Movie trains – tracking the best

Hettrick

There are a handful of great movies set entirely on trains, and dozens of classic and not-so-classic films in which moments featuring trains are the most memorable element, often even iconic.
During 30 days in October 2023 I revisited nearly 60 films I recalled featuring trains, and found about 15 that I had not seen, in order to compile short video highlights and screen shots of my favorites. (I added about 75 more to this compilation over the following year, for a total of more than 135, in addition to more than 100 others I’ve noted at end with very brief and/or not particularly notable visual train moments or not using actual trains.)
Trains have been around about 100 years longer than cars or planes, and they have been featured prominently from the earliest movies, including The Great Train Robbery of 1903 (click highlighted title for 30-sec video highlights from movie), through trains of all styles in hundreds, perhaps thousands of films of all genres for more than a century.
The cinematography of trains has led to some of the most dynamic and artistic images in film. Perhaps you can identify the movie each of these came from:

Alphabetical list of the films with photos and/or videos presented in ranking by category below: (additional list of films at bottom with less notable train scenes)
The 15:17 to Paris
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Anna Karenina (1935)
Anna Karenina (2012)
Asteroid City
At the Circus
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Back to the Future III
Batman Begins
Before Sunrise
Berlin Express
The Big Trees
Breakheart Pass
Brief Encounter
Bullet Train
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Carmen Jones
The Cassandra Crossing
Casino Royale (2006)
Cat Ballou
Collateral
The Commuter
Danger Lights
Days of Heaven
Death Wish
The Defiant Ones
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Downton Abbey
Dr. Zhivago
East of Eden
Emperor of the North
Enemy of the State
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The First Great Train Robbery
The French Connection
The Frisco Kid
From Russia with Love
The Fugitive
Gandhi
The General
The Getaway (1972)
The Girl on the Train
Goldeneye
Go West
The Great Escape
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Great Race
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Grey Fox
A Hard Day’s Night
Harry Potter franchise
The Harvey Girls
High Noon
Hour of the Gun
How the West Was Won
The Hucksters
Human Desire
The Hurricane Express
The Incident
Indiscretion of an American Wife
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
In the Heat of the Night
It Happened to Jane
James Bond 007 franchise
The Journey of Natty Gann
Julia
Kansas Pacific
King Kong (1933 & 1976)
Knight and Day
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Last Train from Gun Hill
Lawrence of Arabia
A League of Their Own
The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)
A Little Romance
Live and Let Die
The Lone Ranger (2013)
Mission: Impossible franchise
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
Money Train
Murder in the Private Car
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
The Music Man
Narrow Margin (1952)
Narrow Margin (1990)
The Natural
Nickelodeon
Night Train to Paris
North by Northwest
Octopussy
Once Upon a Time in the West
A Passage to India
The Phantom Express
Picnic
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Rails Into Laramie
Reds
Ride ’em Cowboy
Runaway Train
Salaam Bombay!
Santa Fe
Saturday Night Fever
Schindler’s List
Shanghai Express
Shanghai Noon
The Silk Express
Silver Streak (1976)
The Silver Streak (1934)
Skyfall
Slumdog Millionaire
Snowpiercer
Solo
Some Like it Hot
Spectre
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Sting
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Source Code
Superman the Movie (1978)
The Swarm
Switchback (1997)
The Station Agent
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
The Tall Target
Terror on a Train
Throw Momma from the Train
Train (2008)
The Train
The Train Robbers
The Train to Busan
Twentieth Century
Unstoppable
Von Ryan’s Express
The Warriors
White Christmas
Wild Boys of the Road
Without Reservations
Young Tom Edison

Of course most of us can instantly think of some of the most iconic train moments in great films (short video or photo highlights below):

  • The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

  • The Defiant Ones (1958)

  • Stand by Me (1986)

  • North by Northwest (1959)

  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

  • Superman the Movie (1978) – Clark Kent outraces a train as a teenager and later, as Superman, uses his body to fill in a missing portion of track during an earthquake to save the lives of a train full of passengers.

  • The Fugitive (1993)

  • Some Like it Hot (1959)

  • Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

  • Reds (1981)

  • How the West was Won (1963)

  • King Kong (1933, 1976) – The famous giant gorilla briefly attacks a New York City El train before climbing The Empire State Building in the original classic as well as the remake 43 years later.

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Here are short video highlights and photos of my favorite movies with trains (only live-action theatrical releases; no animated films or TV shows):

Favorite train movies overall – the film itself and train scenes
(majority or entire film takes place on a train)

  • Silver Streak (1976) – comedy-thriller starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, Ned Beatty, and Patrick McGoohan

  • The Train (1964) – Burt Lancaster stars in World War II drama directed by John Frankenheimer

  • Unstoppable (2010) – click this title for 2-min vid hilites of film directed by Tony Scott starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, and Rosario Dawson 

  • Von Ryan’s Express (1965) – World War II prisoner escape drama starring Frank Sinatra

  • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) – didn’t capture any particularly dynamic visual images but the movie starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw about a hijacked subway and the battle of wills, expertise and verbal exchanges is excellent and all about the train from beginning to end.

