The new Martin Scorsese movie, "Killers of the Flower Moon," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro opened in theaters last week. And there's a piece of Nevada history in the film - a train from the Virginia & Truckee Railroad in Virginia City. The 1916 Baldwin locomotive has been pulling trains on the Comstock for nearly 50 years now.
"We've been running it every summer on a daily basis for tourists and locals alike, and we're starting to use it for movies now," said Tom Gray, President of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad.
The movie is based on actual events that happened in 1920s Oklahoma, so the locomotive and passenger cars are historically accurate.
"They're perfect for the era they were recreating from the 1920s," Gray said. "They renumbered this locomotive and lettered it the Santa Fe, and that's what would pull into Oklahoma there with the three Pullman passenger cars with the old wicker seats. So everything is period appropriate, it's pretty accurate. They did a good job on their research."
The historic locomotive and three Pullman train cars were shipped to Oklahoma for the shoot in June of 2020.
"The locomotives we load with a ramp and for the passenger cars we have big cranes, two cranes on each end and we load them on big trucks and ship them out," Gray said. "It is quite a process. Then we reassemble everything. When we brought them back to Nevada we put the steam locomotive back together, fired it up, and pulled everything back up the hill to Virginia City and put it away."
You'll see some local talent in the film as well - the crews that keep these trains running along the Comstock day in and day out.
"The engineers, the brakemen and firemen, they dressed them up in the old costumes with the derby hats and the big gauntlet gloves, so it was fun. They had a good time," Gray said.
It's not the first time V&T trains have been used in the movies, and it won't be the last.
"We're starting to do a lot of movies for people, we're getting a lot of inquiries from outlets like Netflix and Disney, we have a little music video this week," Gray said. "People like the steam engine and we're pretty handy at that."
You can ride these classic cars behind the historic locomotive, the Robert C. Gray, during the holiday season. Tickets are now available at: https://www.virginiatruckee.com/
