I watched the recent Lone Ranger movie (starting Johney Depp as Tonto) and anyone who has watched know there are a lot of railroad scenes - they spent a big budget on the train parts. They used very funky odd looking couplers on the train cars - they looked like a tongue on one side and a two sided clamp on the other - thus if you turned a car around, it would not be able to couple to the next car. What the heck!?! Only in Hollywood!~
I don't know but as a rail fan since a wee age, I found it was annoying among a number of features of the film which forced me to ignore it in order to find it entertaining. I guess thats what happens when Hollywood build their own trains, rather than using real trains. But this is how they role, they do their own thing and only the people who know about certain specialties notice the flaws - and they rely on this principle and generally get away with it.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761 I watched the recent Lone Ranger movie (starting Johney Depp as Tonto) and anyone who has watched know there are a lot of railroad scenes - they spent a big budget on the train parts. They used very funky odd looking couplers on the train cars - they looked like a tongue on one side and a two sided clamp on the other - thus if you turned a car around, it would not be able to couple to the next car. What the heck!?! Only in Hollywood!~ I don't know but as a rail fan since a wee age, I found it was annoying among a number of features of the film which forced me to ignore it in order to find it entertaining. I guess thats what happens when Hollywood build their own trains, rather than using real trains. But this is how they role, they do their own thing and only the people who know about certain specialties notice the flaws - and they rely on this principle and generally get away with it.
My OP might have made it sound like I was being critical of the movie makers and maybe I was a little. I was more curious if there was still some steam locos around in 1964 Mississippi where the movie was set. But then I got to thinking about my own freelanced railroad and some of the liberties I have taken. For example, my layout is set in 1956 but I have fudged a little and have a couple NYC Jade Green boxcars which I don't think appeared until 1960. My layout also predates the NYC cigar band logo but I have a set of F7s with the cigar band on the roster. Since there aren't a lot of quality 1950s automobiles available, I've got a few CMW 1959 Fords here and there. There's probably some other equipment on the layout that the nitpickers would point out don't belong in my era. My justification is that since I am a freelancer, I can bend the rules and include a few things that aren't technically correct. You could say that the movie producers are doing the same sort of freelancing.
I can buy that to a certain extent. In most cases, the details on the railroad operation are secondary to the film's plot and the need to tell a story. But your model railroad is supposed to please only you, and that's as it should be. The filmmaker's job is to create a plausible visual and auditory environment in which to tell the story for a much broader audience. If a significant number of his audience members find something that interferes with that visual and auditory environment, then the effort fails to a certain degree.
Sometimes the filmmaker just has to come as close as he can. Walt Disney made compromises when he produced The Great Locomotive Chase, but the overall effect was quite plausible. Some of these things amount to poor research by the producers. I'm not sure whose job this is supposed to be. On some films, I suspect it is nobody's job, and that's a shame. The cost of location shooting, the owners of railroad track and equipment, etc. can make a big difference, especially in regard to low budget films. Sometimes CGI can work; other times it might be more than the producers can afford. The Lone Ranger film had an astronomical budget, so it should have been perfect.
Actually, it's something like our models. I've seen a number of models that deviated from the prototype for absolutely no apparent reason, when it's just as easy and inexpensive to make it right as to make it wrong. A very good example would be Bachmann's HO Sharks, released a few years ago. There was no reason to put a long, unprototypical porch on the back of those units, but they did it anyway. As a result, I spent a lot of time and trouble lopping off those extensions and creating new mountings for the couplers on 6 A units and both ends of a B. They operate fine with the engines coupled at a prototypical distance. Couldn't Bachmann's engineers have figured this out?
Maybe Bachmann should produce films.
ACY I can buy that to a certain extent. In most cases, the details on the railroad operation are secondary to the film's plot and the need to tell a story. But your model railroad is supposed to please only you, and that's as it should be. The filmmaker's job is to create a plausible visual and auditory environment in which to tell the story for a much broader audience. If a significant number of his audience members find something that interferes with that visual and auditory environment, then the effort fails to a certain degree. Sometimes the filmmaker just has to come as close as he can. Walt Disney made compromises when he produced The Great Locomotive Chase, but the overall effect was quite plausible. Some of these things amount to poor research by the producers. I'm not sure whose job this is supposed to be. On some films, I suspect it is nobody's job, and that's a shame. The cost of location shooting, the owners of railroad track and equipment, etc. can make a big difference, especially in regard to low budget films. Sometimes CGI can work; other times it might be more than the producers can afford. The Lone Ranger film had an astronomical budget, so it should have been perfect. Actually, it's something like our models. I've seen a number of models that deviated from the prototype for absolutely no apparent reason, when it's just as easy and inexpensive to make it right as to make it wrong. A very good example would be Bachmann's HO Sharks, released a few years ago. There was no reason to put a long, unprototypical porch on the back of those units, but they did it anyway. As a result, I spent a lot of time and trouble lopping off those extensions and creating new mountings for the couplers on 6 A units and both ends of a B. They operate fine with the engines coupled at a prototypical distance. Couldn't Bachmann's engineers have figured this out? Maybe Bachmann should produce films.
I tend to be more forgiving of artistic license in movies that are fictional to begin with. Those that are telling the story of an actual historical event should strive for accuracy as much as possible IMHO. The movie Mississippi Burning which was the subject in the OP falls somewhere in between. While it is obviously based on the murders of the three civil rights workers by the KKK in 1964, the names of the principles were fictionalized. The names of the victims were not even mentioned, not even in the credits.