Train Movies

[mammay76]

wonder how many eye rolls i will get at this one.....Stand by me..... one of my favorite all time movies, and there on train tracks...doesnt get to much better!!! 

[vsmith]

Not a movie, but I'm amazed at how many train scenes Little House on the Prairie had in it. My mom watches it a lot and it seems like every time I walk through the room there's a train on the screen! Wonder what their train budget was??

Aw come on Loathar - it wasn't near as good as Petticoat Junction!!

Guess your right! Little House never had any hot babes skinny dippin in the water tower!

Well if they were really in the 1870's, given the hygene standards of the era, I doubt you'd want to see them skinny-dipping!

As for Little Outhouse on the Prairie, there train budget likely didnt have to be that high, they used the Sierra RR, which was near the filming site, they even had a pre-made town set left over from the Hollywood glory days, they even used the same loco from Pettycoat Junction!

I recall there was one train only episode involving a runaway train with the kids trapped on board, it was fairly realistic if I recall except that I dont ever recall Minnesota (where its supposed to be) having enough hills or grades to sustain a runaway for an entire episode...

[Medina1128]

Not a movie, but I'm amazed at how many train scenes Little House on the Prairie had in it. My mom watches it a lot and it seems like every time I walk through the room there's a train on the screen! Wonder what their train budget was??

Aw come on Loathar - it wasn't near as good as Petticoat Junction!!

Guess your right! Little House never had any hot babes skinny dippin in the water tower!

Well if they were really in the 1870's, given the hygene standards of the era, I doubt you'd want to see them skinny-dipping!

As for Little Outhouse on the Prairie, there train budget likely didnt have to be that high, they used the Sierra RR, which was near the filming site, they even had a pre-made town set left over from the Hollywood glory days, they even used the same loco from Pettycoat Junction!

I recall there was one train only episode involving a runaway train with the kids trapped on board, it was fairly realistic if I recall except that I dont ever recall Minnesota (where its supposed to be) having enough hills or grades to sustain a runaway for an entire episode

That's the nice about my neighbor to the west; Kansas... a runaway train would stop in less than a 1/4 mile... ...

[twhite]

wonder how many eye rolls i will get at this one.....Stand by me..... one of my favorite all time movies, and there on train tracks...doesnt get to much better!!! 

Mammay76--

No 'eye rolls' from me--STAND BY ME is a terrific film, IMO.  And that scene on the trestle is pretty darned heart-stopping!   Like that film a lot, I do. 

Tom

Oh, and a PS to everyone--the movie with Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury is THE HARVEY GIRLS from MGM in 1946, about the establishment of the Fred Harvey restaurants along the tracks of the Santa Fe.  Mainly a musical, but it has a couple of pretty good train scenes featuring a locomotive and cars bought from the Virginia and Truckee, masquerading as a Santa Fe passenger train  (not sure, but I think MGM borrowed the train from Paramount Pictures, who owned a lot of former V&T rolling stock).  However the 'backdrop' for some of the interior train shots is Monument Valley, Arizona, which has never seen a train in its life and is some light years north of the Santa Fe line, LOL!  Talk about Hollywood ingenuity. 

UNION PACIFIC came out of Paramount in 1939 and stars Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea and Robert Preston, and is about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, using a whole bunch of ex-V&T 1860-vintage locos and cars, plus a plot largely stolen from John Ford's 1925 epic THE IRON HORSE.  Neat movie, though.  A couple of really SMASHEROO train wrecks. 

Tom

[steemtrayn]

And for you speeder fans...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KOSbOU8a_p8

 

 

[jecorbett]

This is a side note to the comments about the movie Union Pacific. A few years earlier, the movie The Plainsman was released starring Gary Cooper. It's probably been about 40 years since I saw either and viewed both at a time when one of our local channels ran old movies rather than air any of the string of late night competitors of Johnny Carson. It seems to me the same scenewas used in both. It is a scene where an Indian is telling the story of the Custer massacre. Are there any old movie buffs who can tell me if both movies did use this same footage or am I just having a senior moment? 

