Best Movie With A Train In It

[TomDiehl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by erikthered

I like "Tough Guys" too- wasn't that Doyle McCormack running the Daylight?

Erik

Yes it was. IIRC, the preview in the Railfan magazine said that they decided to use him instead of an actor because it was easier to train him to act than to train an actor to run the 4449.

[TomDiehl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Soo6058


i liked Back to the Future III. havent seen it in so long, dont remember what kind of steam engine it was.

That was the Sierra Railroad's #3, a 4-6-0 built by Rogers in the late 1800's. Supposedly the most filmed locomotive. Used in numerous films and TV series. The one that was wrecked (off the unfinished trestle) was a 1 inch scale model.

One I don't think was mentioned, (two films with the same title) was Silver Streak (the original, with the streamlined diesel Burlington Zephyr). All B&W but great shots of a classic train. A good bit of background of the development of the locomotive, but I don't know how much was history and how much was Hollywood. The newer one of the same name was OK as a comedy, but not really good as a train movie.

Somebody mentioned one of my other favorites "Breakheart Pass." I took exception to the review that was done in (I believe) Trains magazine a couple years ago of a bunch of train themed movies. Their reviewer obviously didn't do his homework as well as Alistaire McLean did when he wrote the story. Charles Bronson is a Secret Service agent tracking down some stolen Army rifles, obviously post Civil War era. The Secret Service was formed right after the Civil War (but didn't exist according to the reviewer) under the Treasury Department. The Division of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ie. rifles) was under them from the start, so yes, a Secret Service agent WOULD investigate a large scale theft of firearms.

[M636C]

Nobody has mentioned "It happened to Jane", in which the last NH Mikado 3016 numbered as "Eastern and Portland 97" runs out of steam on a crossing blocking two trains hauled by FL9s also lettered for "E&P".

I do like "the Train" and "North By Northwest"

M636C

[cpbloom]

TIE:

Conrail "Pittsburgh Line Blues"

Santa Fe "Across the Heartland" aka Countdown to Merger 1

[8D][:)]

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tdearborn

Risky Business. The 'L' scene.

ill give you a big "Roger" on that one[:p]

i liked Back to the Future III. havent seen it in so long, dont remember what kind of steam engine it was.

and a decent shot of the "Q" Pioneer Zypher in A League of Their Own. Ive walked through the train myself.... very nice!!

[greyhounds]

Well, "Emporer of the North" is really great. Lee Marvin is an arrogant hobo determined to show up Ernest Borgnine, the conductor, who won't let "Bo's" on his freight train. Really railroad theamed, lots of good steam action, and reasonably realistic. "I want a good 20 MPH under me when I leave this yard".

Or try "The Battle of the Bulge". Army Transportation Corps railroaders (they were big in WWII) try to roll heavy artilery "Up Front" to fend off the Germans only to be shot to Hell by a Panzer Tank.

[Anonymous]

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but trains.com has a huge list of movies that have scenes of trains or are railroad related.
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/003/669nitlt.asp

[overall]

An interesting movie I saw on showtime a while back was the Festival Express. It had some good sequences of Canadian National passenger equipment circa 1969. It was about a group of Rock Stars traveling across Canada giving concerts. Janis Joplin, Sha na na and Grateful Dead were some of the acts in it. I was never a Janis Joplin fan, she screams "baby" too much. In between the concert and train footage you see the stars drinking and partying constantly. This is definitely NOT a family film. Send the kids to bed.

