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Atomic Train

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Atomic Train
Atomic train poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
GenreDisaster
Thriller
Action
Written byJeff Fazio
Directed byDavid Jackson
Dick Lowry
StarringRob Lowe
Kristin Davis
Esai Morales
John Finn
Mena Suvari
Theme music composerLee Holdridge
Country of originUnited States of America
Original languageEnglish
Production
Running time168 minutes
Production companies
Release
Original networkNBC
Original releaseMay 16 (1999-05-16) –
May 17, 1999 (1999-05-17)

Atomic Train is a 1999 American made-for-television disaster-action-thriller miniseries about an accidental nuclear explosion destroying the city of Denver. It was originally broadcast on NBC in two parts on May 16 and 17, 1999.[1]

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Television film

Television film

A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for initial showing in movie theaters, and direct-to-video films made for initial release on home video formats. In certain cases, such films may also be referred to and shown as a miniseries, which typically indicates a film that has been divided into multiple parts or a series that contains a predetermined, limited number of episodes.

Disaster film

Disaster film

A disaster film or disaster movie is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject and primary plot device. Such disasters may include natural disasters, accidents, military/terrorist attacks or global catastrophes such as a pandemic. A subgenre of action films, these films usually feature some degree of build-up, the disaster itself, and sometimes the aftermath, usually from the point of view of specific individual characters or their families or portraying the survival tactics of different people.

Action film

Action film

Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a dangerous villain, or a pursuit which usually concludes in victory for the hero.

Thriller film

Thriller film

Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.

Miniseries

Miniseries

A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Many miniseries programs can also be referred to and can also be shown as a television film that is usually shown with only a few limited number of episodes too as well. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. As of 2021, the popularity of miniseries format has increased in both streaming services and broadcast television.

Nuclear weapon

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.

Denver

Denver

Denver is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. It is the principal city of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the first city of the Front Range Urban Corridor.

NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are located at Comcast Building in New York City. The company also has offices in Los Angeles at 10 Universal City Plaza and Chicago at the NBC Tower. NBC is the oldest of the traditional "Big Three" American television networks, having been formed in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network," in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting.

Plot

The film starts in Dallas when a school bus full of children, including the teacher, was nearly struck by an oncoming freight train, which the only damage done by the train was the rear door.

In Colorado, Bradshaw Disposal Services has a nuclear bomb made in Russia to transport, and an employee (named Henry Bradshaw) decides to save money by concealing it on a freight train. This train is also loaded with hazardous and flammable chemicals, including metallic sodium, which spontaneously ignites on contact with water. The train suffers a brake failure and becomes a runaway heading for Denver. John Seger, a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator, boards the train and with the assistance of the railwaymen tries various ways to stop the train. Several ideas are tried, such as coupling a following train to the caboose (the coupling mechanism on the caboose breaks, which also results in the death of one of the train's crew members), a derailing attempt (after it is revealed, the catastrophe that the chemicals would cause if ignited) in which a helicopter narrowly avoids being hit, and finally, an attempt at manually activating the brakes (via hitting a part of the engine mechanism with a wrench). The final attempt works successfully but is short-lived. The following rescue train, unaware of the freight's slowing, speeds forward and crushes the caboose (killing an injured crew member in the process). The force disengages the brakes, this time for good, causing the train to speed up once again. Meanwhile, Denver residents are struggling to collect their families and then leave town, despite rioters, looters, and gridlock. Realizing that there is no way to stop it, John and the engineer (who was initially reluctant) abandon the train by jumping off before it can speed up too much.

The train derails and becomes a terrific wreck. Discovering the now highly unstable bomb on board, firefighters struggle to extinguish the fire at the crash site. After realizing that metallic sodium is on the train, the firefighters and NEST teams retreat to evaluate a strategy. In the meantime, all firefighting aircraft are grounded. The misinterpretation of a radio call to a water bombing helicopter leads it to dump its load of water onto the wreck. Water comes into contact with the metallic sodium, which explodes and in turn causes the nuclear bomb to detonate. The blast causes severe damage throughout Denver and releases an electromagnetic pulse. No cars work, electricity is out and anything with a computer is shut down.

After the blast, Denver lies in ruins. John (who made it back to town via helicopter) then attempts to get his family out of Denver before nuclear fallout starts, but is separated again from Megan and their family as Noris takes his son and Grace Seger through the mines for a quicker route towards Eminence, while the bus heading for Kansas has just departed, taking Megan and Grace's boyfriend Danny away, leaving John on his own. He eventually finds a working car and then reunites with his family at a FEMA refugee camp in Eminence, Kansas.

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Nuclear weapon

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.

Russia

Russia

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country, with a population of over 147 million people. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's cultural centre and second-largest city. Other major urban areas include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan.

Rail freight transport

Rail freight transport

Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.

Sodium

Sodium

Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable isotope is 23Na. The free metal does not occur in nature, and must be prepared from compounds. Sodium is the sixth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and exists in numerous minerals such as feldspars, sodalite, and halite (NaCl). Many salts of sodium are highly water-soluble: sodium ions have been leached by the action of water from the Earth's minerals over eons, and thus sodium and chlorine are the most common dissolved elements by weight in the oceans.

