Trains in old movies but not necessarily train movies

[54light15]

'The Hour of the Gun" from 1967 with James Garner, Jason Robards and Robert Ryan. A take on the OK corral. It features trains with steel, riveted passenger cars with knuckle couplers. I don't think any of those things existed in 1881. A pretty decent Western, filmed in Mexico. 

[Overmod]

54light15

I don't think any of those things existed in 1881.

While we're on this, there are the amusing technical details in the Lone Ranger movie, on on a less wacky note, the scene with the locomotive in the cartoon feature Spirit.

If we extend the discussion to not-so-old movies that essentially became old movies while we weren't looking, consider the remake of 1984 with William Hurt (be careful to see it with the original cinematography, not the recolorization).  Part of this was the logical development of Britain had it reached the type of government in Eric Blair's book -- and the train scene is in my opinion a good example of how well that was portrayed in the picture.

[blue streak 1]

Welded rail,  Groomed ballast only regulator would love  air brakes hoses  and even some second air signaling hose, roller bearings..

[54light15]

I am right now watching a German TV production called, "Babylon Berlin" set in the Weimar republic of 1929 and with all that it implies. Lots of sleazy characters and lots of cigarettes are smoked. It is sort of similar in it's way to Boardwalk Empire and the British series, Peaky Blinders.

There is a fair bit of railroad action in it involving a tank car full of gold bars in a train full of phosgene gas! The train is pulled by a type 52 Kriegslok decapod which isn't correct but still, it's an excellent series and the set design is brilliant. An ongoing film noir, sort of. It just showed up on You Tube one day, I watched a five minute bit of it and thought, that's something I would like so I bought the whole series on Ebay. I highly recommend it. 

[54light15]

"Inglorious Bastards" is an Italian war movie from 1978 with Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson. A train is transporting V2 warheads and blah, blah, blah, explosions. It's a "spaghetti war movie" and you know what that means. It's set in France using Italian locomotives and cars. The Germans die like flies! 

[54light15]

This is a good one- "It Always Rains on Sunday," from the Ealing Studio in 1947. Life in London's East end, tiny apartments, smokey pubs, street markets, crooked businessmen with an escaped convict and so forth. Not a lot of train action until near the end with many scenes filmed aboard rolling freight cars in a hump yard. I've never seen a movie with hump yard scenes much less an English one with 4-wheel wooden cars. You also get one short glimpse of a London trolleybus. 

[BaltACD]

Was watching an episode of Adam 12 on MeTV yesterday that was filmed in Griffith Park in LA during the late 60's or early 70's.  The final scenes are centered around a Western Pacific steam engine with one of the bad guys being shot atop the tender of the locomotive and falls to the ground in the final action scene.

[Erik_Mag]

Just after Christmas I watched "The Assassination Bureau, LTD", a charming, though a bit dark, romcom set in 1914. A number of nice shots of inside and outside of European passenger trains.

[54light15]

OK, here's yet another one. The Hunter, one of Steve McQueen's last films. Scenes are on the Chicago Elevated and the train he is clinging to has double trolley poles. Wasn't that on the Skokie line, the remnant of the line to Milwaukee? 

[Overmod]

BaltACD

Was watching an episode of Adam 12 on MeTV yesterday that was filmed in Griffith Park in LA during the late 60's or early 70's.  The final scenes are centered around a Western Pacific steam engine with one of the bad guys being shot atop the tender of the locomotive and falls to the ground in the final action scene.

That would be Western Pacific 26, and according to LA Parks & Recreation she's still there.

[rcdrye]

54light15

OK, here's yet another one. The Hunter, one of Steve McQueen's last films. Scenes are on the Chicago Elevated and the train he is clinging to has double trolley poles. Wasn't that on the Skokie line, the remnant of the line to Milwaukee? 

 

The pan trolleys on the Skokie Swift cars were not set up to swing out.  The pole bases were ordinary trolley bases, so I assume they were set up just for the film. CTA's last use of ordinary trolley wire was in 1973, but the Skokie Swift/Yellow line used overhead into the early 2000s.

Early 1950s Dragnet episodes (Badge 714) have LARy trolleys, both standard and PCCs, in the opening scenes.

[blue streak 1]

The  Palm Beach story

the palm beach story movie 1942 - Search Shopping (bing.com)

A few possible errors Departure boaard said Atlantic coast line florida special from NYP/  Train left NYP pulled by a steam loco under wire.  Palm Beach traain station said elevation 1 foot.  Even FEC didn't run tracks that close to .

[BaltACD]

Not a movie - but a music video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEjU9KVABao

 

[Overmod]

miningman notes that on September 13th, starting at 11:00 eastern, TCM will be showing four 'classic train' films in a row:  

Train Noir Quadruple Feature

11:00 AM

BERLIN EXPRESS (1948): A multinational group of travelers find themselves thrown together to thwart the assassination of a prominent pacifist scientist by defiant Nazis bent on destabilizing post-war Germany. This improbable but intelligent thriller is a true rarity: a shot-on-location look at the resistance Allied powers faced reorganizing the vanquished German citizenry in the aftermath of WWII. Robert Ryan (the laconic American) and Merle Oberon (trying a sketchy French accent) head a cast comprising representatives of each Allied Zone: Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States. Although spiced with shadowy noir dramatics (lensed by Oberon’s husband, Lucien Ballard), the film’s most fascinating aspect is its time capsule view of global geopolitics in the rapidly closing window between the Marshall Plan and the building of the Berlin Wall. Dir. Jacques Tourneur 

12:30 PM

THE TALL TARGET (1951): In this film noir cloaked as historical fiction, a determined detective (Dick Powell) tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during the train ride to his inauguration. It’s helmed by legendary noir director Anthony Mann and shot by Paul Vogel, the cinematographer responsible for Lady in the Lake’s first person P.O.V. Dir. Anthony Mann 

2:00 PM

TERROR ON A TRAIN (1955): Birmingham’s Chief Constable (Harold Warrender) enlists the aid of retired Major Peter Lyncort (Glenn Ford), a former member of the Royal Canadian Engineers' bomb disposal unit, when the police find a bomb on a train filled with explosives. Lyncort’s marital problems add more pressure to an already tense situation. Dir. Ted Tetzlaff 

3:30 PM

THE NARROW MARGIN (1952): In this seminal noir, a tough cop (Charles McGraw) meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's moll, (Marie Windsor) on a tense train ride. Can he keep her alive long enough for her to testify? Dir. Richard Fleischer

.