  • Days of Heaven (1978) – Terrence Malick’s period drama narrated by a young girl’s (Linda Manz) hard-knock experiences traveling from Chicago to the Texas panhandle in 1916 with her older brother (Richard Gere) and his girlfriend (Brooke Adams); also starring Sam Shepard.

 

  • From Russia with Love (1963) – the second James Bond film starring Sean Connery features provocative romance, a battle of wits, and one of cinema’s best fights aboard a train.

 

  • Skyfall (2012) – Daniel Craig’s third film as 007 opens with an epic six-minute chase on a train involving a huge excavator, VW Beetles, and a rooftop foot chase, and later shifts to the London Underground for a seven-minute subway/Tube chase.

  • The French Connection (1971) – While trailing the French head of a heroin-smuggling syndicate, New York police detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle plays a game of cat-and-mouse on-and-off a subway at Grand Central Station, and later commandeers a car to wildly pursue a hitman who takes over an elevated train and forces the motorman to drive through a station without stopping.

  • The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) – Meredith Salenger stars in this hard-edged Disney movie as a Depression-era 12 year-old tomboy who hops a freight train in Chicago to find her father in the Pacific Northwest, getting help from John Cusack and a wolf along the way.

  • Dr. Zhivago (1965) – Omar Sharif, Geraldine Chaplin, Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson in David Lean’s 3-hr 15-min epic period/costume drama set during early 20th century Russian Revolution and featuring several different trains traversing the snow-laden country.

  • Schindler’s List (1993) – When a businessman (Liam Neeson) employing Jewish factory workers during the German Nazi regime sees freight train cattle cars jammed full with thousands of Jews being taken to death camps, he spots his key manager and uses his clout to get him off the train, later also saving an entire train of women who believe they are being taken to safety from extermination at Auschwitz.

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Best showcasing of trains in movie franchises

  • James Bond (romance, action, chases, fights – trains have played a notable role in nine Bond films, and Bond has been on the rails of some sort in more than a dozen episodes; nobody does trains better than 007)

  • Mission: Impossible (big action train scenes in the first and most recent episodes – video highlights from the first one in 1996)

  • Harry Potter (compilation of trains from multiple episodes)

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More fully-loaded train movies

  • Breakheart Pass (1975) – Charles Bronson, Richard Crenna, Jill Ireland, Ben Johnson in 1870s drama about train with medical supplies and troops dispatched on a bogus epidemic relief mission (click highlighted title to see 6 3/4-min video of train scenes in movie). 

  • The Cassandra Crossing (1977) – click this title for 4 1/2-min vid highlights of this star-filled thriller (Richard Harris, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner,  Martin Sheen) of a train on which terrorists have planted a deadly virus.

  • The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) – Denzel Washington in very good remake of the hijacking of a subway that leads to battle of wits and resourcefulness but other than the image below, I didn’t capture any particularly dynamic visual images. 

  • Runaway Train (1985) –  Jon Voight and Eric Roberts in film based on a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa about escaped prisoners who hide on a freight train that quickly runs out of control through Alaska when the engineer has a heart attack and falls off.

  • The General (1927) – Buster Keaton’s landmark 75-minute silent eye-popping stunt-filled epic of its day.

  • Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – all-star adaptation of Agatha Christie murder-mystery committed and solved during the train ride (Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, John Gielgud).

  • The Silver Streak (1934) – The then-brand-new aerodynamic, sleek, high-speed Burlington Zephyr stars as a train that races at record speed from Chicago to Boulder City, Nevada to deliver life-saving iron lung respirators to Hoover Dam construction workers, loosely based on an actual record run by the Pioneer Zephyr from Chicago to Denver in May of that same year.

  • The Lady Vanishes (1938) – Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense drama about an English tourist who is determined to prove that an elderly woman she met on a train has disappeared, despite the denials by other passengers that the woman was ever on the train.

  • Emperor of the North (1973) – two Depression-era freight train-hopping hobos (Lee Marvin, Keith Carradine) try to elude a sadistic tyrant train conductor (Ernest Borgnine).

  • Shanghai Express (1932) – Amidst the a Chinese civil war of 1931, a British captain finds himself on a train from Peiping to Shanghai with a beautiful woman believed to be a seductress called Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) who was his former lover. Also aboard the train is a mysterious Eurasian called Chang who turns out to be a rebel leader who takes a doctor hostage, rapes an Asian woman passenger, and threatens to kill the doctor unless Lily goes to his palace with him. After Lily agrees, the Asian woman stabs Chang to death. As they leave the train, Lily reunites with her former lover, the British captain, and they kiss in public at the train station.

