One I haven't seen is "It Happened To Jane", from the mid 1950's. I don't think trains are the central focus, but the film includes footage of the last New Haven steam loco, a Mikado that was scrapped shortly after her movie role.
Tom
Silver Streak.
Is he with the Feds?
Who?
This guy Rembrandt.
Rembrandt is dead!
Dead?! That makes four.
I limited my choices to ones in which railroading was central to the plot. Thus North by Northwest while being a great movie wasn't on my list. A couple others I hadn't thought of in my first reply, The Train and Von Ryan's Express.
Karl 425:
Actually, "Strangers on a Train" is my all-time favorite Hitchcock movie, but I seldom consider it a "train" Hitchcock film, unlike "North by Northwest" or "The Lady Vanishes", as the relatively brief train sequence at the beginning is only the set-up for the clever suspense of the rest of the film. I also get kind of a kick out of the fact that the train they are on heading into Washington D.C. is the Southern Pacific "Coast Daylight", lol. But it's a great movie!
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 Mighty Wind. It is how my layout got the name Crabville from my wife.
A movie that just came to mind is another Burt Lancaster flick 'The Professionals'.
There were some decent railroad scenes in it. I don't recall who the actual steam locomotive owner was but the railroad scenes were filmed on the now defunct Kaiser Steel...Eagle Mountain Railroad in southern California. I also found out that some of the railroad scenes in 'Tough Guys' were also filmed there.
Mark H
Modeling in HO...Reading and Conrail together in an alternate history.
Emperor of the North
Oh Brother Where Art Thou...no one said the train had to be the central theme.
Robert H. Shilling II
jjdamnit Emperor of the North
I was trying to rack my brain to come up with movies in which railroading was a central theme and this one escaped me until you mentioned it. Emperor of the North is my #1. #2 is the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor version of Silver Streak. #3 is The Great Locomotive Chase starring Fess Parker. I remember this came out when I was very young and I bought the DVD for the nostalgia but I was surprised at how well it held up as adult entertainment.
No ones mentioned Johhny Cash and his trains specials so i will, just did.
"Stand By Me", "The Journey of Natty Gann", and "In the Heat of the Night",all have good train scenes, mh
I'm a little partial to Platform 9 3/4 from a number of movies!
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
Are there no Hitchcock fans here?
Nobody has mentioned Strangers on a Train.
I have the right to remain silent. By posting here I have given up that right and accept that anything I say can and will be used as evidence to critique me.
Here's mine
End of the Line
Danger Lights
Under Siege 2
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
On topic: Emperor of the North
Off topic: I have been wondering about this for years. This thread brings up an opportunity maybe to get an answer. Since we are talking film and shows.
Back in the 70's there was a movie (on commercialvision, not the big screen) that had an HO layout of Southern Pacific flavour. The story was that the layout (by some unknown evil force) would by itself create an accident, then it would happen in real life.
I guess by voodoo or black magic. I dunno. Cant remember the details. I do remember one particular scene where a switcher was toting a string of cars coming to a grade crossing. The model train hit a model car. Ofcourse, in real life you can imagine what this translated too.
The characters in the story were trying to figure out the correlation from layout to real life and stop it. Heres my question....
Does anyone know what the title of this was? Id like to see it again.
Some specifics i remember:
Ho scale layout, rather large in size.
3 main players - guy, young boy, and young girl.
Southern Pacific layout, real world trains were varied.
1970's era show.
PM Railfan
Medina1128The Great Train Chase, Fess Parker
Just a slight correction to the title.....It was ''The Great Locomotive Chase'' by Walt Disney 1956.....two Loco's General & Texas, during the civil war. Saw it downtown Chgo in the same year. Nothing like seeing it on a gigantic screen.
Take Care!
Frank
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.
Jim
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
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...
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
I was going to put in Throw Momma from the Train and Back to the Future 3 but I think that counted.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
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?!
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
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
To pick one it would have to be The Grey Fox, the story of Bill Miner, stagecoach robber turned train robber. Wiki link
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)
"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.
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!
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
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
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".
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!
My favorite railroad movie is the Silver Streak (70s). I like the original half way through, the story dropped.
I also like Unstoppable.