Toy Train In It's A Wonderful Life

I never noticed thata before. I blew the pic up, but it got blurry, and I can't say it is or isn't.

That sure does look like a passenger car. Thanks for pointing it out.

I shows up better on a big screen TV, last night was the first time I ever noticed it and I've watched this movie at least 100 times. Tried to enlarge it more but the quality really suffers.

Jerry

Wow.....never noticed it before!

Peter

The movie was made in 1946. Was anyone making silver cars similar to 2500 series cars then? Could this just be an item related to drafting like a pencil holder??

Pete

Watched more times than I care to admit......never noticed it......

Those vestibules look like the ones on the OK Kasiner kit cars.

I have no better answer, but the corners/edges sure look quite sharp. I don't think any of the models we know of have them with that crisp of a transition from roof to sides.

Keen eye there!!  Never noticed this before...

Alan

looks like a box to me.

I agree with Norton and Steamer.

Interesting observation to say the least.

Pete

Oh my eyes.. it's been colorized

Sorry, I am an over the top IAWL fan, bordering on obsessive, it has to be Black and White With as much as was made in the movie about trains, it always surprised me that there wasn't one running around the tree in the Bailey home Christmas scenes. Then again it was right after WW2 and perhaps the trains hadn't quite caught on like they did later in the 50's

I miss the days when it was in the public domain, even though I own multiple copies it was fun to see how many channels I could string it together on.

I am with you on old movie classics being in black and white.

Art

Chris:

I couldn't agree more on all counts. I'm also an over the top IAWL fan and seeing it colorized pretty much erodes my soul.

One of the proudest moments of my life was in the 1980s when colorization first started.  By dumb luck, I was in a Blockbuster Video in Manhattan renting a movie to watch for the night.  A female TV journalist was in the store because the colorized version of Casablanca had just been released that day.  She came up and asked me a) if that's what I was there to rent and b) what I thought about colorization in general.

I must have felt more strongly about it than I realized because I nearly took her head off for even asking me.  I sneered something like:

No I'm not going to rent it mostly because it's an abomination.  Why don't they just go to the Louvre and paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa?

She then asked me why I felt so strongly so I said:

Color film technology was available at the time Casablanca was filmed.  The moviemakers made a conscious decision to film it in black and white.  For some twit to change that now violates the artists' original intent.

She had her sound bite, so she turned around to the crew and waved them off so they would stop filming.  I made the 11 o'clock news that night in NYC.  I still have my "appearance" on VHS somewhere...

(For the record, even after hundreds of viewings, I have never made it through the end of IAWL without becoming a blubbering basket case ... just hearing "A toast to my big brother George: The richest man in town" gets me every time ... Shoot, I'm half gone when I hear Mr. Gower speak in the first lines of the movie: "I owe everything to George Bailey. Help him, dear Father.")

SJS

P.S. Fun trivia: When Bert the Cop comes out and shoots six shots in the direction of George Bailey, one of the letters in a neon sign out in the distance goes out.  According to interviews with Frank Capra it was a complete accident and he never noticed it until it was brought to his attention many years later.  Watch for it next time you watch the movie.

P.P.S. I don't think that's a train on the table in that still either.

I blew the pic up and it appears to be setting on a wheel truck on the end fartest away, while the other end slopes down and sets directly on the table. It looks sort of like the observation car from one of those prewar 'streamline' sets that used a talgo type vestibule between cars. With the vestibule removed, it would set about the way it is in the picture.

Don't care for Captain Tint and his colorization.  B/W movies should stay that way. I have a two disc set of Miracle on 34th st(the original) that came with B/W and color. Not once have I watched the color. Ruins the nastalgia of the film. Now I have the remake which is just as good as the first one and usually watch them both. As for Wounderful Life, I watch it all year long. Great movie for anytime really and I will only watch it in B/W. Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorite actors. I have quite a few of his movies in my collection. His westerns are my favorites. 

RickA,

   Got to agree with ya and I have the same set of movies, I have the Holiday Inn double set also.  With the original version of White Christmas at the piano in  B&W, some how the color belongs in the White Christmas movie, but not in Holiday Inn, adding the color to the original Holiday Inn takes something away from the original movie, it's like they tried to upgrade something that could not be upgraded.  As with Miracle on 34th Street, Holiday Inn is a classic B&W movie, it needs no color to be perfect, same goes for It's a Wonderful Life, Stewart and Reed are the color.

PCRR/Dave

I'll take the original black and white versions anyday. Just something about the look. 

I have both the colorized and B&W version, the color one just happened to be the one I picked up to copy.

I've played around with my picture editor trying to improve the enlargement and contrast.

I still think it's a passenger car, there is way to much "detail " along the roof line and on the ends to be a box.

Jerry

Remember George liked to think he was an architect/engineer without any formal "training." Bailey Building & Loan did design/build houses.   In those days, most of engineering was still a bit trial and error, not like today with computer analysis.

So building models like bridges and trains could be something they were showing he could do in that office of his.

We need that device shown on tv all the time where they take a poor photo and "enlarge and enhance" it. LOL

I'll get Commander Data and Commander LaForge on it right away lol

"Make it So"

My all time favorite movie!! 

Alan

Rick -

Enhance grid 9A.  Destabilize the visual distortion caused by the subspace interference and that may help.

Whatever it is, I don't believe the item on the drafting table is neither a train nor a pencil box as was suggested above. For someone that drafts by hand and collects that stuff, I don't recognize as such. Also, I don't believe that the item in question is train related, rather, just some interesting set dressing.

I'm a huge fan of Wonderful Life, Miracle, and Holliday Inn. I have watched both original and colorized versions and enjoy both, but prefer 'as-shot' over reconceived any day. I remember the outcry when rumors of colorization of Citizen Kane come to light. I can't imagine why anyone would consider altering Gregg Toland's groundbreaking cinematographic masterpiece.

Sorry, still doesn't look like a train car to me. It looks more like some kind upside down "U" channel to me. Looks like bottom and ends are open.

Toy Trains in movies

Check out the very first episode of 

"Twilight Zone" Art Carney plays a drunken Santa in a Dept Store and there in the opening scences is a Lionel O-Gauge F-3(?) Aluminum Streamliner running in circles around a Christmas tree. Very Cool1

Got to say I am NOT a colorization fan my only exception are the colorizations of WW2 and the latest French Production of recently released film footage of WW1 that were buried in British vaults for the past 100 years they cleaned it up redigitalized and colorized the film and it is stunning film. Had this been available at the time the war truly would have ended by Christmas. The filmers showed ALL the carnage. It's horrific and makes one so sad as you see Europe literally destroy itself in 4 years.