  • The Silk Express (1933) – A businessman who is determined to take a shipment of silk from Seattle to New York City by rail to break a monopoly set up by a gangster, agrees to take along a desperate young woman and her paralyzed father who must get to a New York hospital quickly for life-saving surgery, but gangsters sneak on the train to make sure the silk does not arrive on time and the businessman’s secretary is murdered in a sealed railroad car.

  • Danger Lights (1930) – A hard-driving boss on the Milwaukee Railroad in Montana who spends little time with his wife, loses her to a disgruntled engineer who gets his leg caught in a railroad switch in front of the boss, who saves the interloper’s life but gets a deadly brain injury himself in the process before the engineer takes the boss on a train at record speed to a hospital for life-saving surgery.

  • Berlin Express (1948) – Murder, suicide, and kidnapping take place on a post-WW II U.S. Army train from Paris to Frankfurt on which Americans (Robert Ryan), Russians, British, French, and German diplomats, scientists, and military personnel must work out who among them is responsible and who can be trusted.

  • Murder in the Private Car (1934) – When a Los Angeles switchboard operator learns she is the daughter of a railroad tycoon, she follows the instructions on a bogus telegram telling her to board a private train car to take her to New York in this adventure comedy. During the trip, she and her friends receive ominous threats, witness a murder, and get an offer from a man to protect them, when suddenly their car is uncoupled from the train and begins to roll backwards, loaded with concealed explosives, gaining speed as it heads towards oncoming trains and a crowded railyard before a locomotive is dispatched to catch the runaway train and rescue the group before their car explodes.

  • Terror on a Train (1953) – When a saboteur plants explosives on a freight train full of sea mines in England, a former WW II bomb disposal specialist (Glenn Ford) is called to help find and defuse the explosives before they detonate.

  • The Train to Busan (2016) –South Korean action-horror film of a a zombie apocalypse aboard a high-speed passenger train with a uniquely emotionally powerful  moment near the end using the shadow of a train as the visually evoking imagery.

  • Snowpiercer (2013) – Bong Joon-ho’s post-apocalyptic science fiction action film based on a French climate fiction graphic novel about the remnants of humanity riding a self-sustaining and socially segregated circumnavigational train, starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Song Kang-ho, Jamie Bell.

  • Bullet Train (2022) – Brad Pitt as an unlucky assassin.

  • The Hurricane Express (1932) – One of John Wayne’s earliest credited starring roles was in this 12-part serial in which he played an airline pilot chasing and trying to find out the identity of a mysterious terrorist responsible for the death of his father in a series of train accidents caused intentionally by the terrorist. Wayne’s character drives cars and a motorcycle alongside moving trains he jumps aboard, from which one of the enemies escapes by grabbing a rope ladder hanging from an airplane.

  • The Incident (1967) – Martin Sheen makes his cinematic debut as a rabble rouser threatening the passengers on a New York City commuter subway on a Friday night, which include Ed McMahon..

  • The Warriors (1979) – A New York City gang from Coney Island takes the subway to a late-night summit with a warlord proposing a citywide truce and alliance to control the city as one big gang, but when the warlord is murdered and chaos erupts, the Coney Island gang try to flee via an elevated train but get stranded by a building fire alongside the tracks and get blamed for the murder and chased by police, so make their way to another subway station where a police officer is thrown onto the tracks and killed by a passing train.

  • Money Train (1995) – A down-on-his-luck New York City transit cop (Woody Harrelson) convinces his foster brother (Wesley Snipes) to rob the daily train carrying the commuter subways proceeds with the help of a fellow officer (Jennifer Lopez). Robert Blake and Chris Cooper also star.

  • Kansas Pacific (1953) – Sterling Hayden stars in this story of attempts by Southern sympathizers prior to the Civil War to sabotage efforts to build a railroad across Kansas toward the West Coast.

  • The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) – A year after Davy Crockett, Disney again cast Fess Parker and Jeff York (Mike Fink) to star in the true Civil War story of Union volunteers who went undercover for the Secret Service to make their way from Kentucky through Confederate territiory deep into Georgia to delay Confederate supplies and plans to marshall forces at the Union line near Memphis by hijacking a train and driving it to Tennessee, knocking out telegraph lines, train tracks and potentially bridges all along the way.

  • Source Code (2011) – a future government covert agency thriller version of Groundhog Day on a Chicago commuter train starring Jake Gyllenhal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

  • Murder on the Orient Express (2017) – Kenneth Branaugh’s remake of the Agatha Christie murder-mystery that occurs and is solved on a train ride, starring Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, and Daisy Ridley.

  • The Tall Target (1951) – A New York detective (Dick Powell) is on his own aboard a train secretly carrying Abraham Lincoln to his inauguration to find out who is planning to assassinate the soon-to-be-President in Baltimore and thwart the supposedly real-life scheme.

  • The Phantom Express (1932) – An airline company competing with the railroad devises a scheme to make engineers believe they are seeing an oncoming train and crash.

