Right after the company discovers 777 is under power a pacing shot shows the 777 with damaged front handrails, even though it has not yet hit anything. Moments later when it is about to collide with the horse trailer, a shot shows its handrails are intact.
Near the beginning of the film, when Will meets Frank for the first time, Will picks up his bag and takes his profile pages back from Frank. In the next shot, he takes the paper back from Frank and picks up his bag again.
Observe the trees in the background of the film. It was shot over the course of September to November hence, there are scenes with green trees, fall colors, no leaves, then green leaves, then no leaves.
When 777 crashes into the horse trailer, the left ditch light on the engine (from the crew's perspective) goes out. Throughout the rest of the film, the left ditch light is lit and the right one is out.
The horse driver leads the horse to safety in the nick of time as 777 slams into the trailer. In the wide shot shown on the news (shot from the same side of the crossing) there is no horse and no driver, just an empty trailer waiting to be struck by the train. There is also no dump truck, the one that caused the trailer to get stuck on the tracks in the first place.
It's unlikely that the fictional AWVR would freely disseminate information such as employees' names and images and the cause of the runaway to the media. In the real instance which inspired the film, the cause of the runaway was not disclosed until months later when the National Transportation Safety Board released its report, and CSX never made public the name of the engineer whose error let the train slip, nor what disciplinary action it took.
Several references are made to the locomotives being limited in what they can do due to the unit moving in reverse. The electric drive motors they use do not have a concept of forward or reverse like the common car does. The engine works just the same in either direction.
The locomotives in this film are equipped to operate short hood first in normal operation. (Some railroads normally operate their hood units long hood first.) The problem with running in reverse at high speeds isn't so much with the locomotive's capabilities, but with the fact that the cab and controls are set up for operation in the other direction, and that the view toward the rear (past the long hood) may not be as good as that in one designed to operate short hood first, meaning that the engineer may not see obstacles or emergency circumstances ahead in time - or at all..
It would be similar to driving a car at fifty miles per hour in reverse, looking over your shoulder, with a large package in the back seat blocking the center third of the view behind (in front of) the car.
In the yard scene when 777 accelerates from idle to notch 8 throttle, this is impossible due to the design of the throttle lever. Locomotive throttle levers are notched, and require significant force to move.
Portable derails are used and the description of the process by which they work is technically accurate but they were not installed correctly. The "lifting" mechanism should be on the inside of the rail (where the flange of the wheel is), not on the outside as shown in the movie.
Engine #1206 is instructed to take the nearest siding upon hearing the news of the oncoming train. The crew (Frank) does the math and determines that they will not fit into that siding. He states the siding as being 4011 feet between signals, with about 2500 feet of actual usable space (I'm assuming they mean between crossings). Engine #1206 with 25 cars would only equal about 1580 feet, giving them more than enough room to clear in the first available siding. The average length of a railroad car is 60 feet. Even if the cars were considered "long", 25 total cars would have fit into that siding.
Through several crossings we heard a train's air horns. One train was not manned and we saw close-ups of the actors in the other - no-one was on the horns. This is not necessarily incorrect - in some areas designated "quiet zones" by the DOT, trains are not required to blow their horns in the same manner as ordinary crossings unless the engineer thinks there may be a need; some of these zones have "wayside horns" mounted at the crossing that automatically trigger as the train approaches.
When the 777 train goes around the curve in Stanton the pipes fall off the train but later it appears that they are back on the train when Frank tries to climb over the cars to reach the engine. Actually, there are two flatbed cars with these pipes on that train. They can both clearly be seen in several scenes throughout the movie.
On some of the shots, the crossing gate arms are shown as just coming down as the 777 engine is passing. In normal operation, the crossing gates would be all the way down well before the first engine passes. However, this train was traveling in excess of 70mph. If the crossings were not equipped with newer 'Constant Warning Time' detection circuitry (which gives 15 seconds of warning time at the crossing regardless of train speed), then the signal/gate circuit is designed to activate by distance based on the line's posted speed limit. If the crossings are set to give 15 seconds warning where the limit is 25mph, then at 70+mph it is entirely possible for the locomotive to reach the crossing 5 seconds after the crossing is activated (at which point the gates would still be descending).
The majority of the railroad crossings seen in the movie do not have bells ringing on them, a requirement for all grade crossings equipped with flashing lights. Although some crossings with gates silence the bells once the gates have completely lowered, crossings shown without gates are still silent, and must still have the bells ringing the entire time the lights are flashing. Bells are actually not required for grade crossings equipped with flashing lights.
