Trains In The Movies
I’ve wanted to compile a list of “train movies” for a long time. I'm a rail fan ... and I love the movies. Put the two together ... heaven.
This is not intended to be a “complete” list. If I haven’t personally viewed a particular film, it isn’t included ... yet. Readers should still find plenty to occupy their time here, with lots of variety from which to choose. There are comedies and dramas listed, animated as well as live-action movies, even some science fiction and horror (seems even vampires ride on trains!). Subways and street railways are covered, as well as historical treatments, and contemporary intercity passenger and long-haul freight railroads. Regrettably, the technical accuracy of the rail operations portrayed often comes up lacking. Nevertheless, even the purist should find most of these films fun and entertaining.
None of these are “movies about trains.” Instead, they are movies about people (toss in a dog and a mysterious penguin for good measure in The Wrong Trousers), whose lives are affected – in large and small ways – by trains.
Note: Because of their subject matter, some of these films are for mature audiences only. Please check ratings before family viewing.
I’ve divided my list into four groups. The first group contains movies in which the majority of the action takes place on a train or in a railroad environment, or in which a railroad theme dominates. Some of the films in this group (Rock Island Trail, for example) are admittedly not personal favorites. They are here because the sheer volume of film footage containing railroad action demands their inclusion in any listing that claims to be about trains in the movies. Others in this first group, however, (notably The Train, The Grey Fox, The General, and The Lady Vanishes) are among my most favorite movies regardless of genre.
The second group of films in my list are classified as “Memorable Movie Moments.” All of these films include one or more scenes that contain trains or subways. All of these are “good” movies — ones that I have enjoyed and can personally recommend. Most importantly, to be included in this grouping, the railroad action, whether brief or lengthy, must be of consequence to the storyline. These are not merely movies with trains in them; they are movies in which those trains make a valuable contribution, in many cases an indispensable contribution, to good story-telling.
The third group lists lesser movies, in my estimation, that also contain limited railroad action. I’ve created this list to inform readers as well as to remind myself that I have already taken a look and passed judgment.
Finally, more recently I've added a fourth group, to accommodate all of the suggested movies that visitors to this page have recommended to me. When I've had a chance to view these I will distribute them among the first three lists. And, thank you all for taking the time to share your experiences!
Clicking on any title will take you to the appropriate page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) website, where you can read more about the production, story, cast and crew, and a lot more. I’ve also added critic Leonard Maltin’s movie ratings (**** is Maltin's “very best” ranking; “BOMB” is worst), where available, to help you decide which titles might be most worthy of your time.
If you’d like to propose a missing title for inclusion here, or just to argue a bit, you are most welcome to send me an e-mail with your comments.
Enjoy!
Gary B. Coombs, Director
South Coast Railroad Museum
Feature Films Set On Trains & Around Railroads
| TITLE | STARS/SYNOPSIS | YEAR | REVIEW |
| Avalanche Express | Robert Shaw, Lee Marvin, Linda Evans. CIA operatives battle Soviet agents aboard a train across Europe. | 1979 | “BOMB” |
| Boxcar Bertha | Barbara Hershey, David Carradine. Small-town girl joins a gang of train robbers during the Great Depression. | 1972 | **½ |
| Breakheart Pass | Charles Bronson, Ben Johnson, Richard Crenna, Jill Ireland. Beleaguered train with medical supplies and troops is on its way to plagued Fort Humboldt. | 1975 | *** |
| Brief Encounter | Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard. Two London commuters, married to others, meet in a railway station and fall in love. Most of the movie is set in the station and in and around trains. | 1945 | **** |
| Broadway Limited | Victor McLaglen, Marjorie Woodworth, Dennis O'Keefe, Patsy Kelly, Zasu Pitts. A publicity stunt staged on the Broadway Limited train goes awry. | 1941 | ** |