  • Twentieth Century (1934) – Almost entire second half of director Howard Hawks’ screwball comedy starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as combative showbiz lovers takes place on the iconic 20th Century Limited express from Chicago to New York City, though there are only a couple brief shots of the train itself with the rest mostly shot on studio sets of the inside of the train.

  • It Happened to Jane (1959)-When an error by the E&P railroad company causes the death of 300 lobsters shipped by a business widow with two children in Maine (Doris Day), she and her lifelong lawyer friend (Jack Lemmon) sue the railroad for lost income and take possession of an old train parked in the way of the railroad’s trains and entice the media to cover the story that is stirring up a hornet’s nest amongst the townspeople in this romantic comedy.

  • Without Reservations (1946)-An author (Claudette Colbert) traveling to Los Angeles to work on the film adaptation of her bestselling book when she meets on a man on the train (John Wayne) she thinks will be perfect for a part in the movie, and for herself as well.

  • The 15:17 to Paris (2018) –The true story of three young American buddies who have gone separate ways after school, reunite in Europe and while taking a train from Amsterdam to Paris, the train is attacked by terrorists who quickly shoot a resisting passenger, sparking the trio to jump up and subdue the attacker.

  • Train (2008) – A team of US college wrestlers traveling to a competition in Odessa Russia miss their train after a night of partying are lured onto a train of sadistic torture, mutilation, sexual abuse and death before one of the female students (Thora Birch) sets the train ablaze and decouples the last torture chamber car.

  • The Commuter (2018) – While on his daily commuter train, a man who recently lost his job (Liam Neeson) meets a mysterious woman who offers him $100,000 if he can locate a person who has a stolen item but soon other passengers are murdered and the lives of his family and other train passengers are in jeopardy as he tries to unravel the plot and save himself and the rest of the commuters.

  • Rails Into Laramie (1954) – A railroad agent trying to thwart efforts to stop the railroad from building its line into the area ultimately winds up with a train to Cheyenne barreling head first towards a passenger train, causing the agent to ride his horse to leap on board, shoot his way to the front, and try to reverse the train to avoid a collision..

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Those 1980s films set in India

  • Gandhi (1982) – Richard Attenborough’s 3-hr 10-min epic period/costume biography of the leader of the India Independence Movement starring Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, and Martin Sheen.

  • A Passage to India (1984) – David Lean’s nearly three-hour period/costume drama set during the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s, starring Judy Davis, Alec Guinness, Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox.

  • Salaam Bombay! (1988) – a drama of the daily lives of children living near trains in the slums of India’s biggest city later renamed Mumbai.

  • and the 21st century’s Slumdog Millionaire (2008) – Danny Boyle’s look at the life of a young boy (Dev Patel) reflecting while playing TV game show on how he and his brother survived by being thieves on the streets of Mumbai after the death of their mother. 

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Full steam ahead action train scenes

  • The Lone Ranger (2013) – Gore Verbinski’s take on the masked hero of the Old West with Arnie Hammer and Johnny Depp.

  • Back to the Future III (1990) – click title for 3 1/2-min of video hilites of the second sequel to the 1985 classic; this one taking place in the Old West.

  • Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023) – The final 45-minutes is one long train chase in the first of a two-part mission starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Henry Czerny.

  • The (First) Great Train Robbery (1978) – Author-turned director Michael Crichton”s heist comedy based on the actual 1855 robbery of boxes of gold bullion, starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down.

  • Octopussy (1985) – Roger Moore’s penultimate 007 mission found him riding the rails again, this time in a car, as well as hanging underneath and on the side of a train car and running across the roof and jumping from car to car.

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  • Goldeneye (1995) – Pierce Brosnan got the 007 train experience in his first outing as James Bond.

  • Solo (2018) – Stars Wars spinoff story of Han Solo origin starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandiwe Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany, and featuring 10-min snowy mountain monorail scene near beginning.

  • The Big Trees (1952) – In 1900 when a greedy logger (Kirk Douglas) falls for a local woman, he winds up having to jump on a moving log train to try to prevent her assassination by competing loggers who have locked her in a caboose heading for a tall trestle bridge being blown apart.

  • Spectre (2015) – Daniel Craig was back on a train for the third time in his first four 007 missions, this time finding romance and a big fight just as Connery had experienced 52 years earlier.

  • Go West (1940) – The Marx Brothers hopped a train and executed some amazing stunts in their venture out west.

  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – To open the film with a bang, Steven Spielberg knew a train would do the trick, but it wasn’t Harrison Ford or his father played by Sean Connery who provided a wild adventure on the rails, but young Indiana Jones, played by River Phoenix.

  • Narrow Margin (1990) – In this color remake Anne Archer is the woman who realizes that she’s in danger after witnessing a murder by a crime boss, and sneaks onto a train in Canada, and Gene Hackman is the man trying to protect her from the mobsters who are pursuing her without knowing what she looks like.

