Matewan

Has anyone seen the movie Matewan? It's and older film based on the coal mine wars in Southern West Virginia in the 1920's. It is shot on the C&O line in the New River Gorge and uses Nickel Plate 765. The town scenes are in the town of Thurmond, WV which was a major shipping place on the C&O back in the day. one scene shows 765 going across the bridge at Hawks Nest.

Steve, I watched this one not too many months ago on one of the local stations here in the DC area. The movie was decent, a little too much gunplay and gore for me, especially at the end, but the scenes of the town and the train were great and I think the producers did a good job of capturing the era the movie was supposed to represent.

We had a great "Railroads in the Movies" thread at this site before the previous version went down-a lot of good information was lost. Maybe your post will help revive that discussion.

The film folks did a lot of cosmetic restoration of Thurmond; you'd never know some of the buldings were shells. The real town of Matewan, BTW, looked (and looks) nothing at all like Thurmond, but it was too "modern" for the time period covered in the movie. Most of the underground mining scenes were shot at the Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley. They used pieces of styrofoam, painted black, to simulate coal. The effect was not too bad.

If you are interested in some more of the history of the era, get a copy of the book The West Virginia Mine Wars:An Anthology. It;'s a collection of first-hand accounts.

work safe