Watched the movie 'Flyboys' - based on Americans volunteering for the French Lafayette Escadrille during WW I prior to the US entry in the war.
Individual from Nebraska taking a train East - train was European style with a locomotive that was not of USA vintage - cars had the UP shield decal affixed to them but were of the external door to each passenger compartment style.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD Watched the movie 'Flyboys' - based on Americans volunteering for the French Lafayette Escadrille during WW I prior to the US entry in the war. Individual from Nebraska taking a train East - train was European style with a locomotive that was not of USA vintage - cars had the UP shield decal affixed to them but were of the external door to each passenger compartment style.
I still think back to the "Super Train" episode which had the announcement that the Silver Meteor was arriving in Grand Central as the Super Train was about to depart.
Johnny
hontell A few years back, NCIS, based in the Washington DC area went to a low income housing area looking for a suspect. In the back ground was a commuter train all the way from LA! Howard
A few years back, NCIS, based in the Washington DC area went to a low income housing area looking for a suspect. In the back ground was a commuter train all the way from LA!
Howard
DeggestyI still think back to the "Super Train" episode which had the announcement that the Silver Meteor was arriving in Grand Central as the Super Train was about to depart.
Still trying to figure out how they managed to get the Supertrain out of the Park Avenue Tunnel. Perhaps using the same technology they used to package the very large interiors into the visibly smaller trains?
In "The Last Detail," they're supposed to be leaving Norfolk, Virginia on a train. It's actually filmed in Toronto, you can see the early GO train cars out of the train windows, also the station is Toronto Union Station. Remember the scene where Jack Nicholson points a gun at the bartender? That was in the old Spadina Hotel at King st West and Spadina avenue. The marks made by the gun are still in the formica bar top, but the place is now out of business. I used to drink in that place, it was like stepping back in time.
gardendance The dangers of dead threads brought back to life, one's words from years ago, like a grade school permanent record, can come back to haunt one. VSMITH WROTE THE FOLLOWING POST AT TUE, NOV 20 2012 9:16 AM: vsmith A modern P42 Genesis pulling an Amtrak train is supposedly 1970 Maine in "Dark Shadows" If you have no problem believing in the vampire I think you should be willing also to accept Genesis locomotives in 1970.
The dangers of dead threads brought back to life, one's words from years ago, like a grade school permanent record, can come back to haunt one.
VSMITH WROTE THE FOLLOWING POST AT TUE, NOV 20 2012 9:16 AM:
vsmith A modern P42 Genesis pulling an Amtrak train is supposedly 1970 Maine in "Dark Shadows"
A modern P42 Genesis pulling an Amtrak train is supposedly 1970 Maine in "Dark Shadows"
If you have no problem believing in the vampire I think you should be willing also to accept Genesis locomotives in 1970.
Yikes, the dead are rising!!!... well dead threads maybe
I still find that gaff in Dark Shadows pretty blatantly egregious for a simple reason, that slope nose angular Genesis loco! Its like having a movie set during the Kennedy era 1960's and have the hero drive into town in a 2006 Corvette because that car was readily available to the film-maker! Its that stupid a continuity oversight that would NEVER be made regarding automobiles for example.
Whats so sad is that there are several tourist operations that they could easily have used instead of a modern Amtrak consist and provided a more period introduction to the era the movie was supposedly set in. It really does illustrate how disconnected 95% of the population are from railroads, the movie viewers just accept a train is a train is a train. the film makers themselves may have been just as guilty as the general public in there complete lack of understanding that, just like cars, trains change over the years and that, just like cars, they should be a bit more careful when using them in Hollywood movies.
Have fun with your trains
eagle1030pulled by a pair of BC Rail cowls
One of which is still in service on GVT...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
"Boardwalk Empire" on HBO had one episode where a character was in his room ("Jimmy", I think) at Princton. He tosses and turns, fitfully, while PRR trains roar by blasting their air horns. In 1918!
Ken Burns’ new film “The Roosevelts” mentions Chicago's subway, as it shows this L train crossing the Chicago River by Union Station.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-roosevelts/
The L near Union Station is the former Garfield Park line, since replaced by the Congress line. The State Street subway was opened in 1942, the construction of which was allowed as a wartime necessity to ease congestion on the Rapid Transit. Construction of the Dearborn Street subway was suspended for the duration.
