Passenger Trains > "Earthquake" Chases Cheesy Model Train

The much hyped "10.5" train wreck, featured a 4 or 5 plastic superliner (Phase VIII? LOL)consist, pulled by a hood unit.
THe speeding train near "Redding" was chased (and eventually swallowed) by an earthqake fault which conveniently followed right up the middle of the roadbed like one of those underground giant worms movies.

And it stopped only after swallowing the train! Don't wait for the video. Hate it now.....
trw

It was very convient that the tracks followed the fault and that the trench stopped as soon as the locomotive was swallowed. The traks looked like they had not had a train on it in ages. Bad models.

Looks like I need to speculate in some ocean front property in arizona.:)

Also, this obviously supports UPs assertions of the burden that Amtrak imposses, as soon as it fell into the earth everything stopped going wrong in the area!

Tongue in cheek
Greg

DId you also note the news broadcasters were referring to it on their monitors as a "Commuter Train"?

O, wait, that kind of accuracy of train reporting was not fictional.

Darn the luck! only a few more car links and they would have made it!

Looks like the Baby Bullet Train California was talking about,
Must have been doing 100 on a 40 curve on a 3rd class rail!
No code line so either Dark Territory
(Like in under siege 2 Ha ha ha!)
or CTC with buried fiber
Also another rules violation no markers on the rear!

Nice to see the Dash-8s getting some road work!

> like one of those underground giant worms movies<

Is it a coincidence that Fred Ward from the Tremors underground killer worms movies is in this one?!

THATS IT!! the #35 wana be was swallowed by a GRABOYD!!!!!!!!

Hey didn’t I just hear John Schniders daughter say Pee? It’s the family hour!
Where is the FCC!

If they put 2 Dash-8s and 10 more cars, then it'd be the Coast Starlight. Wonder what the number was on that Dash-8 anyway! ;-p

And since when does Amtrak (or Ontrack or whatever they called it) show up at Redding during the day? Must have been really late Starlight.

The "train" literally took that 40mph curve at 120, and did you notice it was "50 miles east of Redding?" Must have been detouring over the Susanville sub. hey the track looked like it(FRA excepted track to be sure).

Also, the horn was blowing madlessly, like it was going thru 5 or 6 road crossings in a row!, and the train was out in the middle of freaking nowhere. The horn did sound authentic though.

DL

I posted that it looked like a #35 wana be.
With the background it looked more like a #25 wana be.
(but did they ever run Dash-8s on the Pioneer?)
Must have been blowing to get all the trespassing animals off the track.
I fell asleep durring the San Francisco Earthquake segment.
Did I miss any other "LOL" train moments?
Any more "Graboyds" swallow Bart, Caltrain, ACE or Amtrak California?

I normally don't watch stuff like this, but I couldn't resist tuning in to watch the Space Needle fall over (which is apparently the only important thing in Seattle - the rest of us having presumably perished quietly) and stayed for the ill-fated choo-choo incident. I found it interesting that people were still able to get around by air so easily. Our last big quake shut down both airports (one's tower fell over, the others runway caved in)

And maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like my disaster films to have loads of has-been stars in cameo roles (like the old Irwin Allen films) If they had shown say, Dionne Warwick and Angie Dickenson boarding the train with a quake-time shot of them getting jostled around a bit and looking concerned, I would have been much happier ;-)

I agree with all points, and also have a suggestion on why the track looked so terribly unused. Had this scenario actually occured, such violent ground movement can "sift" what's on top of the soil, so that even ballast might fall through the track bed, depending on several technical factors, none of which I'm qualified to go into here. But that's just one idea.

I was wondering what the scale of the models were used for the sequence. But paying careful attention to what was depicted, I got the impression it was more computer graphics than models, which throw's that question right out the door.

I was also surprised at the lack of interior shots and people aboard, and also noted the destruction of San Francisco wasn't shown at all (except for after-effects). Only the Golden Gate bridge collapsing. Having visited the area several times, I had to wonder: what about the Bay Bridge to Oakland? What about Oakland itself? Richmond? San Jose? A 9+ quake would affect all of those, would it not? Maybe even Sacramento?