George

[csxengineer98]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jarubel

QUOTE: Originally posted by csxengineer98

my list...
1..empore of the north...
2.. silver streak (but not so much for the trains as for the actors... genie wiilder and richor pryor...hell of a team)
3... von ryans express..
i cant remember the name of it..but it was about some little mom and pop short line that was going to close up ..and the crew "borrowed" the locomotive and went to the main office to speak with the board of directors about not shutting the road down... it stared the old guy that dose the adds for diabies supplies sent to your house...it had alot of incab footage...but overall it was an ok train movie... but it was a hell of a lot better then atomic train...the only thing atomic train had going for it at all was krisin davis... and she was only in bit parts... hummmmmm krisin davis.... now thats good food...

csx engineer

I think that's "End of the Line" with Wilford Brimley.

ok..yes that is his name... i had it on the top of my head..but it just didnt want to come out when i was typeing the first post the other night..or morning..or when ever i did it.. and thanks for the name of the flick...
csx engineer

[bnsfkline]

Atomic Train? U crazy? That was one of the WORST railroad movies EVER!

Since when does a boxcar have handrails on it?

My favorite would be.....

The Mark of Zorro...In theaters know.....

Line looks to be active......shot in Arizona/New Mexico....and by the looks of it....on the Southwestern Railroad. But Concrete ties in 1850? Some scenes use model trains, and there GREY ties in some of the shots. Nice head on shots. When the train wrecked...I said this to my Girlfriend

"Somebody better get HAZMAT and some blue flags over here...we have one hell of a clean up to do!"

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by csxengineer98

my list...
1..empore of the north...
2.. silver streak (but not so much for the trains as for the actors... genie wiilder and richor pryor...hell of a team)
3... von ryans express..
i cant remember the name of it..but it was about some little mom and pop short line that was going to close up ..and the crew "borrowed" the locomotive and went to the main office to speak with the board of directors about not shutting the road down... it stared the old guy that dose the adds for diabies supplies sent to your house...it had alot of incab footage...but overall it was an ok train movie... but it was a hell of a lot better then atomic train...the only thing atomic train had going for it at all was krisin davis... and she was only in bit parts... hummmmmm krisin davis.... now thats good food...

csx engineer

I think that's "End of the Line" with Wilford Brimley.

[chad thomas]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oskar

Rat Race has a train in it and its a pretty good movie also a funny one




kevin

The locker room scene was filmed at the historic Nevada Northern station in Ely, Nv.. I was there just after they filmed it.

[Anonymous]

[:)][wow] So many movies where trains have been showcased! It's hard to chose a favorite as my list would be a long one. To make things short and sweet, I gotta go with the following:

1) Emperor of the North [bow]
2) The Train
3) Von Ryan's Express

[csxengineer98]

my list...
1..empore of the north...
2.. silver streak (but not so much for the trains as for the actors... genie wiilder and richor pryor...hell of a team)
3... von ryans express..
i cant remember the name of it..but it was about some little mom and pop short line that was going to close up ..and the crew "borrowed" the locomotive and went to the main office to speak with the board of directors about not shutting the road down... it stared the old guy that dose the adds for diabies supplies sent to your house...it had alot of incab footage...but overall it was an ok train movie... but it was a hell of a lot better then atomic train...the only thing atomic train had going for it at all was krisin davis... and she was only in bit parts... hummmmmm krisin davis.... now thats good food...

csx engineer

[GP-9_Man11786]

My Favorites: 1. Silver Streak, 2. Von Ryan's Express, 3. Runaway train

Speaking of Silver Streak, you can find the DVD for about $10 in Target.

As for Runaway train, what's with the GP-7s running on Alco trucks?

[The Block House]

The opening secment of Biloxi Blue and Fried Green Tomato.

[mersenne6]

The Professionals
Heat of the Night
Toccatta for Toy Trains
Charade

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by chad thomas

One of my all time favorite movies is Tough Guys with Kirk Douglas and Bert Lancaster. Great scenes with the SP 4449 in Taylor yard and out on Kiser's Eagle Mt mine RR.

I'll second that one.....'tough guys' is among the best of the bunch

[oskar]

Rat Race has a train in it and its a pretty good movie also a funny one




kevin

[Anonymous]

I saw a wonderful movie several weeks ago; it was called THE NARROW MARGIN and deals with a woman who was witness to a murder and is accompanied, more or less against her will, from Chicago to Los Angeles on the train for testimony. (Not unlike NORTH BY NORTHWEST, but as the gangsters shot to kill, not funny.) The train was never called the Chief but the route was pretty evidently the old ATSF main line, including a top in New Mexico to buy Indian warbonnets and the like(!).

