rocky mountain express / in production
Rocky Mountain Express (working title) is a giant screen film now in production by The Stephen Low Company. Directed by Stephen Low and produced by Pietro L. Serapiglia and Alexander Low, the production is being filmed in the Rocky Mountains and other locations across North America 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. Principal photography continues through 2010 with release of the film scheduled for fall 2010.
For information on exhibition licenses and marketing participation, contact:
Pietro L.Serapiglia, Producer
pserapiglia@stephenlow.com
Alexander Low, Producer
alow@stephenlow.com
The Stephen Low Company
514.633.6036
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 railroad 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 American ingenuity and on labor 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 laborers, 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 class H1b Hudson-type locomotive built by Montreal Locomotive Works in December 1930. (Montreal Locomotive Works was owned by the American Locomotive Company). 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 May 26, 1960.
After a complete three-year rebuild, the resurrected locomotive 2816 re-entered active service in 2001 as the Empress, a roving ambassador for Canadian Pacific Railway. CPR Empress is now the only surviving H1b Hudson and one of only a handful of preserved and operating CPR steam locomotives in North America.
