Hollywood has been screwing up train-related shots for years.  And this includes modern, up-to-date stories.

There is an old B&W movie made in the early 1950's.  The name escapes me right off hand.  It was an up-to-date (at that time) murder/mystery movie with the entire action taking place aboard a cross country train traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles, if memory serves.

The possibly only glaring error in the movie which stands out in my mind is where the train makes a scheduled stop in La Junta, Colorado.  The palm trees in front of the so-called "La Junta" train station didn't do much for the believability of that scene. 

99% of the time, Hollywood can't seem to get their train stuff right even when the opportunity easily exists!

Paul.

Within the last week saw portion of a movie with an F7 pulling a passenger train and heard a 6 chime whistle. No other trains in sight.  Yea, I know there probably a steam generator on the F7, but "Come on, Man!"

Landsteiner posted:

 Imagine if a drama about Henry II and Thomas Becket actually used, assuming we could recreate it, 12th century English.  No one in 2017 would understand a word in all likelihood.  

They would not have been speaking 12th century English but rather Norman French and Vulgar Latin.

But your post does an excellent job of illustrating why so few care about history:  so few know history.

For most folks, it is meaningless, especially in the US.  Our culture has always looked forward, rarely back. 

When doing living histories and re-enactments, I have had people ask me when the Civil War was fought, who the opposing sides were, which side won, why so many battles were fought in national parks. . . .

Like the ACW, RRing was a significant formative influence on this nation, but it isn't the latest and greatest toy, so most people couldn't care less.

palallin posted:

Landsteiner posted:

 Imagine if a drama about Henry II and Thomas Becket actually used, assuming we could recreate it, 12th century English.  No one in 2017 would understand a word in all likelihood.  

They would not have been speaking 12th century English but rather Norman French and Vulgar Latin.

 

 

How about "Braveheart"?

Scotts weren't wearing kilts in that era, and the battle of Stirling wasn't fought in an open field, it was fought across a big wooden bridge on a river. Imagine a movie at the Normandy landings taking place in a desert, that's how inaccurate that sequence in the film was!

American audiences, with no clue of these issues, loved the movie anyway. Same as people who didn't understand trains like, "Unstoppable," which several RR employee friends of mine refer to as, "Unwatchable," instead...

Agree with what Mixed Freight said - saw "The Moon's Our Home" from 1936, with Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, a couple weeks ago at the theater. People are traveling from NYC to New England by train - and heading around a curve is an oil-burner with two groups of driving wheels. Didn't have time to get a count of the wheels or see the name of the railroad. Not a cab-forward, though.

David

Anyone ever watch the HBO series, "Boardwalk Empire"?

I don't recall the exact episode, but one scene I laughed long over showed a well-done CGI Pennsy train with steam going by a house, and the sounds were from a diesel, complete with motor and air horn!

Try  watching Robert Redford's The West series. 

The train clips of the old west become rather interesting :>

First was the preserved steam train running in the Scottish Highlands and then I nearly choked when they threw in a clip of a Western Australian W class running on the Pichi Richi Railway!

You can't beat a good (?) 50s B movie, where the locomotive type changes between scenes.

p51 posted:

Anyone ever watch the HBO series, "Boardwalk Empire"?

I don't recall the exact episode, but one scene I laughed long over showed a well-done CGI Pennsy train with steam going by a house, and the sounds were from a diesel, complete with motor and air horn!

Yes, I noticed / heard that myself. A good friend of mine was a producer on Boardwalk. When I told him of the mistake, he laughed. Hollywood is just not a rivet counter.

Firewood posted:

You can't beat a good (?) 50s B movie, where the locomotive type changes between scenes.

 

The Mystery Science Theatre 3000 guys would have a ball with that one.

Glenn Ford stared in a movie where he was an engineer.  I've seen the movie played on Turner Classic Movies.  I did a search for it and cannot find it.  In the movie he climbs aboard what appears to be an Alco FA, but the view through the windshield is of a general Motors F unit.  

When it comes down to it, the viewers and the makers don't care. So few people care that it does not matter if they get it right. 

david1 posted:

...So few people care that it does not matter if they get it right. 

BINGO!

Give that man a cigar.

The general public doesn't know enough about trains to know if it's right or wrong,   and they don't care.

