'UNSTOPPABLE" movie out on Nov. 12

The 20th Century Fox film, "Unstoppable" - very loosely based on a CSX runaway in Ohio a few years back - opens in theaters on Nov. 12. Director Tony Scott's $100 million production stars Denzel Washington as a railroad engineer who stops an unmanned train carrying dangerous hazmat. It was filmed on location in Pennsylania using the Western New York & Pennsylvania line between Olean, NY and Emporium, the Nittany & Bald Eagle RR at Tyrone, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie and Allegheny Valley RR's in the greater Pittsburgh area.

I saw the preview trailer at the movies last night. Let's just say the movie seems as rediculous as, um, the movie about a huge gorilla climbing the empire state building.

My fave scene is when the train takes a turn, tips and travels sideways on one set of wheels/one rail then magically crashes down and re-aligns itself only to conitue on at 100mph. The whole train that is.

Totally absurd.

That's Hollywood! You go to the movies for entertainment, not to see something credible.
One of the most respected movie critics, Roger Ebert gave Unstoppable 3-1/2 stars. He liked it for what is is. A thriller.
I love Star Trek but I don't look for logic there either.
I am going to see Unstoppable, but I'm not going to look for accuracy or credibility. I'm just going to enjoy the action.

I'm also going to start up my Trainz TS2010 sim and see if I can actually "do" what is done to stop the train in the movie. I don't know how accurate the simulator is as far as physics go, but I would think it would take at least a dozen large locomotives to stop a 1/2 mile train that is moving at 70mph. That is, if it can be caught. Don't most freight locos have max speeds of about 70mph?
One might need an Amtrak Acela or other high speed loco to do the trick.

In any case, it might be an interesting thing to try on the simulator. but that is a subject for the simulators forum. I'll post there and see if anyone is going to try this trick.

FW

Anybody know what they did in Eldred Pa? I see that town on the ex-Erie Delaware Division is listed among the filming locations. Hope I recognize it when I see the movie

It's towards the end.

The guy in the pick up truck with the police detail drives down the bridge over the tracks just north of Eldred (where the siding begins). I think it's called North Eldred.

You can clearly see the road sign that says "Eldred 1. Port Allegany 19."

I recognized Emporium.

When the two awful railroad employees try to jump on the train and they hit a signal is Port Allegany.

So what "railroad" movies are even slightly credible. I'll nominate "Danger Lights" from 1930. Filmed in Montana on the Milwaukee Pacific extension - basically in Miles City, Sixteen Mile Canyon, and some final scenes in Chicago. I believe you can download a free copy (possibly from You Tube?) Any others out there?

Bob Barrows

The scene in which the pickup drives down a bridge ramp that is desceibed in the above post was filmed at South Eldred.

I read somewhere that even though Denzel and others were at the control stand, that there was still a qualified pilot out of sight, running the locos on the respective lines. One even said that a Qualified was actually running the loco by remote from out of sight of the camera. Yes/no???

The scenes showing Denzel Washington and Chris Pine in the cab of 1206 were shot in a piece of movie apparatus that is called in Hollywood parlance, a "buck". It was actually a former SD-40 that had been gutted of its prime mover and adapted with removable side extensions that allowed the camera crew to circle the cab on a 360 degree arc. There was a tunnel cut behind the cap to allow the camera to do that. The former space for the primer mover was an air conditioned office for the technicians and a spot for an auxiliary power system to operate the lighting and cameras. Although the control stand was original, it wasn't connected to anything and Denzel never did any running. The buck was pushed along by an SD-40 (also numbered 1206) that was operated by a licensed engineer and a qualified conductor. You never see this in the film.

