MOVIE: "The Happening" scenes on SEPTA

100% Certain. Had the tell tale paint lines on the concrete walls and portal details

Ah. Okay. So, they had the train on the Trenton Cutoff, West Chester Line, and then more shots coming out of the Portal? Talk about $$$.

I'm still ticked off when they showed the AEM and Amfleets as the train. It is quite obvious with the pantograph on the locomotive and the rounded shape of the cars.

I'm still ticked off when they showed the AEM and Amfleets as the train. It is quite obvious with the pantograph on the locomotive and the rounded shape of the cars.

If they're going to pay for the chopper they should have just shot the RL+comets on the Septa main line. They totally could have done this on a Sunday when Septa is on a skeleton schedule. The diesel was BLUE for gods sake.

Not to mention how it was 4 tracks over concrete ties with the AEM , and then Filbert is a single track just teeming with weeds in the middle of nowhere. Poor script supervision.

Talk about $$$

I wonder how much Septa charged them for all of that.

ChemiosMurphy wrote:Just got back from seeing it. horrible movie and such forced dialogue... But anyways.. Here's what I noticed

-It was strange to see the consist popping out of the CCCT on the Reading end...
-They didn't arrive at Harrisburg, yet ended up in the middle of the state.

That's all I have...

Yes, I knew Keystone route tracks had fallen into disrepair before the recent work, but that long grass on a single track line (West Chester Branch ?) which was supposed to be the Main Line west had me scratching my head. Why couldn't the train proceed? No signals? All the conductor said was they lost contact..with everyone,

Tell me about it. And if it's between life or death, you'd think the engineer and conductor would keep going. I think that would be even more incentive to keep going, if everyone at dispatch just vanished. Such a crappy movie...

Heres the situation. You're a train engineer. You're operating a train leaving Philadelphia. Reports from New York are, people are killing themselves for no apparent reason. Then, people in Philadelphia start killing themselves. You get to an area north of Harrisburg. All the sudden, you loose communications with the RROC. Do you,

A) Stop the train, and tell people to start walking
or
B) Keep going, until you're not able to get any further?

I'd go with B, thanks.

sixroute wrote:Yes, I knew Keystone route tracks had fallen into disrepair before the recent work, but that long grass on a single track line (West Chester Branch ?) which was supposed to be the Main Line west had me scratching my head. Why couldn't the train proceed? No signals? All the conductor said was they lost contact..with everyone,

Don't you see what's going on here? Obviously the autorouter didn't pull up the signal, so they had to wait thousands of feet in advance of the home board because there's no distant signal or meaningful signal aspect, and they couldn't get in touch with anybody at the RROC because it was change-of-shift!

While I think that railfan nitpicking at the movies can be sort of annoying, I have to admit that the very obvious patching together of various equipment and routes sort of prevented me from getting pulled in. A diesel pulling a push-pull out of a SEPTA tunnel I can handle, but the use of a SEPTA interior on an Amtrak train, and the switching of the train between SEPTA push-pulls and Amtrak amfleets certainly threw off railfans and non-railfans alike.

TheOneCalledA1 wrote:Heres the situation. You're a train engineer. You're operating a train leaving Philadelphia. Reports from New York are, people are killing themselves for no apparent reason. Then, people in Philadelphia start killing themselves. You get to an area north of Harrisburg. All the sudden, you loose communications with the RROC. Do you,

A) Stop the train, and tell people to start walking
or
B) Keep going, until you're not able to get any further?

I'd go with B, thanks.

Ah, but aren't you scared a suicidal engineer will crash head-on into your train?

As long as the train is on Septa tracks, this thread is on topic.

But as soon as the suicidal engineer takes it off onto NS/CSX or Amtrak, this thread's gotta end.

AlexC wrote:As long as the train is on Septa tracks, this thread is on topic.

But as soon as the suicidal engineer takes it off onto NS/CSX or Amtrak, this thread's gotta end.

I know this might get slightly off-topic, but please don't lock this thread. This movie is a dream for railfans who love to point out minor inconsistencies in movies; which, last I checked, was all of us ... so I think we should give this one a chance.

yes different drugs these holiwood producers are taking these days...

ChemiosMurphy wrote:Unreal. That's just unreal that no one on set would notice that. I'm a film major at Drexel and my professors would RIP into me if something like that got on screen. The script supervisor didn't do their job

Check out the U.S. flag in the opening scene of Wind Talkers....

Anyway, at the risk of veering away from The Happening, does anyone else remember SEPTA equipment in the following:

> 2 commercials, one with a Silverliner and another with an 80-series Brill car coated in blue plastic running along Delaware Ave

> Taps, filmed at Valley Forge Military Academy, with a Silverliner going across the bridge at North Wayne Ave.

JeffK wrote:

ChemiosMurphy wrote:Unreal. That's just unreal that no one on set would notice that. I'm a film major at Drexel and my professors would RIP into me if something like that got on screen. The script supervisor didn't do their job

Check out the U.S. flag in the opening scene of Wind Talkers....

Anyway, at the risk of veering away from The Happening, does anyone else remember SEPTA equipment in the following:

> 2 commercials, one with a Silverliner and another with an 80-series Brill car coated in blue plastic running along Delaware Ave

> Taps, filmed at Valley Forge Military Academy, with a Silverliner going across the bridge at North Wayne Ave.

I liked Taps especially since I am from Wayne. The Silverliner crossing N Wayne Av was neat to see on the big screen. I don't remember the commercial with the blue Red Arrow car, although I did see a picture of it somewhere. They still had the PST co lettering on it. Don't know why they made it blue.

The Brill car was coated with some kind of rubbery spray-on that formed a pole-to-truck coating but didn't actually bond to the car itself. Although, I remember riding the car a couple of times the next summer and still seeing bits of blue flakes in some joints and crevices on the body. BVT rented the car because the producers handed them a decent chunk of change in return. I think the "rationale" for turning it blue was to give some kind of a surrealistic/futuristic feel to the commercial, but it fell pretty flat for anyone who knew just what was under the goo.

Re Taps, I too grew up in Wayne and actually taught for a short while (very long ago) at the small and often overlooked college associated with the military academy. Pretty neat to see so many places where I lived and/or worked.

Speaking of being futuristic, the flag in the opening scene Wind Talkers (WW2) has 50 stars.