7 October 2006
Silver Streak Released on DVD
 The movie "Silver Streak", originally released in
1976, staring Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan, Ray Walston, and Scatman Crothers, is now
available on DVD.
A somewhat daffy book editor on a rail trip from Los Angeles to Chicago thinks he sees a murdered man fall from the
train. When he can't find anyone to believe him he starts doing some investigating on his own.
The movie was originally meant to be filmed in the United States, however the National Rail Passenger Corporation
(Amtrak) was fearful of adverse publicity and refused to cooperate. As a result, the producers were forced to work
with the Canadian Pacific Railway, using thinly disguised CP Rail equipment from the "Canadian" lettered as
"AMRoad" and "Silver Streak". Exterior scenes were shot along the CP Rail
right-of-way from the Crowsnest Pass to Lethbridge and Calgary, Alberta, plus around Union Station at
Toronto, Ontario, including one unforgetable scene with Wilder and Pryor shot in the washroom. Interiors were shot in
a studio, with the sets mounted on rubber tires so they could be rocked. To simulate the train passing through the
shadow of a tree, a series of crew members would successively move obstructions in front of each of a row of lights
shining into the windows.
The locomotive used as "AMRoad" 4070, was actually CP Rail number 4070. For the filming, the AMRoad decal
was placed over the CP markings and "Multimark" logo. At the end on the shoot, the decals actually damaged
the engines real paint job. The production company had to pay for the repainting of the engine, which took place in
CP Rail's Transcona Shops in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The locomotive is a FP7A built by GMD in 1952. In 1982, CP Rail sold
it to STCUM, where it was re-numbered 1300 in 1983. As of 2002, it sat in
"non-operational" storage at Montreal.
The engine crashing into the station was filmed in a Lockheed hangar at Burbank, California, using a
full-sized mock-up of the FP7A locomotive.
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