The GE 4400 hp units on the "runaway" were operated by a licensed engineer riding in the nose and using an RCL belt-pack. The conductor on this train was also riding out of sight.

blabey wrote:The scenes showing Denzel Washington and Chris Pine in the cab of 1206 were shot in a piece of movie apparatus that is called in Hollywood parlance, a "buck". It was actually a former SD-40 that had been gutted of its prime mover and adapted with removable side extensions that allowed the camera crew to circle the cab on a 360 degree arc. There was a tunnel cut behind the cap to allow the camera to do that. The former space for the primer mover was an air conditioned office for the technicians and a spot for an auxiliary power system to operate the lighting and cameras. Although the control stand was original, it wasn't connected to anything and Denzel never did any running. The buck was pushed along by an SD-40 (also numbered 1206) that was operated by a licensed engineer and a qualified conductor. You never see this in the film.

The GE 4400 hp units on the "runaway" were operated by a licensed engineer riding in the nose and using an RCL belt-pack. The conductor on this train was also riding out of sight.

Now I see. A Tom Habak photo:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 77&nseq=10

I saw the movie the day after it came out and have been debating whether I wanted to post anything about the silliest parts of the movie. There were so many of them I thought I might get overwhelmed, but I'll just post two of them here.
1) When Denzel goes into the hole at the 'RIP' track (in the middle of nowhere...) and the last car of his overlong train gets hit by the runaway. I thought that boxcar exploded like it was made from plywood. Oh, maybe it was...... That would've been game over, obviously, and would have derailed most of the cars on both trains in real life.

2) The 'news' choppers flying at cab level through heavy forest and not hitting any trees or wires.

One other thing I've been thinking about was that after they cleared the '15 mph' curve while miraculously staying on the rails, how did the train speed up again after Denzel applied the handbrakes on some of the cars? Would the brake pads have burned away after being applied at 45 mph, leaving massive flat spots on the wheels? If so, how could those cars stay on the rails with those huge flat spots?

The "boxcar" was a movie prop made of wood and fiberglass. It was designed not to give serious resistance to the 777. CP wouldn't have liked it if Fox really derailed and smashed up their $2 million GE's.

Hey, this is Hollywood, where "28 year "veteran" engineers step on rails and tell the dispatcher they have a 5,000 "horses" when any "veteran" engineer should know his power has 3000 hp. And what about unorthodox radio procedure to say the least, or the lack of a call for "three step protection" when Chris Pine goes between the cars to couple up, or the dispatcher mentioning the "northbound main" when it's a single track line. Should I go on.

The fact is the general public won't catch any of this. "Unstoppable" isn't a railroad documentary - it's an exciting movie thriller that I found to be genuinely entertaining (and well acted to boot). Take it for what it is and have fun.

I too saw the movie the day it came out. Very entertaining. Just wondering if a train can run away by itself the way it was depicted in the film, and throttle up to notch 8, unmanned?
EPS

Yes, a runaway could, and did start in the way described in the movie.

The script for "Unstoppable" is loosely (very loosely) based on an incident that occurred in CSX's Stanley Yard, Walbridge, OH on May 15, 2001. The engineer of SSD-45-2 No. 8888 (think 777 in the movie) left his cab to throw a trailing point switch. Before dismounting, he erroneously thought he had set the unit in dynamic braking mode and set the throttle to run 8. The train air had not bee hooked up while switching, but the engineer applied his independent (i.e locomotive) brakes to slow his 47 car train. After throwing the trailing point switch, the engineer was unable to remount and slipped and fell. His train accelerated out through the yard and out on the main without anyone aboard.

The railroad tried several strategies to stop the runaway. Incidents in the movie involving derailers, and the decision to try and shoot at the fuel cutoff are real. Both were unsuccessful. In the end, CSX dispatchers lined up another locomotive that went out behind the runaway - caught up with it...coupled...and slowed it down to 10 mph a speed. At that speed, a Trainmaster was able to hop on at a grade crossing and shut the unit down.

Obviously the rollover, the antics showing Denzel running along the tops of the cars...and the near derailment on a curved bridge are just Hollywood "additions" to make the movie more entertaining. The "real thing" ended with a wimper - not a bang.

Could somebody who's going to watch it (again) please look at the switch that the train was going to run through at the beginning? It *sure* looked to me like the switch was aligned correctly. Maybe it was just an artifact of cutting from one scene to another, and I thought the train was on a different track.