In this movie, they portray the runaway locomotive as a General Electric locomotive. In reality, the runaway train was being pulled by a General Motors EMD SD40-2. The movie is inspired by the real-life CSXT 8888 incident but not based on it.
When Will is in the red Ford truck attempting to jump onto 777, the shot showing the truck's speed shows the speedometer of "Eleanor", the 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 from Gone in 60 Seconds (2000).
After the train is stopped, Will receives a call from his wife. The profile pic of his wife, on his phone is a "still" taken from the movie, that happens around 5 minutes after he receives the call.
Although the runaway train is stated to be a half mile long, the visual length of the train changes throughout the film. At some points it appears to be not much longer than 100 meters (this is especially noticeable just after it misses Frank and Will's train).
At several points in the movie prior to the chaser locomotive hook-up, 777 is obviously moving much slower then the 60-70 mph it is claimed to be going.
When 777 passes the Railway Safety train, the shot from inside the passenger car showing 777 barreling past is flipped: the number "777" is backward.
When Galvin sees on the news that 777 is on a collision course with another train, the audio track has Galvin saying "We gotta learn about it on damn TV." However, looking at the visual, he is clearly using the full expletive "goddamn".
After passing the curve a reporter on the ground remarks that the train is "gaining speed, out of control and has to derail." His lips and voice do not match.
As Dewey is preparing to move 777 from D-16 to D-10 at Fuller yard near the beginning of the film, the sound of 777 starting up is from an EMD 645-E3, a two-stroke diesel engine found in a number of EMD locomotives, most notably the SD40 (locos like 1206). 777 is an AC4400CW built by EMD's rival GE and uses the GE 7FDL-16, a four-stroke diesel engine which make a completely different noise.
When going over the bridge with the single locomotive (#1206), four distinct clanks can be heard when the locomotive runs over the joints in the rail. The locomotive has six axles, so six clanks should be heard. It may be because the sound was from a four axle locomotive that was dubbed in later.
When the Troopers and Sheriff's Deputies are attempting to shoot the fuel switch, a real PA State Police Expedition is visible behind them in some shots blocking the road.
The TV news graphics state that the film's fictional town of Stanton, Pennsylvania, has a population of 752,000. This would make it among the 20 largest cities in the United States - larger than cities like Baltimore and Boston. Yet it is shown as being a fairly small town, likely with one-tenth such population.
No one in PA would refer to a part of the state as "Northern Pennsylvania" or "Southern Pennsylvania". Since PA is much wider east-west than it is north-south, regions are referred to such as "Southeastern PA", South-Central PA", or "Northwestern PA".
The electronic map shows Olean, Portville and Horsehead in Northern Pennsylvania. These are Southern Tier New York towns just above the Pennsylvania border. Horsehead is actually Horseheads, NY near Elmira, NY.
Towards the end two red and white 'Buckeye Crossbucks' railroad crossing signs can be seen. These were designed and mounted only in the state of Ohio, and never adopted in other states.
When 777 is shown approaching the crossing blocked by the horse trailer, the landscape surrounding the tracks switches between tree-covered and open land in alternating shots.
The brakes on railroad trains require air pressure to hold them OFF, not to apply stopping force. The premise of the movie is that the consist was "bottled" in the yard; that is to say the valves on both end cars are closed to hold pressure in the brake pipe.
When Frank and Will catch 777 they would certainly know that activating all the brakes is a simple matter of opening the last angle cock; the train line would bleed instantly and engage all of the car brakes.
How is it possible that Will sees Judd's train explode after it is derailed? They are still miles from the accident but it appears that they are on the spot.
Since he was trying to stop the train from the front and was therefore close to the train cab had Judd Stewart brought a conductor with him on board his train the conductor could have boarded the runaway train easily from the front and stopped it.
When Will leaves the cab of engine 1206 to jump onto the back of the truck he does not reduce the throttle and the engine is seen to still be going at speed. As it is on the same track, when Will stopped 777, engine 1206 would have run into the back of it causing a serious collision.
When officers are shooting at "777", they are obviously using semi- or fully-automated weapons. A few moments later, an information officer tells the press that shots were fired with shotgun rounds.
As 1206 gets closer to 777, one of the Fox 43 chyron graphics misspells Stanton as "Stanon". This may have been done on purpose, as TV stations often insert typos during fast-breaking news events, and then fix them.
In the closing soundtrack credits, "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner is spelled "Ride of the Valkeries".
AWVR 777's consist is said to be 39 cars long. However, it is actually 25 cars long.
When Will first meets Frank he tells Frank that they are picking up 25 cars. When Frank notices the line of cars looks too long he asks how many they were supposed to pickup and Will says 20.