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.
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.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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.
"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!
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.
Welded rail, Groomed ballast only regulator would love air brakes hoses and even some second air signaling hose, roller bearings..
54light15I don't think any of those things existed in 1881.
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.
'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.
Here is the 1990 Trailer, almost all on topic...
Narrow Margin (1990) - IMDb
Some of the cars have no letterboard with the Via blue stripe on the narrow fluting, including those used for the studio close ups. These also have the name Via Rail Canada in the centre of the car. The dome looks like a real "Canadian" car at least. Credits include BC Rail, who might have owned the SD40-2.
Peter
The 1952 film has Marie Windsor, the very definition of a "Femme Fatale."
It was called 'The Narrow Margin', and I haven't been able to find a complete upload on the Internet, so I suspect someone is keeping the rights defended.
Here is a clip that gives you the flavor, though, with an opening shot that is right in line with this thread:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gSFxXH3TKOM
I just watched a 1990 Gene Hackman movie "Narrow Margin". The plot was that a woman witnessed a Mob murder and Hackman, a Deputy District Attorney went out to find her. They end up in Canada followed by hired killers and catch a train to Vancouver. The train seems to be largely Via Rail cars with some Canadian cars including a dome. The locomotive is a Canadian SD40-2 (with triple marker lights) painted in Via colours as applied to an F40PH. There are a lot of fights on the roof of the train in very scenic settings. Apparently there was a 1952 movie with the same title and plot, made in the USA.
pennytrainsYep. To feed and water the animals between the mandated exercise stops.
Regulatory stops required the animals to be removed from the cars for their period of feeding, watering and resting. After the period they were reloaded to the cars and had another 24 to 36 hours before they had to be fed, watered and rested again. That is why 'back in the day' there were stock pens at stations no one today would have expected there to be any.
That's Hollywood!
Yep. To feed and water the animals between the mandated exercise stops.
Same me, different spelling!
54light15 what appear to be hinged openings on the roofs of the cars- any idea what those are for?
Buster Keaton's "Go West" features stock car loading and various details about them. I didn't know that they had 2-piece sliding doors and ramps from the car to the platform similar to a handicapped ramp today. There are what appear to be hinged openings on the roofs of the cars- any idea what those are for? The movie is funny as hell and has a cattle stampede through 1925 Los Angeles. Looking at old entries, jeez, I mentioned this one before. "Sorry bout that" as Agent 86 would say.
I've never been to a rodeo but Junior Bonner showed just how dangerous it is. It was interesting in how it showed them preparing their equipment and I can only imagine that they researched just what a cowboy does to make the picture credible.
I have a scene of "The Ladykillers" on my layout. The area is based on the tracks going into King's Cross and just above a tunnel entrance is Mrs. Wilberforces's house and in front of it are the "musicians" walking toward it. Next to the tunnel entrance is a semaphore signal and just below that is a platform where a figure painted to look like Professor Marcus is standing. The semaphore wing doesn't exactly hit him, but it comes close.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the release of the Steve McQueen movie "Junior Bonner". It was filmed July 1971 in the Prescott (AZ) area..including a scene at the Santa Fe station just north of Downtown Prescott. Apparently, they hire a Santa Fe crew to move a train back and forth while doing the filming.
At that time Prescott was the end of a branch off of the Phoenix subdivision (before 1962 it was a major point on the Phoenix line, with an engine house to service the helpers going west over the mountin range). The locals servicing the Clarkdale branch and the Iron King branch were based there until the mid-late 70s)
Gramp Saw "The Ladykillers" (1955) on public TV last night. Peter Sellers and Alec Guiness when they were young. Really neat UK steam played an intergral role in the film. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d5/28/25/d52825c465b8b91cf3139f9f1d0bb808.jpg
Saw "The Ladykillers" (1955) on public TV last night. Peter Sellers and Alec Guiness when they were young. Really neat UK steam played an intergral role in the film. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d5/28/25/d52825c465b8b91cf3139f9f1d0bb808.jpg
Not to act as a spoiler to the movie but the locomotive hauling the empty steel four wheel open wagons that play an important part in the story was a class V2 2-6-2.
https://www.lner.info/locos/V/v2.php
It is possible that multiple scenes with these wagons were filmed with the one train. The V2 is visible in one of the later scenes.
Not a movie, but...
Recently I have been viewing episides of "Twelve O'Clock High" on YouTube. In this episode General Savage spends more screen time on and around the train to Inverness than in the "Picadilly Lily":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDCbV_u3ZK4
Or the three wise men: Moses, Lawrence and Jerome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fIRtr8dFX0
Flintlock76 pennytrains I'll take Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho over almost anybody. Or Stan and Ollie!
pennytrains I'll take Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho over almost anybody.
I'll take Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho over almost anybody.
Or Stan and Ollie!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWBi-1y6uO8
Them too!
Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey are pretty good when they're not playing Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey.
Jerry Lewis is dead now so it doesn't matter.
It could be the Yonkers station. It was used in Boardwalk Empire.
rixflix- I can't stand any of those guys either!
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