While I can't say I've ever been a 'rail buff/fan/nut of any signifigance, I've always held a passing interest in the sheer size and power of locomotives in general. It may stem from my more rabid affection for the powerful musclecars of the 1960s and early 1970s. I can tell you I've lived about 100 yards from a freight line that pases behind my home (thankfully nowhere near a crossing, so no clanging or horn blasting to live with) and I love the 'singing' they do as the crawl along late at night. I've never owned a scale railroad of any kind, but being a car modeler, I've come across the huge assortment of equipment and accessories the rail hobby has had in my travels to hobby shops. And I suddenly decided recently that I want to recreate a pair of quasi-famous trains from two B-films. First, because I find weathering/damaging a model much easier than making it look pristine, I decided to replicate the four locomotive behemoth from the 1985 Jon Voight and Eric Roberts film, "Runaway Train". In my research I learned the following: The four locomotives, front to rear, are all made by EMD. They are a GP40-2, an F7, and a pair of GP7u models. All were owned at the time of production by the Alaska Rail Road, but since the film's subject was a runaway train, the ARR required their markings be covered up. All were painted with water-based paints (for easy removal later) and made to look well-worn, even neglected. Because of scattered filming locations, other locomotives stood in for the ARR units for many close-up and interior scenes, and sometimes their registry numbers are more prominently featured than the ARR numbers. As such, I'm using the most often/clearly visible numbers for each of the four: The GP40 will be 3010 The F7 will be 1500 The first GP7 (nearly unreadable) will be 1810 The last GP7 will be 812 (a non-ARR unit). A good friend and model rail nut happened to have many unused vintage locomotives, two of which matched my needs- an Athearn GP40-2 and an Athearn F7. He donated them to the project, then I located an eBay sale for a pair of lightly-used AHM GP7s ($25) to complete the needed set of four. Then, watching the film closely I made notes on a bunch of equipment differences the real trains had compared to the HO-scale models I'd acquired, and went shopping to get ahold of as many of those pieces as I could locate. I also ordered up the paints I felt I'd need, as well as a fake snow product and a 32" length of roadbed and track to display the train on later. The two GP7s and the paints arrived today, so I pulled all four bodies off their chassis', stripped out the glazing and horns, removed the GP40's cab...and shot each with their base color: The GP40 and F7 were hit with Hull Red and the GP7s got Metal Black, both from Tamiya. Yes, yes- most of you "RT" fans will say I'm nuts and the four locos were all black. My reply: get a better TV. If you watch carefully in the better-lit scenes, the two front locos are actually a red-brown (with the GP40's cab being black with a silver top). Side note: one of my GP7s is missing its left/rear staircase...which fit in nicely with the plot wherein the runaway collides with the tail-end of the freight train. Based on Manny's statement that "all the hand rails are gone", I plan to mangle the GP40's left side railings a bit (moreso at the front corner), the F7 will get significant scars on the left side and the two GP7s will lose most of their left-side railings...and the one will be missing a staircase (which I'll replace with debris resembling the crushed stairs). Tonight I went and started distressing the GP40 and doing some testing with 'snow'. More to come tomorrow.