| Canadian Pacific | Randolph Scott, Jane Wyatt. Surveyor helps push the Canadian Pacific Ry. through Rockies, contending with saboteurs, hostile Indians and romance along the way. | 1949 | **½ |
| Cassandra Crossing, The | Sophia Loren, Richard Harris. Train passengers have been exposed to a deadly disease. | 1976 | *** |
| Closely Watched Trains ("Ostre sledované vlaky") | Vaclav Neckar, Jitka Bendova. A young train dispatcher becomes a lover and a hero in WWII Czechoslovakia. | 1966 | *** |
| Danger Lights | Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, Jean Arthur. The girlfriend of a tough rail yard boss falls in love with a young hobo turned train engineer. | 1930 | ** |
| Emperor Of The North (aka “Emperor Of The North Pole”) | Lee Marvin, Ernest Bornine, Keith Carradine. Hobos vie for supremacy on the railroad. | 1973 | ***½ |
| General, The | Buster Keaton, Marion Mack. Silent comedy classic finds engineer (Keaton) chasing Union spies who have stolen his locomotive. Based on the same real Civil War event as The Great Locomotive Chase. | 1927 | **** |
| Ghost Train, The | Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison, Peter Murray-Hill. Stranded passengers wait for a train at an English railway station purported to be haunted. | 1941 | |
| Great Locomotive Chase, The | Fess Parker, Jeffrey Hunter. Union spies steal a train and try to destroy Confederate bridges and track. Based on the same Civil War event as The General. | 1956 | *** |
| Great Train Robbery, The (aka The First Great Train Robbery) | Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down. In Victorian England, a master criminal makes elaborate plans to steal a shipment of gold from a moving train. | 1979 | *** |
| Grey Fox, The | Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs. On his release from prison, an aging stagecoach bandit goes to Canada to rob trains. | 1982 | *** |
| Harvey Girls, The | Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Ray Bolger, Preston Foster. Women move west to become waitresses at Fred Harvey's rail-station restaurants serving cross-country train passengers. | 1946 | *** |
| It Happened To Jane | Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovaks. Maine lobsterwoman sues the railroad over a spoiled shipment of lobsters. | 1959 | **½ |
| Lady Vanishes, The | Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty. A woman mysteriously disappears during a trian ride, but only one fellow passenger seems to remember her. | 1938 | **** |
| Lady Vanishes, The | Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd, Angela Lansbury, Herbert Lom. Light-duty remake of Hitchcock classic (see previous listing) has some nice steam-train cinematography; otherwise, stick with the original. | 1979 | *½ |
| Look Both Ways | William McInnes, Justine Clarke . Several Australians face personal crises in the wake of the fatal crash of a commuter train. | 2005 | |
| Mrs. O'Malley And Mr. Malone | Marjorie Main, James Whitmore, Ann Dvorak, Phyllis Kirk. A Montana widow and a Chicago lawyer solve a double-murder aboard a train to New York. | 1950 | ** |
| Murder On The Orient Express | Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman. Agatha Christie's master-sleuth Hercule Poirot investigates a murder on a snow-bound luxury train. | 1974 | *** |
| Narrow Margin, The | Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor. Cop escorts gangster’s widow on a train with hit men aboard. Critic Leonard Maltin calls this “one of the best B(-movies) ever made.” | 1952 | ***½ |
| Narrow Margin | Gene Hackman, Anne Archer, James Sikking, J.T. Walsh. Remake of 1952 thriller (see previous listing). | 1990 | **½ |
| Now Or Never | Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Anna Mae Bilson, William Gillespie. A man escorts a child on a train. 36-minute silent film is packed with some of the funniest train footage you’ll ever see. | 1921 | |
| Once Upon A Time In The West ("C'era una volta il West") | Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards. A mysterious stranger joins forces with a desperado to protect a beautiful widow from an assassin working for a railroad magnate. | 1968 | ***½ |
| Polar Express, The | Tom Hanks. A boy who doesn't believe in Santa Claus boards a magical train to the North Pole. Animated. | 2004 | |
| Rock Island Trail | Forrest Tucker, Adele Mara, Bruce Gray. The president of the Rock Island Trail company tries to expand his railroad into the Midwest. | 1950 | |
