My wife likes to watch ghost hunting shows on tv. Recently there was one revolving around spirits left wandering around town after a train crash in Georgia. In various cutaway scenes they too used images of an English locomotive and coaches. It was so glaringly wrong it made the rest of the program hard to watch.

On the other hand they also did a few scenes recorded in the cab of a Porter Locomotive on static display in the town. This was the very engine I used to operate in tourist service, so it was nice to see an old friend on tv. 

B Smith posted:

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.

They also do not know anything about non-American railways and their history; in the Hollywood movie Murder on the Orient Express that will be released in a few weeks a European Wagon-Lits car has got an American observation platform with the Wagon Lits emblem as drumhead. Horrible:

Regards

Fred

B Smith posted:

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.

I understand - but consider the difficulty casting a GG-1 to play this part...

They use what is available and most people don't care. This is Hollywood, enough said!

I watched "Sherlock Holmes goes to Washington" this weekend. They accurately had a GG-1 with pantograph  pulling the train.  The only disturbing part was the sound of the GG-1 puffing and chuffing down the tracks.

A lot is probably cost and using stock footage especially in TV. Hogans heroes blew up a civil war era train many times that was masquerading as a german muntions train

Roving Sign posted:

B Smith posted:

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.

I understand - but consider the difficulty casting a GG-1 to play this part...

That's what CGI is for.  Lemony Snikett's Series of Unfortunate Events had a very credible PRR T1 done in CGI.

There was also a credible CGI 2-6-0 (if not a tad too "modern") in Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Rusty

It's entertainment, not an historical documentary.  Evocative is more important than strictly accurate in all details.  Some care about trains, the vast majority of audiences could care less. It's not exactly the focus of the film and story. People also spoke quite differently in past eras.  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.  

I think they just don't care. They are trying to show what they think the audience will like and are not really concerned with accuracy because the average movie watcher would never notice. There are hundreds of YouTube videos showing errors in movies that could have easily been fixed with a tiny bit of effort.

At least two current ads show an F7/9/3 locomotive pulling commuter trains into a station

Maybe because the movie was filmed in Manchester, England. They used what was available to produce the movie?

Charlie

Movie producers are limited to what they have or can make in a computer, and doubly so by what the director and crew thinks “looks cool.”

So often, they’ll go against what is correct, full well knowing, so, because they were looking for something different.

The WW1 movie, “Flyboys” had someone hopping a UP train which was clearly filmed at a British preservation line with Brit equipment, just marked UP.

I agree the lack of interest from the studios is primarily because the audience doesn't know anything about trains and doesn't care. If this move, which begins in 1929, had been populated by 1954 Buicks and Chevrolets, however, critics would have noticed. The film is actually set prior to the arrival of the GG-1s, but there's plenty of stock footage of earlier locomotives in and out of Penn station that could have been used or enhanced. 

There is also the fact that we know about trains, but not as much about other things. If we knew about other aspects, we might realize that there were mistakes there as well.

Anachronistic differences always bother me. One of my favorites is Foyle's war, but every time I watch, I see a few more Easter eggs, like the radial tire in the background when Sam is working in the motor pool, or the modern hand grips on the bicycles.

I always worried that movies and TV shows would teach would be crooks how to commit crimes. Then I saw them commit a crime using technology that I am familiar with. The technology/crime looked good to the great unwashed masses, but I could tell that it could not possibly work that way in real life, so I was no longer worried about it.

So the bottom line is, whatever looks good to the director, even if the director does not have any knowledge whatsoever of the accurate particulars, gets on film.

As someone else said: This isn't a documentary.    The feel of the movie is what matters.   I watched it.  I know trains.   It did not bother me.  

Just like "Unstoppable" with Denzel.    Regardless if you thought it was a silly movie; we all know that engine wasn't going to really do those things in real life.   Yet, this is an action movie and designed as such.   Again, it didn't bother me.

It's okay to not be offended about train things.

They have done this for decades. Back in the 50s, the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye movie "White Christmas" had the principals travelling from Florida to Maine in a train pulled by warbonnet Santa Fe diesels.

Jagrick posted:

...using stock footage especially in TV.

winner winner chicken dinner!!!

jay jay posted:

They have done this for decades. Back in the 50s, the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye movie "White Christmas" had the principals travelling from Florida to Maine in a train pulled by warbonnet Santa Fe diesels.

the funniest ever has to be the episode of "Dukes of Hazzard" that has the Duke boys beating Roscoe or Boss Hogg (don't remember which) to a grade crossing and getting away by the passing of a SP daylight train pulled by a GS, classic stock footage from the 40s or 50s, for a show taking place in the 80s!

My standard on this topic...

In an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, Andy and the gang went to meet somebody arriving in or around Mayberry on the train.

