Nostalgia & History > Runaway Train movie & the Sierra Pacific

I'm pretty sure I've posted these before, but a post on the Western Board yesterday (Runaway Train Movie; The Quiz) prompted me to post these shots, I shot all 6((3 to follow) of these on April 5, 1973 in Denver.

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here's the other 3

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I think I mentioned before that Darlene Carr (depressed babe on the train) wore a great pair of leather pants in the movie. :-)

Tom Y

How Ironic that all the RR equipment in the photo's would wind up being owned by the Real SP

This was the 1973 movie entitled "Runaway!" The other movie, set in the Arctic, was 1985's "Runaway Train".

ctillnc Wrote:
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> This was the 1973 movie entitled "Runaway!" The
> other movie, set in the Arctic, was 1985's
> "Runaway Train".


Runaway Train was a cold movie to watch!

Runaway train movies = Real railroaders can punch all kinds of holes in them, they are so far from reality. === === = === JLH

One of my favorite Farside cartoons was captioned Runaway Trains. It showed the lady emptying grocery sacks with pictures of missing locomotives like in the same vein as missing kids.

Sneebly

As I recall they only shot from the right side of the train. Did both sides of the locomotives get repainted?

Rick

When "Runaway" was made in 1973, I was a member of the Arvada Volunteer Fire Department. We got to be 'extras', since the script called for the fire department to be called out in case the train derailed on the big curve just west of Wadsworth Blvd. I think there were a couple of runbys. If you watch the movie, I think we're seen for about a second!

Scott Hightower

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can we watch it?

I remember watching this absurd movie and being transfixed as a 10-yr-old kid! The BN called it 'hogwash' at the time (imagine a RR using that word now?). Actor Ben Johnson's old head engr hat was indeed an exact match for the one worn by my ol' hogger Abe, though!

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/12 16:35 by IC_2024.

dan Wrote:
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> can we watch it?

At one time it was out on YouTube in 4 or 5 segments.

Tom Y

Tried to search the movie on youtube but only found a short 1.x minute clip

Then Engineer was Ben Johnson. He was pretty good actor, and showed up in a lot of the old westerns.

The 1973 movie was made for ABC-TV by Universal. It starred Ben Johnson as "Holly," a Sierra Pacific engineer on his final run. Also in the cast was Martin Milner, Vera Miles, and Ed Nelson. It was directed by David Lowell Rich, who also gave us "The Concorde: Airport '79" (1979, Universal) and "SST: Death Flight" (1977, ABC-TV).

"Runaway" is, as many mentioned, a ridiculous film. But fun to see many, many shots of Rio Grande geeps in the 1970s. The GP30 now residing at the Colorado Railroad Museum is the same one from "Runaway." I think the museum should paint its GP30 into Sierra Pacific colors! :)

This move never seems to come up on TV and to my knowledge has never seen a video release on any format. I have a copy from a broadcast on TV back around 1980.

Canyon shots were done between T8 and Crescent from a helicopter in the shade which didn't come out oo well in color



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/12 07:49 by WAF.