train falls off bridge


When the train was moving backwards on the track with tsoldiers inside, why didn't it just keep on following the track over the bridge? What made the train fall off the tracks??

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I think it was going backwards too fast and once it hit that turn it lost control. I don't know how trains work but since there was no brakeman anymore there was no control. It was on a downward slope and all...

that said I'm wondering why you never saw any bodies...wouldn't there be soldiers flying everywhere once the train broke up?

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When the disconnected last cars of the train are moving backwards,
there's a steel rod shown several times stuck in the ground at the curve
where those cars will fall off. I interpreted that rod to be either a
section of rail that had been removed, or a tool used to remove it.

I think the bodies weren't shown because it would have been too gruesome,
and caused the movie to receive a restricted rating.

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Its more movie BS. realistically trains use the westinghouse braking system, if the trains are uncoupled (like in the movie), it breaks the air brake hose and the breaks are engaged,its designed to prevent what happens in the movie,also the movie uses modern tracks tracks of the 1800's tracks were not so nice and Im sure the train would have derailed long before it got to the bridge, as far as the crash ,realistically the train would have hit the curve and flipped over, it looks like the built some type of temporary shunt and just let the train roll down and off of it.

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Easy friend, whether that train ought to have had Westinghouse brakes depends on just when the movie was set. George Westinghouse patented his brakes in 1868, and of course that doesn't mean that all trains and rolling stock immediately had such a braking system, and indeed we don't see any air hoses at the couplers. More of an anachronism might be the obvious Janney Coupler (introduced 1873) seen cut through and not the rod and pin couplers the train almost certainly ought to have had.
Whether the train ought to have derailed sooner would depend on the grade and speed the unbraked three cars would have achieved. It didn't seem to be going much more than 30 - 40 Miles per Hour. Clearly the wreck was done with a set of brush concealed spur tracks leading over the embankment, just as was done in the movie The Fugitive. If a little of suspension of disbelief is required to suppose that runaway train cars would derail perfectly flat then what they hey, I'm willing. :)

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