Speaking of quake range, how about Tacoma and Spokane? Would an 8+ quake in that region, how far would such a damage range extend?

Tonight, they use Lex Luthor's idea from the first Superman movie to explode a nuclear device in the fault to destroy California. In a twist, this new film will attempt, however, to seal the fault shut. If that fails...

Now, the question becomes what if a 10.5 hits the region? What would the damage area be? Obviously all of Greater L.A. But what about Las Vegas? Hoover Dam? San Diego? And could the thing blow south toward Mexico City? Frightening as this scenario may be, it's at least interesting to me that NBC showed some real scientists watching the movie, and there were great shots of laughter as things obvious to them were in the dialogue, things which were stupid and outrageously WRONG, which could NEVER happen! Evidently this was more of a comedy to them than a disaster movie.

Any comments on the rail issues? What did they call the train? "Ontrak"? Oh, brother. I actually laughed at that one...

Hi there,

I only caught a few minutes of the movie. I hated all the zoom in and zoom outs. They would switch the camera to who was speaking, do a lot of zoom ins, a few zoom outs. They would zoom in so close they made the face huge. I can't believe NBC would make something like that. I'm up in Alaska and the news was on after the movie, they had a story on the news, the write was from Alaska.

> I was wondering what the scale of the models were
> used for the sequence. But paying careful
> attention to what was depicted, I got the
> impression it was more computer graphics than
> models, which throw's that question right out the
> door.
>

Looked like O scale to me.

"10.5" -- Funniest NBC since Seinfeld
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earthquake epic '10.5' presents a choice: Either run screaming or pass the beer and savor a camp classic
Tim Goodman
Friday, April 30, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/30/DDG036CKMQ1.DTL





10.5: miniseries at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on NBC.
This Sunday's sweeps miniseries from NBC, "10.5," is so phenomenally bad it borders on spoofed genius. The floor drops out so quickly and so massively that you begin to wonder if all the people involved here were in on the joke - - it must be a joke, right? You wonder when they might have figured out that each and every one of them -- from Kim Delaney to Beau Bridges -- were giving the worst performances of their careers in a four-hour tour de force of lameness.

If you haven't had the opportunity to guffaw at the previews, then you can probably suss from the title that this is an earthquake movie, and it boasts the profound Irwin Allen stamp of big-cast, over-the-top ridiculousness that essentially destroyed these kinds of programming events years ago.

Either the producers of "10.5" were aware up front that everyone involved was going to make a scenery-chewing monster, or the cast members need to fire their agents. Because this isn't just an earthquake movie, it's one disaster of an earthquake movie.

This miniseries may be the ultimate drinking-game movie. There are so many weary disaster-movie cliches here and so much write-by-numbers formula that the entire country could wobble over drunk on Sunday and come back for two more hair-of-the-dog hours on Monday. In fact, "10.5" is so joyously awful that if you dare undertake participation-style viewing connected in some manner to alcohol you'll have to rein in the number of tip-off moments.

Try these: 1. When someone looks shocked -- shocked! -- at any kind of news delivered to them. 2. When the treacly music roars up from behind. 3. When it feel like "Saturday Night Live." Do not, under any circumstances, base tipping-point moments on when someone cries, or yells, or freaks out, or demands that someone "do something" or when there are dramatic close-ups or people are seen running like wild animals.

It really comes down to this: If you don't have stadium seating in your house equipped to hold at least five or six giddy, irony-soaked, cliche- hawking friends, then don't bother watching. If you watch "10.5" alone it will be like going to a comedy club by yourself, or, at the basest level, simply wasting four hours of your short life. "10.5" is a movie best shared with others.

Delaney heads the cast as Dr. Samantha Hill, "an intellectual earthquake expert." They spell it out like that because ... well, it's hard to tell. One thing is clear -- she's the only person in the world touting a theory that there are fault lines deeper than we imagine, and that come Sunday they will all link up in one Super Quake, splitting the West Coast off into the Pacific Ocean and forcing people to spout nonstop, side-splitting cliches.

"I'm not going to lie to you," Delaney says at one point. "This is a stretch." You think?