I've got a couple bloopers:
Silver Streak: The porter tells Gene Wilder "There ain't no way to get to the engine. Period!" F Units have a door in the nose.
Runaway Train: Again with the F Unit nose door. The characters try to open it outwards. Those doors swing inwards. Granted the door was jammed from an earlier collision but it would have been more accurate if they were pulling on it.
Places in the Heart: Sally Field's husband is shot in a train yard. The film is set in 1935 yest the box cars have no running boards and low ladders.
The French Connection The NY Subway train Gene Hackman is chasing switches from R42 cars to R32 cars in one shot. The train is operating on one of the outer, or local tracks during scenes filmed from above. During scenes filmed from the front of the train itself, it is operating on the center, or express track.
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
In the 1984 mini-series "The First Olympics Athens 1896" a Pullman Interior is shown with a 4 foot wide aisle and 5 foot wide sections. The car would have to be around 14 feet wide! The "Italian" railway scenes (filmed in Yugoslavia) were much better.
rfpjohn, I have the Boardwalk Empire series on DVD, but was there a railroad through the Princeton campus? That seemed strange, not just the sound effects. Not to get off track (Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk) but have you seen the movie "Chaplin?" In it, he is depicted as leaving the United States for the last time in 1951. The ship they show as taking him was the S.S. Normandie, which was scrapped in 1947 after its disastrous fire of February 9th, 1942. Chaplin rode the original Queen Elizabeth! If they couldn't get this part right and it's not like footage of the Queen Elizabeth doesn't exist, (it was a newsworthy event when she docked without the use of tugs due to a tugboat strike in New York in 1966 and I sure remember it) that what else did they get wrong with that picture? It's too bad that I wasn't at the premier, I woulda told Richard Attenborough a thing or two!
For all the bloopers and improbabilities in that movie, I think the start of the runaway comes close to the original incident. You can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident and here http://kohlin.com/CSX8888/z-final-report.htm The real engineer was evidently dragged (can't remember if that's how the movie went).
The thumb nail version of how the locomotive kept going without the "dead man" stopping it.
The engineer did this before exiting the cab - fully applied the independent, set up the train air, attempted to engage the dynamic brakes, and moved the throttle to notch 8. The train line was not connected to the locomotive and he didn't properly engage the dynamic so those did nothing but apply full power to the engine. The "dead man" was disabled, by design, due to the build up of pressure in the independent brake from the full application. This also prevented the "dead man" from powering down the prime mover.
ChrisB1962 For all the bloopers and improbabilities in that movie, I think the start of the runaway comes close to the original incident. You can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident and here http://kohlin.com/CSX8888/z-final-report.htm The real engineer was evidently dragged (can't remember if that's how the movie went). The thumb nail version of how the locomotive kept going without the "dead man" stopping it. The engineer did this before exiting the cab - fully applied the independent, set up the train air, attempted to engage the dynamic brakes, and moved the throttle to notch 8. The train line was not connected to the locomotive and he didn't properly engage the dynamic so those did nothing but apply full power to the engine. The "dead man" was disabled, by design, due to the build up of pressure in the independent brake from the full application. This also prevented the "dead man" from powering down the prime mover.
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
54light15rfpjohn, I have the Boardwalk Empire series on DVD, but was there a railroad through the Princeton campus?
Yes, there was -- the 'dinky' originally ran to a station in the lower courtyard of Blair Arch. There is still a milepost showing where the old ROW was located. But it was cut back to its edge-of-campus location by 1917, so still a blooper for 1918.
I have to wonder whether the sound effects mentioned were fast-moving trains -- that old joke about the answer to the woman's question 'Does this train stop at Grand Central' comes to mind!
54light15 uses the verb "rode" in talking about "the original Queen Elizabeth" when the correct term is "sailed." No big deal. As a railfan I often use "rode" when talking about a cruise I was on. It gives us both away as guys who ride trains far more often than we sail! Ride on!
I often say I take my sailboat out for a ride. Sometimes I even say I drive my sailboat.
