Western Railroad Discussion > location where The movie ?Duel? was filmed

Last night I watched a movie called \?duel\? There where many scenes with a Southern Pacific train paralleling a highway. Can anyone tell me the location where this movie was shot? Thanks.

This has been covered here at trainorders many time (about the time it get shown on TV). Do a search and you will get more than everthing you ever wanted and more about Duel. Any yes, it was shot on Soledad Rd, from Saugus to Palmdale, up Soledad Cyn, with the SP (now UP) Saugas line in the background.

CPRR wrote:

> This has been covered here at trainorders many time (about
> the time it get shown on TV). Do a search and you will get
> more than everthing you ever wanted and more about Duel

CPRR: If it was before the site was updated recently, he's SOL.

SantaFe fan:

Scroll down and do a search for the past 90 days for "Duel." There was a good discussion on April 11th.

I guess I should have added, I tried a search (all dates) first, came back (No matches found)

mojaveguy,

I went back and did a search (90 day) and I did find the thread you where referring to. I wounder why when searching (all dates) it didn't pick it up?

May have been a simple input error. Other than that you'll have to ask our esteemed webmaster, Todd Clark.

mojaveguy,

Tried (all dates) again same result. Works with every thing eles. I think we have a bug with (search all dates) I will email Todd.

Cool! Someone besides me has an interest in this fascinating movie, however, I have been on that Metrolink line many many times and see very little in which this could have feen filmed.

Case in point: There is one point in the movie (towards the end) where they start playing a Psycho like song, then you get a glance of the tracks far below the road where the Valiant is being chased...........where can THIS possibly be at???? What road is that that appears high above the tracks????

Could parts of it have been filmed on the Palmdale Cutoff line? Since this movie was filmed in 1971 and the Palmdale Cutoff line opened in 1968, I'm thinking maybe it was filmed there also..........please help as I want to settle this with myself.

(It would be neat if there were a passenger train using the Palmdale cut-off, don't you think?)

rms492 wrote:

> Cool! Someone besides me has an interest in this fascinating
> movie,

Yes, it's a great movie. Dennis Weaver played the part well.

Did you remember the fight in the cafe......i was told the actor who played the truck driver unseen in the movie also played a dual role as one of the people in the restauarant scene with D.W....see if you can pick him out.....look for the left arm.......

I liked the power lash ups. Just from the shots
in the movie looks like SD-9's, SD-39, U30C, etc
love the old power!

Haven't seen the movie in a long time, but it has always been one of my favorites too. RMS, the line looks very different today than it did then -- new housing tracts, line changes, etc.
There are a couple areas where Soledad Cyn. Rd. parallels the tracks at a much higher elevation. One area is at Crown Valley Rd., and another at Aliso Cyn. Rd. (if my memory serves me right -- I used to railfan there in the early 90's, when the SP geep 60s were newly speed-lettered!)
Always wondered if those trains were staged, or if they just waited for one to come through.

I've never seen it. Here's a link.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0067023

If you search at Google for "duel spielberg" you'll get plenty of hits. This one, for example:
http://members.tripod.com/~DavidMann/main.html

I am aware of the problems with the search function. I am working on a new feature that will make the search function much smarter. The site has gotten so large that the existing infrastructure cannot handle whole site searches.


Todd