Movie Model Trains

One of the other miracles of modern streaming TV - apart from being able to watch old US sitcoms, of course - is that films that once turned up rarely on terrestrial TV back in the day now seem to be playing constantly.  The spaghetti western My Name is Nobody (1973) - which features the bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime, star pairing of Henry Fonda and Terrence Hill - I had, until a couple of years ago, seen only once, in an early nineties screening on BBC2.  Then, during the first lockdown, it turned up on an on-demand service and I caught it again.  Now, thanks to a live streaming service I get on Roku, I've seen it three times in as many weeks.  Despite the repetition, I still enjoy it.  Another spaghetti western that only used to make rare appearances on terrestrial TV was Pancho Villa (1971).  I say spaghetti western, but while it was filmed in Spain, like many true spaghetti westerns, it was actually a Spanish/UK/US co-production, with no Italian participation.  Anyway, it now seems to play constantly across a live streaming multi-channel Roku app I have installed.  I actually watched it all the way through tonight and you know what?  It actually wasn't that bad.  OK, it is a completely fictionalised and hugely unhistorical account of the famed Mexican bandit-turned-revolutionary general's 1916 incursion into the US, when he and some of his bandits/revolutionaries attacked Columbus, New Mexico, but it is entertainingly done and played largely as farce.  Even if it does continue an obsession on the part of film makers in casting bald actors - Telly Savalas in this instance - as the historically hairy Villa, (see also Villa Rides! (1968), with Yul Brynner in this respect).

One of the most interesting things about the film, though, is its use of some truly wonderful large scale model trains in several action sequences.  These trains also turned up in the following year's Horror Express (which also used the coach interiors, redressed, from Panhco Villa), which was produced by the same team.  The story that did the rounds at the time of Horror Express' release, (and persists to this day), was that the producer of both films had bought the trains from the producers of Nicholas and Alexander (1971) and built both films around them.  (A variation on the story has it that they were originally built for Doctor Zhivago (1965)).  Producer Bernard Gordon, however, has denied this, claiming that the models were specially built for Pancho Villa.  Indeed, the fact that locomotives and rolling stock appear to conform to Spanish designs and match up to the real locos and rolling stock seen in other scenes, this claim seems to have credence - both Nicholas and Alexander and Doctor Zhivago being set in Tsarist Russia, dictating that their train models would probably be appropriate to this setting.  Nevertheless, I still have my suspicions that, even on Pancho Villa, the models were second hand.  Another film set during the Mexican Revolution had also been shot in Spain in 1970-71: Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dynamite (1971) (aka Duck, You Sucker!).  At its climax, this film, like Pancho Villa, features a spectacular and magnificently staged head on train crash, using large scale model trains.  From memory, the model trains used were certainly similar to those used in Pancho Villa, following Spanish outline so as to match up with the real trains used in other sequences.

So, did Pancho Villa and Horror Express use model trains recycled from Fistful of Dynamite?  Possibly.  It isn't unusual for props to be recycled between films, (sets and scenery, as well), in order to reduce costs.  Certainly, the models used in all of these films must have been built to a very large scale - in Pancho Villa their sequences are shot outside, rather than in a studio and have a level of detail that makes them appear very realistic.  Which implies that they were very expensive to originally build - too expensive, perhaps, for a modestly budget production like Pancho Villa to have built them from scratch?  Whatever the truth, they are pretty magnificent looking and surprisingly convincing - far better than the HO or O scale model trains, (usually commercially available models) that turn up in many other low-budget movies.  (See, for instance, the train sequence in 1957's The Black Scorpion, where the manufacturer's name, 'Lionel Trains', can clearly be seen on the side of the locomotive's tender - which is coupled to the loco the wrong way around).  They alone, make Pancho Villa worth watching - that and the fact that Telly Savalas sings the song over the closing credits, (it really shouldn't be allowed).