In pulled some beautiful looking UP passenger cars in the their yellow and gray glory.

Even the Three Stooges got it right.

One of the shorts features the boys being dragged out of a Pacific Electric B-50-14 boxcar coupled to a PFE wood reefer... under PE wires!

Anyway, they are movies not documentaries and the trains are only props so NBD when they are not PC (prototypically correct) 

johnstrains posted:

My standard on this topic...

In an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, Andy and the gang went to meet somebody arriving in or around Mayberry on the train.

In pulled some beautiful looking UP passenger cars in the their yellow and gray glory.

And who can forget Fonzie and the gang going from Milwaukee to California via the Pennsy.  Behind a GG1 no less...

Rusty

I'm not offended by this stuff about getting the trains wrong, I'm just observing that even though movies are clearly not documentaries, the producers usually spend some time, effort, and money to get the cars, clothes, airplanes, and architecture more or less right, but consistently give zero attention to the trains. 

B Smith posted:

I'm not offended by this stuff about getting the trains wrong, I'm just observing that even though movies are clearly not documentaries, the producers usually spend some time, effort, and money to get the cars, clothes, airplanes, and architecture more or less right, but consistently give zero attention to the trains. 

That's because the average person has no clue what a 'real' train looks like as they only see them at grade crossings, while checking their Facebook status.

Military movies were often consistently awful for the details (and I don't even mean the 'infinity' ammo magazines, Mach 1-speed choppers or things like that) until it became clear to Hollywood that people really do know the stuff they're looking at. So soon after the current global conflict on terror, war movies have become way more accurate than ever before.

Such a shift for trains in movies will never happen, though, as there won't be a huge shift in the population who'll know that the Pennsy never ran in CA state.

I won't name the film, but a not-exactly-large-budget movie could have had me as a historical advisor. But once I talked with the people involved, I realized quickly on that the film wasn't going to be any more historically or militarily accurate than the "Captain America" movie (I know a guy who worked on that, he walked away early on, not wanting his name associated with such a travesty of the 40s). Most advisors' advice gets thrown out the window once the director says, "yeah, but I want it that way anyway". The only example I know of is from the filming of the well-done HBO series, "Generation Kill." the advisor to that series balked at a bad version of the USMC LAV vehicles and demanded the director allow them to be digitally rendered, or he'd walk from the set (or so I'm told). the end result was a good call as I've seen the LAVs they were going to use, and they looked awful.

There is a movie called "The Commuter" coming out at Christmas. Its stars Liam Neison and it is big budget. The trailer is on you tube and it takes place in NY. The trains are all wrong, don't know where it was filmed but they are no Metro North. And last years "Girl on a Train was filmed on my street and the nearest tracks are the Harlem line in White Plains. They used the Hudson Line for the train scenes and her looking out of a train window at my neighbors house, it was a camera on tracks set up in the back yard. It starred Emily Blunt.

Oh, it's not just trains that they get wrong.  Watched an episode of the Incredible Hulk in which a character took a commercial airplane flight from Chicago to Gary, Indiana.  Duh, basic geography teleplay writers, basic geography.

A real live movie prop:

In 1977 a movie company needed some passenger cars for the made for TV movie "Mary White."  They approached the Kansas City Railroad Museum in the River Quay district and chose our ex CB&Q/BN power car and ex Frisco Business car #3.  We really had no other suitable cars.

We repainted the combine Pullman Green.  We debated where to place the Pullman lettering and decided it looked best over the coach section rather than centering it on the car.  I applied the adhesive lettering for the letterboard and car names.  The movie company painted a piece of Masonite to make a Pullman letterboard to cover the Frisco lettering on the business car.  

It's what was available locally and the cars were moved to KC Union Station and picked up by the Santa Fe to be moved to Wichita for filming.  They had about 10-15 seconds of screen time.  Stock footage was used to show a steam powered train approaching the station.

Rusty

If a recall correctly the Jackie Robinson movie, 42, had a scene where he boards a Southern passenger train despite   the cars blaintly had lease company markings on them. 

In the movie "Changling" they borrowed the 2-6-2 and a few heavyweights from the Orange Empire Railway Museum. They were in various road names, but were filmed in such a way that the letterboards weren't really visible. They filmed the station scene at San Bernardino Depot. It was a matter of what was around and of appropriate vintage. Unfortunately, most of your movie people aren't train people and don't know what's appropriate for the location and era. The 2-6-2 went from Perris to San Bernardino under its own power, by the way.

In the beginning of the Avengers movie with the Black Widow scene, the scene takes place in Russia with Norfolk Southern locomotives going by on the far right corner of the warehouse in Cleveland, Ohio where the scene was filmed. Of course the NS logos were blacked out and were replaced with some Russian letterings.

