Prototypes

[rogertra]

Movie trains are worth a new seperate conversation .  Starting one.

Most movie trains are totally unprotypical as are those TV shows about trains.

You only have to have a little knowledges of the prototype to see how inaccurate they are.

Roger T.

[Trainman203]

White Heat and Danger Lights are spot on.  Recommended viewing.

[bbmiroku]

How do you mean inaccurate?  Set-pieces? Plot uses? Anachronisms?

[Terry Toenges]

I don't know if I would say "most" but a lot of them are.
There are only a few RR's whose equipment was used in so many movies and TV shows. The production people kept the painters busy on the train stuff, repainting and relettering for different road names.
Then there are the fake stacks and light shells that they kept around to make the locos look different. If there wasn't an old time loco available, they just put an old stack and light shell on a newer one. If you have a newer one 20 miles away and an older one that you'd like that's 200 miles away, sometimes it made more economic sense to back date the newer one and use it. The general public usually doesn't know the difference, only we train heads.
Sometimes the same loco might appear in a movie as two or three different ones with cosmetic changes.

[rogertra]

How do you mean inaccurate?  Set-pieces? Plot uses? Anachronisms?

All of the above.  Remember, in all movies and TV shows the plot, visuals and excitement come first, accuracy and detail come second.  So if the plot and the director say a train will uncouple and the front half has to run away ahead from the rear half, then so be it.  Automatic brakes?   Don't care.  The train breaking in half is more exciting.


Cheers.

Roger T.

[Terry Toenges]

In the Wild Wild West, they lettered a loco #8 so they could shoot a lot of footage and then they could turn the film backwards and run it also so they had twice as much stock footage they could use through out the series. That couldn't be done with any other number on the loco because the number would be backwards when they did that.

[bbmiroku]

Funny you should mention Wild Wild West.
     The Wanderer was 'played' by three different engines, two for the series and one for the movie.  The first engine (Sierra #3; 1891 [4-6-0]{renumbered 5}) was used only in the pilot episode, because it was built a decade or two after the show took place.  The same engine took part in Petticoat Junction, The Virginian, Back to the Future Part III, Unforgiven, The Lone Ranger (TV series), and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, just to name a few.
     The second engine, Inyo (1875 [4-4-0]), also played in an episode of Gunsmoke, and in the movies Union Pacific, Red River, and McLintock!, just to name some.
     The movie engine William Mason (1856 [4-4-0], played in Raintree County, Tuck Everlasting, and Gods & Generals among other titles.
     Funny enough, both the Inyo and the Mason  Would both work on The Great Locomotive Chase.

[RAM]

You mean pulling into LA behind a GG1 is not accurate.

[Trainman203]

Or the Reno pulling Amcans.  I've seen both on layouts. 😱😂