Patrick Boylan
Free yacht rides, 27' sailboat, zip code 19114 Delaware River, get great Delair bridge photos from the river. Send me a private message
Sailed. Rode. I was in the engine room of a Navy ship that carried Marines. The engineers, the deck apes, the cooks, the navigators were all part of the crew that yeah, sailed the ship. The jarheads didn't sail the ship. They rode it. Apologies to any jarheads.
The crew sails the ship; passengers sail on the ship.
Back when the original West Coast City trains had sailing dates, did the passengers ride the trains or sail on them?
Trains had "sailing days?" Hmmm.
We're getting off topic, and I'm sure some of us are having fun. How does one refer to the act of taking a train onto a car float? There weren't many of them I'm sure, for example I think some interurbans around San Francisco put passenger railcars onto ferries.
I once had thought there were passenger car floats to Cuba, but google's mean to me today. http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r053.html says passengers had to change to ship, although the train did pull alongside the ship.
Do we know of any television or motion picture depictions of passenger railcar floats? The closest I can think of is Murder on the Orient Express movie, my memory ambiguously tells me Poirot talked about the "Calais coach", which makes me think that too was a train to ship transfer, otherwise wouldn't it have been the London coach?
I don't recall any passenger cars on ferries in movies, but I do recall a film with David Niven called "The Brain" about robbing a train based on the Ronnie Biggs robbery of 50 years ago. There are scenes of them aboard the S.S. France in New York harbour and they look at an armoured, full of money freight car on a barge (Erie Lackawanna!) and propose robbing it. There was also a war movie, "Heroes of Telemark" about the freight cars full of heavy water being taken to Germany to make an atom bomb. The ferry is sunk, the freight cars roll into the water and along with them is a steam locomotive- that didn't seem to make much sense.
Passenger cars on ferries, while not exactly common in Europe is still done between Germany and Scandinavian countries, crossing the Baltic. Then there was the famous "Night Ferry" between London and Paris that Paul Theroux wrote about in one of his books.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (set in the 1960s) has George Smiley holed up in a hotel (in the film near Liverpoot St station in London - in the book near Paddington station also in London); a panshot follows to trains has them leaving London Victoria, and with stock not introduced until the 1980s.
Otherwise quite a good film.
54light15 Sailed. Rode. I was in the engine room of a Navy ship that carried Marines. The engineers, the deck apes, the cooks, the navigators were all part of the crew that yeah, sailed the ship. The jarheads didn't sail the ship. They rode it. Apologies to any jarheads.
No offense taken! Besides, when we Marines figure out a way to walk on water we won't need you squids anymore anyway!
Back to railroad bloopers. Anyone remember a TV series from 1959 called "Casey Jones", starring Alan Hale Jr., later to become "The Skipper" from "Gilligans Island"? Now this show was loaded with bloopers, too many to go into, but one that sticks out is Casey throwing the "Cannonball Express" into a driver-spinning reverse to stop! The show had nothing to do with the real Casey Jones, being a railroad themed western.
HOWEVER, this was a show aimed at children, and as such had a lot of good life lessons thrown into it. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, there's no honor among thieves, and so on. As a six year old budding steam freak I just loved it! And, Alan Hale's portrayal was very close to the real Casey, big-hearted, generous, great sense of humor, intensely loyal to his friends, and so on. Hale didn't look like Casey, but he sure acted like him.
Some kind soul has posted the old "Casey Jones" show on You Tube. Just do a search and you'll find it. And if you remember the show as I do you'll enjoy seeing it again, bloopers and all.
"Casey Jones" with Alan Hale was my favorite TV series in the 1950's. I loved that theme song! Of course, it had nothing to do with the real, or even legendary Casey Jones, but the program had a locomotive in it! I was hooked. I can't watch the show on YouTube today because it just doesn't hold up well with its glacial pacing and trite storyline. Does anyone recall a TV series from about 1958 entitled, "Union Pacific"? I got to stay up an extra hour on the nights that was broadcast.
Note to Firelock76 and 54light15: When my dad joined the Navy in 1938, his father, a Marine of 1909-1913 vintage, let it be known that he thought my dad was "letting down the side" by not joining the Corps! Like most sailors & Marines they had a deep respect for each other's outfit. Incidentally, when dad's battleship (BB-38) was bombed at Pearl Harbor (with dad present), it was largely the Marines aboard who became the casualties.
I like how you guys kid each other, but I know the real admiration that underlies that kidding.
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