Large Scale Central

🚂 TRAIN DREAMS — Pre-MIK Inspiration (For Some…)

General Discussion
#1

With Cliff finally finishing that trestle (yes Sean, really), the rest of us might need a little help coming up with ideas before the MIK timer starts.

Cue Train Dreams — all steam, timber, and frontier grit television, with enough logging-camp atmosphere to give you MIK ideas galore.

From the previews, it looks to be well worth a watch… unless you’re Vic, who, as history has proven, will have his entire amazing MIK entry built, painted, weathered, scenicked, lit, photographed, and posted before the rest of us have even found our glue bottle from last year. :crazy_face:

Edit: Vic, not that I’m discouraging you from watching… I just want a head start :smiley:

#2

Started to watch it this morning with my first cup of coffee.
Practically fell back to sleep in the first half hour.
It’s too slow to develop the plot, so I moved on.
So they are hand cutting timber for RR Bridges, No Donkeys, skidders, etc (yet).

#3

John,
Last night I too settled in to watch Train Dreams for the second time, hoping for—well—trains. Steam. Rails. Something. Somewhere around the third lingering shot of that man staring at a horizon, my eyelids gratefully surrendered and I drifted off… yet again.

But get this, John: I had Train Dreams! And the dream was brilliant.

I woke up this morning bursting with inspiration. Proper, full-blown MIK energy. I grabbed a notebook before the kettle even boiled and started scribbling:

  • The build… (wait for it) a two-storey fruit and veg store
  • “Small shed with loading dock”
  • “Wooden framing”
  • “Produce crates complete with mini fruit and jars of pickles”
  • “Stonework textures”
  • “Catchy inappropriate business name!”

The more I jotted down, the more excited I became. For once I’d dreamed up a build I could ACTUALLY start during the first week! The whole thing had unfolded overnight in perfect clarity — walls, roof, platform, even tiny fruit-box labels. I was absurdly proud of myself.

And then it hit me, John.
This wasn’t my idea at all — it was Vic Smith’s 2024 MIK build.

Somehow, in my sleep-deprived, movie-induced stupor, I had spent the night dreaming I was banging out a full MIK project in a single evening while the rest of LSC were still buying napkins and sharpening pencils.

Sigh…

So here’s my official review of Train Dreams:

  • As a movie? An unparalleled sleeping aid.
  • As creative inspiration? Questionable — though it did let me channel my inner Vic.
  • As a reminder? When someone says they’re on top of their MIK project, Vic Smith will probably shatter their dreams by posting a completed build the same day.

Back to the drawing board. This time I’m putting on Transcontinental. Even though the steam engine is completely made of wood, at least it has trains and a plot.

#4

That’s hilarious!
…

#5

Is this better?

1 Like
#6

Okay… Got my interest, so I watched the movie because I thought it might have trains in it.
AHHHTT! Wrong…sort of.
This movie is about a man of constant sorrows who lived in a time of logging in the Northwest in the early 1900’s. There is a single visible locomotive pictured in the movie as it crosses a trestle, but that locomotive has no drivers, cylinders, steam chest, or stack but makes choo choo sounds. Confused poor Bruce to death as I have never seen anything like it! The trestle the loggers built looks like Pacific States Lumber Co trestle in Selleck Washington (Pg 53 of Logging Railroads of the West) and is the only cool railroad thing in the movie. The loggers don’t seem real for the period, no steam donkeys, oxen or many horses to move logs and no camps.
Spoiler…
The man’s wifey and kid dies in a large fire and he desperately tries to get to her, but can’t. I didn’t understand that as the cabin is next to a river and she doesn’t hide in the river from the fire. He never finds the bodies! Wha???
It’s a snoozer for real. Should of called it Forest Dreams, Sad Dreams, Snoozer Dreams or Can’t Think of Reason to Watch This Dreams.

-Deneh

#7

I suppose you should have just watched the movie I posted then?

#8

The wife and I watched it last night and she thought it was boring and played on her phone throughout but I really liked it. It didn’t have much train action in it but maybe the “Train Dream” had to do with the reoccurring dream that he kept having of the train through the dark woods and coming up to that poor Chinese guy that got tossed off the trestle?

What was amazing was the era that the guy lived in. He started in the late 1800’s and died in 1968. In his time there were so many marvels of technology invented from horses to cars, from trains to planes and a man in space, that he saw on a TV in a store front window. How many wars came and went in his time?
I think the idea was that he lived a quiet life that was made even smaller when his wife and child died.

The slow pace of the movie reminded me of another “train” themed movie that was a hit or miss, “The Station Agent” but with “Train Dreams” the scenery was much better. It also reminded me of another slow paced movie “Dances With Wolves” but it fell short of that greatness.

I guess to each their own with “Train Dreams” but I liked it.

#9

Bill, if you want a real brain breaker of a movie, try “Sasquatch Sunset”, it’s certainly not an Avengers movie but it’s weird enough to hold my attention all the way through and it has lots of trees :grinning:

#10

OMG, Vic!

I loved that the trailer gave each Sasquatch a dramatic close-up with their name — you know, just in case we didn’t instantly recognise them beneath three kilos of fur and prosthetics. And one of them is a supermodel?!

We actually have redwoods in our own backyard. Herself grew them from three tiny 5 cm cuttings, and now they’re towering at four metres.

Anyway, I’m in. I’m hunting for a theatre with the biggest screen I can find.
(And… should I tell Herself it’s a documentary before we go?)

#11

Yes, yes, yes! That was how I got my parents to take me to see Jaws back in the day. As a preacher’s kid, things like that were a challenge. They didn’t walk out, but my mom kept repeating, “Oh my goodness…” :grin:

#12

I understand the challenge and it’s even more difficult if your mother is the reverend!

#13

That was probably what started the fire in the first movie

#14

It probably would have captured my attention more but the special effects bothered me greatly. It didn’t have GHA* and humongous cranes that I’ve come to expect with great movies.

* Giant Hand Action scenes per @Deneh

#15

HAHAHAHA!
GHA! I am becoming the most quoted observer, like Rooster!

-Deneh

#16

Yeah Bruce I’m definitely coming to you for all my future cinematic acronym needs.

I’ll still keep the umlauted ones that Korm provided me as they infer a level of style, sophistication & je ne sais quoi that I would not otherwise have.