Sunset Limited, Southern Pacific Ry. (1898) watch online HD

Sunset Limited, Souther Pacific Ry. (1898)

This Edison film lasts just a minute as we see a group of people with their arms in the air as a train comes towards them. On the second half of the film we see the train going to opposite direction. Yeah, that's pretty much all we get to see here but Edison made countless railroad pictures as did many other studios and this has always fascinated me. You have to think that a lot of people went to these films because it gave them a chance to see things that they wouldn't in their normal life. However, you'd also think that most people had either been on a train or seen one yet these type of films were highly popular and explains why there are so many. This one here really doesn't offer us anything interesting so it's certainly going to be for film buffs or those who want to see an operating train from 1898.

It's a famous train for the era and Tom Edison's company made a bunch of films for the Southern Pacific. Yet, is that the Sunset Limited of the Southern Pacific? There is certainly a great deal of naiveté in the film makers and audiences of the era. Again and again we are presented with images and told they are of some famous view, but how are we to know? It's a passenger train crossing dry scrub land with some mountains in the distance.

Contrast that with our modern era of film making in which a couple of setting shots are used to demonstrate that this is, indeed, a particular place -- the Empire State Building for New York, say, or the Kremlin for Moscow. We then are treated to some other place for location shooting -- Vancouver for Manhattan, say, because it's a lot cheaper shooting there.

Anyway, it's a train. Even for the era, it's nothing special.