toy trains in movies

[Brutus]

There was a thread about this before, but I couldn't find it.

I had two new sightings this week:

1) UHF - Michael Richards (Kramer) is a kid show host on a UHF station and starts an episode while surrounded by toy trains - pretty cool!

2) Mr. & Mrs. Smith - at one point, the Smiths, pursued by bad guys, go in the basement and Mr. Smith tears open some old toy train boxes and starts throwing cars all over the place, eventually revealing two backup pistols he had hidden there. This movie stunk, I thought.

[pbjwilson]

I always liked the scene in "Risky Business" when Joel, Tom Cruise, retreats to his basement and plays with his trains while "the girls" are doing business upstairs. It's a very brief shot but I think he sits down in front of a ZW and runs an EP-5 around the track.

[daan]

In the sesame street film of Elmo the bad professor also runs a train.. A postwar Lionel one. (My girlfriend is a big fan of elmo)

[Big_Boy_4005]

The movie "The Hunter" with Steve McQueen has a couple of scenes of interest. He plays bounty hunter who collects old toys, so there is a little standard gauge as props on the shelves in his home. Another scene has him arresting a guy who has some MPC set up un a loop on the floor.

Another of my favorites is "Nothing But Trouble" with Demi Moore, Chevy Chase, John Candy, and Dan Ackroyd. The dinner scene is short but wonderful, as a loop of track pops up from a long oval table.

The opening of the movie "The Station Agent" has Peter Dinklage Working in a small train store, until his boss dies suddely.

[LS1Heli]

In the original Godfather movie there is a scene when I believe the family's lawyer steps out of a department store and for a second or to you can see in the window a Lionel 2037 or something along the lines of that chugging aways with a 262 crossing gate/flasher working. Can remember what else was in the window.

[Anonymous]

and for the older crowd...

1) Elizabeth Allen gives Lee Marvin a Marx train for Christmas at the end of 'Donovan's Reef'.

2) Jeanne Crain gives Cary Grant a rather extensive Lionel setup for his birthday in 'People Will Talk'

[darianj]

I'm sure everyone know about the scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphy and his friends are looking at the dept. store display in the window. Don't remember what type of train it is off hand.

[siberianmo]

[2c] On the subject:

In the movie Arthur with the late Dudley Moore, there's a scene in his bedroom where his Lionel trains make quite an appearance.

[Anonymous]

My favorite movie ever.... "The Day the Earth Stood Still" The boy pulls a set out from under his bed on a board and runs them and then "Klatoo" tells him where he's from trains run without any rails.

[Dave Farquhar]

QUOTE: Originally posted by darianj

I'm sure everyone know about the scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphy and his friends are looking at the dept. store display in the window. Don't remember what type of train it is off hand.

It was running on 3-rail track, which suggests Lionel or Marx rather than American Flyer, but I've never gotten a good enough look at the train to identify it any closer than that. There's another scene in that movie where you can see what appears to be an American Flyer crane sitting on a shelf in the bedroom.

There's a brief scene in Garfield where Jon and Odie play with a Lionel layout in the basement, powered by a ZW.

[jimhaleyscomet]

I pulled the list below off a previous post. This includeds movies with trains (not just toys).

I recently saw a Christmas movie on TV from about 1996. A single mother purchases a Lionel train for a add shoot and then can not return it. She is engaged to one guy and falls in love with the one who gets fired for letting her return it. It has several wonderful toy train shots but I can not remember the title!

Jim H

Train Movies

A Century of Lionel Trains
Bound for Glory
Breakheart Pass
Casey Jones TV show
Danger Lights
Disaster on the Coastliner TV
Emperor of the North
Exciting 100 mph Race to Chicago
Fahrenheit 451
Flame Over India
Fours a Crowd
Holiday Affair
It Happened to Jane
Love those Trains
Midnight Run Deniro
Narrow Margin
North by Northwest
Pacific 231
Rail Away
Rio Grande 1950's
Runaway Train
Station Agent
Switch Back
The Chartreuse Caboose
The Christmas Story
The Denver and Rio Grande
The General Buster Keaton
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Iron Horse
The Lady Vanishes
The Molly Maguires 1968
The Polar Express
The Silver Streak 1934 Version
The Silver Streak Pryor
The Train
Toccata for Toy Trains
Tough Guys
U.S.2.:D.T.
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Union Depot
Von Ryan's Express
Ya Can't Win Em All

Jim H

[Anonymous]

movies with real trains??
holy cow, i could name 100 others...

