Rail transport in fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Examples of railways in fiction include:

Name	Description	Originator	Materials
Boxcar Children
Hogwarts Express	Harry Potter book series	J. K. Rowling	Books, Film
Polar Express	Takes children to the north pole.		Book, Film
The Railway Series	Featuring Thomas the Tank Engine and friends	Rev. W. Awdry	Books, TV series
The Railway Children		E. Nesbit	Books, Film

• Back to the Future Part III The improvised method of propelling the time machine to 88MPH in 1885 was by using a steam locomotive, also Emmett Brown refitted a similar train as the basis of his new time machine.
• Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express features a train like Digimon called Locomon that is controlled by another Digimon causing it to run wild on the rail ways. It later evolves into a meaner looking Digimon called Grandlocomon.
• Digimon Frontier features several train like Digimon called Trailmon that run on monorails.
• The Thirty-Nine Steps (book by John Buchan, films, one by Alfred Hitchcock) features a sequence where the character Richard Hannay escapes from the Police by jumping from a train. One version uses the Forth Bridge in Scotland, while another is filmed on the Severn Valley Railway.
• Mission: Impossible (film adaptation) sees a helicopter pursuing a TGV train into the Channel Tunnel which runs between Great Britain and France. In reality this type of train does not travel through the Channel Tunnel, and the tunnel shown in the film has double track whereas the real tunnel has two single bores.
• The Dark Tower (book series) by Stephen King. The main character Roland of Gilead travels through a series of caves which were once part of an underground railroad system. The characters also ride on a monorail with artificial intelligence.
• While You Were Sleeping (film) starring Sandra Bullock as a Subway worker who is mistaken for the fiancee of an injured passenger.
• Men In Black; Men In Black 2 (films) starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, has aliens living in the Subway.
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (film) sees a gang of criminals hijack a Subway train in order to extract a ransom.
• Volcano (film): An extension to the Subway meets a lava flow.
• Network (book) by Laurence Staig. A monster takes over London Underground and the minds of passengers.
• Silver Streak (film), in which a passenger train is both the primary set and plays a pivotal part in bringing murderers to justice.
• Closely Watched Trains (film), in which the story takes places at a railway station in World War II in Czechoslovakia under the Nazi occupation. The film is based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel, directed by Jiří Menzel.
• Murder on the Orient Express (book, film) describes a train journey from Paris to Istanbul aboard the Orient Express during which a murder takes place. Hercule Poirot, riding on the train solves the mystery and justice is served.
• The Mystery of the Blue Train (book, TV adaptation), an earlier Poirot story in which a murder takes place on a train.
• 4.50 From Paddington (book; film and TV adaptations), a Miss Marple story. A passenger on one train is witness to a murder being committed on another train.
• Anna Karenina (book) by Leo Tolstoy. Train travel is arguably the most prominent motif of the story.
• The Lady Vanishes (film) by Alfred Hitchcock the majority of the plot takes place on a train heading for England.
• Death Line (1972) and Creep (2004) (films) both deal with killers on the London Underground.
• Two seasons of Power Rangers, Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue and Power Rangers Mystic Force, (TV series) feature train based Megazords; the Supertrain Megezord and Solar Streak Megazord.
• The Crazy Locomotive by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, 1923 expressionistic 45-minutes play ( Obie Award-winning production at the Chelsea Theatre Center in 1977, Classical Theatre of Harlem). Two engineers push the locomotive to ever-greater speeds causing a head-on collision.
• La Bête humaine (novel) by Émile Zola, filmed 5 times, e.g. as Cruel Train
• Night Train aka Baltic Express, 1959 Polish film by Jerzy Kawalerowicz
• From Russia with Love - James Bond novel and film, confrontation on board of the Orient Express
• Brief Encounter - 1945 (film) romantic meetings in a train station
• The Motion Demon - 1919 (book) horror stories by Stefan Grabiński- Engine Driver Grot; The Wandering Train; The Motion Demon; The Sloven; The Perpetual Passenger; In the Compartment; Signals; The Siding; Ultima Thule.
• Northwest Frontier 1959 - British army officer smuggles an infant prince to safety aboard an antiquated locomotive.
• The Cassandra Crossing 1976 - Passengers aboard a transcontinental train face a threat from carrier of plague virus.
• The Locomotive - dynamic poem for children by Julian Tuwim, filmed by Zbigniew Rybczyński
• Strangers on a Train (novel, film) tells the story of how two strangers meet on a train and decide to exchange murders so they can't be tied to each other.
• Von Ryan's Express (film) is about World War II POW's escaping by taking control of their prison train.

• Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends — TV Series originated from The Railway Series by the Rev.W.Awdry
• Silver Streak Appeared in two movies, the 1934 thriller Silver Streak and the 1976 comedy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.
• Taggart Comet (Atlas Shrugged)
• The Great Train Robbery — feature film based on a true story, also title of a modern film.
• Starlight Express (Andrew Lloyd Webber) — Musical about trains competing in a World Championship railway race.
• Galaxy Express 999 — From the manga and anime of the same name by Leiji Matsumoto, this train travels the galaxy from planet to planet.
• Runaway Train — Film about escaped inmates on a runaway train.
• Atomic Train — TV movie (1999) A runaway train carrying an atomic bomb into a town.
• Astrotrain A Decepticon triple-changer from the Transformers More Than Meets the Eye character line.
• Supertrain — A television series on a huge luxury double deckered high speed train.
• "The Celestial Railroad" — Short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three — 1974 film adapted from the John Godey novel of the same name about the hijacking of a New York Subway train.
• "Tons Of Steel" — A Grateful Dead song about a man and the train he operates.
• Iron Council (China Mieville) — a fantasy book about the building of a cross-continental railway line.
• The Little Engine That Could, a children's book. Also adapted as an animated film in 1991 (see The Little Engine That Could (film)).
• Horror Express, an Anglo-Spanish horror film set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express and follows a group of passengers as they are killed off one by one.

[edit] External links

List of Railway Movies (as of December 5, 1994).