| Runaway Train | Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay. Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a train without brakes or an engineer. | 1985 | *** |
| Santa Fe | Randolph Scott, Janis Carter. Following the Civil War, four Southern brothers move West. One helps build the Santa Fe Railroad, the others make trouble. | 1951 | ** |
| Saratoga Trunk | Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman. Gold-digger meets a Texas gambler in 1875 New Orleans and follows him to Saratoga, New York, where they become involved in a battle over a valuable railroad trunk line between Albany and Binghamton. | 1945 | *½ |
| Shadow Of A Doubt | Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers. In this Alfred Hitchcock thriller, trains play a crucial role, first bringing trouble to the small California city of Santa Rosa, then resolving it in dramatic fashion. | 1943 | ***½ |
| Silver Streak | Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor. A man finds danger and romance on a long-distance train. | 1976 | *** |
| Spy Train | Richard Travis, Catherine Craig, Chick Chandler, Thelma White. Low-budget thriller has Nazi spies planting a time-bomb in railroad-station baggage that mistakenly ends up on a train. Filmed at Los Angeles Union Station and in and around streamliner passenger trains. | 1943 | |
| Station Jim | George Cole, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laura Fraser. A stowaway pooch becomes a railway station mascot, then a community hero, in 19th century England. | 2001 | |
| Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The | Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo. Armed men hijack a New York subway train and demand ransom for the passengers. | 1974 | ***½ |
| Terror By Night | Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are retained to protect the Star of Rhodesia diamond while aboard a London-to-Edinburgh express train. | 1946 | **½ |
| Terror On A Train (aka Time Bomb) | Glen Ford, Anne Vernon. An expert must defuse a bomb aboard a British freight train loaded with explosives. | 1953 | **½ |
| Tickets | Carlo Delle Piane, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Silvana De Santis, Filippo Trojano. Three stories about passengers on a train traveling through Italy, involve a biochemist, a general's widow, and rowdy soccer fans. | 2005 | |
| Toast of New York, The | Edward Arnold, Cary Grant, Frances Farmer, Jack Oakie. You'll look in vain for any trains, but any movie about the battle between Cornelius Vanderbilt and Big Jim Fisk over the Erie Railroad deserves to be included here. A fictionalized account. | 1937 | *** |
| Train, The | Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau. During World War II, the French Resistance tries to stop a Berlin-bound train filled with art treasures ... without destroying the cargo. | 1964 | **** |
| Under Siege 2: Dark Territory | Steven Seagal, Eric Bogosian, Everett McGill, Katherine Heigl. A mad genius hijacks a Denver-to-Los Angeles passenger train, threatening to use it to fire a space weapon at the U.S. unless his $1 billion ransom demands are met. Fortunately, there’s also a CIA operative aboard. | 1995 | ** |
| Union Depot | Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Alan Hale. A busy city train station is the setting for this multi-threaded character-driven story. | 1932 | *** |
| Union Pacific | Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston. The Union Pacific Railroad builds the eastern portion of America's first transcontinental railroad. | 1939 | *** |
| Union Station | William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald. Railway police and city law enforcement join forces when kidnappers choose an urban train station as the ransom drop. Fans of Los Angeles Union Station will appreciate this detailed architectural tour. Southern Pacific steam locomotive #4337, a 4-8-2 Mountain, makes a cameo appearance, along with Pacific Electric cars, and a lot more. | 1950 | **½ |
| Von Ryan's Express | Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard. British and American prisoners-of-war seize the Nazi train that is transporting them from Italy to Austria and make a run for neutral Switzerland. | 1965 | *** |
| Whispering Smith | Alan Ladd, Robert Preston. Railroad detective must hunt down an old friend who is wrecking trains and rail cargo. | 1948 | **½ |
| TITLE | STARS/SYNOPSIS | YEAR | REVIEW |
| 3:10 To Yuma | Glenn Ford, Van Heflin. Deputized rancher must evade the bad guys and get his prisoner to the rail station in time to meet the 3:10 train.
