Review of The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) by David F — 11 Feb 2014

I just loved this movie as a kid and I can see why--trains! Disney used a bunch of historical locomotives to film this recreation of a famous raid by northerners into the south during the Civil War. Their plan was to steal a southern train and to use it as transportation while they cut telegraph wires and tore up track behind enemy lines.

Some of the raiders received the first Congressional Medals of Honor making this a significant event of the war. But what makes this movie significant isn't the gratingly serious performance of Fess Parker as the leader of the raid, or the proto-action movie plot full of explosions and escapes, it's the trains.