful sheet metal "diamond" stack to play a Civil War locomotive..................

Well thank you all for the information. I am a Civil War re-enactor to and a railfan. Two more questions. Did the engine have a compressor on it cause i think I can hear one, and are those the cars that got smashed and what happened to them(the ones that got smashed that is)?Thanks again.

-Eric

I'm pretty sure but not 100% certain that the 25 does not have an air pump.

Yes, the CNJ Bagggage Car and one of the two CNJ coaches got smashed in to roof collapse. Here's the immediate aftermath:

http://www.borail.org/restoration/slide_show/20030303.asp?page=6


The museum owns another nearly identical CNJ coach, in much rougher shape cosmetically, that was in the carshop the weekend of the storm and was not damaged.

This survey report

http://www.borail.org/media/pdf/damage_report_no_10_baggage_car.pdf

indicated that the baggage car would be a reconstruction rather than a repair job, and would end up with at least 40% new material. I beleive the assessment on the coach was broadly similar.

I don't know what course of action the museum ultimately chose for these two items--I'll try to find out for you.[url][/url]

I asked around this week to see what I could learn about the Museum's plans for the ca. 1870 CNJ Baggage Car and Coach, the cars that appeared in the movie and were heavily damaged in the roundhouse collapese.

My understanding is that the museum has solicited and received outside bids for reconstructing/recreating the coach using as much surviving material as possible, and for repairing the bagage car. They have not yet decided on whether or not to accept any of the bids.

I believe that the cars are still therefore on the museum property, in storage, in their damaged state, pending a decision on how and when to restore them.

This is the best I could ascertain in a hurry; please take it with a grain of salt; I could have one or more details wrong. Hope it helps anyway.