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  • The Narrow Margin (1952) – A mob boss’s widow carrying a payoff list of her murdered husband’s on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles to testify to a grand jury is pursued by mobster hitmen who don’t know what she looks like while being guarded by a detective.

  • Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) – The ranch inherited by a newly-widowed mail-order bride (Claudia Cardinale) sparks several showdown gunfights among bandits and rival outlaws, including Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, and Henry Fonda as a ruthless villain in this Sergio Leone Western in which trains play a pivotal role.

  • Young Tom Edison (1969) – Mickey Rooney plays the young problem-causing inventor who peddles food and snacks on trains, sets up a printing press in a baggage car where he causes a fire, and becomes a hero when he uses the train’s engine whistle to send Morse code to warn an oncoming train that the looming railroad bridge is out.

  • The Station Agent (2003) – Peter Dinklage plays a train aficionado who inherits an abandoned rural train depot that he makes his home, triggering the meeting of several new friends that impact his life and theirs..

  • Switchback (1997) – An FBI agent (Dennis Quaid) chases a serial murderer (Danny Glover) on a train, first by car, then on foot before jumping on the roof of the train and and out onto the train’s snow-scraper, a large metal beam on the side of the train.

  • The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) – This story of the evolution of the masked hero of the Old West and his Tonto leads to a finale in which the U.S. Cavalry join The Lone Ranger and Tonto to thwart an attempt to hijack a train carrying President Ulysses S. Grant (Jason Robards).

  • The Swarm (1978) – Townspeople under attack by killer bees try to flee by train but the bees attack the train, causing the locomotive to derail over a cliff and kill almost everyone aboard, including a schoolteacher (Olivia de Havilland), retiree Felix Austin (Ben Johnson) and the town mayor and drug store owner (Fred MacMurray).

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Nice brief train moments

  • Santa Fe (1951) – Randolph Scott stars as a brother of three former Confederate-turned criminal siblings who add to his challenges of trying to help build the Santa Fe Railroad from Missouri through Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.

  • Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) – A train was one of the multiple modes of problematic transportation for Steve Martin and John Candy in this John Hughes holiday classic, but ultimately it was another train that saved the day.

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  • The Great Race (1965) – Dastardly Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk took fatefully to the rails as one of many illegal methods they tried to use to defeat squeaky-clean Tony Curtis and his eye-fluttering damsel Natalie Wood.

  • The Great Escape (1963) – a train becomes one of several key elements of the massive escape of prisoners of war.

  • Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) – A train is responsible for one of the most shocking, sudden and dramatic endings in cinema in this Peter Fonda film that is otherwise an exciting car chase from beginning to end.

  • Live and Let Die (1973) – Jane Seymour unexpectedly has to compete for Bond’s attention in their private train car berth.

  • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova had the same kind of romantic experience with Bond on a train that Solitaire enjoyed four years earlier – their rhythm was interrupted by the metal-toothed Jaws just as Tee Hee disrupted Solitaire and Bond.

  • Anna Karenina (1935) – Traveling by train through Russia to smooth things over between her philandering brother and his Princess wife, Anna meets a man with whom she cheats on her own husband, and also witnesses a horrible tragic accident on the tracks at a train station, both of which cause her emotional distress in this MGM adaptation of the classic Leo Tolstoy story starring Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Basil Rathbone, and Maureen O’Sullivan.

  • Anna Karenina (2012) – Traveling by train through Russia to smooth things over between her philandering brother and his Princess wife, Anna meets a man with whom she cheats on her own husband, and also witnesses a horrible tragic accident on the tracks at a train station, both of which cause her emotional distress in this British adaptation by Tom Stoppard starring Keira Knightley.

  • The Sting (1973) – The first scam that Robert Redford and Paul Newman pull off to hook the mob boss played by Robert Shaw into the eventual big con in this Oscar-winning film is during a fixed poker game aboard the 20th Century Limited making its way from New York to the LaSalle Street station in Chicago.

  • Death Wish (1974) – Charles Bronson stars in the very successful vigilante movie in which he takes on would-be muggers on a New York subway.

  • Saturday Night Fever (1977) – Neighborhood disco dance king John Travolta needs some time alone, so he rides the New York subways to clear his head after a wild and tragic night with friends and girls.

  • A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – Even The Beatles find a moment of solace on a train.

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  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) – One of cinema’s greatest-ever cinematographers Roger Deakins lights and filmed the approach of a train = the tracks, wooded area in the fog, and a lantern – like no one else.

  • The Music Man (1962)  – The rhythmic sounds and movement of a train are blended to ingenious musical perfection, providing the perfect vehicle to introduce the flim-flam salesman Professor Harold Hill .

  • Asteroid City (2023) – Director Wes Anderson loves to use trains to set the scene for his always-visually dazzling films.

