True Life Adventures of Real Steam Tank Engines

The True-Life Adventures of Real Tank Engines
Right from the start, parents have written in to us saying their kids (or grandkids) love our videos. This was interesting because we have always produced our shows with adults in mind. Lots of action mixed with lots of history and other interesting facts. But, we never actually produced a show with kids in mind. When my kids were little they loved Thomas the Tank Engine. We sure watched a lot of Thomas videos together… and we all read the books, too. Even though we loved the garden railway, G-scale type models they used in the videos, Thomas and Friends were storybook characters. They only implied what real tank engines looked like …or what they did …or how they did it. The story still needed to be told of life as real tank engine.

Tracking Down our Tank Engines
I have been gathering footage of tank engines for years. But, when I heard last year that the Niles Canyon Railway (located in Sunol, California…just south of San Francisco) would be hosting a steam triple-header-weekend with all tank engines, I knew this was the final piece of the puzzle I had been waiting for. I also knew that the footage was going to be just way too cool to be only for children. So, here was the solution: The first ever steam train video with two separate soundtracks…
* one for kids
* one for grownups.

Soundtrack #1 is for all the little engineers you may know. They’ll see real tank engines in action. They’ll discover the connection between storybook trains and real trains by having a real tank engine tell them about things from “his point of view.” Not only that, they’ll get to see lots of different trains, too. It took over a dozen different steam engines to help make the story of Real Tank Engines come alive. Whether your kids like “Thomas the Train”, or “The Little Engine That Could,” this new video should quickly become a new favorite they’ll want to enjoy again and again. (And as soon as it is released on April 14 we’ll keep you posted on customer feedback as it comes in.)

The second soundtrack is for all the grownups out there who like trains, especially steam trains. It is the same footage as the kids version, but with different narration, the video is transformed into (quite possibly) the world’s first tank engine documentary. And there’s a good reason that this is the “world’s first.” Nobody seems to think much about the old TANK ENGINES. But, tank engines once were everywhere. (And we actually talk about that in the film.) REAL TANK ENGINES is about a lot more than just tank engines. It’s a picture window into a real part of steam railroading.

Steam Engines
A lot of people who like trains actually don’t know as much about steam engines as they might like. Watching this show they’ll learn a bit about the inner workings and how steam engines were an amazing innovation in their day. In fact, they still are. The video features some footage we shot even before there was an official Golden Rail Video… footage from a situation so rare, I doubt that it could ever happen again.