Also, in The Dark Knight Rises, the scene where Detective Blake goes to the cement factory, a CSX YN2 engine shows up pulling autoracks with their various logos on them. But when the locomotive comes out from behind one of the cement trucks, the scene gets cut and the CSX logo is only partially seen. The scene takes place in Gotham city but is filmed in Pittsburgh so that is probably the reason why Christopher Nolan did not want anyone to see CSX in the film. 

ES44AC posted:

If a recall correctly the Jackie Robinson movie, 42, had a scene where he boards a Southern passenger train despite   the cars blaintly had lease company markings on them. 

But in all fairness, they digitally put a steam loco in the scenes where he's going through spring training (no pun intended), behind the back wall. I was very pleasantly surprised to see they went through the effort.

Unfortunately, most of your movie people aren't train people and don't know what's appropriate for the location and era. The 2-6-2 went from Perris to San Bernardino under its own power, by the way.

Very true Matt

They only want to blow them up or crash them. 

On the flip side there are lots of good movies that are inaccurate with Trains and some even get it right. North by Northwest, Denver and Rio Grande, The General, Unstoppable, The Train, Von Ryan’s Express. Then again that’s why they call Fiction.

For Spike Lee's Malcolm X they hired the actual Pullman club car for the Valley Railroad in Essex CT and moved it to GCT for filming.

One railroad movie that got EVERYTHING RIGHT was this one...

Story line.  Visual appeal.  Camera angles.  Set restrictions.  Money.

I just watched "Emperor of the North" with Lee Marvin and "The Train" with Burt Lancaster. Both excellent railroad themed movies.

Doees anybody remember the nuclear powered train from the 70's?

"Supertrain" has yet to be mentioned..lol. I remember the models used for filming were the subject of a Model Railroader or Model Railroad Craftsman article back then...

Tom

Roving Sign posted:

B Smith posted:

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.

I understand - but consider the difficulty casting a GG-1 to play this part...

Better not be a GG1 in or out of GCT.

And so perpetuates the issue...

The same thing was done, British steam train in GCT NYC, in a movie made years ago. I think the title was something like "Once Upon A Time In America". Maybe both movies used the same "stock footage".

Most of my book reading is "historical fiction" (a made-up story with true time period settings). I've read many that has a steam locomotive puffing in Grand Central or Penn station in NYC. As you know, electric engines were the only ones allowed. The other thing is frequent mentions of a caboose on the rear of a passenger train.

They don't have to get it right. It only has to look good for the scene.

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:

jim pastorius posted:

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....

More enjoyable for who only if they're perfectly correct? Maybe for train-oholics, but they're likely the only ones who see it that way. When you think about it, how many of our daily lives and jobs are continually exciting and interesting, even to ourselves? Afterall, the reason most people watch films  is they serve as a refuge and respite from reality. 

More enjoyable to me. I didn't need any more excitement in my job or daily life. i guess others do.

If directors and producers are making an effort to get everything else right in the film, are we, Train-O-Holics just chopped liver ?   What, we don't deserve a break today.....LOL

Sometimes a movies budget will  affect what they do with a scene and how important the production team thinks it is.

jim pastorius posted:

 One western movie, an oldie, "The Horse Soldiers"  has a lot of good cavalry scenes in it. 

Well, let's see.  Grierson was a music teacher, not a civil/RR engineer, but a musician would have been hard for the Duke to portray (ever hear him sing?). 

I don't remember what artillery the movie used, but it was not what Grierson used:  a battery of 2 lb. Woodruff guns   http://turnerbrigade.org/history/woodruff/

Lest you think me too critical discussing artillery in reference to a claim made about cavalry, it's worth noting that small, light guns were common in horse, flying, or cavalry batteries.  He had to move fast over rough terrain, and the smaller guns were far easier to do so with.  And, though small, the Woodruffs were still more gun than just about anything any the opposing forces might have had, which was more than likely none.

I'll stop now before I go overboard.

I am not an expert but am acquainted with cav  equipment and tactics. Not so sure the movie people were interested in having Woodruff guns in their movie.

Danger Lights did an excellent job. The story line is pure schmaultz, but the railroad scenes are great. Mind you the director gave the Milwaukee Road free reign as the technical adviser on that one...

You guys are beating this to death, the makers don't care and people watching the movies don't care. 

We can find fault with every movie ever made, time to end this thread. 

if you think train fans are alone, consider...

1) building contractors laughing when they see people crawling through air ducts.

2) computer operators having to explain that tape units moving have nothing to do with calculations.

3) car guys cringing every time a car noisily peels out ...on dirt.

4) meteorologists trying to figure out why streets filmed at night are always wet, yet it never rains.

