I omitted it from my original reply, but...



I often see the criticism that "Hollywood" doesn't know or understand railroading. It's the other way around. The "mistakes" we often observe are deliberate choices made for perfectly rational creative or narrative reasons. Surely no one here watches the tug-of-war in Danger Lights and clutches their pearls. No one is claiming Unstoppable is high art or akin to Schindler's List. Just because someone is a music lover, or even an expert musician, does not mean that they should walk into an opera house and lambast a soprano because it's not their cup of tea. It doesn't all have to be your bag.

Of course, none of this deliberate "artistic expression" explains away the CGI boxcars of questionable European origin in the recent episodes of 1923, though.........Must have been the low bidder in the visual effects house. I see them get a lot of stuff right and a lot of stuff not right. Same goes for any industry. It is, after all, make believe. Let's not be too precious, especially since Unstoppable ain't a documentary, either.



This hope take lots of typically well-paying work away from regional and heritage railroads in the process. Bummer. The railroads, tourist lines, etc I've worked with easily see a quarter million, half million, or several million or more paid out in a short order for film work. As I'm sure Mr. Gresham can attest, the productions that can afford to do this work aren't fly-by-night operations and are just as practiced craftspeople as the ones we laud in backshops.

Of course, the way that most major production work is going, on-location work with practical trains is out of the question for many shows. Even the most recent production I was involved in questioned whether their 5-minute railroad action scene was needed because of the dollar signs involved, which is to say no cow is too sacred regardless of who the director or studio is. More YouTube content creators can afford to crash and bash trains than most film companies. Given the intended audiences, I'm not sure I like the implication...



It was a criminal act, and the director went to jail, but it's not exactly accurate to paint a broad stroke with this one. This was not a major production by any means and more akin to a wedding photographer "stealing" a shot on railroad property than a full-on company moving onto a location. The only acceptable outcome from this was how the crew person's death increased industry-wide focus on film set safety overall.

Many years ago I was involved with a movie shoot on a short line. We weren't asked to do anything that would violate a rule or regulation. The director filmed the same scene over and over, into the night, at which point I had to tell the producer we would have to start watching our hours of service. He found that a convenient reason to tell the director to wrap it up.

I had a very peripheral experience with a big production that needed to film a scene on a class one railroad. One of the producers confided to me that he was more nervous about the train scene than anything else they had shot, simply because he knew the railroad would control what could or couldn't be done, and there was no amount of money they could pay that would make them an important customer.

The same production had a very exacting art department that wanted to make sure the studio mock-ups looked like real passenger cars, down to the smallest detail. They borrowed some hardware from us and later asked for help in reproducing a correct handbrake for a scene on an open platform observation car. We happily cut a handbrake off of a junk car and gave it to them if they promised not to send it back.

- Alan Maples

Later.

For those annoyed with the wrong terminology etc, they're movies, not documentaries!
I was involved with the movie "Runaway Train", we supplied the F unit. The producer asked me what I'd do in the situation. I replied "I'd hit that bright red emergency engine shutdown switch, and I'd dump the airbrakes ". "But what if the brakes have burned off from being under load?" "The PCS switches would still kill the power when it dumps". He replied "Well, that certainly wouldn't make for much of a movie, now would it?"

Orrville Railroad Heritage Society supplied coaches for "Unstoppable". We had our mechanical crew on site the entire time and everything concerning our cars was by the book. It was a good experience overall - catering was most excellent, too. We did have to keep an eye on the film crew so as not to sneak in any unapproved alterations to the cars.

FWIW, every rail operation I talked to directly or indirectly associated with "Unstoppable" was financially compensated to the point they weren't complaining, even if some of us in the preservation/enthusiast side may have been rather appalled. I couldn't believe that they got away with what they did, not necessarily safety related if nothing but image. The end scene on blowing up the derailing locomotive on a fireball was done with a very accurate full sized plywood model and a lot of pyrotechnics, one take.

Going back MANY years to like 1994 (edit: nuts, it was 2/23/2000), I was approached by the Robbie Knievel group that they wanted to motorcycle jump over top of UP 844(4). They insisted, I talked to Steve Lee to get the appropriate level of "oh H@)) no" as would be expected. I suggested they talk to Texas State RR instead as they were comfortable with movie guys, and the rest is history. That's the most insane thing I've been involved in like that, even if that's not in 49CFR Motorcycle Jump over Moving Train regulations.

With regard to Hollywood, that's an interesting take, except I never said they don't institutionally understand railroading. The average "journalist" doesn't understand railroads, but Tony Scott as the director made Unstoppable with absolute and total disregard not only to reality but to remote plausibility.

