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Re: Movie Madness



As I remember "Runaway Train", they had to get to the lead locomotive and
the problem was an old A-unit (no outside walkways) with a front access
hatch (sorry about the terminology) jammed shut after an accident. As
escaped convicts they chose to hide in a trailing locomotive, since they
might have been discovered by the engineer if they had been in the lead
locomotive. (for those who haven't seen it, the "train" was a lashup of
locomotives being moved when the engineer had a heart attack.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Margaret  Monroe
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?

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