Dan, thank you for the most informative piece I've ever read about movies and railroads. Up in Washington state, the Northwest Railway Museum at Snoqualmie was an oft-used Hollywood location ("Twin Peaks" was filmed there), until some nasty experiences forced them to take a hard-line stance with film companies. New requirements: no major modifications to the equipment (the museum decides what constitutes "major"), and a $20 million (minimum) insurance policy in place before turning a wheel. Film crews haven't been very excited about working with us since, but now they've got the idea we're not a props store.
I was also disappointed when I heard "Men of Destiny" had been shelved, and now doubly so since it might have been Eureka's return to the silver screen. In the past, the movies have made four tries, three of them with blockbuster budgets, at making a film out of the transcontinental railroad story and none of them have been much good.
First there was John Ford's "The Iron Horse," a 1924 silent featuring Union Pacific #"116" (their typo, not mine) and a Jupiter whose funnel stack would get a "D-" in shop class. Someone even had the gall to insert a title card claiming that the locomotives used in production were the original engines that met at Promontory in 1869. The story wasn't much either, and rumor holds that Ford was so depressed by the results that he refused to direct another Western until "Stagecoach" in 1939.
Also in 1939 came the Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza "Union Pacific," an example of product placement that has yet to be topped. This is probably one of the best-detailed historical re-creations I've ever seen, and several scenes from the film look like 1860s photos come to life. Too bad the story is typical DeMille hokum --- some nonsense about Joel McCrea taking on Brian Dennehy, who's running a vice operation financed by the U.P.'s rival, the Central Pacific. DeMille also seems to have some kind of pathology against trains, as he wrecks two of them and photographs both with unseemly gusto.
In 1999 came "Wild Wild West," in which #119 gets blown up by a fireball spat from the mandibles of an eighty-foot-tall steam-powered tarantula. Need I say more?
The final attempt sprang from the combined efforts of myself and some high school friends, using the Bachmann HO models of the Golden Spike engines and lots of video trickery. No copy of this film survives (unless my mother saved one), and that's probably just as well.
Coming attractions for the Eureka? Believe me, I'll be watching the trade papers to see if, after the success of "Pirates of the Caribbean," Disney springs for "Men of Destiny" after all. And you got to read the script for it. Lucky dog.
