Nostalgia & History > More Analysis of the 1954 Movie "Human Desire"

Here's the first ten minutes of the 1954 movie "Human Desire" where Glenn Ford and Edgar Buchanan played enginmen on the fictional Central National railroad.  Many of the scenes, including the FA, were shot on the Rock Island at or near El Reno, OK.  

What I'm curious about is the initial opening scene where the camera is looking down the track out the front of the locomotive.  The train runs through a truss bridge, and then passes a large water tank and coal loading tower and winds down a canyon with a river on the left.  

Does anyone know the location of this scene?  With the looks of some of the block signals and the terrain, I'm guessing it's somewhere on the D&RGW.  It's frustrating to watch as many of the opening credits are splashed on the screen, obscuring the "good stuff."  

Under "fair use" policies, I don't think we have to worry about copyright issues.  The entire film is on YouTube and what's shown here is just the first ten minutes.  



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/20 20:20 by CA_Sou_MA_Agent.

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Miss Wiki says the story has been filmed five times. Here's the 1938 version:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029957/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_B%C3%AAte_humaine

What a mixture of stock film!

Did he run a 'stop' indication around 2:33?

One scene looked like Harper's Ferry West Virginia.

How on earth did the head end crew of a passenger train get so dirty?-BMT

wp1801 Wrote:
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> One scene looked like Harper's Ferry West
> Virginia.
Definitely is Harper's Ferry with a B&O train crossing over the Potomac River into West Virginia.
John in White Marsh, Maryland.

At 2:28, in the shot of the engineer in the cab, the backdrop shows the Pulaski Skyway, a road bridge between Newark and Jersey City, NJ!!  

So in the first four minutes, we have the train traveling through (at least) Colorado, Harpers Ferry, WV, New Jersey, and at 3:28, the train is pulling into Albuquerque, NM - now THATS getting around!!

Can anyone identify any other locations?

UPNW2-1083 Wrote:
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> How on earth did the head end crew of a passenger
> train get so dirty?-BMT

Because they hostled their own locomotive?

Seems to me to be a few departures from reality in the name of theatrics.

Arved Grass
Fleming Island, FL

Brodrick Crawford just before Highway Patrol.

Interesting railroad scenes.

Regards, Jim Evans

4thDistrict Wrote:
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>
> And the loco miraculously morphed from a Santa Fe EMD passenger F unit at 3:20 into a Central National Alco FA at 3:40!

That "Central National" FA1 appears to be well weathered 6 year old Rock Island 153.
 

Fun to watch still.

That is certainly on incredibly long crew district! ;>)

Although my memory is fading these days, I clearly remember a thread about this movie plus a couple others that show up when searching for 'Human Desire' as exact phrase.

Movie: Railroad Movie "Human Desire", shot in El Reno

They certainly covered a lot of territory on that train, from east coast to west coast and everywhere in the middle.  But I never noticed they ran a red signal until ts1457 mentioned it.

Might the running of the STOP aspect on the signal have been because the scene was originally fllmed from the rear of the train and reversed for the actual copy. ??

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA

JimBaker Wrote:
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> Might the running of the STOP aspect on the signal
> have been because the scene was originally fllmed
> from the rear of the train and reversed for the
> actual copy. ??

You might be right. I was wondering that.

It does look a mix of western and eastern rail scenes, but I imagine most viewers weren't too bothered by it.  It was/is pretty cool to farily clear movie footage of rail operatoins that long ago.  Some of the worst are from the period photographers switched from 16 mm film to video, which was very lo resolution at the time and is very fuzzy/blurry to watch.  

Where's Rodney Zona?
 

penncentral74 Wrote:
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> Where's Rodney Zona?

Funniest post for the day.  After viewing this footage, he's probably got steam shooting out of his ears and his eyes are rolling around in concentric circles. 
  

CA_Sou_MA_Agent Wrote:

> What I'm curious about is the initial opening
> scene where the camera is looking down the track
> out the front of the locomotive.  The train runs
> through a truss bridge, and then passes a large
> water tank and coal loading tower and winds down a
> canyon with a river on the left.  
>
> Does anyone know the location of this scene? 

Wish I could help.  That wedge plow mounted on a gondola complete with a crew cab visible at 0:41 in the video has to be a one-off or at least a design unique to the railroad that owned it, but I sure haven't been able to locate another photo of it.

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
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> Wish I could help.  That wedge plow mounted on a gondola complete with a crew cab visible at 0:41 in the video has to be a one-off or at least a design unique to the railroad that owned it, but I sure haven't been able to locate another photo of it.

Another thing that's of interest is the coaling tower or transfer facility beyond the water tank.  It has an incline ramp that brings a track up above the mainline.  I don't believe this was a common feature for coaling towers.  Maybe this was a place where narrow-gauge interfaced with standard gauge and how the bulk commodity was exchanged.  There are a limited number of places where narrow and standard gauge had bulk commodity transfer facilities.  

I dunno.  It's a real mystery.  I watched the video again and it appears that ALL the track is standard gauge.  Why would they have a transfer facility like that where cars would be run up a ramp and then they'd dump their loads into other cars, if there was no difference in gauges?  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/20 23:37 by CA_Sou_MA_Agent.