• Superman Returns: Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) had a multi-gauge layout.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Richard Dreyfus' character had an H.O. layout under construction.
• Clockers: There was a drug dealer who used his profits to buy O gauge toy trains.
• End of the Line: (Movie about a rail line being shut down). The president of the company had an H.O. layout in his office. Ironically, the engineer and conductor who stole a locomotive and drove it to the corporate headquarters helped him fix a derailment problem on the layout. He then takes off with them and sells them the rail line for $1.00. Cute, but ain't gonna happen.
• Unstoppable: Oops. Those were real trains acting like models due to GGI special effects. Entertaining movie, but they took a few liberties.

Arthur (original), Throw Momma From a Train, A Christmas Story, Holliday Affair, Back to the Future III, The Black Scorpion.  The last one has the distinction of a train set (complete with Lionel Lines on the sides of some of the equipment) playing the role of a "real train" with a "giant" stop motion scorpion.

Don't forget the great layout in 'Arthur'. 

Here are a couple of older movies:

miracle on 34 st

       AND

As, Chuck mentioned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_Affair

"Merry Little Christmas" all,

Ralph

We can expand this to include TV shows - Big Bang Theory 2 1/2 men, I Love Lucy Christmas Special, he show with Joe D.

The Day the earth Stood Still

Though it wasn't a movie, Dr Jeffery Geiger playing with his Lionel train on the floor of his office on the TV show, Chicago Hope. Mandy Patinkin actually had a great love of Lionel Trains.

On one episode, as best I can remember, Dr. Geiger offering a young patient a "special" Lionel GG1. Maybe someone can add the details of that episode.

Donovan's Reef.

 

Rusty

Track 29

 

A doctor's wife tires of his obsession with model trains, and spends her days wondering about the son she gave up for adoption at birth. While eating at a roadside cafe, she encounters a British hitchhiker, who turns out to be her son. They spend time together trying to find a bond. The son begins to hate the husband, and the wife begins worrying about the safety of her husband and his train set.

TV: Leave it to Beaver, The Millionaire.

In the first "Godfather" movie there was a scene shot at the former Polk's Hobby Shop, you can make out an O gauge train running on a display layout.

 

Also there was an HO layout in the latest "Lone Ranger" movie, interesting since it was also an electric train that was pretty elaborate in detail, including the layout.  Don't think they had HO electric trains in 1869, let alone model or toy trains that would look like intricate brass or plastic models we have today. 

 

 

Tom Cruise & a ZW in Risky Business

 

Dudley Moore sleeping with his trains running in Arthur

If you are including TV, don't forget ALF.

Lionel Trains are used as part of the plot in "Holiday Affair" (1949) starring Robert Michum and Janet Leigh. Here is the IMDB entry.

TM Books & Video did this article quite some time ago:

 

http://www.toytrainrevue.com/hollywd.htm

 

 

OMG......

 

I cant believe no one has mentioned the Addams Family... both the movie and the TV show.

 

Where else can see lionel trains crash and blow up and not feel sad!

I guess I should have read the first post....  sorry

Another movie was, I think the name was Fours a crowd with Errol Flynn. Had a great train race on a huge outdoor type layout.  Movie was from the late thirties...........Paul

Watch the BR extra features......while events were 'out there' much of the train wrecks were real.....some came close to getting out of hand.

 

TV trains...Addams family and Capt Kangaroo.....local TV Engineer Bill show which I was on myself!

I had an uncle who scratch built a train set, making it look so realistic that when he needed money he put the set in the "For Sale" section of the news paper, a movie company bought it and used it for a WWII B&W movie.

The train is supposed to be a German freight train, which runs over a bridge and gets blown up!!!!!!

My uncle made realist looking model trains, cars, trucks, ships, boats and planes, that would be right up there with the foreign imports of today!!!!!

Before, he passed, he worked for NASA, on small intricate parts for the Space Program, down in Florida.

Ralph

Garfield

Meet the Robinsons: the line is kind of blurred in this movie, as the "model" is full-sized but remote control.

 

And speaking of scale :

 

 

 

 

Aaron

Don't forget the Sopranos Episode. THE BLUE COMET!!!

The Toy with Richard Prior and Jackie Gleason.  Nice indoor LGB setup the kid crashes into one another.

I know, the elevated commuter train, in the original King Kong, is supposed to be real, but I believe it is worth mentioning.

I don't know what scale size the train was, but it was realistic in appearance.

Ralph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apjvf9YNzEM

 

Nothing But Trouble   Dinner Scene.

Chevy Chase, Dan Akroid, Demi Moore

Not a movie but there was an 80s show titled "Our House" in which Wilfred Brimley played the role of a retired railroader with a layout.

  

 

Bob

If i remember correctly there was an episode of Dexter with John Lithgow running a train. Sure it was a little creepy but still.......

The Black Scorpion trailer, one of my favorites (pause the vid at 0:59)

 

 

As pointed out by Penn-Pacific there is a still from the train scene above (at :59) showing the Lionel Lines tender that is actually backwards! If you stop the clip there you can see it...