Around the World in 80 days
Bad Day at Black Rock (SP Daylight)
Cat Baloo
The Lady Killers
Some Like it Hot

Sullivan's Travels
The Greatest Show on Earth (great train wreck)
White Christmas
It's a Wonderful Life
Days of Heaven

Dr. Zhivago
The Great Escape
The Cassendra Crossing
Inherit the Wind
The Bridge on the River Kwai

Young Frankenstein
A Hard Day's Night
The Grey Fox
My Little Chickadee
Next Stop Wonderland

Risky Business (the best sort of train ride)
Festival Express (trains and dr*gs and rock and roll)
Mad Max, Beyone Thunderdome (railbus?)
Groundhog Day (don't drive on the tracks!)
Blazing Saddles (handcar)


...well i probably could name 75 more, but here's a bigger challenge. find a movie set in the 30's - 50's that doesn't have a train in it.

cheers...gary

[andregg1]

Hi guys
I like "The adams family" when his wife say "oh,oh he start to play with a Diesel"
and you can see the GP-9 runing........
And the house start to shake.......
Andre.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jimhaleyscomet


I recently saw a Christmas movie on TV from about 1996. A single mother purchases a Lionel train for a add shoot and then can not return it. She is engaged to one guy and falls in love with the one who gets fired for letting her return it. It has several wonderful toy train shots but I can not remember the title!

Jim, That sounds like the made-for-TV remake of Holiday Affair. I'm not familiar with it, other than I know it was made around that time. The original movie is from 1949 and stars Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. In it, Leigh is a mystery shopper who buys a Lionel set from a department store with the intention of returning it. Mitchum is the salesman in the store's toy department who operates their large Lionel display layout. The plot is basically the same as the one you described. The train has Santa Fe F3's and Madison cars, which have had their "Santa Fe" and "Lionel Lines" lettering changed to "Red Rocket Express".

Another film with a great toy train scene that comes to mind is Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1934 (not to be confused with the remake he did in 1956). The movie is about a couple whose teenage daughter is kidnapped by spies. There's a scene where they are in the girl's room. There is a large Hornby O gauge layout set up on the floor that the father is running, which includes numerous accessories. The train running on it is a Royal Scot 4-4-2 pulling a single bogie Pullman coach. We see painfully little of the trains, but what makes this scene so great is the dialogue. It starts out with the following:
Wife: Is that train electric?
Husband: Yes, 20 volts. Best present I ever gave the kid. She doesn't play with it very much now, though.
Wife: She never did. You never gave her a chance.

A Christmas Story has been mentioned. In the department store window, the trains are prewar Lionel Hiawatha and M-10,000 sets, plus two steam engines pulling long freight trains.

On a simmilar note, in The Bishop's Wife (1947), there's a quick scene where Cary Grant looks at a store window display at Christmastime that has prewar Lionel trains. A steam engine pulls a caboose, boxcar and hopper car (in that order!) very slowly over a high bridge. Underneath the bridge, there is a track with two gondola cars and a flatcar sitting on it.

One of my favorite movies as a kid was the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) with Angela Lansbury. It's been years since I last saw it, but there are some scenes that take place in a large children's nursery in a grand mansion in London. There is a quick shot of one of the kids in the film playing with some prewar Marklin gauge 1 trains. From what I remember, the engine was a streamlined "Coupe Vent". There were also various accessories. There were also some other German gauge 1 trains sitting on shelves on the walls of the room.

In Throw Momma From The Train (1987), there's a very quick scene with Danny DeVito running postwar Lionel trains on the front porch of his house. A diecast steamer pulls a three-dome Gulf tank car and a maroon LV hopper car around an oval of track. There are a gateman and a 252 crossing gate which aren't hooked up. DeVito pushes the crossing gate down himself. You can also see some orange and blue Lionel boxes lying around.

