worst or best potrayals of railroads in movies/tv shows

[rluke]

All movies

Has anyone ever seen a movie or tv show where a train slams into a car or truck (or person) and then

stops?  or at least goes into 'emergency'?    They all just keep going..

 

--Best portrayal  in a movie:           Bound for Glory

 

                                                                                          Rich

[vsmith]

Where do I begin

Lots of good documentarys turn up on local PBS from time to time. Great Railway Journeys Of The World, being one.

I can run off  a laundry list of crap. Supertrain-pure 70s TV CRA*P! Supposed to be Loveboat on rail, more like garbagescow on skids.

Atomic Train has to be the single worst though, complete drivel.

[Andrew Falconer]

That out of wack movie was NBC's ATOMIC TRAIN. It made no sense. The locomotive and freight cars were strange and confusing due to Hollywood style invading British Columbia.

The best TV Series depiction was on the CBS Series "Early Edition". It was shot in Chicago and the trains were real and accurate. They were shown as dangerous if people were careless.

[Anonymous]

Hitchcock was a stickler for accuracy whenever trains turned up in his movies. Listen carefully in "North by Northwest" to the train announcements in Chicago's La Salle St. Station where Cary Grant disguises himself as a redcap in order to elude his pursuers. Then compare that with an old NYC timetable of the time.

[One Track Mind]

Gonna have to go with a whimsical nitpickin' donation to this thread. Don't remember which season it was, but it was at least post-1972 when the TV show Emergency! aired part of an episode about a rescue in a freight yard in or near Los Angeles. Prominent in the shot was a boxcar from the great fictional rail line, The Chicago Pacific with lettering that looked eerily familiar to the SP. What nailed the scene, though, was the sound effects folks wanted the sound of trains moving in the background, so they used steam locomotive sounds! Now I wasn't around LA in the early '70s but I'm guessing steam was no longer being used. (Hey that's some sarcasm there, no need to explain to me when steam locomotives were retired....) Anyway, always enjoyed that tidbit.

[caboose63]

Does anyone have any examples of the worst or best potrayal of railroads in tv or the movies? for me the worst example was nbc' stinker atomic train from about 1999 i believe that had a train with a russian a bomb aboard and heading towards denver. one thing that stood out to me that made the film bad was the fact some of the freight cars looked too old to be on a major freight railroad in late 1990's. or the gondola in the train that was hauling oil drums of toxic chemicals. i worked on a railroad and i never saw chemicals shipped that way thankfully.