"A Hobbo's Christmas",1987, starring Barnard Hughes and Gerald McRaney featuring BOTH trains and a model train layout.

2 1/2 Men had some train episodes also.But they showed an HO layout so that really doesn't count

King of Queens.. doug's father sets up his layout at a train meet and doug wrecks the 681. things catch fire

Silver Spoons for TV and The Santa Clause 1 & 2 (LGB) I believe.

The Station Agent starts out with Peter Dinklage working in a train shop. Lots of Lionel trains, and I think there was a layout, but it is a very short sequence.

Gee I never knew there were so many movies and TV shows with model Trains.Impresive!!!!!!

There, was an Ozzie and Harriet episode where Lionel trains are bought for Ricky, but Ozzie and I believe Don Defore run the trains, while a dejected Ricky looks on!

Ralph 

There was one. It featured a Lionel MPC Union Pacific Berkshire and modern Lionel rolling stock. You could also see many postwar and modern Lionel on the shelves as well as MTH.

I never saw it, when it came out in the '50's, a B&W filmed Lionel commercial with Joe D'Magio. I first, saw it a few years ago.

Also, Johnny Cash Lionel, MPC commercials of the '70's.

Ralph

 

Not a movie but a TV show. Captain Kangaroo.

I 2nd " Four a crowd " great outdoor layout with a 700E racing a M10000 Streamliner.

The layout trains are featured several times in the movie featuring a race between the two.. The millionaire who owns the layout Al's has a control tower that he operates the trains from.

 

Model trains made appearances on "Diff'rent Strokes" which co-starred the late Gary Coleman, a well known railroad enthusiast. In fact, one episode titled "Small Claims Court" featured the family trying to resolve a situation involving a defective locomotive which Mr. Coleman's character had just purchased. I believe the model in the episode was an MPC NW2.

 

Bob  

The movie Beatleguise with Micheal Keaton has a great model town used at the beginning. Later the characters shrink and move though a very unreal but now full size model town. Fun. I've thought about what shrinking down to model size would be like.

There was a layout in two episodes of Columbo,  Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case and in the much later Murder, Smoke, and Shadows (directors club house).  Man from Uncle Episode had Napoleon Solo trying to control a run away N gauge train set with a vail of nerve gas as a tank car.

 

A Might Wind has a great scene with Eugene Levy popping up inside an elaborate HO layout.

Ellery Queen: Season 1, Episode 14 The Adventure of the Eccentric Engineer.  Ed McMahon has an extensive Lionel layout in his outbuilding - with a spur to the main house for delivering messages. 

 

Full Episode HERE.

CSI did a multi story arc around "the miniature killer".  A scale modeler/railroader (not the serial killer) was featured prominently near the end of the arc.

There's a brief scene of model trains running at a department store before Chevy Chase goes lingerie shopping in Christmas Vacation.

 

>Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.

>Superman Returns.

>So You Want to Build a Model Railroad (from the 50s)

>People Will Talk

 

 

The Dukes of Hazzard tv show....Boss Hogg used a model train for one of his haywire schemes.

 

Tom and Jerry....Tom ties Jerry to the tracks of a model train layout.

How about the trolley from Mr. Rogers?  My favorite part of the show.

There was also a lionel train (I think) in one of the Banaczek (George Peppard) episodes when a real train turned up missing, and he used the model to illustrate what happened to the real train, and they show an aerial view of horseshoe curve, if memory serves.

I forgot, Stuart Little also had an O gauge layout.

Lots of trains running all over the palace in John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!

Was trying to think of that Ellery Queen. Anyone mention "Risky Business"?

Oh yeah, in the episode Grandma's Dead of That 70's Show, Red Forman plays with his old Lionel tinplate train, a 262 steam engine with a whistling tender, a 700 series passenger car, 600 series freight cars, 124 Lionel city station, and Lionel Trains Inc. versions of the 133 and 157 stations.

I recall one episode (I forget which one) of Poirot had a British tinplate O gauge train.

Towards the end of this year's bust, "The Lone Ranger", The kid was playing with a small Toy train while in the passenger car.

The Smurfs. Lionel display in FAO.

 

My favourite though as rusty mentioned is Donovan's Reef

 

Holiday Affair  ( 1949 )

Robert Mitchum Janet Leigh

Technically TV ...

 

Thank you for the Ozzie and Harriet T.V. filmed Lionel trains, episode Rob,

Ralph

You beat me to it, LVfan.  I was beginning to wonder if anyone around here had ever watched a movie over twenty years old!

 

Holiday Affair -- toy trains and the luscious Janet Leigh!  Unbeatable combination.

 

Dennis the Menace had an episode where they were racing soap box cars and Dennis' dad won a bet with another dad on who's car was fastest.  Dennis had the reward of getting a Lionel set while his friend who won the race only had a little HO set as a prize.  Scene is at 23:55

 

Years ago in a made for TV movie about Al Capone (stay with me on this)

there was a scene in Al's house in Chicago with his Son playing with some

beautiful Lionel Standard Gauge Trains.