This noir is not a movie for people who value consistency, because the engines hauling all out west vary quite a bit, including some great (altho' B&W) photograpy of the "most beautiful engine in the world," apparently footage of the Coast Daylight. About eighty percent of the movie consists of the train trip, and the film captured reasonably well the routine of life on a long-distance train and the look of a diner, etc.

THE NARROW MARGIN dates from around 1950 but is available as part of a "Film Noir" collection that my friend ordered thru Amazon. Pretty good movie in its own right, too.

[AztecEagle]

The Lovely Catherine Zeta Jones Douglas Would Definitely Blow My Whistle!!WhooWhoo!!

[eolafan]

Heard today that Clint Eastwood is making a new movie called "Flags of our Fathers" that will have a scene with BN1 and BN2 along with a bunch of heavyweight passenger cars. More later.

[AztecEagle]

A Couple of Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis Movies From The 50's:#1:"Living It Up".Jerry Lewis Is A Small Town Simpleton Who Thinks He's Been Exposed To Radiation,So He's Shipped To New York For Treatment.Great Scenes of The ATSF In The New Mexico Desert.Really Great Footage of FUnits in Both Freight and Passenger Liviries.#2:"Never Too Young".Jerry Witnesses A Murder,So He Dresses Up As A Kid And Hides Out On A Train.Great Scenes of Espee Steamers in The "Daylight"Scheme.Also,A Little Blooper Involving Trains and Movies/TV:"The Fugitive"With David Jannsen as 'Dr.Richard Kimble'.at The Beginning,You See What Looks Either An EMD E or F Unit.(It's Shown In The Dark,So You Can't Really Tell.).Then The Train Derails.If You Look Close Enough,You See Some Model train Wheels Start Sparking And Jumping The Tracks.Then In The Next Scene,You See The Overturned Train Car With A Crew of Rescuers.Look Closely and You'll Make Out The Lettering and Car Style.Turns Out That It's Lettered For "The Orient Express".

[AztecEagle]

Okay.Another One I Thought Of:"The Fugitive"With Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.Great Last Second Escape Scene Before The Train Hits It!!Also:"In The Heat of The Night".Great Scenes of Sidney Poitier Arriving and Departing On A GM&O Passenger Train,Plus One Scene With A Couple of MoPac Freights and Sidney Poitier Defending Himself Against A Gang Of Bullies In A Locomotive Shop.Also,The TV Series With Carroll O'Connor and Howard Rollins Opened With An Amtrak Train Coming Through Town In The Middle of The Night,Plus Occasionally Showed Some CSX Freights Going Through Town As Well."Coal Miner's Daughter".Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn.Scenes of Former CP"Royal Hudson"Pulling A Train Through Town."Giant".Epic Saga of A West Texas Ranching Family.Beginning Shows A C&O Passenger Train Going The Pastoral Virginia/Maryland Countryside.Another Scene Shows Liz Taylor Waking From Her Bedroom In The Riata Ranch Private Car and Seeing That Theyr'e Parked On A Lonely West Texas Siding During The Middle of A Sandstorm.Plus,A Scene Of An Espee Train Bringing The Troops From The War,Plus A Very Poignant Scene Of Some American Legioniares Meeting The Flag Draped Casket of A Fallen Soldier.Availibity:"Giant"and"The Fugitive":Warner Home Video/DVD;"In The Heat Of The Night":MGM/UA Home Video/DVD.

[vsmith]

My fav's

Buster Keaton -The General

Buster Keaton- Our Hospitality

Burt Lancaster-the Train

Emporer of the North

Silver Streak-

Union Pacific -

The Titfield Thunderbolt-



Movies to Avoid like 3 day old sushi:
Atomic Train-[xx(][xx(][xx(]
Under Sludge-Dark Territory-[xx(][xx(][xx(]

and the WORST train movie of all time....
The Cassandra Crossing-[xx(][xx(][xx(][xx(]

[videomaker]

Hey guy's,
Anybody seen the new Zorro flic? It's got a lot of train scenes in it..Ive only seen the trailer at the last movie I went to but I was thinking of seeing it..Any comments would be helpful,good or bad..

