What are your favorite movies which feature trains or model trains?
My favorite movie is Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean. Set during the Gold Rush, most of the story takes place on a steam train traveling through the California mountains on the way to the coast. This is an action movie with the action taking place in the passenger cars, troop transport cars, the engine, tender, and even on the roof walks. It might not be totally accurate but it is a fun adventure.
While not exactly a "favorite" there is a rather odd film called Track 29 with Gary Oldman, Theresa Russell and Christopher Lloyd that features quite a bit of model railroading in it. There's even a glimpse of MR magazine and a national train convention in it.
As far as one some of my favorites to watch are:
North by Northwest, 20th Century Limited
Danger Lights, lots of Milwaukee Road action
The Train with Burt Lancaster and the whacky
Silver Streak with that great CP FP-7 crashing into the Toronto station scene!
Those are some of the ones that come to mind... Ed
My favorite train film is "The General " with Buster Keaton from 1926. Buster co-directed the film and did all his own stunts. This was all before cgi so they end up sending a real full size working steam engine off the end of a destroyed bridge. "The General " is listed 18th on the American Film Institute's 100 best films.
Derek
My favorite train movie is the Cecil B DeMille epic, Union Pacific with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck, hands down.
There's another great train western movie called Denver and Rio Grande. I forget who's in that one, but the Santa Fe are the bad guys. Who knew?!
Jim (with a nod to Mies Van Der Rohe)
I like the one where Denzel and New Captain Kirk are on the train because I know virtually every filming location they used in that whole movie.
Here are my top 3
Jim
Emperor of the North
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Emperorer of the North with Lee Marvin, Keith Karadeen and Ernest Borgnine. Greatest movie ever made for steam train lovers.
Strictly for fun, check out "Ticket To Tomahawk" with Dan Dailey, co-starring R.G.S. 4-6-0 #20.
Tom
Snowpiercer?
No actually, "The Train" with Burt Lancaster.
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
The Train...Emperor of The North...The Great Locomotive Chase.
Take Care!
Frank
"The Taking of Pelham 123",
"White Heat"
The 1930s cartoon "Play Safe"
"Von Ryans Express"
Denver and Rio Grande. Hands down.
jim
The Train...is my all time favorite.
Speaking as a former railroad professional, Unstoppable is a great action comedy...it just has too many flaws for me to take it too seriously.
Mark H
Modeling in HO...Reading and Conrail together in an alternate history.
My favorite railroad movie is the Silver Streak (70s). I like the original half way through, the story dropped.
I also like Unstoppable.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
What about The Lone Ranger?? Not the Mantua/MDC model but the real trains used/made for the movie. Actually, I just liked Johnny Depp!
-Bob
Life is what happens while you are making other plans!
A long list of favorites, including Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, Ticket to Tomahawk, The Train, Unstoppable, Breakheart Pass and The General among them. But one of the best I've ever seen is a 1946 French film directed by Rene Clement titled "La Battaile du Rail" (Battle of the Rails) concerning the French underground and their attempts to sabotage German railway movements in France just prior to the Normandy invasion. Some of it was actually filmed under the noses of the Nazi occupiers, and there's a lot of tension and some great railway action (including probably the most spectacular train wreck I've ever seen. Real train, not a model). It makes a great historical "bookend" with the Burt Lancaster film "The Train".
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
A couple more train movies to add to the list--"The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones; and "The Wild Wild West" with Kevin Kline, Will Smith, and half of Kenneth Branagh.
Richard
I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned "The Harvey Girls" with Judy Garland.
There are plenty of clips on U-tube that show the opening number...
The first twenty minutes of the movie are basically just the first production number with odd bits of plot interspersed.
The end of the first number has virtually the whole cast marching beside the departing train until it draws away from them. you can see the steam from the cylinder cocks drenching the feet of those in the front row and nobody flinched.
This was clearly before occupational helth and safety...
There was one big coninuity problem.
The opening sequence under the titles was the train running through open country. The three cars are painted Tuscan Red. They then cut to the filming replica cars which are yellow, and when the train rolls into town, the real cars are yellow...
Another British movie is "The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery" where the Great Train Robbers encounter a local girls only school when trying to escape with the loot.
Filmed on the Longmoor Military Railway there are an amazing number of train scenes with Keystone Cops style actionwith three different trains and a handcar.
M636C
In The Great Train Robbery, Sean Connery did his own stunts. When you see him running/crawling/falling across the top of a moving train behind a smoky steam engine, that is actually him, doing exactly that!
"The General" and "Ticket to Tomahawk"!
I have bookmarked both films on "the tube", so I sneak in a few minutes of viweing whenever I feel like it.
I don't know most of the (older) ones mentioned, so I'll try to watch them someday. Most of these movies aren't based on trains, but they at least have some interesting train scenes:
-Throw Momma from the Train
-Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade (young Indy running through the circus train)
-Trading Places (New Year's Eve, they're all wearing costumes)
-Planes, Trains & Automobiles (they break down and Steve Martin helps John Candy carry his gian foot locker across the field to the watiing buses)
-Switchback (bad movie, OK train scene at end)
-Back to the Future 3 (they outfit the Delorean with train wheels; great scene)
To pick one it would have to be The Grey Fox, the story of Bill Miner, stagecoach robber turned train robber. Wiki link
High Noon. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The noon train brings Frank Miller back to town to get his revenge on Gary Cooper. My father commuted in and out of Boston on B&M trains that looked just like the one in the movie. Open platform wood truss rod coaches and steam power.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
up831 There's another great train western movie called Denver and Rio Grande. I forget who's in that one, but the Santa Fe are the bad guys. Who knew?!
That was Sterling Hayden as the bad guy. Another good one with Hayden was "Timberjack" with Sterling as the good guy. Lots of Shay footage.
WP Lives
I was going to put in Throw Momma from the Train and Back to the Future 3 but I think that counted.
Every couple of years, or so, someone asks this question. It never gets old; I like comparing everyone's favorites. Mine are, in no particular order are:
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
The General is always at the top of my list, but Risky Business is a close second. The kid made the most of both the model and the prototype...
Yes!!! The last section of "How the West Was Won"! The whole movie is fantastic even with a few "dated" early '60's song/number sequences. It was originallly a "Cinerama" film and later vhs copies had the three vertical separation lines faintly showing. See it on DVD with a newly remastered (no lines) version. This film was my introduction to the concept of a family epic and one of my fondest meories of seeing it with my father.
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.