You know you're a bit too into trains when...

[Anderson]

We've all had these moments, but it's gotten pretty bad for me. Without needing to spoiler the movie, I saw Super 8 tonight (Friday night), and as the ads show, there is a train wreck in the movie. My first thought at the well-maintained train station the wreck occurs near was "Is this track Penn Central? No, wait, 1979...Conrail? Chessie?" (This question is, regrettably, still bugging me...as is which line carried the train from Area 51 eastward, though I think that would've been WP to UP, with a handover somewhere in the Midwest...)

The more glaring moment, however, was when the train wrecked. The train hits a truck head-on (the truck is driving up the tracks), and on seeing the cars flipping all over the place, my first thought was...

"Yep, somebody was violating the class 5 freight speed limit."

And yes, when the map of the course the train took appeared on-screen for a moment, I wanted to get a good screenshot of it...to figure out just how fast Abrams had that train timetabled going.

Sadly, I'm not kidding...but I'm also fairly certain that I'm not the only one here who's had (absurd/unexpected/inappropriate) train-related thoughts at odd times. So...who else wants to admit to them?

Edit: Alright, on this one, I looked at the map in the interactive trailer...that is definitely UP trackage (the Overland route, in particular) from Nevada into Utah and Wyoming. I assume there's a subdivision you can take through Iowa, but it looks like they used Burlington Northern line through parts of Nebraska and into southern Iowa (the CZ's line) track to connect into Chicago, then went down through Indianapolis (though would that have been Chessie or Conrail at the time? That main line is probably the Cardinal's route, which is primarily CSX now, but I can't recall just who had the Chicago-Indianapolis line then. Ugh...why is this bugging me so much?)...and then it gets hazy, but it seems to stay on current CSX tracks the rest of the way to the base. There appeared to be more writing on the map in the movie...yeah, call this an annoying splinter in my mind.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

We've all had these moments, but it's gotten pretty bad for me. Without needing to spoiler the movie, I saw Super 8 tonight (Friday night), and as the ads show, there is a train wreck in the movie. My first thought at the well-maintained train station the wreck occurs near was "Is this track Penn Central? No, wait, 1979...Conrail? Chessie?" (This question is, regrettably, still bugging me...as is which line carried the train from Area 51 eastward, though I think that would've been WP to UP, with a handover somewhere in the Midwest...)

The more glaring moment, however, was when the train wrecked. The train hits a truck head-on (the truck is driving up the tracks), and on seeing the cars flipping all over the place, my first thought was...

"Yep, somebody was violating the class 5 freight speed limit."

And yes, when the map of the course the train took appeared on-screen for a moment, I wanted to get a good screenshot of it...to figure out just how fast Abrams had that train timetabled going.

Sadly, I'm not kidding...but I'm also fairly certain that I'm not the only one here who's had (absurd/unexpected/inappropriate) train-related thoughts at odd times. So...who else wants to admit to them?

Edit: Alright, on this one, I looked at the map in the interactive trailer...that is definitely UP trackage (the Overland route, in particular) from Nevada into Utah and Wyoming. I assume there's a subdivision you can take through Iowa, but it looks like they used Burlington Northern line through parts of Nebraska and into southern Iowa (the CZ's line) track to connect into Chicago, then went down through Indianapolis (though would that have been Chessie or Conrail at the time? That main line is probably the Cardinal's route, which is primarily CSX now, but I can't recall just who had the Chicago-Indianapolis line then. Ugh...why is this bugging me so much?)...and then it gets hazy, but it seems to stay on current CSX tracks the rest of the way to the base. There appeared to be more writing on the map in the movie...yeah, call this an annoying splinter in my mind.

One suggestion for finding out things is this. Check your Guide. You will notice an index of railroads at the front and a list of cities and towns at the end.

Look at Indianapolis, since it is much smaller than Chicago, and thus narrow it down to the lines which serve Indy, and which go to CHI.

Looking up CHI, on the other hand, would be a huge waste of time since there are so many RRs going nowhere near Indy for you to knock off in your search.

I kind of skimmed it and it looks like PRR, NYC and Monon, at least.

This brings back memories of the South Wind, a preAmtrak train which went Chicago to Miami via PRR between CHI and Indy and Louisville. This train was taken over when Amtrak was formed and was shortly renamed the Floridian. If suffered huge problems with bad track, delays , wrecks etc and was among those trains discontinued in 1979.I remember if used Monon some of the time.

An example of inappropriate thoughts might be interest in clipping our photo of train wrecks when I was a kid. I especially remember a shot of the L&Ns Pan American lounge with the furniture tumbeled all across the place.

I remember having daddy drive me to Ringgold, Ga.,(very near Chattanooga) to see the Georgian wrecked. I guess even a wrecked train is better than no train. (Jumping ahead many years, Ringgold was among those places devastated by tornadoes recently.)

 

[Anderson]

Alright, I've got it down:

(Link to the image: http://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2011-04-18_00020.jpg )

-The first dot on the map is Winnemucca, NV. There's a truck shipment to there...this is an SP/WP line. I'm actually going to go with WP because they threw in a picture of a WP car model at one point, and because of the second dot.

-The second dot is in SLC (handover to UP; SP does not serve SLC directly, and the dot looks too far south to have been intended to be Ogden).

-The third dot is in Rock Springs or Rawlins (or thereabouts...too far west for Cheyenne, too far south for Casper). That's on the UP mainline.

-The fourth dot is North Platte. That is exclusively a UP stop. We're staying on UP.

-The fifth dot is Chicago. UP runs to Chicago, and we have to do a second handoff.

-The sixth dot looks to be Lafayette, IN. This offers us Monon, NYC, Nickel Plate, and Wabash in 1956. Of those, Monon was part of L&N as of 1971, NYC was part of Conrail via Penn Central, Nickel Plate folded into Norfolk Southern via Norfolk and Western, and the Wabash has a bad alignment.

-The seventh dot is Indianapolis, IN. Conrail, N&W, and L&N remain possibilities.

-The eighth dot is Richmond, IN (if I had to guess). That only lists the Pennsy and C&O. Presuming that they want to keep handoffs to a minimum, this suggests Conrail out of Chicago for 1979.

-The ninth dot is Dayton, OH, which has a lot of RRs going in and out.

-The final dot is the fictional setting of the movie, which will offer no information to us since I can't use the guide.

So, if I had to take a stab here, your path was WP to UP (SLC handover) to Conrail (Chicago handover). It's possible that it was SP to UP via Ogden instead, but I'll go with an irrelevant hint in the movie to satisfy my curiosity, and since JJ Abrams is known for doing things like that. The train was, of course, all military...but somebody was having to dispatch it.