Movies reusing footage has been done before. Footage of Doolitle's Raiders taking off which initially appeared in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo was later used during the opening of the movie Midway produced during the 1970s and again in the lame movie Pearl Harbor which was made sometime in the late 1990s. Midway also reused some footage from Tora, Tora, Tora to depict the intial Japanese raid on Midway Island.

[jecorbett]

wonder how many eye rolls i will get at this one.....Stand by me..... one of my favorite all time movies, and there on train tracks...doesnt get to much better!!! 

Mammay76--

No 'eye rolls' from me--STAND BY ME is a terrific film, IMO.  And that scene on the trestle is pretty darned heart-stopping!   Like that film a lot, I do. 

Tom

Oh, and a PS to everyone--the movie with Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury is THE HARVEY GIRLS from MGM in 1946, about the establishment of the Fred Harvey restaurants along the tracks of the Santa Fe.  Mainly a musical, but it has a couple of pretty good train scenes featuring a locomotive and cars bought from the Virginia and Truckee, masquerading as a Santa Fe passenger train  (not sure, but I think MGM borrowed the train from Paramount Pictures, who owned a lot of former V&T rolling stock).  However the 'backdrop' for some of the interior train shots is Monument Valley, Arizona, which has never seen a train in its life and is some light years north of the Santa Fe line, LOL!  Talk about Hollywood ingenuity. 

UNION PACIFIC came out of Paramount in 1939 and stars Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea and Robert Preston, and is about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, using a whole bunch of ex-V&T 1860-vintage locos and cars, plus a plot largely stolen from John Ford's 1925 epic THE IRON HORSE.  Neat movie, though.  A couple of really SMASHEROO train wrecks. 

Tom

Yes, Stand by Me was an excellent and underrated movie. Extremely well done. If I remember right, it was set in 1960 and apparently the branchline on which much of it occured was still using steam power. Wasn't this set in Oregon. Rob Reiner directed the film based on the Stephen King book The Body so it had a lot going before filming even began.

[loathar]

Has anybody seen or heard anything about that Kevin Bacon train movie? It was supposed to have come out already but I haven't seen anything about it.
Conductor(Bacon) runs over kids dad and then be-friends orphaned kid. I put a link to it up a while back but can't remember it's name.

Stand by Me was great!
Google doesn't bring anything up on The Runaway...

[wjstix]

This is a side note to the comments about the movie Union Pacific. A few years earlier, the movie The Plainsman was released starring Gary Cooper. It's probably been about 40 years since I saw either and viewed both at a time when one of our local channels ran old movies rather than air any of the string of late night competitors of Johnny Carson. It seems to me the same scenewas used in both. It is a scene where an Indian is telling the story of the Custer massacre. Are there any old movie buffs who can tell me if both movies did use this same footage or am I just having a senior moment? 

Movies reusing footage has been done before. Footage of Doolitle's Raiders taking off which initially appeared in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo was later used during the opening of the movie Midway produced during the 1970s and again in the lame movie Pearl Harbor which was made sometime in the late 1990s. Midway also reused some footage from Tora, Tora, Tora to depict the intial Japanese raid on Midway Island.

One problem there is that "Union Pacific" ends with the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. The battle of the Little Big Horn was in 1876. I haven't seen either movie in a while, but I'm guessing it's maybe a similar scene but not the same one used twice.

BTW re an earlier post, "Petticoat Junction" was set in the 1960's (i.e. the time it was being made) not the 1870's. The idea was that a washout had cut off that branchline of the railroad, and they had just continued doing things the way they had been without interference from the outside world. In the 1960's that idea of going back in time or finding a place that was still like the "good old days" was very common...about half of the "Twilight Zone" episodes involved that theme in one way or another it seems.