[Anonymous]

I OVE THE MOVIE VON RYANS EXPRESS.

[MJ4562]

1) Emperor of the North. Trains running in the scenic Northwest with a couple of actors thrown in.

2) The General (Buster Keaton). Great shots of old time 4-4-0s.

3) The Train. Don't remember much but it was good.

[Anonymous]

This topic has come up before, but it's still a good one.

QUOTE: Originally posted by lincoln5390

Anybody remember Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes?" He made it while he was still in the U.K. B&W from around 1939 I think. I think it's still available on VHS or DVD.

I love that movie! If I had to pick my top five favourite movies of all time, The Lady Vanishes would unquestionably be one of them! It was the success of this film that lead to Hitchcock being noticed by Hollywood and coming to the United States.

If you like The Lady Vanishes, then I would recommend that you also check out the films Seven Sinners (1936), Night Train To Munich (1940) and Sleeping Car To Trieste (1948). Like The Lady Vanishes, all three are Briti***hrillers involing spies, international intrigue and trains that do great jobs of blending edge-of-your-seat suspense with laugh-out-loud comedy. Seven Sinners was written by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, the same people who wrote the script for The Lady Vanishes and features footage real-life of a train wreck. Night Train To Munich (directed by Carol Reed) was also written by Launder and Gilliat and features some of the cast of The Lady Vanishes, with Margatet Lockwood as the heroine and Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne reprising their previous roles of cricket-obsessed Charters and Caldicott. The male leads are Rex Harisson and Paul Henried. Sleeping Car To Trieste takes place on the Orient Express and was a remake of a 1933 film called Rome Express (which might be good also, but I haven't seen it yet).

As far as other movies with trains in them, Silver Streak, Strangers on Train, Narrow Margin, The Train, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and Tough Guys all come to mind, but they have all been mentioned, so I won't elaborate on them any further.

On the subject of Hitchcock, who can forget North By Northwest (1959) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943) featuring the 20th Century Limited and an SP local? Hitchcock himself was something of a train buff. Almost half of his movies feature a train scene of some kind (even if very brief) or else train sound effects in the background.

In Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), John Candy and Steve Martin take a ride on a "Contrack" train (in a sharp blue and orange paint scheme) pulled by a C420 that more than lives up to the reputation Alcos have of producing lots of smoke.

For those that like 4-4-0's, there are Buster Keaton's The General (1927) and Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), both telling the story of the same event from very different perspectives. Both feature plenty of great train chase scenes.

Von Ryan's Express (1964) has Frank Sinatra leading a group of POW's as they escape on a stolen train in Italy.

Then there's Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1939) with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea which centres around the building of the UP across the continent in 1869. The last spike ceremony at Promentory, Utah is even recreated in the film. Lucius Beebe was a technical advisor for this movie.

All of the above of great movies in my opinion. As for bad movies with trains, Atomic Train instantly comes to mind (no offense to those who say they enjoyed it, though, to each his own).

Another bad train movie is Under Seige 2: Dark Territory with Steven Seagal battling terrorists in control of a satellite that could destroy the world on a cross-country luxury train. To the film's credit, the train itself is actually very attractive with a nice paint scheme.

[Anonymous]

Burt Lancaster in "The Train" No1;
Dr Zhivago; and Lawrence of Arabia hard to improve on too.
What about an Eastern European film in Russia, "Yerenski's Kindergarden" must have been made in 1980's I suspect, it has great scenes aboard Soviet military trains of flat cars and Red Army tanks hauled by Baldwin, Alco or Lima 2-10-0's of Yea type. They were still in use in far east / siberia 1970's mid 80's. A few later were seen in North Korea. Can any one tell more of the movie?