Heres a nice little featurette on the train sequences from Lone Ranger. Gives you an idea on where a big chunk of that 250+ million went:

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

Seriously you could have rented the stuff at Carson City and the Sierra Railway and found a shortline that would let you film for a fraction of the price and you still would have made a better looking movie.

Isn't there some railroad testing lab out west somewhere with a great big loop of track already built. That would have saved you what 10-12 million right there?

Simple; It's theirs, they could and did do with it what they wanted with no liability to some museum or operation, no destruction of historic equipment, no worry about what they could and couldn't do with camera mounts, and the various safety harnesses, rails, ladders, or any other stuff they needed, nor were there any restrictions on hours of service for steam crews, etc, etc, etc...

For movie props, they are pretty damn nice, IMO.

Director Jerry Bruckheimer was quoted in an article as saying the whole railroad business was $100 million of the budget--that's 46% of the budget if you use a figure of $215 million (one source), or $40% at a higher estimate of $250 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Ranger_(2013_film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210819/

We're not the only ones to note certain liberties taken with history, otherwise known as "inaccuracies," or as this site puts it, "goofs." In the following list, some are historical inaccuracies, others are errors in continuity. Seems even big budget jobs like this can mess up things like hats and colors of horses between scenes!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210819/tri ... =tt_trv_gf

Despite the criticisms some of us may have about the accuracy (or lack of) in the film, I do have to say I appreciate two things as presented in the featurette.

One is the stunt work. Some of that was quite amazing, and it's equally amazing that almost all of it went off quite safely.

The other is the idea that the trains themselves became "characters." The director had a more "artistic" idea of that for what he was doing, but at the same time, I had something like that in mind for my proposed television series, in that the setting and character of the railroad and its equipment were very important to the feel of the series. A railroad and its equipment (particularly in the custom steam locomotive era of the 1920s-1940s) set in the West would not look or feel like one set in West Virginia, New York, the High Sierras, the Cascades, in Canada, or the deep South of the Carolinas or Louisiana.

Exactly, people don't appreciate the liability and damages often freted over in making a movie. Back in the day, prop houses would make huge props and studios would rent them out. Now, it's easier for the studio to make or buy what they need, own it outright, then trash the crap out of it, if that's what they need to do.
On top of this, they can sell the stuff off later on, which is now wildly profitable (after the movie "Titanic" sold off props and costumes from the film, no production company ever again sold off the stuff by weight like they used to, or back in the day they'd just often toss it in the dumpster
Frankly, I love the fact that they made all this stuff, and did a pretty decent job, as opposed to trashing a real, restored locomotive.

I won't mention the production, but Dave Kloke was approached to rent out Leviathan for an action type movie. Problem was all they wanted was the engine and refused to include Dave and his crew for operations and maintenance. Would you lease anyone something on those terms? Hollywood doesn't have a great reputation for taking care of things and getting them to pay for damages afterward? Well, do your own internet search and you'll find plenty of unsatisfied customers.

Dave did offer to build them their own engine, but they didn't want to wait two years.

It's funny listening to the Director who says he's trying to achieve an "authentic" look got so much wrong. Rail is too heavy, ties are too big and modern and the track is ballasted. Engines from the period, being the "high-tech" of the time were treated with great care and kept polished and clean. Black as an overall engine color didn't come for 20+ years later.

Its funny listening to the actors talking about working around the trains and the feelings it gave them. All I could think it, try it for real and let me know how you feel. That's why it used to be one of the most dangerous occupations in the country.

As for reality, where's Ernest Borgnine& Lee Marvin when you need them?

Pseudo railroad history as it is always presented in the movies and the associated gimmickry just is not my cup of tea and I think it has nothing to do with preservation of anything historic. It could be I have become cynical in my dotage toward confabulation as the "real thing" as another commentator pointed out was far more dangerous than anything the Hollywood types could portray in fantasies.
It would be refreshing to see a film portray the real dangers, turning brake wheels atop boxcars in ice conditions, the link and pin ballet required not to lose fingers, corn field meets in dark territory less telegraph dispatching..etc.

Locomotives were too large and modern for the period, plus the funny Janney couplers, weird engine controls (one had the throttle as a floor lever like a Johnson bar, another had the throttle pushed forward to open, pulled back to close--opposite of the real world, and a copy of one of the major errors of "The Polar Express"). and air brakes, too. And let's not forget the craa-zee action of the locomotive sliding on one side toward the Lone Ranger and Tonto and stopping right in the nick of time, and the springy main rod. . .



Interestingly, some of the actors did seem to appreciate or maybe got a hint as to what it was like to be a railroader in the 19th century. It would be interesting to float the idea of a real railroad themed film to these people, and see what their reactions would be. Of course, the people you really have to sell to would be the executives who would have to bankroll the thing. . .





Indeed! That's for the 19th century ("The General Manager's Story," anyone?), but later could be just as interesting. Think of fighting blizzards on Donner Pass, floods, and just dealing with steam locomotives that can be cantankerous on a good day, as steam operators here can tell you!

Of course, I have to put in a plug for another thread, just to see where some of us might go. . .

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=36158&p=209600#p209600

A key point to remember--people care more about people than our hardware, remember that the story and the people are the important ingredients!

Personally, I'd like to see a movie version of the Great Northern Wellington Disaster of 1910. One could make it a re-telling of Martin Burwash's "Vis Major". Start it out with the grandson of the young boy who survived the disaster visiting the actual wreck site, perhaps on a tour with Mr. Burwash himself, and then transform the scene into 1910 Wellington and go from there. Nothing needs to be exaggerated to make that story compelling.

If we're talking great natural railroad disasters, we could include two hurricanes in there--the one in New England in 1938 that nearly destroyed a New Haven train on a causeway, and the one in Florida in 1935 that wrecked the Florida East Coast's Key West Extension.

As someone who is involved with/entering the film-making "industry," as it were, I can really appreciate what they've done here. It's a stylized movie (if you haven't seen it)-logic dictates that the objects from our reality with meld and morph to fit the stylized reality of the film world. You can kvetch, but I have to hand it to them-those were some nice creations. It's evident a lot of time and effort was poured into them. Accurate? Not entirely. Does it matter? Nope. Do they care that you think it's "wrong?" Nope. And some of those creative techniques for getting shots in locations they couldn't lay track were pretty clever and well-executed. Not a great film, but props to the art department (pun completely intended).

"Authentic look" and "authentic" are two completely different terms. The movie's not being marketed to railroad historians, it's being marketed to people who used to watch The Lone Ranger and the current generation. Both groups are not going to notice the details you pointed out, and frankly, they don't care.

In other news, I wonder what's going to be done with these trains. That video gave the indication that they are actual, operational steam locomotives so I question if they're going to run on a railroad somewhere or just going to sit in a warehouse somewhere.

I got more of the impression that they're very realistic (visually) dummies, being pushed from behind.

Here's one of the "locomotives" that was trucked into the Santa Anita race track parking lot in Arcadia CA in Sept. 2012 for "pickup shots". The setup featured a huge "blue screen" structure, assorted buildings and rolling stock, and a trestle for a train wreck scene.