 

The layout was well done.  I believe the Son was running the Lionel Bankers

Set.  Who ever directed this scene had a love and understanding of Lionel

Standard Gauge Trains.

 

Many thanks,

 

Billy C 

Bill,

Off of the subject of model trains!

How is Providence lately?

I last saw Providence back in May of 1965, when I was in the U.S. Navy aboard the U.S.S. Lake Champlain CVS-39, Home Ported at Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, R.I.

Take care,

Ralph

I am off the subject. Ralph send me an email in my profile. I have stories about "Champ" CVS-39 from my Dad.

George

Great topic and responses.  I believe that if trains play a major part of a hit movie or tv show we big resurgence in the popularity of this hobby.  Maybe the Kardashians will will buy a train set.  

The "Twilight Zone" where the real town turned out to be a layout.  "Stopover in a Quiet Town."

Someone posted this this summer The World, The Devil, The Flesh. Great shot of first class PW trains on SUPER O

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9fEGFyqOqU

Classic!

American Flyer transformer in the 'Dennis the Menace' episode.

From a few years ago, Kevin Bacon drives a train that kills a woman whose son forms a father/son relationship with him.  Bacon tries to engage the boy into

working on his HO layout, so the model trains are a tangential part of the

story. Odd but moving by the end.

 

Rails & Ties (2007)

 

 

-Mark

RJL, I will just say my native City & State is still going strong.  To 

stay on Topic I know many of my friends in the NETCA who have

passed on, would agree with the fine comments above regarding

toy trains in movies.  I remember having coffee at the Franklyn, Mass

School NETCA Meets back in the day, after a great deal on a train item, talking

about this very subject. 

 

Many thanks,

 

Billy C

 

 

 

 

I just watched that. Great layout.

Fours a crowd train race

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKaJpzzr2O4

"Thank God for the model trains, you know? If they didn't have the model trains they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big trains."

One of the Gumby videos that my children had. One of the "Blockheads" punches a Lionel scout engine and derails it when the Blockheads are up to nogood causing mischief.

Sorry for bringing this thread back up, but I just saw the premiere episode for season 3 of Sherlock.  OO gauge London Underground layout featured.

As Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, Mandy Patinkin shared his love of Lionel Trains on an episode of Chicago Hope. 

THE PHANTOM CREEPS

An old "serial" from the 1930's starring Bela Lugosi.  They are fighting in a switch tower and knock the lever to the de-rail position. The train wrecks and many passengers are killed and injured. It is a Lionel train maybe the same footage as the BLACK SCORPION. I have both. The picture quality of the Phantom is poor, but next time I watch it, will look for the reversed tender as pointed out in earlier post.

 

Bill

"THE PHANTOM EXPRESS" (click to view entire movie) has some good footage of models posing as 1:1 look-a-likes.

Not a movie but a video from a young man, Evan Roth, I built an N scale layout for when he was 10 years old. He now is all grown up and has his own band and featured that layout in one of his numbers, "Growing Up". Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUz4mvEPxAQ

Engineer Bill?  American Flyer?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzvdlE45XEI

Yes it does, I rather enjoyed that flick. ( I paused the vid @ 19:13, looks like a third rail in the middle....)

How can you forget about the movie "People Will Talk"?

Beep, Beep Beep, Beep Beep Beep

Last night on PBS I watched Sherlock. There was a guy (a subway motorman) had a London underground layout (brief scene of the trains) in his flat. He helped Sherlock solve a terrorist case by locating a bomb laden subway carriage which was craftily placed in a never used station. 

When Sherlock rang the guy's doorbell a recorded voice said "mind the gap". 

An odd one....The Babysitters.  John Leguizamo's character plays with a Fastrack layout in his home.  The rest of the movie isn't as PG.

Not a train per se, but in the movie "A League of Their Own", the outfield ball park fence has a Lionel Trains advertising sign, the one on the red and white striped background.  A little strange since the movie took place during WWII and new Lionel Trains were not available.

Does anyone know the name of the B&W 40s/50s era movie in which Harry Belafonte sings a "traveling" song while strumming a guitar and following a toy train as it runs on track setup on furniture that flows from one room to the next?

 

I searched online for the name but was unsuccessful.  However, I did find a website that has two long lists of movies, i.e., one for movies with real trains and the other for movies with toy trains.  Here's the link:

 

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L_GV8EufzDQJ:www.toytrains.info/trainmovies.asp+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

 

Bob Nelson

 

 

navy.seal

The name of the movie is:

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959 film)

 

It was on TCM last night.

 

I watch it too. Good movie. You can see the third rails in several shots. I am kind of curious as who made the trains as Engine and Passenger cars could pass for MTH/Lionel trains of today.

 

I'd like to know how they got those model loco's to smoke like that.....

I'm glad I wasn't the only one that say this. I was just scared to say it.

 

 

Impressive video, I could really relate to it!  Clever lyrics, good song and the technical video editing is perfect.