"10.5" blatantly steals its camera style from "24," meaning loads of split screens and dramatic fade ins and outs. In the process you get five -- check that, 10.5 -- times as much hokeyness as "24."

The movie opens in ridiculous fashion -- a man riding a BMX bike through Seattle just as a massive quake hits. It's like a teen video. He's jumping cars as they collide with each other, cruising past store fronts as windows explode and finally trying to outrun the Space Needle as it topples. Everything topples in "10.5," not the least, logic.

Bridges stars as the president and Fred Ward as his best pal. They play basketball in an early scene and it's just so fake it's painful to watch. Bridges is beautifully campy as the president, leaving no opportunity for pomp and gas unfulfilled.

"This is a nightmare," he gasps.

It sure is, Beau. Thanks for that.

When he finds out that two gigantic earthquakes have struck 800 miles apart he says, "There's a lot of scared people out there, and they have a lot of questions about what just happened."

No kidding. Like, is the premise of the movie that these earthquakes are eating each other and getting stronger, or do they just have a predator thing going?

Later Ward, who really disembowels his career here, is hired by Bridges to head up the campaign to stop the earthquakes from continuing. Yes, you read that right. Eventually he green-lights the use of a nuclear weapon to do this. Naturally.

Ward is really something. "According to your hidden fault theory, we could be looking at the Big One," he says to Delaney. Oh, Fred, you're soaking in the Big One, buddy.

David Cubitt stars as the Guy Who Looks Stunned by Everything Kim Delaney Says and, later in the movie, as the Guy Who Advances the Plot by Asking Questions Only Delaney Can Explain. Example: From a helicopter Delaney realizes the Kern River is acting weird (just go with it). Cubitt: "It changed direction? How's that possible?"

How indeed? And how is it possible this movie got made?

Ivan Sergei ("Crossing Jordan") and Dule Hill ("The West Wing") are featured as young doctors because every disaster movie needs medical miracles.

John Schneider ("Smallville") and Kelly Cuoco ("8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter") also appear, because every disaster movie needs a father and daughter starting out at odds, falling into peril and finally bonding. There is a scene where the pair come across a small town that looks to be, um, eaten by an earthquake. Cuoco, hysterically (every thing she says or does is hysterical, literally and figuratively): "Where's Browning?" Schneider: "It's gone."

You have to love a movie that topples the Space Needle and the Golden Gate Bridge almost immediately, but it's a truly special occasion when you can watch an earthquake follow a train down the tracks and swallow it up like a shark chasing a swimmer in "Jaws." That alone is almost worth the four-hour price of admission to "10.5" because, if nothing else, it gives keen insight into the rest of the movie. After all, if you can dream up a scenario in which an earthquake CHASES A TRAIN DOWN THE TRACKS, well, anything is possible.

There is so much carnage in the writing of the script it's hard to know where to begin. A favorite scene has Delaney and Cubitt poring over maps (maps and computers that zoom in on things and beep a lot are very popular in "10. 5"). Delaney says excitedly about some aftershocks: "These are not from our fault. They are from the faults affected by our fault."

Well, hell, it's somebody's fault.

Later she says, without falling down laughing, "It's our job to arm people with the facts, good or bad." Just ask any seismologist: There are a lot of bad facts in "10.5." But that's what keeps you going -- slo-mo after close-up after tearful hug after bloody-faced speech. So many people fall into crevices in "10.5" that you can't keep track. Things blow up. The camera shaking (not to mention the acting and the writing) makes you want to vomit. Cars flip over. People scream -- a lot.

After your four hours of viewing are up, the true meaning of "10.5" smacks you in the face -- NBC, against the odds, has finally found a great comedy.

E-mail Tim Goodman at tgoodman@sfchronicle.com.

The Unit's Road Number was 238. But they had the Unit's number on the left front of the Nose. I saw it. When the Train was gobbled up.

In the old days, wouldn't 50 miles railroad east of Redding be up towards Dunsmuir?

Also, what the heck does LOL mean - I see it all the time.

Bill Davidson

1) Laugh out Loud

2) Lots of Luck

or my uncles favorate
Luney-ness of Liberals