  • Collateral (2004) – When an L.A. cab driver (Jamie Foxx) realizes that his hitman customer (Tom Cruise) is targeting a federal prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith) whom he met earlier in his cab, he tries to save the woman by hiding on a metro rail train as the now-wounded assassin chases them.

  • Enemy of the State (1998) – Train movie Unbreakable director Tony Scott also created an exciting sequence with Will Smith and Gene Hackman at a freight train yard in this political action thriller.

  • The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – The Cecille B. DeMille film depicting life in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, James Stewart, Dorothy Lamour, and Gloria Grahame, was the first film seen by Steven Spielberg, with the train crash scene being one of his inspirations to make movies.

  • Strangers on a Train (1951) – Hitchcock makes his cameo while returning to a train to establish the set-up of this suspense drama that begins when a psychopath proposes a plan to a fellow passenger that they should each murder someone for the other’s benefit.

  • East of Eden (1955) – In one of just three movies starring James Dean, he hops a freight train in California as he deals with his father whom he struggles to please, his estranged mother who owns a brothel, and his brother whose girlfriend he falls for.

  • Cat Ballou (1965) – Jane Fonda’s pursuit of the gunman who killed her father with the help of handsome bandit Michael Callan and “Uncle” Dwayne HIckman leads to a chase on a train in this award-winnning comedy starring drunken gunslinger and hosted/narrated by musical storytellers Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye.

  • The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) – a train ride to a familiar beach with romantic memories for an estranged couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) that have had their memories erased, triggers new experiences and maybe happier memories.

  • The Girl on the Train (2016) – Emily Blunt stars in this mystery psychological thriller as a recovering divorced and out-of-work alcoholic who grows dangerously agitated by her daily fleeting observations of her ex-husband’s new home life during her commuter train ride.

  • Shanghai Noon (2000) – A bumbling Imperial Guard of the Forbidden City in China in 1881 who is intent taking over the mission to rescue a princess who fled to the United States with her tutor, first uses martial arts to take on a gang of train bandits in Nevada, uncouples the train cars and escapes on the engine. (Click here for 65-sec video hilites)

  • A Little Romance (1979) – A train to Venice plays a critical role in the fulfilment of the quest of a young French boy and American girl (Diane Lane) to ensure their romantic future in this brilliant and lovely film by acclaimed filmmaker George Roy Hill, co-starring Sir Laurence Olivier.

  • Batman Begins (2005) – young Bruce Wayne gets a ride on the futuristic new train through gleaming Gotham before everything turns dark in this Christopher Nolan origin story.

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  • Throw Momma from the Train (1987) – the plan of two writers to take inspiration from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (see above) goes awry when one (Billy Crystal) tries to eliminate the cantankerous overbearing mother of the other (Danny DeVito in his directing debut).

  • The Grey Fox (1983) – Former stuntman Richard Farnsworth stars in this true story of an Old West train robber in Canada.

  • A League of Their Own (1992) – Two young sisters in Oregon (Geena Davis and Lori Petty) in 1943 run to jump on a train as it is pulling away in order to follow a baseball scout (Jon Lovitz) to Chicago in this story of the formation of a women’s baseball league during World War II, also starring Tom Hanks, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and others.

  • Picnic (1956) – A vagrant (William Holden) jumps off a freight train box car in a small Kansas town to visit a fraternity friend, where he winds up in scandal and romance before jumping back on a freight train box car to leave town.

  • Downton Abbey (2019) – An impressive early 20th-century steam train leaving the station in London and traveling through the beautiful countryside to Yorkshire sets the stage for the first big-screen version of the popular TV series. 

  • Night Train to Paris (1964) – A New Year’s Eve party train from London to Paris by way of a ferry boat serves as the setting for this black-and-white spy film starring Leslie Nielsen.

  • The Train Robbers (1973) – A beautiful woman (Ann-Marget) arrives in an Old West town by train to meet a man (John Wayne) who has agreed to take her to find the gold her dead husband stole and left on a wrecked train in the desert, or at least that’s her story.

  • 3:10 to Yuma (1957) – Glenn Ford and Van Heflin star in this Elmore Leonard story about a rancher and an outlaw in the Old West, which builds to a confrontation at an arriving train destined for a prison at the end of the movie.

  • 3:10 to Yuma (2007) – Russell Crowe and Christian Bale star in this James Mangold remake of the 1957 Western that builds the entire movie to a showdown when a critical train arrives in town.

  • Brief Encounter (1945) – David Lean’s British black-and-white adaptation of Noël Coward’s one-act romantic drama play starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard revolves around two people unhappy in their marriages who come together due to their regular train rides.

  • The Natural (1984)- In the early 1920s, a 19 year-old Nebraska baseball pitching phenom Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is on a train to Chicago for a tryout with the Cubs when he agrees to a bet at a stop-over that he can strike out legendary home run hitter “The Whammer” with just three pitches.

