After panning across some idling diesel locomotives under the opening
credits, the film begins with scenes at two rail yards in different
regions of
Pennsylvania run by the fictional Allegheny and
West Virginia Railroad (AWVR). In the fictional Fuller
yard
in northern Pennsylvania, children arrive for a school field trip on
rail safety. Meanwhile, in the fictional southern Pennsylvania town of
Stanton, Will Colson (
Chris Pine) gets up for work, stopping to
surreptitiously watch his wife put their son on the school bus. He calls
her but she refuses to even answer.
Arriving at work, Colson, a
conductor, gets his
orders for the day and learns that he will be working with
engineer Frank Barnes (
Denzel Washington), with whom he has never worked
before. He goes to a group of older workers, with whom he has some
barbed words over their age differences, and finds Barnes among them.
While he goes to punch in, the other older workers complain about being
displaced by Colson, who they say got his job through family connections
in the
union.
Meanwhile, in Fuller, the yardmaster yells at a pair of
hostlers
who have been standing idle near a freight train led by locomotive #777
(nicknamed "Triple Seven") to get it moved off its current track so
that the schoolchildren's
excursion train can use the track to get out of the yard. In a
hurry, one of them, Dewey (
Ethan
Suplee), decides against connecting the air hose between the lead
locomotive and the rest of the half-mile–long (approximately 800m) train
to save time. This, the other hostler reminds him, means that the
train's
air brakes will only
apply on the lead locomotive, but Dewey says they will connect the hoses
after parking the train on another track.
Barnes and Colson meet by their locomotive for the day, where Barnes,
a 28-year employee, finds out that Colson, who will be in charge of the
train, is only four months out of training. He reminds Colson that if
there's anything he doesn't know, he should just ask. They take the
locomotive out to where they will attach their train for the day. Colson
learns that a court hearing that morning ended with the extension of a
restraining order preventing him from
seeing his wife and son rather than a lifting, as he had hoped.
In the locomotive cab at the Fuller yard, Dewey sets the locomotive's
throttle at 100% in order to enable the train's
dynamic brakes. As it approaches a
switch, Dewey sees that it is not set to the
right track. Against the advice of the other hostler, he jumps down from
the slow-moving train to line the switch properly. While he does, the
levers fall in the cab of their own accord. As the train has since
picked up speed, Dewey is unsuccessful in his attempts to reboard. It
leaves the yard and enters the
main line unmanned.
Colson makes the mistake of picking up five more cars than the twenty
he was ordered to. They leave Stanton for a zinc plant. In Fuller, the
hostlers let yardmaster Connie Hooper (
Rosario Dawson) know that that they have a runaway train
headed into opposing traffic on the main line. Assuming the
dead man's switch will trigger the brakes and turn the
train into a "
coaster" that stops a few
miles from the yard, she tells them to catch up with a
speeder
and stop it. She also calls Ned, a
welder
for the railroad, and tells him to set a switch. When he arrives at the
switch, after waiting some minutes the two in the speeder arrive, and it
becomes clear that the train has passed already, moving faster than
expected due to being under power. The two in the speeder proceed and
catch up with the train, but do not succeed in boarding it.
Connie and the dispatchers work to get every train on the main line
onto
sidings. The train carrying the schoolchildren
narrowly avoids a head-on collision. Oscar Galvin (
Kevin
Dunn), Connie's superior, calls her and asks her what's happening
and what she's doing about it. She hasn't yet figured out how to stop
the train and begins calling the
state police to make sure that
each of the
grade crossings along the
line are secured, since 8 of the
tank cars
on the runaway train contain 80,000 gallons of molten
phenol, a
hazardous material.
On their train, Barnes and Colson hear the dispatcher's order to pull
into a siding. Barnes says they can't use the siding initially assigned
since the train is too long to fit in it. He asks instead if an
RIP
track further down the line is clear and gets permission to continue
along the main line to it.
Galvin overrules Connie's suggestion to derail the train in an area
of lightly populated farmland, since it would be too costly and it is
still possible to stop the train. An emergency meeting of railroad
executives approves another plan, but Galvin refuses to tell Connie what
it is. The train's odyssey becomes a
media
event, followed by helicopters with continuous coverage on
television and reporters at crossings in small towns. The train, picking
up speed, smashes through a horse trailer caught on the tracks at one
crossing.
The company's plan, to have a lashup of two locomotives enter the
main line ahead of the runaway and slow it down while another employee
attempts to board the lead locomotive from a helicopter, fails
catastrophically, leading to the derailment of the lashup locomotives
and the death of the veteran engineer operating them. The police abort
another plan, to trigger the safety switch on the locomotive's side with
close-range shotgun blasts at a grade crossing, when they realize the
switch's proximity to the fuel tank. A state trooper's
radar
gun shows the train's speed to be 71 miles per hour (114 km/h) as it
passes. Barnes and Colson make it into the RIP track in the nick of
time, as the runaway smashes through the rearmost car of their
consist.
As the train passes, Barnes sees that the
coupling on the last car of the runaway
is open. He decides to put his locomotive
in reverse and catch the runaway by
coupling onto the back of it. Colson, at first reluctant, joins him.
Galvin insists that Barnes, Colson, and Connie abandon the plan, but
they refuse even after Galvin threatens to fire them. Barnes then
reveals that he has already been fired by Galvin, being 72 days into his
90 day notice period.
Another attempt to stop the train with
derailers
in a small town fails because the train is too heavy and going too fast.
Evacuations begin as the train approaches Stanton, where the line
crosses the town on a sharp elevated curve. Taking the curve at the
runaway's current speed would result in it derailing and falling into a
fuel
oil tank farm, causing a major disaster.
Barnes and Colson catch up with the runaway. After Colson manually
couples their locomotive to the train, severely injuring his foot in the
process, they begin slowing it down with their own brakes, but are
unable to slow the runaway down enough to safely navigate the curve.
Barnes goes out onto the train and begins setting each car's brakes
manually, but is stopped at a gap between two cars which he cannot
bridge. Colson then applies an independent brake from the chase
locomotive. These two factors slow the train down just enough to get it
through the curve with precarious tilting, rather than a derailment.
After coming out of the curve, the chase locomotive's brakes blow out
and the train begins to pick up speed again.
Ned the welder catches up to the train, and Colson jumps into the
back of his truck. Driving at high speed they make it to the lead
locomotive, where Colson is finally able to get into the cab and stops
the train. Colson and Barnes are declared heroes, and Colson reunites
with his wife and son.
In a short epilogue, it is revealed that Barnes was promoted and
retired with full benefits, that Colson got back together with his wife
who is now pregnant with their second child, Connie was promoted to
Galvin's job, and that Dewey is now working "in the
fast-food
industry".
Password : zealot
Sumber : en.wikipedia.org & zealotdownload.blogspot.com
