Hard to believe that fine film is 18 years in the can! I just re-watched it yesterday an couldn't identify to steam locomotive in the beginning. It's a 2-6-2 Prairie, oil fired, and numbered as #4, along with tender lettering appropriate for the film. There's a historic steel boxcar, and a pump-car following.
Anybody know the true identity of the loco and location used for filming?

It says the train scene was filmed in Leland, Mississippi.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/locations

Oh Brother Where Art Thou has been one of my favorites since I was a kid. I've always wondered what locomotive that is. After doing some brief research, my best guess would be that the locomotive is Fairchild and Northeastern #4 from Laona, WI. I don't believe it was filmed in Mississippi because the state has no operating steam locomotives.

Thomas

http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=40

Reader #4

Yeah, hotbox nailed it, it's definitely Reader Railroad #4. There are a couple of early threads that refer to it as being in the movie shortly before going to a tourist operation in Mount Dora. And here's an interesting article, seems that the Coen brothers used Reader equipment again for another movie filmed offsite.

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2010 ... f=trilakes

Thank you, all! Much appreciated.
I am no longer a man of constant sorrow.

Reader #4 and trainset arrived in Mount Dora around May or early June 2000 and were there just in time to start service on the 4th of July...
The engine and several other cars had been used in filming O Brother shortly before coming to Florida....if I recall correctly, the filming was done around a town called Satartia Mississippi...
The caboose used in O Brother came to Mount Dora in 2011 with the #2 and three coaches used there previously and were operated as part of the recently closed Orange Blossom Cannonball...

I remember at the end of the movie one of Clooney's kids is walking with him and said "Mama told us you were nothin' but a grease spot on the L & N!"

"Lots of decent people get hit by trains... but they don't get sent to the prison farm for impersonating an attorney".

Great movie. I came by it after becoming a fan of Alison Krauss and Union Station, part of the real Soggy Bottom Boys in the movie. You really didn't think George Clooney could sing like that did you? That was Dan Tyminsky of Union Station, and Alison was the voice singing Down in the River, as well as one of the Sirens, along with Emilou Harris and Gillian Welch. You can find their performances on YouTube, as well as the late Ralph Stanley, as the singing voice of the Grand Wizard on O' Death.

I believe Reader #4 also played a role in the opening scenes in the movie re-make of True Grit. I like both movies. They are filled with details that made me watch again multiple times.

"Do any of you fellers happen to be smithies?Or otherwise trained in the metallurgical arts?"

Delmar O'Donnell: You work for the railroad, Grampa?

Blind Seer: I work for no man.

Delmar O'Donnell: Got a name, do you?

Blind Seer: I have no name.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, that right there may be the reason you've had difficulty findin' gainful employment. You see, in the mart of competitive commerce...

Reader #2 was used in True Grit, after it was also used in 3:10 to Yuma, There Will Be Blood, and Appaloosa. It went to Florida after True Grit.

I love the good memories and quotes the thread has elicited. Goes to show the appeal of a classic story, retold in a unique fashion.

"With the added time on my sentence, I'll 87 when I'm released."

"Well, I only be 83!"