  • Casino Royale (2006) – Daniel Craig came out of the station in his first outing as British secret agent James Bond with an electric verbal exchange on a train with a beautiful partner.

  • Before Sunrise (1995) – Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy star in Richard Linklater’s romantic drama about a young couple whose meeting on a Eurail train leads to a life-changing relationship.

  • At the Circus (1939) – Chico recruits Groucho to come on board a circus train to help him recover the money he was going to save the circus, including performer Harpo, from closing down..

  • White Christmas (1954) – A pair of singers (Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye) lose their beds on a train to another pair of singers (Rosemary Clooney/Vera-Ellen) and rehearse a quartet holiday song on their way to stage a holiday benefit show for their former commander.

  • Human Desire (1954) – When one volatile railroad employee (Broderick Crawford) is fired and takes out his jealous vengeance on his boss (Grandon Rhodes), the man’s wife (Gloria Grahame) decides to seduce his former co-worker train conductor (Glenn Ford) in order to get him to kill her husband, but her plot backfires while on a train journey.

  • High Noon (1952) – On his wedding day, retiring Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) learns that a vicious outlaw will arrive on the noon noon train in less than 90-minutes to seek revenge in a showdown against the Marshall. The outlaw’s brother and gang wait for him at the train station while the Marshall is disappointed to find out that no one in town will support him, perhaps not even his new bride.

  • Nickelodeon (1976) – An attorney (Ryan O’Neal) and gunslinger (Burt Reynolds) who board a train when they are hired to stop an illegal silent film production wind up directing and starring in the movie themselves which includes a dramatic final scene atop the train before they both fall for the same movie starlet (Jane Hitchcock).

  • The Harvey Girls (1946) – The classic song The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe is the big showcase number on a train in this film named after the famous restaurant starring Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury.

  • The Getaway (1972) – When the girlfriend (Ali MacGraw) of a bank robber (Steve McQueen) gets tricked by a con man and loses the satchel full of money, her ex-con boyfriend must quickly jump on the train ridden by the con man and retrieve the satchel before the law or the criminal’s angry double-crossing partners catch him.

  • Julia (1977) – When American Jewish playwright Lillian Hellman is invited to a writers conference in the USSR during the Nazi era, she is enlisted en route by her childhood friend to smuggle money into Germany during her train ride through Berlin to assist the anti-Nazi cause.

  • Wild Boys of the Road (1933) – High school boys in families that are struggling to pay the bills decide to help ease their parents’ burden by hopping a freight train, where they meet and befriend a teen girl who is on her way to her aunt in Chicago. The three are forced to board several more trains, on one of which the girl is raped by the train brakeman, who is then attacked by the boys and falls to his death. When the boys jump off the train to avoid the police, one falls across the tracks and gets his leg amputated.

  • Ride ’em Cowboy – Abbott and Costello (1942) – Two peanut vendors on the run from their boss get jobs as cowboys on a dude ranch.

  • In the Heat of the Night (1967) – Black Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs rides into tiny Sparta Mississippi on a train during the opening credits to the theme sung by Ray Charles, is quickly suspected of murder by the local racist police chief, clears himself and another innocent suspect, and then partners with the chief to track down the real killer, before leaving on the same train in a much more contemplative manner during the closing credits and reprise of song by Charles.

  • Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) – A classic Western steam train, complete with cattle catcher on the front, plays a pivotal role in this movie about a U.S. Marshall (Kirk Douglas) who tracks down the son (Earl Holliman) of a wealthy cattle rancher (Anthony Quinn) when the son rapes and murders his Native American wife (Ziva Rodann).

  • Hour of the Gun (1967)- Tombstone Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp (James Garner) is surprised to see Doc Holliday (Jason Robards) join him on a train en route to a mission of personal vengeance, after which the two survive an ambush at a train station.

  • Carmen Jones (1954)- When a handsome Army guard Corporal at a parachute factory in North Carolina (Harry Belafonte) is assigned to escort newly-arrested shameless vixen Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge) to civilian authorities 50 miles away and gets his Jeep stuck in a river, he chases down a train instead, when Carmen eludes him and climbs on to the roof the train, initiating a chase. The two later flee together on a train to Chicago.

  • Indiscretion of an American Wife, aka Terminal Station (1953)- In Rome’s Stazione Termini (train station) awaiting a train to Paris, a married American mother who began an affair with a young Italian while visiting her sister, has decided to to break off the affair without telling her lover and return to her husband in Philadelphia until the young man tracks her down and makes her have second thoughts about her decision.

  • The Hucksters (1949) – Eager to prove himself after being hired at an advertising agency, Vic Norman (Clark Gable) boards a cross-country train to Hollywood with a talent agent and enlists his former flame, a torch singer (Ava Gardner), to help him manipulate the agent into signing a contract with his new comic actor client.

