The Rocky Mountain Express movie poster.

21 September 2011

Rocky Mountain Express

Toronto Ontario - Rocky Mountain Express is a giant screen film by The Stephen Low Company. Directed by Stephen Low and produced by Pietro L. Serapiglia and Alexander Low, the production is in the 15/70 film format for exhibition in IMAX theaters and in other giant screen theaters worldwide. Extensive aerial photography has been completed for the project. The film comes to the Ontario Science Centre beginning Saturday, 1 Oct 2011, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, on 30 Sep 2011.
 
Film Description
 
Through the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth, the pioneering effort of joining communities using steel rails and the power of steam was repeated everywhere, a universal epic re-enacted on every continent and reaching virtually every corner of the globe. The great era of steam lives on, in stories, and in the heart. But for some, stories are not enough. A determined few work instead to re-ignite the fires of the Age of Steam and re-animate the great steel wheels and proud machines of their dreams.
 
Among those champions of steam are the passionate engineer and crew of locomotive 2816. Together they have helped restore the 2816, the "Empress" as she is known, a locomotive from the pinnacle of the steam age. Now they are proving her, running the great engine across some of the most demanding and breathtaking railway terrain on Earth. The crew, like precision acrobats, must keep the great performance on track. Together they pit their skills and the old engine against the perils of the great mountain passes and the great open spaces of the continent. They will run from the Pacific to the cities of the East. For the passengers, it will be the ride of a lifetime.
 
As the tale of our modern-day steam adventurers unfolds, so too does the dramatic 19th Century story of the rails on which they ride. Rocky Mountain Express focuses on one of the most ambitious of the great nineteenth century railway ventures, the building of a transcontinental link through the Canadian Rockies in the 1880s, a project that drew heavily on labour from around the world. It was an undertaking so immense it drove its builders and a tiny young nation to the edge of ruin. Carved out of granite and shale by tens of thousands of labourers, this ribbon of steel pulled a nation together out of the wilderness and ultimately shaped the lives of millions.
 
As we roar toward our destination aboard the Empress, we reconnect with the spirit of the steam age and discover not only the drama behind the creation of the railway, but also a potent technological secret. Locked in the centuries-old technology of the train, is an almost supernatural efficiency that now, in an era of accelerated climate change, is beginning to redefine the future of transportation.
 
About the "Empress"
 
Locomotive 2816 is a Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 Hudson class H1b locomotive built by Montreal Locomotive Works in December 1930. The 2816 worked with the top passenger trains of the 1930s between Winnipeg and Calgary and subsequently in the Quebec-Windsor corridor. The locomotive was capable of producing 4,700 horsepower and regularly operated at speeds in excess of 70 miles an hour. After logging more than two million miles in active service, the 2816 made its final revenue run on 26 May 1960.
 
After a complete three-year rebuild, the resurrected locomotive re-entered active service in 2001 as the "Empress", a roving ambassador for Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR Empress is now the only surviving H1b Hudson and one of only a handful of preserved and operating steam locomotives in North America.
 
Stephen Low Company
 
Ontario Science Centre
 
Canadian Museum of Civilization