Running time: 100 minutes
Language: English
Another day in Allegheny and West Virginia Railroad railyard in Pennsylvania starts just like any other day with routine jobs. Veteran engineer Frank Barnes is teamed with green conductor Will Colson for the movement of freight cars. The tension between them rises - Barnes suspects inexperienced Colson got his job because of the family connections. Colson feels Barnes just picks on him to prove he is incompetent. Both men has personal problems and it begins to affect their job. But what will make their day unforgettable begins back in the railyard - one of the engineers while moving cars to the siding makes a mistake. He tried to correct the alignment of the switch while his train was in motion, but he was unable to climb back into the locomotive. His train not only is unmanned with the automatic brake switched off and the dead man’s switch disabled, but also moved into mailline and is now danger to other trains. Yardmaster Connie sends few of the men to redirect the runaway train to a siding, but when they fail she has to contact her superiors. Soon the media start the story of ghost train that heads towards cities. Meanwhile Connie learns that in some of the cars of the train are full of chemicals that may bring danger to civilians.
Film based on real event (see CSX 8888 incident) that took place on 15 May 2001 in Walbridge, Ohio - train with dangerous chemicals got out of control during intra-yard movement. But just like in many other Hollywood movies the original story was spiced-up to make the whole story more entertaining. Nevertheless it is one of the most interesting movies about trains - it shows that even with all modern technology the human error is still the most important factor in safety on railways. Also the scenes where two engineers face the uncontrollable power of freight train.
Our rating
8.8
/ 10
Film value
8
/ 10
Train scenes
5
/ 5
Adventure
5
/ 5
Scenery
4
/ 5
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