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Re: Movie Madness



I just couldn't resist contributing to this
discussion.  I remember a movie
called "Runaway Train", starring John
Voigt.  It was filmed in Alaska, and one
of the problems the hero had to solve was
how to stop a runaway train.  For the sake of
dramatic effect, the story had our hero saying
that he had to get into the cab of one of the trailing
locomotives in order to stop the train, that he could
not stop the train from the lead locomotive.

That is, quite simply, wrong.  When diesel locomotives
are "MU'ed" (coupled together ["Multiple Unit"]) to pull a train,
a person can operate all the locomotives from *any* of them.
He could easily have stopped the train from *any* of the
locomotives, and would certainly have stayed right there
in the lead locomotive had he been a real engineer -- but,
then, where would the dramatic tension have come from?

Then there is "Under Siege 2 -- Dark Territory", starring
Steven Segal.  I enjoyed that move, but  it had a number
of glaring errors, which anyone who knows anything about
railroads can easily spot.  One of the most obvious, and
funniest, is when Segal's character opens a window in
the upper level of a Superliner-type car, in order to escape
from the bad guys.  First of all, it has been at least 70 years
since passenger cars were made with windows that open.
(I am not talking about the windows in the lower-level exit
doors on Superliners.)

Secondly, if a railroad passenger car has windows that open,
they open by being slid upwards, *not* by sliding them *sideways*,
like a sliding glass door, and those cars are *not* being used
on any Amtrak train I know of.   The older cars the SP used until 1985
for the San Francisco - San Jose commute service *did* have
windows that *used* to open, but even those were painted shut
long ago.

Passenger cars that were built in the 1940's, and after, had
double-pane windows, with air between them, and those are
kept in place by gaskets and metal strips that are screwed down.

The Segal movie also shows our hero running away from a train
that is in the process of rear-ending into the train he is on -- and he
actually is able to run fast enough to *outrun* the locomotive!!
Is that fantasy, or what?

I am also a railfan, and thus I notice it when movies contain errors
about trains.  I do not pretend to know everything about trains,
so some errors may escape me.

The above inaccuracies were done for dramatic effect, as I know, but
I still wish that the media would be more accurate in their depictions of
reality.  It is quite unfair to most people, who *will* get almost *all* of
their
knowledge about the past, adn about current events from movies and
television.  It is quite distressing to think that most people in this
country
read only one book a year, if that.  Our work as archivists is *definitely*
cut out for us!


Margaret Monroe
Un-official archivist for Caltrans toll bridge records

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