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Trussman posted:

"Emperor of the North" is my favorite railroad movie.

 

I just found this one about the Big Boy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gnK9JaU7Y

 

I have to chuckle on how an early NBC TV drama from the Lucky Strike Theater is now an "educational documentary." 

I still have this on VHS from the olden days of 1997, bought it from Pentrex.  Doesn't appear to be in their catalog anymore.

BBOTV 003

Rusty

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Last edited by Rusty Traque
balidas posted:
Seacoast posted:

The Little known and a good storyline with plenty of train and action. Ken Moore and Lauren Bacall.

Click on link below. You can even watch the full movie on YouTube for free.

Northwest Frontier 1959

This is the movie I was referring to in a previous post about a train movie with Bogey. This is a good movie.

????

Bogey is nowhere to be found in the cast & crew of North West Frontier. 

NWF Poster

I can't think of any "train movie" Humphrey Bogart starred in.

Rusty

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Last edited by Rusty Traque
Big_Boy_4005 posted:
Rusty Traque posted:
wjstix posted:

As far as CGI, I'm pretty sure the scene in "Unstoppable" where the engine and cars have their wheels lift off the track on one side going around a tight curve wasn't 'real'....

Bingo. 

The laws of physics and gravity wouldn't allow it.  Swell melodrama, bad science.

Rusty

I agree, once the science goes wrong, the movie is a total loss.

I didn't see any mention of Switchback with Danny Glover and Dennis Quaid. Good train scenes in that one.

Another is Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Steven Seagal.

Those don't make my top 5, but they are worth noting.

For me it's Emperor of The North, The Train, Von Ryan's Express.

I liked Switchback as well. Not great, but very good, as you say. I thought it told the story of itinerant railroad men quite well. 

Has anyone noticed a pattern among the movies that several participants have nominated as the all-time greatest train feature? Films including Breakheart Pass, Emperor of the North, Unstoppable and Once Upon a Time in the West all open with an approaching train, and end with a scene of the same train, although usually several days later.  The Train doesn't include railroad images in the opening scene because the art theft theme has to be established, but the trainload of stolen paintings figures into the plot early enough to fit this pattern. An exception may be Bad Day at Black Rock where the same Southern Pacific Daylight train appears in the opening and closing scenes, but no time in between.

Gil Hulin

 

 

 

 

There is a western titled "Denver and Rio Grande".  It is a story about fighting for right of way between the D&RG and the ATSF back in the day.  This movie was made in the early 50's and was true to events as they really happened.  The Santa Fe did not seem to fare well as to it's business practices,ha,ha. 

Entertaining train movie and western.

Norm 

Norm posted:

There is a western titled "Denver and Rio Grande".  It is a story about fighting for right of way between the D&RG and the ATSF back in the day.  This movie was made in the early 50's and was true to events as they really happened.  The Santa Fe did not seem to fare well as to it's business practices,ha,ha. 

Entertaining train movie and western.

Norm 

The other side of the coin: Santa Fe (1951) Randolph Scott, Janis Carter, Jerome Courtland.  The D&RGW is the"bad guy" in this one...

From IMDb:

After the Civil War four brothers who fought for the South head west. Yanks are building the Santa Fe Railroad and one of the brothers joins them. The other three still hold their hatred of the North and join up with those trying to stop the railroad's completion. The one brother unsuccessfully tries to keep the other brothers out of trouble but eventually has to join the posse that is after them.

Rusty

Norm posted:

There is a western titled "Denver and Rio Grande".  It is a story about fighting for right of way between the D&RG and the ATSF back in the day.  This movie was made in the early 50's and was true to events as they really happened.  The Santa Fe did not seem to fare well as to it's business practices,ha,ha. 

Entertaining train movie and western.

Norm 

One my favorites Paul Fix is also in it as Monahan the train engineer.

55C1DD3D-D4C3-44D5-8C70-527394727DB0

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Hello friends,

I don't want to drive this train too far off topic, and I agree with most of the top picks such as "The Train" and "Breakheart Pass," but since we have also cited such movies as " Le Bête Humaine" and the "Polar Express," I would like to mention three of the many movies featuring trains that are particularly high on my list.  I first saw these movies years ago, and I believe they actually influenced the direction taken by my interest in toy trains.  These films were: 

Bad Day at Black Rock

Toccata for Toy Trains

Pacific 231

Gil has already mentioned "Bad Day at Black Rock" above.  It is a great movie with a stellar cast, but the streamliners that open and close the movie have stuck with me since first seeing the film on the recommendation of my Dad who grew up in SP country (Oregon) and who himself was a veteran of WW2.  I have since learned, of course, that FT locos did not pull Daylight streamlined cars, that the paint scheme of the A and B units had not yet been used by the SP in late 1945 when the movie is set and that the horn blast and hand signals used during the sequences were all wrong, but seeing that relatively short, streamlined passenger train pull up to a tiny station in a tiny town, looked like a scene right out of my various floor layouts that I imagined it to be as a kid.

Not long after getting out my old toy trains and taking my first tentative steps to becoming a "toy train collector," I came across a VHS video of "Toccata for Toy Trains" (This was well before the advent of the internet and YouTube!)  This well known, short 1957 film by Charles and Ray Eames makes creative use of antique toy trains and other trains set to a wonderful score by the incomparable Elmer Bernstein.  Again, I found myself drawn into the world of toy trains as they relate to the larger world, not always as accurate scale miniatures, but also as representing a world seen through the eyes of a child and toys of our youth.  All this set to a great score.

