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US Railroad drama coming to Sky


shortliner

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Just watched the first one - the jury's out. I have the whole series (the internet is a powerful tool and the world is a small place) on the media player so will watch another one tomorrow.

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  • 1 month later...

is anyone else watching Hell on Wheels? It's being shown on Sunday evenings on TCM and reaches about episode six tomorrow.

I'm quite enjoying it but it's a watch and delete rather than a keeper on my rapidly filling up Tivo. Not a great deal of actual railroading but that's probably authentic for the end of steel and the actual equipment they have seems to be one Atlantic, a private car and a few freight cars. I've no idea how historically accurate it is- I rather doubt if Durant would have spent that much of his time at the construction end- but I have read about the Credit Mobilier scandal which made the building of the Union Pacific a massive swindle. ISTR that the US taxpayers ended up paying for the UP at least three times over.

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I'm watching it, usually the Thursday repeat. I was hoping for more rail related content but it's not bad as it stands. The loco that stands about at the railhead appears to be a mock-up, weathered by 1 to 1 scale dry-brushimg! There is also a more real looking loco that moves and may be a real one. No doubt there's a website about the making of it but life's too short.

Pete

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I'm watching it, usually the Thursday repeat. I was hoping for more rail related content but it's not bad as it stands. The loco that stands about at the railhead appears to be a mock-up, weathered by 1 to 1 scale dry-brushimg! There is also a more real looking loco that moves and may be a real one. No doubt there's a website about the making of it but life's too short.

Pete

Apparently the background loco is CGI so only exists inside a computer while the real looking one used for close ups is a ply and foam mock up but it's got enough of a chassis and wheelset to run at speed as it did in tonight's episode.

The American RR blogs are complaining bitterly about the production not using a real loco - several of this type and era, or at least working replicas of them do exist- but I suspect that the costs of hiring, manning and keeping a real loco in steam more or less throughout the filming would have been prohibitive. There are also complaints about the loco being dirty black and not brightly painted as they were at that time but that wouldn't have fitted with the scruffy hell image of the end of steel. For me the only thing that looks really wrong is the very small glass on the headlamp. There have also been comments about the lack of valve gear but they may be forgetting that these old locos had inside valve gear - Stephenson or similar- rather than Walschaerts.

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