Tag Archives: World War 2

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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Loaded For War 1944

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Santa Fe Telefilm Recording

Wow, early first generation diesels star alongside Santa Fe Railway’s magnificent fleet of steam locomotives in this color film showing the AT&SF was doing its bit to help win World War 2.

As a vital link to the Pacific Theater, Santa Fe received the lion’s share of EMD FT diesel locomotives built before and during the war.

Let’s take a look at how one railroad hauled military, freight and passengers along with all the facilities needed to keep the system going. Santa Fe, All the Way!

An EMC E6 locomotive gets its slant nose scrubbed down as a Baldwin 4-6-4 backs up alongside; a 4 unit set of EMD FT’s pulls past a very smoky iron horse.

GM’s Electro-Motive Division designed the famous red and silver “Warbonnet” paint scheme as well as the more somber, but still classy blue and yellow for the freight FT’s.

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The Train 1964

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United Artists

While not particularly OBSCURE, (Trains Magazine rated it the #1 greatest railroad film, evah), this black & white MOVIE is chock full of TRAINS from start to finish. So, two out of three ain’t bad.

Mind you, it’s a foreign film, which I usually don’t review, but The Train features so many explosions, spectacular derailments and is steam locomotive-propelled throughout, I just couldn’t pass it up.

Burt Lancaster, American accent intact, stars as the engine driver Labiche (pronounced Labeesh) — more about his funny last name later.

So come on, all you World War 2 buffs, let’s check out how the railway workers of the French Resistance take on the Germans in this gritty, over-exposed iron horse opera.

Colonel Franz Von Waldheim (played by Paul Scofield) is the art connoisseur who has looted a trainload of paintings from the Musee du Jeu de Paume and intends to take it back to Germany for ransom (“enough to equip 10 panzer divisions”).

How come English stage actors seem to make the most sinister and convincing stiff-arm saluting German officers?

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