Western Railroad Discussion > "Bad Day at Black Rock" on TV today

This 1954 movie, with opening and closing scenes of SP Black Widow-painted F-units pulling Daylight cars on the Lone Pine branch, will be on Turner Classic Movies today, Saturday Oct. 30 at 3:30 pm Pacific time.

Thanks for the heads up! I just punched that into my Tivo...

Where was the location of the town? Were the building just movie sets built near the ROW, or was any of that an actual settlement?

hotrail Wrote:
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> Where was the location of the town? Were the
> building just movie sets built near the ROW, or
> was any of that an actual settlement?

The area around the town of Lone Pine was a favorite for many western movies and TV programs, such as the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, etc. The town used in BDABR was a set built near the tracks close to Lone Pine. It believe it was very close to the end of the standard gauge track.

The ranch and night scene is in the Alabama Hills just west of Lone Pine, where, as it has been pointed out, tons of Westerns have been shot over the years. With the unusually high
and dramatic eastern escarpment of the Sierras in the background, you can hardly find more photogenic scenery.

Having just watched the last half of the movie on a lazy afternoon, it seems to me at the end of the movie when the train pulls out it is actually going northbound. I'm sure it was for photographic purposes but I hadn't really noticed that before. Couldn't imagine paying
$2.35 a gallon for Mobil Gas from those gas pumps.

Of course, the brief scenes of SP black widows and Daylight themed cars always look great.

A few years ago we were in Independence and they had built a "block" of "false fronts" by the park on the south side of town and had added some cannon to the Courthouse lawn for a movie.

If you only watched the last 1/2 of the movie, you missed the opening scene of the film with the train coming to Black Rock and stopping.

As the train is coming to a stop, one of the towns' folk says something like "this is the first time the streamliner stopped here in 2 years". Hence, at the movies' close, when the conductor says the same thing, Spencer Tracy says "Nope! Second!".

Just one of the many "details" in this outstanding drama!