|
1957 | ***½ |
| 42nd Street | Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler. The musical number, "Shuffle Off To Buffalo" (briefly featuring Ginger Rogers) is worth a look. | 1933 | **** |
| Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein | Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr. The unhuman remains of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster arrive by train, where the crates are mishandled by station baggagemen Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello). Filmed entirely on sound stages; no trains. | 1948 | ***½ |
| Back To The Future, Part III | Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Lea Thompson. In this final installment of the Back To The Future series, Marty McFly travels back to the Wild West circa 1885. Is he trapped there? Or, can a steam locomotive be converted into a time-travel vehicle to return him to the present? | 1990 | ***½ |
| Bad Day At Black Rock | Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan. S.P. Daylight train brings Tracy character to desert town of Black Rock, to investigate the death of his wartime buddy. | 1955 | ***½ |
| Before Sunrise | Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy. In the leisurely opening sequence, the young lovers meet aboard a train. | 1995 | **½ |
| Berlin Express | Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas. In post-WWII Germany, Nazi underground members attempt a political assassination aboard a train. | 1948 | *** |
| Biloxi Blues | Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Penelope Ann Miller. In the opening scene, WWII Army recruits ride a troop train to Biloxi, Miss. for basic training. | 1988 | *** |
| Blazing Saddles | Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder. Director Mel Brooks’ hilarious Western spoof in which a black track worker is appointed sheriff of a small town in the way of the railroad construction. Features funny opening scenes at the railroad camp and involving a handcar. | 1974 | ***½ |
| Bound For Glory | David Carradine, Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland. During the Great Depression, sign-painter and future folk-music legend Woody Guthrie finds hopping freight trains to be a thrifty but highly dangerous mode of travel. | 1976 | ***½ |
| Bridge At Remagen, The | George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman. With the Allies advancing, the Nazis attempt to destroy the last bridge across the Rhine River. | 1969 | **½ |
| Bridge On The River Kwai | William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa. Allied prisoners-of-war help the Japanese build a railway bridge in Burma, unaware that the Allies are planning its destruction. | 1957 | **** |
| Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid | Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross. Two bank bandits try their hand at robbing trains. | 1969 | **** |
| Carlito's Way | Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller. Thrilling final chase scene begins aboard a NYC subway train, then through Grand Central Terminal to an awaiting Amtrak Silver Star. | 1993 | *** |
| Dark City | Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly. The only train that goes all the way to Shell Beach is the Express, but it doesn't seem to stop at any of the stations in this mysterious city. | 1998 | *** |
| Derailed | Jennifer Aniston, Clive Owen, Vincent Cassel, Melissa George. A chance encounter on a commuter train leads to adultery, blackmail and worse. | 2005 | |
| Dogma | Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Linda Fiorentino. Two fallen angels, the 13th apostle ("Rufus"), a pair of unlikely prophets, and a female descendant of Jesus all meet on a train to New Jersey. | 1999 | **½ |
| Duel In The Sun | Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish. Arrival of the railroad adds to the problems of a Texas rancher, whose sons are already fighting over beautiful Pearl Chavez. Big showdown between ranchers and railroad construction crews ends when U.S. Cavalry arrives to defend the builders. | 1946 | *** |
| Doctor Zhivago | Omar Sharif, Julie Christie. Pasha's (Tom Courtenay) political transformation is symbolized in the power of Strelnikov's train. | 1965 | ***½ |
| Double Indemnity | Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Woman seduces insurance man into an insurance-fraud scheme involving murder and a moving train. | 1944 | **** |
| Fried Green Tomatoes | Kathy Bates, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker, Jessica Tandy. The railroad is an important part of the backdrop for the 1920s rural Alabama town of Whistlestop where this film is set. Young Idgie Threadgoode is devastated when her teenage brother is killed by a train while they are playing around the tracks. Later, Idgie and a friend feed the occupants of a hobo camp by throwing stolen canned goods from a moving train. As the movie opens, a phantom train passes through the town, symbolizing the passage of time and the changes that Whistlestop and its people have undergone. Lots of steam-train action in this one! | 1991 | *** |
| From Russia With Love | Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi. British secret agent 007 and Tatiana Romanova make love and encounter S.P.E.C.T.R.E. assassin Donovan 'Red' Grant aboard a train. | 1963 | ***½ |