In the movie "John Carter" they had real steam locos and passenger cars from the 1800's, but they filmed in the United Kingdom instead of the USA, for a scene set in New York.  It was close enough for the movie. 

There are movies like "Ray" and "The battle of the sexes" where the crew ended up with modern intermodal trains in the background of scenes set in the 1960's and 1970's. 

Andrew

Dan Padova posted:

Glenn Ford stared in a movie where he was an engineer.  I've seen the movie played on Turner Classic Movies.  I did a search for it and cannot find it.  In the movie he climbs aboard what appears to be an Alco FA, but the view through the windshield is of a general Motors F unit.  

Hi Dan, A favorite movie of mine. Glenn Ford, Gloria Graham and Broderick Crawford. 1954 “Human Desire” yes a train flick, well sort of.

Bingo, George.  I had forgotten the title.  Thanks.

Watching a program called Stranger Things this evening, the director got it right.  It takes place in the '80s.  I'm watching the first season which was made about a year ago.  In episode II there is a scene where a freight train is passing by in the background.  Believe it or not, the train was headed up by Conrail diesels.    

"Planes, Trains, & Automobiles" had real or realistic railroad scenes. 

"The Fugitive" had real and realistic railroad scenes. 

Andrew

occasionally it's fairly close...

B Smith posted:

I just watched Genius, a reasonably good movie about the difficult relationship between editor Maxwell Perkins and writer Thomas Wolfe, in which the set director obsessively and accuirately rendered every minute visual cue of the years between 1929 and about 1933 in exquisite detail, including correct period clothing, automobiles, buildings, images of NYC skyline, apartment interiors, lamp shades, neck ties, refrigerators, shoes, suits, shirts, hair styles, restaurants, taxi cabs, manual typewriters, Harlem jazz clubs, and on and on. But with one glaring and pointless exception, as follows.

Editor Max Perkins lives in New Canaan, CT, and commutes to his work at Charles Scribner's Sons in Manhattan by way of New Haven and New York Central into Grand Central Terminal, which is accurately depicted in the film. However, Max is regularly shown entering GCT, then walking out to a platform and boarding what appears to be vintage English coaching stock pulled by an English steam locomotive spewing smoke under a glass-roofed train shed implicitly in the heart of Manhattan! Despite slavish attention to period detail in all other aspects of this film, the producers/designers seem to have no clue that GCT was electrified decades earlier, and choose instead to depict steam engines leaving Grand Central Terminal in 1929, apparently because they thought it would make the film more "nostalgic." 

I suppose this kind of egregious historical error, or misrepresentation, in a film that is otherwise quite accurate in its visual depiction of the late 1920s - early 1930s simply shows that most people know nothing at all about American railroads and their history. These kinds of errors are repeated again and again in both Hollywood productions and so-called documentary productions.

Why can't the producers, directors, set designers, and consultants get it right, for once? It's not that hard.

What you call "egregious error. or misrepresentation" is actually creative license, which is commonplace in the arts. This movie and many of the films and programs cited in this thread make no pretense to be 100% accurate. They are not documentaries or even historial fiction, perhaps period pieces at most. Their primary audience wants to be entertained and that's what the filmmakers strive to do, and likely more than 99% or the viewers and reviewers who see this fare aren't bothered by the various inconsistencies mentioned in this thread.

Watching a movie with my wife, "The Christmas Train". First, it takes 2 days to go from NYC to Chicago.  Second, along the way you can hear distinctive 4 chufs per driver rotation, steam whistle... Third, after leaving Chicago, the mainline is electrified.  

Come on, Man!

Larry

and the city scene, arriving in Toledo, them buildings are not in Toledo....

Does it have to be repeated ? This is the HALLMARK CHANNEL ! I find it hard to believe the whining this thread has bought out.

Arthur posted:

Does it have to be repeated ? This is the HALLMARK CHANNEL ! 

Ah, yes. The Hallmark Channel. The absolute worst writing on television today.

That network is for television what Harlequin romance is for literature.

Of course, my wife watches it all the time. There are times I would much rather be stabbed in both eyes with a knitting needle.

The way AMTRAK runs it might take you two days to go from NYC to Chicago !!

jim pastorius posted:

The way AMTRAK runs it might take you two days to go from NYC to Chicago !!

Come on, man?

LMAO

Larry

jim pastorius posted:

The way AMTRAK runs it might take you two days to go from NYC to Chicago !!

