Kansas Pacific

Rating:
Summary: Railroad goes West,must fight pre-Civil War Confederates
Review: Railroad moving West,just before the Civil War is beset by problems. Construction boss (Barton MacLane)recieves help from the head office in the form of chief engineer (Sterling Hayden).Hayden quickly goes against the raiders led by "Quantrill"(Reed Hadley and pre-Civil war confederates/ Average Western-B movie.

Rating:
Summary: Railroad goes West,must fight pre-Civil War Confederates
Review: Railroad moving West,just before the Civil War is beset by problems. Construction boss (Barton MacLane)recieves help from the head office in the form of chief engineer (Sterling Hayden).Hayden quickly goes against the raiders led by "Quantrill"(Reed Hadley and pre-Civil war confederates/ Average Western-B movie.

Rating:
Summary: This is no way to run a railroad
Review: This production falls comfortably between poor and below average. The acting is only a little better than the plot deserves, the lead actors - Sterling Hayden and Barton MacLane - being let down by a poor script. The love angle to the story is indifferently supplied by Eve Miller.

The main "star" is the supposed railway, a military line under construction just before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Based loosely on the transcontinental railway that broke ground shortly before the outbreak of the War, the road in this film is intended as a supply line to the cavalry's western outposts. A rough bunch of Confederate spoilers makes several attempts to destroy it. Needless to say, they don't succeed. Actually, they didn't need to: the rails are laid in such a desultory fashion that it would have required the rest of the 19th century to finish the job.

The budget for this railway was even less than that for the movie. The small track-laying crew appears to have only one (little) locomotive and there's a lack of heavy lifting equipment. In one scene the engine and freight cars are blown up beyond repair in a narrow pass, blocking it. A short while later we see a maintenance crew rummaging around a few broken bent and twisted rails; the train has magically disappeared. The whole enterprise resembles a rather disorganized afternoon picnic, with none of the hustle and bustle of a genuine "end of track." There is much chucking about of dynamite, and that's another problem with this film: the stuff was not invented (by Nobel) until the War was over.

If you're looking for a western or a historical treatment of railways, skip this one.