Tag Archives: Pennsy

Project Phoenix 1972

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Universal Studios

Banacek! George Peppard stars in this NBC Wednesday Night Mystery Movie. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” fans will remember him as the courtesan to Patricia Neal and companion of Audrey Hepburn.

This train-laced movie (both prototype and model) features 4 character actors from Star Trek TOS and Batman 1966 and includes overhead (helicopter) scenes of railroads in Boston, Massachusetts.

Banacek is brought in when an expensive, experimental sports car vanishes from a non-stop freight train. The solution to the mystery is so preposterous, you just HAVE to come along for the ride (no pun intended). Let’s roll…

Would you believe an Atlas O scale (two rail) Great Northern, Big Sky Blue box car is a key exhibit in explaining how they done it? Read on…

42 years later, this is what Big Sky Blue fades to, in Sandpoint, Idaho.

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At This Moment 1954

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The Jam Handy Organization for
Westinghouse Air Brake Company
(Jim Handy to the rescue!)

Inspector Luger! Yep, I actually recognize someone in this industry featurette. Good old James Gregory appears in this corny, railroad worker documentary. Corny yes, but great scenes of first generation diesels and passenger/freight trains from the post-World War 2 heyday of American Railroads.

Long before the days of FedEx, UPS and Amazon, practically EVERYTHING used in the American home and business got there by rail. This message is beaten into the viewer continuously. Our story takes place in a railroad beanery called “Scotty’s”, just up the street from the depot. A stranger has arrived and is pumping the locals for information, about just what it is, that makes a railroad go.

I plan to overlook most of the hyperbole and just concentrate on the kick color views of trains. Sound good, Inspector?

Mr. Gregory was a great character actor “curmudgeon” from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Here we see him as Inspector Frank Luger in Barney Miller and the diabolical Doctor Tristan Adams in Star Trek’s “Dagger of the Mind“. Is that a great, smirking countenance, or what?

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Across the Bridge 1957

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The Rank Organization

Carl Schaffner (played by Rod Steiger) is a British financier in New York City who is into his company for about $9 million. As details emerge of his embezzlement, Rod/Carl decides to take it on the lam. Thus, he heads down to Pennsylvania Station taking a sleeper on the first train to Texas and eventually Mexico.

Interestingly enough, the Pennsylvania Railroad had a train, the Penn Texas, which ran from New York to St. Louis, MO with connecting sleepers on the Missouri Pacific to Dallas, TX and from there on the Texas and Pacific (a Mopac subsidiary) to El Paso, TX.

This being a British film, most of the interiors were shot in Shepperton Studios with exteriors of American railroad scenes (mostly in the dark) thrown in for good measure.

Train scenes are only present for 20 minutes, but it was enjoyable to hunt down pictures and identify the locomotives shown. Let’s get onboard with shyster Schaffner as he makes a run for it.

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The Pullman Porter has his suspicions about the cranky old guy in Bedroom C.

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The Greatest Show on Earth 1952

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Paramount Pictures

The circus traveled by rail as demonstrated in Cecil B. DeMille’s Technicolor masterpiece of 1952. Winning the Oscar for Best Picture, this is the film that made Charlton Heston a star.

For this review, I concentrated on circus scenes that had trains in the background. Some highlights include an Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) steam locomotive and caboose, a Pennsy GG-1 electric and a elaborately-detailed scale model of the two circus trains.

Our review begins 19 minutes into the movie as the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (RBandB&B) prepares to leave its Winter Quarters in Sarasota, Florida.

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It took hundreds, if not thousands of people to operate the circus. As wagons of equipment are loaded piggyback-style on the left, performers and support staff prepare to board the passenger train on the right.

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