| Gandhi | Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen. As a young attorney traveling to his first case in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi is thrown off the train when he refuses to relinquish his seat in the whites-only first-class car. Film’s striking cinematography also shows off India’s steam trains. | 1982 | ***½ |
| Greatest Show On Earth, The | Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame, James Stewart. Lots of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus-train footage here, some presented in documentary style. Train-crash sequence alone is worth the price of admission. | 1952 | ***½ |
| Hellboy | Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair. Action sequence includes a subway battle between protagonist Hellboy and one of his many unearthly adversaries. | 2004 | |
| Heaven's Gate | Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston. Wyoming settlers arrive from the East by rail. | 1980 | ** |
| High Noon | Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges.Noon train brings bad man Frank Miller for the big showdown with Marshal Will Kane. We watch clocks all around town count down the final hours and minutes, but it's the steam-train whistle that finally announces the arrival of the midday hour. | 1952 | **** |
| How The West Was Won | Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne. The coming of the railroads played a key role in the taming of the American West. Buffalo stampede is a noteworthy sequence. | 1962 | ***½ |
| Incredibles, The | Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee. Superhero Mr. Incredible saves an elevated train and its passengers after a bomb destroys part of the track. He also uses locomotives and cars in the rail yard as his strength-building equipment. | 2004 | |
| In The Heat Of The Night | Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger. On his way home, Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder at the small-town Sparta, Miss. train station. At the end of the movie, only after helping the town police chief solve the crime, Tibbs resumes his journey home - aboard a GM&O train. | 1967 | **** |
| Jerk, The | Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters. During his stint as a carnival worker, central-character Navin Johnson spends some of his time as "Engineer Fred," operating the miniature-train ride. While he isn't looking, a little boy hops in the cab of the empty train, causing a runaway that Navin/Fred must stop. | 1979 | **½ |
| Julia | Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Maximilian Schell. Playwright Lillian Hellman travels luxury class by train from Paris to Berlin to Warsaw, to see her childhood friend and smuggle money to save Jews and dissidents in Nazi Germany. | 1977 | **** |
| Lawrence Of Arabia | Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins. Popular action sequence involves a dramatic train wreck caused by sabotage by British officer T.E. Lawrence and his followers. | 1962 | **** |
| Meet Me In St. Louis | Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Leon Ames. Musical number The Trolley Song ("Clang, clang, clang went the trolley") features a St. Louis streetcar ride, circa 1903. | 1944 | **** |
| Mystery Train | Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Cinqué Lee. Japanese tourists on a musical pilgrimage travel to Memphis, Tenn. by train. The movie’s title comes from the Elvis Presley hit by the same name. | 1989 | *** |
| North By Northwest | Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason. Both spies and the law are chasing innocent Roger Thornhill (Grant), who meets and romances Eve Kendall (Saint) aboard the 20th Century Limited. | 1959 | **** |
| O Brother, Where Art Thou? | George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson. Escaping convicts try to hop a moving freight train, but they are chained together, creating a funny scene. Next, the trio encounter the Blind Seer, who gives them a ride on a handcar and foretells some of their coming adventures. | 2000 | |
| October Sky | Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern. To pay for their rocketry experiments, four high school friends salvage rail from an abandoned branch line ... or is it abandoned? | 1999 | ***½ |
| Palm Beach Story, The | Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee. Take a wacky ride aboard a Florida-bound train, where you'll meet the unforgettable Ale and Quail Club. And you thought skeet shooting was impossible inside a closed passenger car! | 1942 | ***½ |
| Picnic | William Holden, Kim Novak. In opening scene, drifter Hal Carter arrives in Kansas town stowed aboard a freight train. A steamy love scene takes place near the tracks. | 1955 | ***½ |
| Planes, Trains & Automobiles | Steve Martin, John Candy. A train is just one mode of travel used by a man battling to get home for Thanksgiving. | 1987 | **½ |
| Railway Children, The | Jack Blumenau, Clare Thomas, Jemima Rooper, Jenny Agutter. Children and their mother move to the English countryside after their father is unjustly imprisoned. They have a series of adventures, many related to their regular visits to the tracks to way at passing trains. | 2000 | |
| River Runs Through It, A | Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt, Brenda Blethyn, Emily Lloyd. With the road blocked, young Jessie Burns drives the car, with Norman Maclean as her helpless passenger, on a heart-pounding detour through a railroad tunnel and across a high bridge. | 1992 | **½ |
