Playing with trains in Hollywood

The LA Times has a wonderful series about the people who work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry called "Working Hollywood." It runs every Sunday. This week, it's about a guy who works with trains for movies. I love this kind of story. He worked on Leatherheads. Apparently the film left the trains in even better shape than they found them:

"Collectively, the film company left the museum with improvements worth more than $50,000," says Miller. "The historic coaches were redecorated on the outside and improved on the interior, and the steam locomotive received expensive cosmetic modifications. It needed some work to make it look like it was really in service.

That's always nice to hear. I used to work for someone who financed railcars when I worked at Babcock & Brown in New York. I also produced a day of pickups for a USC production that took place on a train set built just for the movie industry. The trains are (I think) 1/16th scale, so they're just big enough to sit on, and you can ride them around the property. That was a cool day of shooting. There's something about trains that is just cool.