Denver

Denver

Denver is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. It is the principal city of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the first city of the Front Range Urban Corridor.

National Transportation Safety Board

National Transportation Safety Board

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine accidents, pipeline incidents, bridge failures, and railroad accidents. The NTSB is also in charge of investigating cases of hazardous materials releases that occur during transportation. The agency is based in Washington, D.C. It has four regional offices, located in Anchorage, Alaska; Denver, Colorado; Ashburn, Virginia; and Seattle, Washington. The agency also operates a national training center at its Ashburn facility.

Aerial firefighting

Aerial firefighting

Aerial firefighting also known as Waterbombing is the use of aircraft and other aerial resources to combat wildfires. The types of aircraft used include fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Smokejumpers and rappellers are also classified as aerial firefighters, delivered to the fire by parachute from a variety of fixed-wing aircraft, or rappelling from helicopters. Chemicals used to fight fires may include water, water enhancers such as foams and gels, and specially formulated fire retardants such as Phos-Chek.

Electromagnetic pulse

Electromagnetic pulse

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending upon the source, the origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic field, as an electric field, as a magnetic field, or as a conducted electric current. The electromagnetic interference caused by an EMP disrupts communications and damages electronic equipment; at higher levels of energy, an EMP such as a lightning strike can physically damage objects such as buildings and aircraft. The management of EMP effects is a branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.

Power outage

Power outage

A power outage is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user.

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Federal Emergency Management Agency

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders on April 1, 1979. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurs must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster. The only exception to the state's gubernatorial declaration requirement occurs when an emergency or disaster takes place on federal property or to a federal asset—for example, the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, or the Space Shuttle Columbia in the 2003 return-flight disaster.

Eminence, Kansas

Eminence, Kansas

Eminence is a ghost town in Finney County, Kansas, United States.

Rail equipment

The release poster features FM C-liners, of which one exists today, Canadian Pacific 4104 at Nelson British Columbia.

The actual film uses all Canadian equipment, including the MLW M-420. The two locomotives that attempt to couple to the runaway are in the paint scheme of BC Rail, which has since been folded into Canadian National.

Cast

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Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe

Robert Hepler Lowe is an American actor, filmmaker, and podcast host. He made his acting debut at the age of 15 with ABC's short-lived sitcom A New Kind of Family (1979–1980). Following numerous television roles in the early 1980s, he came to prominence as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with roles in films like The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), About Last Night... (1986), and Square Dance (1987). The success of these films established him as a Hollywood star.

Kristin Davis

Kristin Davis

Kristin Landen Davis is an American actress and producer. She is known for playing Charlotte York Goldenblatt in the HBO romantic comedy series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She received nominations at the Emmys and the Golden Globes in 2004 for her role as Charlotte, and reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), as well as the spin-off show And Just Like That... (2021–present).

Esai Morales

Esai Morales

Esai Manuel Morales Jr. is an American actor. He has had notable roles in the films Bad Boys with Sean Penn and La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips. His television roles include the PBS 2002 drama series American Family, the Showtime series Resurrection Blvd. (2000–2002), portraying Lt. Tony Rodriguez on NYPD Blue (2001–2004), Joseph Adama in the science fiction series Caprica (2009–2010), Camino del Rio in the Netflix original series Ozark (2017) and as the DC Comics villain Deathstroke / Slade Wilson in the superhero series Titans (2018).

John Finn

John Finn

John Joseph Finn is an American character actor known as one of the leads of the television programs Cold Case and EZ Streets. Finn has also had supporting roles in the films The Hunted (2003), Analyze That (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), True Crime (1999), Turbulence (1997), Blown Away (1994), The Pelican Brief (1993), and Glory (1989).

Mena Suvari

Mena Suvari

Mena Alexandra Suvari is an American actress, producer, fashion designer and model. After beginning her career as a model and guest-starring on several television shows, she made her film debut in the 1997 drama Nowhere.

Edward Herrmann

Edward Herrmann

Edward Kirk Herrmann was an American actor, director, and writer. He was perhaps best known for his portrayals of Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and 1982 film musical Annie, Richard Gilmore in Amy Sherman-Palladino's comedy-drama series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), and a ubiquitous narrator for historical programs on The History Channel and in such PBS productions as Nova. He was also known as a spokesman for Dodge automobiles in the 1990s.

Awards

  • Won the Golden Reel Award (2000) for "Best Sound Editing - Television Mini-Series - Effects and Foley"
  • Nominated for Golden Reel Award (2000) for "Best Sound Editing - Television Mini-Series - Dialogue and ADR"

Home media release

Trimark Home Video (under the label NBC Home Video) released the film in DVD and VHS on September 21, 1999.[2]

Source: "Atomic Train", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Train.

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References
  1. ^ Richmond, Ray (May 12, 1999). "Atomic Train". Variety. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
  2. ^ Atomic Train. ISBN 1573626732.
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