| Road To Bali | Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour. Low on funds, two stage performers on the run come up with a new way to save on train travel: ticketholder George rides inside with the other passengers, passing surplus diner food to Harold, a stowaway on a makeshift “sub-lower” berth outside, beside one of the trucks. | 1952 | *** |
| Shadow Of A Doubt | Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers. In this Alfred Hitchcock thriller, trains play a crucial role, first bringing trouble to the small California city of Santa Rosa, then resolving it in dramatic fashion. | 1943 | ***½ |
| Some Like It Hot | Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, George Raft. Two musicians disguise themselves as women to evade mobsters and find employment in an all-female band. Their encounter with Monroe character aboard a Florida-bound train is especially memorable. | 1959 | **** |
| Spellbound | Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll. During a train trip, parallel tracks and the tines of a fork combine to trigger the recall of World War II memories by an amnesiac patient. | 1945 | ***½ |
| Spider-Man 2 | Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina. Spider-Man's true identity is revealed to the passengers he rescues aboard an out-of-control urban elevated train. | 2004 | |
| Stand By Me | Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell. Four young friends follow the railroad tracks in search of a dead body, rumored to be that of a local teenager. | 1986 | *** |
| Strangers On A Train | Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll. Two men meet on a train, where their idle discussion eventually turns to talk of swapping murders. | 1951 | **** |
| Sullivan's Travels | Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake. Hollywood director wants to make a movie about real people and human suffering, so he sets out on an odyssey as a hobo. His adventures include hopping a freight out of Los Angeles. Lots of railroad action. | 1941 | **** |
| Thin Man, The | William Powell, Myra Loy. With their first murder-mystery together solved, sleuth Nick and Nora Charles return home to California by rail. The first of five sequels, After the Thin Man (1936, ***1/2), continues the storyline, opening with Nick and Nora arriving home in San Francisco aboard Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited. | 1934 | **** |
| Thin Man Goes Home, The | William Powell, Myra Loy. You've never seen a crowded train unless you've watched this 5th installment in The Thin Man series. The fun begins when the Charles take a train to Nick's hometown for a birthday vacation with his family. | 1944 | *** |
| Throw Momma From The Train | Danny DeVito, Billy Crystal. Comedic remake of Strangers On A Train. | 1987 | **½ |
| Underworld | Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman. An interesting use of rail, featuring both a subway and steam train. Violent. | 2003 | |
| Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers | Not-to-be-missed chase scene in which pursuer Gromit rides a speeding train, laying track as he goes. Animated. | 1993 | |
| Who Framed Roger Rabbit | Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd. Takeover of the venerable Pacific Electric Railway by the sinister Clover Leaf Industries is a main plot ingredient in this groundbreaking film that combines live and animated scenes and characters. Fun to see to the L.A. Red Cars rolling again (sort of). | 1988 | ***½ |
| Witness | Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Josef Sommer, Lukas Haas. Enroute by rail to Baltimore with his mother, a Amish boy witnesses a murder in the Philadelphia train station. | 1985 | *** |
| Young Frankenstein | Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman. Dr. Frederick Frankenstein travels by train to Transylvania to claim his birthright. His rail trip includes several funny scenes. | 1974 | ***½ |
| Jewel Of The Nile, The | Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito. Sequel to Romancing the Stone. | 1985 | ** |
| Matrix Revolutions, The | Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne. At the start of this second sequel to The Matrix, series hero Neo is trapped between the real world and the machine world, in a place that resembles a subway station. The traffic there is controlled by an anthropomorphic program called “The Trainman.” | 2003 | |
| Unbreakable | Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn. The sole survivor of a catastrophic passenger train accident learns that he has a special ability. | 2000 |
Thank you to all of the movie-page visitors who have recommended these and other films for inclusion in the above lists. Many of your suggested titles have now been “promoted” to those earlier lists. The following remain, until I have another chance (in a few cases, a first chance) to view them.
Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Dumbo (1942), Falling In Love (1984), “Light in the Piazza (1962), “Living It Up (1954) Major and the Minor, The (1942), Out of Africa (1985), Schindler's List (1993), Since You Went Away (1944), Summertime (1955), Three Caballeros, The (1944), Terror Train (1980), Broken Arrow (1996), Atomic Train (1999), Titfield Thunderbolt, The (1953), Slim (1937).
Filmography links and data courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.