On the same VHS tape as the Eames film was the even shorter French film "Pacific 231."  Like the train scenes from the 1938 movie "Le Bête Humaine" previously mentioned on this topic, the film "Pacific 231" shows big steam railroading in France in 1949 set to the music of a 1923 composition by Arthur Honegger of the same name.  The filmmaker used innovative camera work along with expert editing to create a piece that not only documents the operation of a powerful steam locomotive, but also seamlessly follows the music to the point that one could believe that the music was actually written to score the film. 

Any time I can combine good filmmaking, great music and trains, both real and toy, is a win, win, win for me.

Cheers!

Alan

 

 

Seacoast posted:
Norm posted:

There is a western titled "Denver and Rio Grande".  It is a story about fighting for right of way between the D&RG and the ATSF back in the day.  This movie was made in the early 50's and was true to events as they really happened.  The Santa Fe did not seem to fare well as to it's business practices,ha,ha. 

Entertaining train movie and western.

Norm 

One my favorites Paul Fix is also in it as Monahan the train engineer.

55C1DD3D-D4C3-44D5-8C70-527394727DB0

I always get a kick during the head on collision that the tenders exploded...

Boom

Rusty

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Nick Chillianis posted:
Berkshire posted:

The Polar Express is one of the most memorable train movie I remember watching, I know it's new, but man is that movie good.

I wound up watching it because I was with my girlfriend who was babysitting her grand-rug-rats.

C'mon, great movie? 

Maybe if you're ten years old.

Not our fault if you chose to outgrow having fun.

Adriatic posted:
Nick Chillianis posted:
Berkshire posted:

The Polar Express is one of the most memorable train movie I remember watching, I know it's new, but man is that movie good.

I wound up watching it because I was with my girlfriend who was babysitting her grand-rug-rats.

C'mon, great movie? 

Maybe if you're ten years old.

Not our fault if you chose to outgrow having fun.

Polar Express is OK.  But just OK.

Personally, I find the old Rankin-Bass Christmas specials fun.

Rusty

Toccata for Toy Trains is the true art film of toy trains and nothing else comes close. The filmakers were the famous designer team of Charles and Ray Eames, with a beautiful score by Elmer Bernstein. The collection of vintage toys are staged so creatively, and the camera work is uniquely unsurpassed, especially in a non-digital age! Finally, the narration has a poetic quality that matches the music quite well. A true gem, worth repeated viewings!

Last edited by Tinplate Art

Gentlemen,

IMO the best train movie ever made was Night Passage, because of General Jimmy Stewart and SGT Audie Murphy.  The open air rolling stock and old coach cars are just incredible.  

PCRR/Dave

Then I realized I was holding the bravest man who ever lived in my arms - Jimmy Stewart

High praise from the General!  Jimmy's & his wife Elaine were close friends with my parents.  Audie Murphy was my military career mentor, and my Fathers good friend.  No train movie will ever top this one for me.

[URL=http://www.jpgbox.com/page/55676_800x600/][IMG]http://www.jpgbox.com/jpg/55676_800x600.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Last edited by Pine Creek Railroad
Pine Creek Railroad posted:

Gentlemen,

IMO the best train movie ever made was Night Passage, because of General Jimmy Stewart and SGT Audie Murphy.  The open air rolling stock and old coach cars are just incredible.  

PCRR/Dave

Then I realized I was holding the bravest man who ever lived in my arms - Jimmy Stewart

High praise from the General!  Jimmy's & his wife Elaine were close friends with my parents.  Audie Murphy was my military career mentor, and my Fathers good friend.  No train movie will ever top this one for me.

[URL=http://www.jpgbox.com/page/55676_800x600/][IMG]http://www.jpgbox.com/jpg/55676_800x600.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

I too grew up with Jimmy Stewart and his wife, although to us she was Gloria. I have his autograph hanging in my office here at home. He would walk his dog past our house almost every day when I was a kid and I finally worked up the nerve to ask him for his autograph (neighbors weren't supposed to do that :-)

Rusty Traque posted:
Adriatic posted:
Nick Chillianis posted:
Berkshire posted:

The Polar Express is one of the most memorable train movie I remember watching, I know it's new, but man is that movie good.

I wound up watching it because I was with my girlfriend who was babysitting her grand-rug-rats.

C'mon, great movie? 

Maybe if you're ten years old.

Not our fault if you chose to outgrow having fun.

Polar Express is OK.  But just OK.

Personally, I find the old Rankin-Bass Christmas specials fun.

Rusty

My daughter (who I started reading PE to in 1988) took my 3yo granddaughter and I on Saturday. It was much better suited to her than most early-childhood movies: rich scene depictions, plenty of good deeds and well-meaning, lots of belief in higher ideals, no implied violence, relatively little death-defying suspense, an almost complete lack of vindictive plotting, and very little dishonesty. As I read the book, I've always imagined it best as a 30-minute "featurette". But it works much better for young kids than I had expected, and far better than any other feature-length adapted childrens' story I've seen before.

Its inclusion of book-exact dialogue, complete with scenes to match the pictures, really helped. When she got antsy and said it was time to go, I said "no, there's still 2 pages to go - remember?" She did, and settled down to watch the final 10 minutes of the story.

Saturday Night at The Movies • I have seen this movie back in the day. Wanted to watch it again, this movie combines one of my favorite actors and trains.  I did a search on all the free and paid channels on xfinity & Netflix. Not available at this time.

1 Night Passage2 Night Passage on screen

Went to my local public library and they had a DVD copy, brought it home and we watched the movie, in theater mode. Had a favorite snack from a Michigan candy company, Sayklly’s, making candy for over 100 years. The Yooper Bar.

Gary: Rail-fan

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