"The crash killed 59-year-old Dr. William Varner and his 69-year-old friend. "After the fire was put out, officials said one victim was in the passenger seat and the other was in the back seat. "The details are leading many to wonder if the car was in self-driving mode." https://abc13.com/tesla-crash-battery-fire-dr-william-varner-elon-musk/10530747/ I like to drive myself. I'm good at it.
I never knew about the movie until my NJ cousin and I were talking about botched repairwork to the rear diff in his vintage Skylark (no kidding, I can't make this stuff up) and his wife said the our dialogue sounded like the script of My Cousin Vinny. I was puzzled, but upon returning home I happened to catch it on cable and my life has never been the same.
One of my buddies is racing against time/Parkinsons Disease with a big home layout. The club has pitched in with help, and it's close to complete. Oddly , our next club session had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions in England, but he can hold up to 6 strong sessions on his layout. That's what I love about this hobby- if you can't , a club member often can, and you all often benefit.
Vehicles are being built today where you literally CANNOT work on the transmission. The things are press-fit together and they can't be opened up. Engines are beginning to be built in the same manner, heads press-fit onto the blocks so that nothing can be done with the valves or piston rings etc. They run till they fail, then you replace them.
...okay some of you need to watch the movie. It's funny enough to make it worth your time (and there is almost a train in it)
Thankfully they didn't actually show it. How many times is a movie or TV show set somewhere specific town, city or geographic region and they have a train in the background that is totally inappropriate for said local? Or worse, it is supposed to be in England and the railcars are clearly U.S. or Canadian.
I recently watched the movie "Bite the Bullet" which is a pretty good flick, all things considered, which takes place during Teddy Roosevelts first term in office. Unfortunate they used a Baldwin K-36 Mikado that was built in 1925. This is what you get when you are a train enthusiast . . . and you read.
What I hate is the use of stock film in a movie of a European train with the round buffers that is suppose to be in the United States.
A couple days ago in a discussion about movies made of the Vietnam conflict I was asked if I knew were they were filmed. I replied and she was very happy to find someone that knew the real answer. She is from Thailand.
Or 90% of the scenes in the movie are just plain made up because the writer has very little knowledge of how railroads or railroad equipment work. One of the most hilarious movies ever made was "Unstoppable" staring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. The only truthful part of that movie was, CSX did have a runaway train in Ohio, but the locomotive was a SD40-2. And yes the Ohio Police did try shooting at the EFCO to shut the diesel engine down, until someone told them that button is mounted on top of the fuel tank. Other than that everything else in the movie is pure fiction and violates just about every safety rule in place. You can tell the writer knew very little about railroad operations. Second on my list is Runaway Train staring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. Third on my list is Runaway!, The film was produced by Universal and originally aired on ABC, about a Runaway D&RGW Ski Train. Now two of the all time classic train movies in my opinion are: "The Train" staring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau. and Von Ryan's Express starring Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard. I'm not going to say these two are the most realistic train movies every made, but in my humble opinion they are great action/adventure movies.
Some of those which I find humorous the editors speed up the train to make it seem more dangerous. This makes such scenes look a though it was filmed in the old silent days.
But even though they where all fiction....they where watchable. Purely entertainment. They werent documentaries by any means.
This is true, but like in the movie "Unstoppable" if you're going to allow the train to run into two locomotives in front of the train, why didn't you just have a crew member cross over once that happened and take control of the runaway? Another example shows the brakeman in the case locomotive slam the Automatic brake handle into the emergency position, then move the handle to the release position and do it again. I'm surprised Superman didn't fly in and stop the train with one hand. In the real world, once you throw the automatic into emergency it take a minimum of one minute to recover and that's for a single unit not coupled to a train. I know it's an action/adventure movie, but can we at least be somewhat realistic. Remember that movie was based on a real life incident, but sadly they got far too many of the facts wrong. In the movie there was no need for that engineer to climb down off the locomotive, he was at a facing point switch, in real life the engineer climbed down because he was approaching a trailing point switch and the points were against him. In the movie the throttle magically moves from idle to 8th notch. In real life the engineer was on a SD40 with an older control stand that still had a selector lever. The engineer thought he moved the selector from power to dynamic braking before moving the throttle handle to notch 8. Sadly the engineer did not properly transition to dynamic braking and the locomotive remained in the power setup. I just wish they would have stayed a little closer to the actual events and not added so much Hollywood to the movie. On a side note, they did store some of the movie equipment in the yard were I work, but they kept it hidden from the general public for fear of people trespassing on the property to get photographs of the equipment. I also have to laugh when you see someone in a movie jump into a tractor trailer and drive it like they've been driving trucks their entire life. Let's be honest, on a Road ranger 13 speed once the average person got to 4th gear, they'd be lost on what to do next and that's if they'd even make it to second gear.
I laugh at that too. Back in the day...I was out of trucking for 5 years...due to injuries. When I decided to get back in...I was told I had been out of the trade to long and would need a refresher course !! Say What?? You dont forget how to drive a truck that you have been doing for 15 years...in 5 years !!! At the school I had to attend (per my future employeer)...classes where boring. Going out to the training course was a blast. All them 'rookies' didnt have a clue once they where out of the books and in the divers seat ! As far as those movies go...ask 100 people who watched "Unstoppable" and 95 would tell you that they have/had no clue about how a train works. But they will tell you those scenes had them on the edge of their seats. It's all H O L L Y W O O D !!! .
