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The Subway in the Movies


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I know that Hollywood takes liberties with subway operations in movies. "The Taking of Pelham 123" showed green lights all the way from 23rd Street to South Ferry. Of course, that's impossible because there are grade and station timing signals that would be tripped if the train didn't slow down, which it didn't in the movie. Also, the (6) doesn't go to South Ferry.

 

I just watched "Money Train." To prevent the train from being stopped from hitting a tripper, the crooks bled the air from the brakes. The movie implies that without air, the trippers can't stop the train because brakes can't be applied. In reality, wouldn't bleeding the air cause the brakes to be applied?

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Few things:

 

Wrong destinations and station names and such, most of the time this is done for I'm sure legal reasons and such.  Another example would be Die Hard 3's (2)(3) Wall Street scene.

 

Movie physics would usually never follow the laws of physics in real life, I'm sure people on YouTube and that popular show Myth Busters busted a lot of things from James Bond movies and I believe that famous bus jump on Speed.

 

Movies are made for entertainment, so unless it's clearly stated as an documentary, I would just enjoy it for purely entertainment.

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I had that same question about bleeding the brakes a while back.

 

Its impossible to "bleed the brakes" since the emergency brakes would automatically come on and lock the brakes

That's exactly what I thought. I guess a little knowledge is dangerous.

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The  (6) ran to Coney Island in the Pelham 123 remake, and sped past a  (W) on elevated tracks...

 

Movies are not accurate at all. (Although they did have a mayor with a very close resemblance to Giuliani...)

 

 

Well in another remake of that movie, I believe they used Toronto's subway.

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The 70s version of "Pelham" was a lot more accurate than the remake. I could go on and on about the inaccuracies in the remake (how is north of 57 St above ground and why is a (B) train going there?!). I remember one of the characters saying something about there being a red signal on the inner loop of South Ferry that eventually would (and did) trip the train so it stopped safely; I believe it was a grade time signal?

 

And since we're on the topic of inaccuracies: how did CI go from 8 tracks to 2 in the movie? At least Denzel Washington's explanation about re-routing the (R) train in the very beginning of the movie was pretty accurate :P Could you imagine the (R) actually being re-routed over to the express tracks north of 34th and taking the unused tracks to Lex-63, crossing over to the (F) tracks and rejoining Queens Blvd @ 36 St? Wild!

 

-A

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in the 1995 film across the sea of time the kid thomas gets on a redbird (2) on chambers st in the express but when it shows the railfan window of the redbird it says (1) to South Ferry that is as well very inacurate from the makers since in 1995 the (1) didnt run redbirds by then it was 100% R62As.

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in the 1995 film across the sea of time the kid thomas gets on a redbird (2) on chambers st in the express but when it shows the railfan window of the redbird it says (1) to South Ferry that is as well very inacurate from the makers since in 1995 the (1) didnt run redbirds by then it was 100% R62As.

 

 

You are right about that. The (1) never ran redbirds unless under rare circumstances. Some of the car fleets (R29s, R33s, and R36s) that became the Redbirds did run on the (1) before being rebuilt in the 1980s. The (1) has been using R62As since the mid 1980s. Speaking of movies, Nighthawks is one I know of with Sylvester Stallone in it.

 

They used the museum train of R1/9s in the movie. Cars 1802, 800, and the ill-fated 1208 (An R-6-2 car) were seen in the movie (likely the entire museum train was used for that scene). Then we had Jacob's Ladder, which used a train of Green R10s (which for some reason was displaying (C) at Bergen Street). All of the R10s had already been retired when they filmed that scene (September 7th, 1989 was the last run I think). Ironically the same cars seen in the movie were used on the fantrip on October 29th of 1989. 

 

Here is a video of Jacob's Ladder showing the train of R10s. This is pretty much what a Green R10 sounded like.

 

 

 

 

 

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in the 1995 film across the sea of time the kid thomas gets on a redbird (2) on chambers st in the express but when it shows the railfan window of the redbird it says (1) to South Ferry that is as well very inacurate from the makers since in 1995 the (1) didnt run redbirds by then it was 100% R62As.

Ah, I remember that. It was an imax 3d movie. I liked one scene of the filming on the cyclone rollercoaster. Movie itself was ok.

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