20 hours from NYC to Chicago via Amtrak.

If everything goes right.

Also, any time you see a bustling NYC subway train scene filmed at Court St station,  that station hasn't been used in passenger service since 1946.

I've had to condition myself to ignore the trains and train sounds in train-themed movies.

Again I repeat, the makers of the movie don't  care and the viewers don't care. 

  This issue comes up from time to time and Ogaugeguy has it pegged. It's not about public knowledge or not caring about technical accuracy it is about entertainment ... and differences between fact and fiction in the movies are not restricted to trains.  Think about all of the fight scenes - anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the human body and the basic physics of karate and falling objects can tell you - those fight scenes are physically impossible...as for jumping off of things like building roofs and landing a couple of stories down with nary a bruise to show for it - all I can say is don't try that at home.

  With the exception of some very recent cinema the same is true with respect to war movies.  U.S. Military vehicles standing in for all kinds of German, Japanese, Soviet equipment.  Same for individual weapons such as machine guns and sub-machine guns...and who can forget the ME-108 training planes standing in for ME-109's doing all of that strafing in Von Ryan's Express?

  Speaking of firearms - how about the fact of the incredibly poor training of the bad guys - open up on the good guy with a machine gun and not one round comes within a mile of him/her.  I don't remember the title of the spoof movie but it had a Star Wars scene where one storm trooper turns to another and asks, "Have you ever managed to hit anyone with this thing?"

 For me, movies that are other than a serious documentary are just entertaining fiction and my only criteria for assessing them is: did I find them entertaining? I give them a pass when it comes to basic physics, technically correct equipment, and any other deviation from reality.

Dan Padova posted:

Glenn Ford stared in a movie where he was an engineer.  I've seen the movie played on Turner Classic Movies.  I did a search for it and cannot find it.  In the movie he climbs aboard what appears to be an Alco FA, but the view through the windshield is of a general Motors F unit.  

The movie is HUMAN DESIRE staring  Glenn Ford,  Gloria Grahame, and Broderick Crawford.

I know movies are meant to be entertaining but it makes it more enjoyable if the producers make an honest effort to get such scenes, at least close, to realistic.  I have read that real medical people complain that such scenes in movies and TV shows aren't realistic either. One western movie, an oldie, "The Horse Soldiers"  has a lot of good cavalry scenes in it.  A guy I know, who was there, says "Blackhawk Down" is the most realistic  modern war movie.  My favorite RR movie is the one of the French Resistance against the Resistance. Forget the name and the actor.

Jim - The Train - Burt Lancaster

"From Russian with Love" did a fairly accurate depiction of the Orient Express circa 1963.  Then again in "Me, Myself and Irene" the train was pulled by an F40PH only to be pulled by a Genesis a few scenes later.  :-)

GG1 4877 posted:

"From Russian with Love" did a fairly accurate depiction of the Orient Express circa 1963. 

My jaw just hit the floor upon reading this. You do know they used the real train and it was 1963 when they filmed that, right?

p51 posted:

GG1 4877 posted:

"From Russian with Love" did a fairly accurate depiction of the Orient Express circa 1963. 

My jaw just hit the floor upon reading this. You do know they used the real train and it was 1963 when they filmed that, right?

Of course I  know that .  Seeing who was actually reading the thread.  It's probably my favorite Bond movie and closest to the books of any of them other than Bond gets poisoned by Rosa Klebb in the book at the end.

Robert S. Butler posted:

  With the exception of some very recent cinema the same is true with respect to war movies.  U.S. Military vehicles standing in for all kinds of German, Japanese, Soviet equipment.  Same for individual weapons such as machine guns and sub-machine guns...and who can forget the ME-108 training planes standing in for ME-109's doing all of that strafing in Von Ryan's Express?  

Yep, but war movies have really improved in recent years. "Saving Private Ryan" really raised the bar for realism in war movies.

But remember the WW2 films in the 60s? Man, other than "Kelly's Heroes," (oddly, a dark comedy but has the best representation of Tiger Tanks put to film before that time) few even tried to get anything right.

Reminds me of a cartoon I did for a British re-enacting magazine a few years ago. Anyone really familiar with WW2 uniforms and equipment will immediately start spotting the errors to the guys on the left, showing all the messed up things from early WW2 films: