A Railway Collision

A train, waiting in front of a tunnel, is suddenly struck by another train emerging from the tunnel. This is one of the earliest cases of models being used for rail cars, although at least a couple of the Edison battle recreations of the Spanish-American War were shot in bathtubs.

This film was made possible by the rise of model railroading. Although to the modern eye, this is obviously model work, the moviegoer of the era would not be so ready to recognize the fakery and so this must have been a very exciting film for the period. Within a few years, American film-makers were crashing real locomotives for the movie-going public, but doubtless producer Robert Paul found this less expensive method much more profitable.