  • Knight and Day (2010) – A woman (Cameron Diaz) who gets mistakenly caught up with man (Tom Cruise), who is running from a disloyal CIA agent in a global-trotting caper, is knocked out to avoid her fear of flying, and wakes up on a train in Austria where she and the man are attacked by an assassin who they manage to kill by kicking out the window into an oncoming train.

  • The Frisco Kid (1979) – A newly-graduated Polish rabbi (Gene Wilder) making his way across country to his assigned congregation gets robbed and then befriended by Amish people who buy him a ticket on a train, which gets robbed (Harrison Ford) while the rabbi is in the bathroom.

.
.
More than 110 of the many other train appearances in movies
that are either brief or not particularly visually notable of an actual train:

  • Above and Beyond (1953)
  • The Aftermath (2019)
  • Anna Karenina (1948-1997)
  • Apache (1954)
  • Appaloosa (2008)
  • Baby Face (1933)
  • Bird on a Wire (1990)
  • Black Orpheus (1959)
  • Bridge of Spies (2015)
  • Calamity Jane (1953)
  • Candleshoe (1977)
  • Carson City (1952)
  • Cat People (1982)
  • City Hall (1996)
  • The Clock (1945)
  • Code Name: Emerald (1985)
  • Convicted (1950)
  • Cowboy (1958)
  • Dead Man (1996)
  • Dead Reckoning (1947)
  • Derailed (2005)
  • Duel (1971)
  • Enigma (1982)
  • Eye of the Needle (1981)
  • Face of a Fugitive (1959)
  • The Falcon in San Francisco (1945)
  • Fancy Pants (1950)
  • The Flim-Flam Man (1967)
  • Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
  • From the Terrace (1960)
  • The Fury (1978)
  • Gentle Annie (1944)
  • The Getaway (1994) – remake with Alec Baldwin, Kim Bassinger
  • Get Carter (1971)
  • Ghost (1990)
  • Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)
  • Godzilla (1985)
  • Godzilla (2014)
  • Going Home (1971)
  • The Gypsy Moths (1969)
  • The Happening (2008)
  • Harry Angel (1987)
  • Harry and Tonto (1974)
  • Highway 301 (1951)
  • Home Alone (1990)
  • The Horse Soldiers (1959)
  • The Hustler (1961)
  • The Jayhawkers (1959)
  • The Key (1958)
  • King Solomon’s Mines (1985)
  • The Living Daylights (1989) – see Bond franchise movie hilites above
  • The Long Good Friday (1980)
  • Love in the Afternoon (1957)
  • The Makioka Sisters (1983-Japanese)
  • A Man and a Woman (1966)
  • March or Die (1977)
  • The Matrix (1999)
  • The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
  • Mercury Rising (1998)
  • Miracle of the White Stallions (1963)
  • Mirage (1965)
  • National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985)
  • Nighthawks (1981)
  • Night Train to Lisbon (2013)
  • No Time to Die (2021)
  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – see Bond franchise movie hilites above
  • Outsourced (2007)
  • Payback (1999)
  • The Perils of Pauline (1947)
  • Pickup on South Street (1953)
  • Pocket Money (1972)
  • Rally ‘Round the Flag Boys (1958)
  • Red River (1948)
  • The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
  • A River Runs Through It (1993)
  • Seconds (1966)
  • Seraphim Falls (2006)
  • Sliding Doors (1998)
  • A Soldier’s Story (1984)
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
  • The Stalking Moon (1958)
  • Striking Distance (1993)
  • Suddenly (1954)
  • Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
  • Taken 2 (2013
  • Them! (1954)
  • The Third Man (1949)
  • This Property is Condemned (1966)
  • Top Secret! (1984)
  • Trading Places (1983)
  • Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
  • Unfaithful (2002)
  • U.S. Marshalls (1998)
  • The Venetian Affair (1967)
  • Waterloo Bridge (1954)
  • Weird Science (1985)
  • While the City Sleeps (1956)
  • Whispering Smith (1948)
  • The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)
  • Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
  • The Wings of Eagles (1957)
  • Without a Clue (1988)
  • Wrongfully Accused (1998)
  • Wyoming Mail (1950)
  • Yellowstone (1936)
  • You Only Live Twice (1967) – see Bond franchise movie hilites above

Additional movies where trains are prominent but mostly obviously digital, models, rear-screen, or stage sets:

  • Dames (1934)
  • D-railed (2019)
  • Hellboy (2004)
  • Night Train (2009) – Danny Glover
  • Wild Wild West (1999)

Bonus TV train Christmas movie exceptions

  • The Christmas Train (2017) – Hallmark Hall of Fame magical romance cross-country train ride starring Dermot Mulroney, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Joan Cusack, and Danny Glover as a famous movie director.

  • This is Christmas (2022) – An idealistic young man who rides a London commuter train every day with the same fellow passengers who never talk to each other, decides to throw a Christmas party for all of them, which leads to multiple inspiring connections in this wide-screen two-hour Sky Cinema/MGM movie.


— By Scott Hettrick