Not sure if this belongs here or in modeling, but this is an interesting video on how they built an entire full scale 1860's train from scratch for the new AMC series "Hell On Wheels". Some may nitpick the level of detail, but the overall effect is very convincing.

http://tinyurl.com/8xu78sf

Watched it Sunday. It's about 90% correct.....some details are wrong or out of scale. Pilot a little off, headlight too....but the fact they made a whole train just for the show is impressive!

Wow, that is cool! Thanks for the link.

Biggest goof in my opinion? The locomotive is WAY too over-weathered.

The video doesn't play on my computer.

With all the research that has been done on building of the Union Pacific, you would think that the writers would actually read some of it. I started picking it apart about ten minutes into it and stopped when my list hit twenty-five. I agree with Steve, from what I have read no self respecting engine crew would have been caught dead running a loco that looked like it was just hauled out of a river.

I thought it was funny when in one of the meetings, the show's producer/director was using a model of a three truck Shay locomotive as a visual aid to discuss the creation of the model 4-4-0 for the show.

A train is a train is a train to 99.99% of the general public.

And we here on the board the other 00.01% Sure would have taken pioneers quite a long time to reach the West by shay.....

Time to upgrade that Commodore 64 there, chief.

I can't get any AMC pages to display. The video sound was running once or twice, but no picture. All other sites come up fine.