TV production companies tend to be a lot "cheaper" than "major motion picture" producers. Some of the stories about the original Star Trek TV series (i.e. the one with Kirk and Spock) point up the tight budgets of that operation.

I can see why a lot of people are hesitant to lend their locomotive to film companies, look what happened to SP 745 for Jona Hex.

Disney did an interesting combination of "real" and "fake" in the recently released "Saving Mr. Banks." In the early part of the movie, P.L. Travers, as a child, and her family are traveling by train to a remote part of Australia. The Disney people came out to Campo and filmed a small trestle. In the movie, you'll see the trestle, with a nice computer-generated 4-4-0 crossing it. Everything in that shot, except the train is Campo. If you'll look at the cover photo on Pacific Southwest Railway Museum's Facebook page, that is the train on the bridge. Scroll down quite a ways on that page, and you'll see a comparison of the Disney photo, and one that one of our people took at the same location.

In the same film sequence, you'll see a shot that appears to be taken from inside the coach, looking out the rear door, with the tracks going by. To film that, they mounted a camera on the rear of one of our cabooses, that we pulled behind our 80-ton GE center-cab. So, the scenery that you see our the door, is really Campo, CA, not Australia.

I can't say that Disney blew a lot of money at Campo, but they did make it worth our time.

You cannot believe a thing you see. Special effects are too expensive and animation is too good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbuzAV1TAYc

Touche

If you only knew how much LASTA got to dress up the 745 for the movie you wouldn't make such a comment. And the folks at LASTA got a big kick out of helping and watching the filming of the movie.

Later!
Mr. Ed

I have to wonder how the contract was worded. TVRM has had good success in dealing with production companies. Their contracts always stipulated that the equipment was to be returned in the condition that it was delivered in. Only issue I can recall was when the 4501 and Savannah and Atlantic caboose No. 252 were returned from filming for the movie "October Sky". They wanted the equipment lettered for the Norfolk and Western Railway so they applied "temporary" markings over the Southern Railway markings. The prop department had told us that the temporary markings could be removed with hot water. Not quite...we had entirely repaint the locomotive (which the production company paid for). We didn't even bother repainting the caboose.

Exactly. It's a fiction movie based on an old TV fiction show, and that's why rivet counting and whining about "historical" or "prototypical" inaccuracy is stupid since there's nothing in the movie that's meant to be "historical" or "prototypical" in the first place! If this were based on a real event or series of events (Andrew's raiders and the "General", for example) it would matter, but in this case it doesn't (especially given the target audience, who wouldn't notice or even care the way we would) so carping about it is pointless (not that those of us who have nothing better to do will care...).

No offense intended but this is one of the more er..goofy ( read paradoxical ) threads posted here. Must be a case of cabin fever. Thomas The Tank engine is ripe for analysis.
Then again, maybe there is a Yahoo group for historical Hollywood props.

As someone who has negotiated a movie contract or two for a railroad museum, I can say this:

Get an attorney involved, and make sure the movie company will indemnify you and pay for any damage they cause.

What David W. said, and also make sure you have people on-set and around your stuff to watch them at ALL times. Our antiques are simply props to the movie techs, and props are there to be used/altered as they see fit. Nick once told the story of discovering two lighting grips who were about to deck-saw a hole through the side of the Nebraska Zephyr to run power cables; this was "A League of Their Own" at IRM. You can bet there was plenty of yelling over that one!

RMNE's experience has been positive; we don't sweat the incorrect stuff the film people might come up with. Offer a suggestion if you want, don't be offended if they ignore it, and take the nice check and deposit it.

Howard P.

My question is how did they get NS to move 4501 and the train to the TVA site? Since this was after the end of the steam program.

Money talks, beggars walk.

Thankfully, Norfolk Southern, at that time, had several thousand active and working diesel locomotives. I'm sure they just used one or two of them to move the train to the filming location.

I can see your point, but one I would take from this, and some other threads, is that it is embarrassing to see a subject we care about as deeply as we do treated as poorly as it is by the entertainment business. It's doubly embarrassing when some silly stuff winds up costing north of $200 million smackers, but something that's more accurate either doesn't get made or gets made to where it either is done very cheaply, or worse, gets done with a lot of money and the thing still looks like it was done very cheaply!

Which brings to mind--how much would a decent railroad film run? This movie cost well over $200 million, and reportedly over $100 million was for the railroad sequences alone. That's a lot of money for any film, and of course we have to account for a lot of special effects work, a new railroad, stunts, computer animation, and all sorts of other things, but at the same time we shouldn't have to be limited to the estimated less-than-$500,000 cost of "The Station Agent." Given the right railroad locations (i.e., being able to work all on one line, as was done so many occasions on the Sierra Railway, and on the Oregon, Pacific & Eastern for "Emperor of the North Pole"), and a line with a decent collection of equipment either on site or available from somewhere, what could we do with a budget on the order of $30 million to $70 million or so? Could a locomotive or two or three even be restored for something like this? Hey, that would be only $3 million to $5 million, and on the high end, that would be only about 7% of the $70 million budget vs. the 40% plus that was spent by Disney on "The Lone Ranger."

Could the whole railroad prop business--locomotives, restored cars, fixed up stations, even finding a repair facility, and hopefully all of this on one road, like the Nevada Northern or the East Broad Top--actually be done for less than 10% or so of a $70 million budget?