Unstoppable

[Cody J]

The movie Unstoppable about a runaway train is filming not too far from my home in Martins Ferry, Ohio. It had been filming in Belliare, Ohio which is also close to my home. Being only 13 years old and my brother (who is a railfan) being away at OSU in Columbus I had no way to go see the train. Does anyone know if they are using the train in Martins Ferry and when filming will end in Ferry?

Thanks,
Cody

[Chessie Sys. 3022]

The movie is using several Wheeling Lake Erie SD40-2s and Canadian Pacific AC4400s. They are painted in4 varieties of schemes, and are all lettered for AWVR (Atlantic & West Virginia). The trains are made up of rolling stock all done with fictitious lettering and reporting marks, and weathered by the hollywood crews.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/modelthumbs.aspx?id=AWVR

[Cody J]

Thanks but are they filming the train in Ferry?

Cody

[Chessie Sys. 3022]

A lot of it was filmed along the W&LE mainline through Olean, New York.

[jward]

the wheeling doesn't go to new york. did you mean the new york & lake erie? they also were filming on the nittany & bald eagle out of tyrone, pa.....

[jward]

were you able to catch them filming in martins ferry wednesday afternoon?

i had a delivery to lollini brick, and accidentally drove my truck through the area they were filming. i was told that they stored the trains at rayland when they weren't using them.

[Cody J]

were you able to catch them filming in martins ferry wednesday afternoon?

I didn't drive up to Martins Ferry on wednesday. On thursday my mom didn't work so she picked me up from school and we went up to Ferry. My mom works with a lady that lives near the filming site and she said that the crew goes on lunch break from 11-3.
When I was driving North on State Route 7 I saw a headlight on the WLE tracks and figured it was the train. I saw many cars but houses were blocking the loco. Farther down near Hanover Street we turned left and into the Marathon gas station. There was also a Mattress USA store there. My mom went in and looked at Mattresses and I went down to see what was going on. I saw the train approx 100 yards from where I was. The lead unit was 777 with 767 behind it. I did not want to get any closer of fear of getting my camera taken away. So after taking a couple shots I went and joined my mom in Mattress USA where we looked at Mattresses for a few minutes. We then left and started heading for the car when we heard a train horn so we rushed down to the tracks and saw the train heading towards us. The train passed us at between 50 and 60 mph. 777, the lead unit had some sort of contraption on the engineers side for filming. The train had an SD40-2 pushing with another filming contraption on the side.

It was a great day.
Cody

[rich1998]

i am wondering on how much hollywood will change what happened?
years ago in reader's digest i read the story about how the engineer and conductor in their loco went after the wayward freight and caught up with it. they had to go over the safe speed for a single loco not pulling anything to catch up.
lex

[jward]

there was a similar incident on the b&m back in the 1980s. guilford had just taken over and leased the railroad to springfield terminal. the regular employees went on strikke and the line was being run by new hires.

a yard crew accidentally let a cut of cars get away from them, easy to do when kicking cars in the yard. instead of reporting the runaway, they chased it down the mainline, where it had hit a train headon. they then plowed into the wreckage......

i have a good feeling about this movie. if they've taken the time to get the details right on the props, details only a railroader would notice like plain black cars with awvr reporting marks, then the rest of it is probably as well researched. awvr by the way is the name of fictional railroad in the movie.