Also re Little House - one railroading gaffe they had was one where one character goes to Minneapolis c.1880 for some reason. At one point someone offers him a ride in their buggy and he says "no thanks, I'll take the "el" " and proceeds up the stairs to an elevated train station. Problem is there was of course no "el" in Minneapolis, perhaps they found a leftover set from a movie about New York or Chicago and decided to work it into the episode??

 

[SilverSpike]

Loathar, you must be talking about "Rails and Ties" http://railsandties.warnerbros.com/ I think it might be out on DVD now.

[binder001]

For action my vote goes to "The Train".  The French let the movie crew wreck several steam engines and they appear to tie up a double track line somewhere.  Lots of trains, military gear and even the "big hook" in action. 

I still enjoy the original "Union Pacific" of 1939.  A DeMille classic!

Not a "feature film" but I have always enjoyed "Last of the Giants", about the best RR-produced documentary movie.

Gary 

 

 

[twhite]

This is a side note to the comments about the movie Union Pacific. A few years earlier, the movie The Plainsman was released starring Gary Cooper. It's probably been about 40 years since I saw either and viewed both at a time when one of our local channels ran old movies rather than air any of the string of late night competitors of Johnny Carson. It seems to me the same scenewas used in both. It is a scene where an Indian is telling the story of the Custer massacre. Are there any old movie buffs who can tell me if both movies did use this same footage or am I just having a senior moment? 

Movies reusing footage has been done before. Footage of Doolitle's Raiders taking off which initially appeared in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo was later used during the opening of the movie Midway produced during the 1970s and again in the lame movie Pearl Harbor which was made sometime in the late 1990s. Midway also reused some footage from Tora, Tora, Tora to depict the intial Japanese raid on Midway Island.

jecorbett--

I have both of the deMille westerns, and no, that scene in THE PLAINSMAN isn't reproduced in UNION PACIFIC.  The band of Cheyenne that attack and derail #11 in UNION PACIFIC is a much smaller band than the 600 or so Sioux that deMille used in the two Indian battle sequences in the earlier film.  One interesting note, however--the Indian raid in UNION PACIFIC is almost an exact duplicate of a sequence in John Ford's 1925 silent epic THE IRON HORSE, the only difference is that in the earlier film, the indians stop the train instead of wrecking it.  But the subsequent looting of the train in the Ford film is duplicated almost exactly by deMille fourteen years later.  Actually, both sequences are based upon an actual incident in the building of the original Union Pacific, so deMille didn't actually 'steal' the sequence from Ford, it's actual history. 

Tom

[twhite]

For action my vote goes to "The Train".  The French let the movie crew wreck several steam engines and they appear to tie up a double track line somewhere.  Lots of trains, military gear and even the "big hook" in action. 

I still enjoy the original "Union Pacific" of 1939.  A DeMille classic!

Not a "feature film" but I have always enjoyed "Last of the Giants", about the best RR-produced documentary movie.

Gary 

 

 

 

Gary--

One interesting feature of THE TRAIN is that spectacular bombing attack on the railyard, early in the film.  It seems that the French National Railways was going to take up and relay that particular rail yard right outside of Paris, and when director Frankenheimer found out about it, he approached officials about letting him blow it up.  The railway gave him permission, and he hired Lee Zavits, the special-effects wizard who had 'burned' Atlanta for GONE WITH THE WIND, and together, they set enough dynamite charges in the yard to take it out almost completely.   Frankenhiemer used about 10 or so Panavision cameras strategically placed (one in a helicopter) the entire area was sealed off, the train was run through with a few explosions, and all that terrific stunt work by Burt Lancaster, and then when the train (and the cast) was clear of the yards, the whole thing was blown to smithereens.  The entire sequence took one morning to film, the railway company moved in after and re-laid the yard to their new plans. 

Another interesting note--the scene where the yard switcher derails its train almost on top of the camera, actually took the camera out, and smashed several hundred dollars worth of Panavision equipment, but the film was undamaged and the sequence remains in the movie.  The first time I saw the film, I literally DUCKED!!

THE TRAIN is one terrific film, IMO!

Tom