Other than some of those already mentioned by others, these are the only other ones I can come up with.

[Brutus]

QUOTE:
Dave Farquhar Posted: Today, 08:30:28 Quote

There's a brief scene in Garfield where Jon and Odie play with a Lionel layout in the basement, powered by a ZW.
--------------------

Dave - is that in the Motion Picture Garfield?

I was just watching Nothing but Trouble this morning and was going to mention that condiment train! Hilarious scene! I love it when it shoots a pickle at the Brazilionairess!

Great list! I couldn't find the older post with search.

[Craignor]

In the early 1970's French Connection 2 film, there is a fight/chase scene on on the tracks in or near NYC.

As the scene plays on, Amtrak or Penn Central GG-1's (I forget which) hauling passenger cars cruise by.

Pretty cool.[8D] The movie is ok too.

[Anonymous]

One of the trains in the movie "A Christmas Story", was a 1939 Lionel "Hiawatha" set. It was only pulling two cars. I'm not sure of the freight though. It may have had a Lionel steamloco, but the Nickel Plate Road caboose eludes me. I love the scene!

[Brutus]

There was a train enthusiast episode of the Avengers I remember, where this old guy wanted to do away with all the cars so folks would have to take trains again - I think it ended with a chase on a 1/4 or 1/3 scale outside railroad???

[jimhaleyscomet]

Sask -

Thanks for the title. I think it was called A Holiday Affair. I will have to check out the older one.

Jim H

[laz 57]

ESPN had a commercial on over Christmas show a tree and a Lionel starter set NYC going round thw tree.
laz57

[cnw1995]

We got to arguing what year A Christmas Story was set - 30s vs. 40s - I picked the former because of the toy trains in the window - presumably new - and the Orphan Annie decoder pin which seems to say 1940 on it...

[Jumijo]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cnw1995

We got to arguing what year A Christmas Story was set - 30s vs. 40s - I picked the former because of the toy trains in the window - presumably new - and the Orphan Annie decoder pin which seems to say 1940 on it...

My guess is the 1940's Doug. I'm a huge fan of Gene Shepherd's, and consider his books to be American classics. I'll bet Garrison Kyler was a huge fan as well.

The Polar Express - very briefly at the end of the film, a "toy" 3 rail version of the "real" Polar Express is seen running around the Christmas tree. It is rendered as a tinplate starter set with 2 cars, and is first seen exiting a styrofoam or paper mache tunnel.


Jim

[artyoung]

In re: "Donovan's Reef" posting on 1st page. That's a Lionel 2037, not Marx. Fun flick, got it on DVD.

[Frank53]

In the movie "The Battle of the Bulge" a Lionel train is used to depict a real train making it's way through the mountains. It's so obviously not a real train it's comical.

The movie "Hard Times" with Charles Bronson has many excellent real train scenes.

The Cincinnati Kid has Steve McQueen dodging back guys in a train yard and jumping a moving turntable.

[sulafool]

RE: A Christmas story--- check out the full scale automobiles; I'm not a car guy but those don't look like 30's models to me. I believe I read somewhere else it is set in the late forties...

[sulafool]

How about toy trains masquerading as real? Didn't the 50s movie "the Black Scorpion" have a train that said Lionel Lines on it? Haven't seen the movie to verify since hearing that, though.

[Anonymous]

Excuse me if it has already been mentioned, but who can forget the otherwise very forgettable 1965 "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" featuring Peter Ustinov as mad King Fawz and his Arabian palace full of very large-scale trains equipped with TV camers that dashed in and out of the haren, among other niceties?

[Brutus]

I've got The Black Scorpion on dvd - I'll check it out this weekend if I get time!

[otftch]

I agree with Andre but like John Astin better in the origional Addams Family series.Guess I'm showing my age.
Ed

[otftch]

I agree with Andre but like John Astin better in the origional Addams Family series.Guess I'm showing my age.
Ed