I've probably seen this movie about a half dozen times since it came out in the mid 1970s. The first time was at a drive-in. One thing I noticed this latest viewing that I hadn't given much thought to before is that the three main actors, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Keith Carradine, all seemed to do most of their own stunts while the train as moving. It all looked relatively dangerous so I'm guessing there were some hidden safety straps involved. All three actors were shown moving along the roof tops of a moving train and it seems to me there was no way to fake that. Marvin and Carradine were shown riding underneath a freight car as the train moved. Borgnine was shown hanging onto the ladder between cars. I'm curious as to how much danger the actors were actually in while filming these scenes.
I've seen that movie a couple of times. It's absolutely great, one of my favorites.
My guess is, they used stunt doubles for the motion scenes and recorded duplicate scenes on static railcars with the stars. As an older (gentle)man myself, I recognize and appreciate my frailty, so I suspect age would lead to the realization that discretion is the greater part of valor. The filmmakers are great at hiding the transitions and making us forget we're watching a movie.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Here's Ernest Borgnine talking about the making of the movie.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
There were doubles for the three main actors: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070030/fullcredits. How and when used is not clear? I guess not everyone can be Tom Cruise.
There were a lot of films that had stunt people for the stars but the actors did their own stunts anyway.
kasskaboose There were doubles for the three main actors: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070030/fullcredits. How and when used is not clear? I guess not everyone can be Tom Cruise.
Some of the scenes probably were stunt doubles but others had close up camera angles where it was clear it was the actor himself in the scene. The ones where the two hobos were riding under the freight cars seemed to show them on a moving train but it's possible it could have been a static scene with a movie screen in the background showing the scenery going by. Ditto for the scene with Ernest Borgnine hanging onto the hand holds between freight cars as the train was moving. What couldn't have been faked because I don't think they had the technology back then were the scenes where the main actors were running along the roof tops of the cars on a moving train. That had to be the actors doing the scene themselves. Perhaps they had safety nets between the cars in case one of them fell there. Maybe they had similar precautions in case they fell over the side. The scenes where one of them either jumped or was thrown off the train probably were stunt doubles.