When A#1 is attempting to stall Shack's train as it is trying to beat the mail train to the junction, his shoulder is badly injured by Shack's chain and scalding steam from the engine, after which he puts grease on his severe burn. When we see him without sleeves after Cigaret steals the clothes from the church group, his arms are burn-free.
In the early part of the climactic fight scene, the blood on Shack's right shoulder appears and disappears several times between shots.
Right after A#1 and Old Cigarette get locked into the cattle car. Cigarette tries to kick open the roof door then sits and glares at A#1, then he asks him "Who you calling a fool."
A#1 has not said anything to Cigarette, there is obviously some missing dialog.
A#1 has not said anything to Cigarette, there is obviously some missing dialog.
After A-No.1 trips the brakes on the train near the end of the film, Shack tries to get it going again by pushing forward the Johnson Bar and pulling back the throttle. Immediately after he does this, he grabs the Hogger and throws him into his seat, telling him to get the train going. The Hogger pushes forward the Johnson Bar and pulls back on the throttle again, them having magically returned to their previous positions.
Between the time of greasing the tracks and jumping onto the top of the slipping passenger train, the original closely spaced cans of grease were wide spaced.
The switch is not thrown for the mail express train to pass by Shack's train as it just enters the junction. In those days, not having the switch thrown would have derailed the mail train.
On a single track railroad, such as in most of the scenes, trains have to adhere to a precise schedule in order to allow trains to run in both directions. An experienced train man like Shack would know this and would never purposely stop his train to conduct a search the way he did on the bridge. At the least it would foul up the schedule of other trains, and at worst could cause a head on collision.
The train highballs it out of the yard in the fog and gets sent into a siding. After backing out to resume on the main line, Shack throws the switch in the wrong direction (back into the siding).
When the train is racing to the siding to clear the track for the fast mail they are moving at a fast speed. However, when the train stops in the siding the caboose is only about 20 feet beyond the switch just as the fast mail train goes by. The train could not have stopped that fast in so short a distance.
The film gives dates in late October of 1933 (hobos writing on the water towers). However the Willamette Valley, Oregon setting shown extensively in the movie indicates midsummer. The sun's angle is high and the deciduous trees are quite green, yet the grass is dry yellow which would make it more like mid July.
After A-No-1 hits Shack in the arm with the ax there is a lot of blood on Shack's arm, but there is no blood on the ax.
In the scene where they guy climbs up on the water tower to write "A#1 to Portland....", you can hear a diesel engine idling in the background.
The comment about hearing a diesel engine idling in the background being a revealing mistake, it is not necessarily a mistake. The movie takes place in 1933, diesel engines began appearing on railroads in the 1920's.
In the beginning of the movie, when Shack knocks the hobo down with a hammer, the hobo is seen with his body cut in half, one half of his body between the rails, the other half on the outside of the tracks covered with blood. There is no blood visible on the rail, even though there certainly would have a lot of blood on the wheel that cut him in half.
Although the Engineer of the speeding passenger train that threatens colliding with Shack's train (No. 19) sees Shack's train for at least 1 minute and 46 seconds before the potential collusion, he makes no attempt to
stop his train until a few seconds before the trains would have collided.
Among the freight cars seen in the train yard is a plug-door boxcar. These were not invented until the 1960s.
The fireside chat from President Franklin Roosevelt that can be heard playing on the radio is from 28 April 1935. The film is set in October 1933.
The railroad men placing bets use $1 bills bearing the motto, "In God We Trust," which first appeared on silver certificates issued October 1, 1957.
A-No.1 and Cigarette struggled toting 11 cans of grease up the steep hill from the trash pile to the tracks but greased both tracks using grease from only 2 of those cans.
There are several parts of the movie where you hear crossing gate bells. In one scene, the train is passing a field of wheat or dead grass. You hear the bells ringing, but there is no RR crossing, street, or crossing gate and bell to be seen.
When the passenger train reaches Salem, the station is shown to be a small wooden building located in what appears to be a rail yard. This was in fact the depot for the Oregon Pacific and Eastern Railroad in Cottage Grove, OR. The actual Salem train station is a fairly large masonry structure built in 1918, located near the city center.