Favorite Train Movies

[RAM]

Didn't you love that black oil smoke from Petticoat Junction's wood burner.

[SlimGauge]

Nobody has mentioned Breakheart Pass (1975) starring Charles Bronson.  One of the locations used was the Camas Prairie Railroad, Lewiston, Idaho, USA.

[grumpy]

How about Runaway Train with Eric Roberts and John Voight. (1985)
Don

[Santa Fe buff]

I love that movie, I already mentioned it, but still, good movie isn't it?

[Woody Elmore]

Tonight the movie "the Horse Soldiers", starring John Wayne and William Holden was on cable. In the movie, confederate soldiers come to town in a train to attack the Union column that has just arrived. The engine appeared to be V&T Reno or Inyo. The rebel soldiers jump out of box cars that had Betterndorf trucks with leaf springs (not too accurate for the Civil War era.)

[WGL]

 I just got a copy of Historic Rail catalog.  They offer the 1934 Pioneer Zephyr "Silver Streak," a modernistic design for its time.  Included is a DVD of the 1934 movie, "Silver Streak," which the ad says is "based on the record-setting 'Dawn to Dusk' dash of the Pioneer Zephyr on May 26, 1934."  The catalog also has a page of train movies available on DVDs.

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Didn't you love that black oil smoke from Petticoat Junction's wood burner.

Sure enough! 

[Yampa Bob]

The name "Hooterville Cannonball" is a hoot. (pardon the pun)  Perhaps back then the name had a different connotation.   

[pdlethbridge]

Ya, the three girls in the watertower

[Jhanecker2]

Entertaining show. Was that a spin off of Beverly Hillbillies or Green acres?

[Yampa Bob]

I think mostly Green Acres, these pages explain the connection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooterville_Cannonball

Beverly Hillbillies is mentioned in this one (Location)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooterville

Apparently all the shows were "Filmways" productions.

[Woody Elmore]

Paul Henning was the producer of "Green Acres." He then spun off "Petticoat Junction" from "Green Acres." One of the girls in the water tank was his daughter.

There were no spinoffs from the "Beverly Hillbillies" (thank goodness.)

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Paul Henning was the producer of "Green Acres." He then spun off "Petticoat Junction" from "Green Acres." One of the girls in the water tank was his daughter.

There were no spinoffs from the "Beverly Hillbillies" (thank goodness.)

Sorry to contradict you, Woody, but it went the other way 'round. "The Beverly Hillbillies" was Henning's first hit, and it was a huge hit when it debuted in the early 1960s.

Henning had wanted his friend, the actress Bea Benedaret (sp?) to play Granny in "Hillbillies," but it was decided she wasn't "scrawny" enough! Essentially he created "Petticoat Junction" for her. After "Petticoat" also became a hit, the network went to Henning and more or less told him to create another series, and the network would buy it without even seeing a pilot episode. That series was "Green Acres."

I got this information from a DVD set of the complete first season of "Petticoat" that I bought about six months ago. Each episode has an introduction by Linda Kaye Henning, Paul Henning's daughter, who played Betty Jo, the youngest of the three Bradley sisters and the only one of the three to stick with the series for its entire run.

Although the show was still doing well in the ratings, it was cancelled when the network changed its programing philosophy to try to draw in a younger, "hipper" audience.

[Woody Elmore]

I stand, err sit, corrected and am mortified. I think I'll go over to Pixlie and down my woes in a big root beer float.

[Yampa Bob]

I don't recall this being mentioned, but there was a brief train scene in "Good, Bad, and Ugly".  Eli Wallach put his handcuff chain on the rails, which was cut by a train's wheel.  He laid the fat guard on the other end between the rails.