5) aviators concerned that people think planes without power immediately fall to the ground.

6) drivers thinking that their cars will explode on impact.

and on, and on...

Dan Padova posted:

If directors and producers are making an effort to get everything else right in the film, are we, Train-O-Holics just chopped liver ?   What, we don't deserve a break today.....LOL

Actually, Dan,  consider what Overlandflyer has said. The movie folks aren't making a 100% effort to get other aspects of their films correct either. They're taking creative license in their films with those aspects too only we don't necessarily notice or clamor about those discrepancies or flaws since, as Overlandflyer has alluded to, we aren't experts or aficionados in those areas. Likewise, non train folks don't noticeor clamor about  what to some of us are glaring train inaccuracies.

Stop being a TRAIN NERD and enjoy the entertainment.  It's just a movie.

I have always liked to pick films apart when it comes to things I know about.  That said, most people don't know much about trains, so, as has been pointed out by some of you, they don't know much about trains !

I always get a kick when the train in the film is definitely an American train.  Then you see shots of the train later but now it's a European train.  Or vise versa.  

palallin posted:

jim pastorius posted:

 One western movie, an oldie, "The Horse Soldiers"  has a lot of good cavalry scenes in it. 

Lest you think me too critical discussing artillery in reference to a claim made about cavalry, it's worth noting that small, light guns were common in horse, flying, or cavalry batteries.  He had to move fast over rough terrain, and the smaller guns were far easier to do so with.  And, though small, the Woodruffs were still more gun than just about anything any the opposing forces might have had, which was more than likely none.

Artillery is something movies rarely ever got right until they started using re-enacting units for that. How many times have you seen films in the past where the guns get loaded by putting the rammer less than a foot down the bore, and then it leaped several feet into the air seconds after the 'charge' goes off? No water buckets, worms (for everyone else, a 'worm' in artillery is a long staff with a metal twisted fork at one end, to extract any unburned portions of the previous charge that might still be smoldering in the back of the barrel) or even charges seen during the loading process. How about several batteries of cannon all going off at the exact same moment (clearly electrically fired from a common panel off-screen)?

Even as a kid, having crewed muzzle loading artillery plenty of times, I'd roll my eyes. "Waterloo" for example was an amazing movie but the artillery was so unrealistic looking when it fired.

One photopau that recently got my attention was in the movie, Public Enemies.   Kudos to the film for depicted CMStP&P, S3 #261 pulling streamlined Hi cars into Chicago.  Would have been perfect had the engine and cars existed in 1933.

Bruce

There's always this little gem:

Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry had a "Celebration of Railroading" way back when, (mid 80's) which included some artifacts from the movie.  One of which was a letter from a railroad employee complaining about the inaccuracies in the movie.  The response from the studio admitted it "was terrible railroading, but swell melodrama."

And so it goes...

Rusty

brwebster posted:

One photopau that recently got my attention was in the movie, Public Enemies.   Kudos to the film for depicted CMStP&P, S3 #261 pulling streamlined Hi cars into Chicago.  Would have been perfect had the engine and cars existed in 1933.

At least they tried. Better than the E-units in "Flags of our Fathers!"

Did you notice what appears to be UP 844 in that same movie?

Watched a movie last night where a child picked an obvious Santa Fe F3 warbonnet A unit.  The store owner took it away from him claiming it was a very rare 1941 Burlington engine.  You could clearly see the Santa Fe markings on the nose.  I didnt think Diesels were in service in 1941.

My biggest complaints are with the accuracy depicted of the transport devices and food replicators used in Star Wars and Star Trek movies.  Galaxy Quest is the only movie to get it right that I have seen.

But they're just entertainment, right?

Diesels were indeed in service in 1941.  The store owner's statement is obviously a gross oversight, to say the least.  When the director was filming, did he even bother to look at the toy ?   

p51 posted:

Artillery is something movies rarely ever got right ...

i stopped by an archery site one time and saw a huge string critiquing the shooting style of Hawkeye from the Avengers... a fictional character from a fictional world.  sadly, i believe most responses were "serious" whereas i found the entire string hilarious.  perhaps something you should consider before bringing up this subject with train-muggles.

p51 posted:

brwebster posted:

One photopau that recently got my attention was in the movie, Public Enemies.   Kudos to the film for depicted CMStP&P, S3 #261 pulling streamlined Hi cars into Chicago.  Would have been perfect had the engine and cars existed in 1933.

At least they tried. Better than the E-units in "Flags of our Fathers!"

Did you notice what appears to be UP 844 in that same movie?

Actually, "Flags of our Fathers" used the BN executive F9's (lettered Boston & Maine) and CB&Q E5 from IRM. 

Still not correct, but at least some cash for the Museum.

Rusty