I'm all for creativity in the realm of fantasy. This was represented as being based on a true story-and from the get go it was just stupid-beginning with the magic throttle notching itself up. Flying cars in The Jetsons was a cartoon. The portrayal of current vehicles engaged in controlled flight is just dumb-but everybody would know it. That film preyed upon viewer ignorance to create cardboard cutout heroes and villains.

There's also no amount of condescending protests from cinematographers and movie foamers that's going to get me to believe that this film is a gnostic work of art (high or low) that I simply don't understand or appreciate.

Worse, the idiotic portrayals of trains have real world consequences. This summer will mark the 30th anniversary of the fatal accident involved two brothers, their ATV's lodged between tracks and a Steamtown train. During the subsequent litigation, now deceased witnesses noted how the question came up about why the train was not subjected to an emergency application. Too many movies have portrayed trains requiring an urgent stop zooming in on an engineer slamming the handle over and then zooming in on wheels abruptly stopping, sliding and throwing a shower of sparks. The average person has no idea about the marginal benefit of an uncontrolled, immediate emergency application and the potential to injure passengers, create flat spots, buff forces and slack action, etc.

As for my wishes about CGI, they are irrelevant to the likely displacement of physical action. CGI is already capable of rendering images that nearly indistinguishable to the human eye, and the growth of computing power and incorporation of AI are going to erase the small remaining differences. The ultimate reason will be cost. On a vacation in 1993, I saw artists working on individual cells for then upcoming summer blockbuster The Lion King and we were told then that it was likely to be the last film made in that manner. The days of armies of animation artists having to laboriously create thousands of individual hand-drawn images to produce even a short, let alone a feature length animation film are over.

As to CGI displacement, I don't know how many lines make substantial or recurring revenues from films, but they best plan on the end of what I suspect are irregular windfalls. If a scene can be rendered without the elaborate planning, involvement of casts and risk involved in the production of live action shots, it IS going to happen.

Interesting thread. And timely for me as I was thinking about this after recently watching the Marvel TV series Echo which has a long action sequence of the main character running around (and under) a fast moving train. I'm pretty sure it was all CGI but I was still a little surprised to see it given the potential for copycats etc.

RE CGI train fights.

Compare the actual train chase with river pheonix in indiana jones 3 , to the CGI fight on top of a train with the Hannibal actor , in the (hopefully) last indiana jones film.
While the physics was technically correct, One would still recognize that the first, he was actually on a moving train, and the second, they were in a room, somewhere.

I am aware about special effects and CGI. I once thought of a relatively simple effect that could be used to show someone running across the railroad track with a train flying straight towards them in perfect safety. When the opportunity arose I decided to try this effect myself. It was fairly straightforward, the Amtrak Vermont ran in push pull mode with two locomotives at either end and as it was leaving the station I ran backwards across the track. When you reverse the video of someone running backwards across the track with the train departing you now have a video of somebody running forward across the track as the train is arriving. Needless to say there were a bunch of people who were not amused at my video.

My all time favorite, that is at least moderately accurate, remains "emperor of the North" (Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine) and the railroad stunts in that were both absurdly dangerous and pretty accurate, especially on throwing the train into emergency, greasing the rails, riding the rods, geez. When the fireman crashes into the backhead and gets burned, you feel it.

You actually don't have to break reality to make a really, really good train movie. and just a good movie of the depression era as well.

I still get chills watching that hobo get caught under the train.

And this "financial compensation" came out of the pocket of taxpayers. In any case, the whole affair reminds me of a joke involving an exchange between a man and a woman:

Man: Would you share your female charms with me for a million dollars?

Woman: Sure.

Man: Would you share your female charms with me for $500K

Woman: I guess.

Man: How about fifty bucks?

Woman: (Indignant) Absolutely not, what do you think I am?

Man. I think we've established what you are, at this point we're just fixing a price.


While the same individuals may not be involved; this board as a community has in the past 25 years complained about painting things into non-historic or imaginary schemes (you should have seen the uproar when Steamtown magnetically affixed "Lionel Lines" on the Baldwin 26 in the late 90's or when Milw Road 261 was relettered Lackawanna 1661 thirty years ago.

If you are a 501(c)(3); I guarantee your exempt mission is under the banner of education. And while the IRS won't visit you for lending out your stuff for Hollywood Hush money, you have no right to complain about fictitious paint schemes, coal to oil conversions or using a 12-251 prime mover in a locomotive originally fitted with a 16-244 or any other historicity lament that's seen the light of day on this board or other venues.