Tag Archives: China

Railroad Tigers 2016

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Well Go USA Entertainment

Happy Birthday, Hunny! Yep, this movie review coincides approximately with my wife’s 39th birthday and references tigers, her favorite carnivore and house pet.

The movie itself is rather thin on the tiger side, but chock full of kick railroad scenes pretty much throughout this picture. I had a heck of a time finding out about the locomotives used. After much googling, I came across this vague quote from Wiki: “The film had railway sequences shot in Diaobingshan using steam trains.”

Diaobingshan was the key. I soon discovered the nearby Tiefa Steam Locomotive Museum which has a whole fleet of similar looking locomotives. <– This last link is an absolutely outstanding look at operations from over 20 years ago (Many thanks to David Longman).

One more lick of trivia before we start reviewing. Check out the above back cover from my DVD. How did a U.S. built (Baldwin 1925), narrow gauge, Durango & Silverton K-36 class 2-8-2 #486, make it all the way to Diaobingshan? Slow boat to China? Nope. Cut & paste, and maybe they won’t notice. How about Flying Tigers?

Ding Hao!!

Here’s a REAL railroad tiger, posing with my glass-marbled crossbuck. Mister Tiger is the aforementioned house pet who spends most of his time napping on the living room couch (Lazy ass tiger…).

SY class 2-8-2 #9708 rounds a curve with an eclectic mix of rolling stock. I believe filmmakers were using 2 locomotives and just changing their numbers for different scenes or trains.

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Shanghai Express 1932

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Paramount Pictures

Like last month’s Union Depot 1932, I’d like to thank Danny at the Pre-Code.com blog for introducing me to yet another obscure train movie.

There are only two thespians I had previously heard of in this picture: Marlene Dietrich, of course, as Shanghai Lily and Eugene Pallette as Sam Salt. Mr. Pallette was almost instantly recognizable by his voice alone. Film goers may remember him as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 (“Give me back my mutton!“).

The real star of the show was Southern Pacific Railroad #2428, a P-3 class 4-6-2 Baldwin-built steam locomotive. I believe this was the same engine used to represent two different trains. Pulling out of Peiping (Peking), the engine is numbered 4234, then the “hostage train” is numbered 2428. To further complicate things, there are only Chinese characters in the number boards to reference, but at least the wheel arrangement matches.

Anyhoo, let’s take a look at Hollywood’s interpretation of Chinese rail transport during an ongoing civil war. Hen hao, xièxiè !

Fixing to leave Peiping, the engineer looks back for the highball. Cab side lettering reads “4234” in Chinese characters; Later on in the movie, the engine characters are switched to “2428”.

Here is a link to sister SP locomotive #2429 to see what our film’s 4-6-2 looks like without the set dressing.

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