where was it filmed?


Anybody know? Looks like out West, seen some overhead pantographs so either the Rocky Mountain Division (Avery-Harlowtown) or the Cascade Division (Othello to Tacoma).

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Stencils on some of the cars, and the logos on the tender (coal car), indicate it was filmed on the Milwaukee Road (Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific RR)...they also had large electric freight engines...hence the overhead catenary (electric wires).

The rail yards were in Miles City, Montana...so I would guess it was filmed in that state...and a number of other states as well...South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois (Chicago area).



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Thanks, I lived & worked along The CMSt.P&P for about 24 years mostly in the Rocky Mountian Division just around the time of its demise and it all looked very familiar. I remember seeing the last of the "Little Joes" around Missoula, & worked along the section between Avery, Idaho & St. Regis Mt. Just last summer I was in Miles City at the old Locomotive Shop site. The story line had the film taking place about 600 miles West of Chicago, but the majority of the film looked further West.

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...that ran on the South Shore Line. I made many road trips from Chicago to Michigan and Ohio, and while passing through Northwest Indiana, I would often see them running alongside the expressway, especially in the Gary area.

In Ohio, I used to see two of the last three in existence. They were being stored in a freight yard, next to I-480. Those two are now at museums in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and the only other surviving Little Joe is on display in Montana.

The museum in PA is not far from where they were originally built, for use in Russia during WWII. Thanks to the Cold War, they never left the States.

History of the Little Joes:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Road_class_EF-4_and_EP-4



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There was one shot that seemed similar to one filmed in Around the World in 80 Days in color. The train was going away and there was a steep hill on the left and a single spire rock on the right with a river below. I believe that was shot in Colorado and the Durango line.

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The location shots were filmed with the full cooperation of the Milwaukee Road between early May and mid-June, 1930. The locations in Montana included the yard, roundhouse and station at Miles City, Lombard (where the special carrying the injured Dan Thorn passes the sidetracked Olympian), Sixteen Mile Canyon including Eagle Nest Tunnel (where the lovers flee to safety from the onrushing freight and the landslide occurs), the original bridge built in 1907 crossing the Missouri River at Mobridge, South Dakota (where the speeding special flies across the river) and at Union Station, Chicago.

Interior shots (with a few exceptions-when Jean Arthur looks out the window at Larry passing by with the dynamometer, etc.) were filmed at the RKO studios. "Classic Trains" in their Fall, 2001 issue has a good-size article on the film.

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