Goofs

When John Seger (Lowe) is trying to reconnect the air hose between cars, the manual brake wheel appears and disappears between upper and lower camera cuts.

If there is a Jackson Summit that slows the train to just above walking speed, then it cannot also be true that the route is downhill all the way from the starting point to Denver.

The chase train's lead engine is number 4920 on the side, but number 643 on the front (the front numbers are above the windshield, seen in only a few shots).

In the initial blast, we see the city of Denver wiped out. Yet in following shots we see the city skyline is in tatters and burned out.

John Seger is informed by radio that the bomb is in a boxcar marked "Flammable Chemicals". The boxcar Seger enters is clearly marked with a placard reading 'Explosives'.

The engineer on the train states that the "throttle is stuck again." Federal Railway Administration and company rules would require a locomotive with a sticking throttle to be removed from service.

The emergency method for disabling a nuclear warhead is to blow it up. This will either disrupt the core from imploding and producing nuclear yield, or prevent the uranium sphere from firing into its target, depending on the weapon design. The detonation of the sodium metal would not have set off the nuke.

When the air hoses on the runaway get disconnected the train keeps going faster and faster, but in reality if air hoses on a train become disconnected it's considered a dump in air pressure which would lock all the train brakes up and make the train come to a dead stop, rather than keep the train moving.

In the prelude, the school bus is still stationary when the train, moving at 40 mph, reaches the sidewalk at the far side of the road. To advance for half its length and stop again before the train reaches its lane, it would have to accelerate at more than 15 G and brake with the same force.

The freight cars have no reporting marks (the standard abbreviation next to the car number that identifies the railway).

Although many people think that a nearby explosion or fire cannot cause an atomic device to detonate, this isn't necessarily so. While an atomic explosion is a very difficult thing to cause, it is not unknown for accidental detonations of the high explosives in atomic weapons to take place when they are exposed to fire, extreme impacts or nearby explosions. Although modern devices are designed to be very safe and almost immune to such a high explosive detonation leading to a nuclear explosion, older devices from the 1940s and 1950s weren't as safe, and it was known that any high explosive detonation could lead to at least a partial nuclear detonation. This was why most weapons of that era had removable nuclear cores that were only inserted into the weapon after take-off and after orders for attack had been received - With the core removed, there was no chance of a crash or fire leading to a nuclear explosion. After the 1950s, design improvements made many nuclear weapons "one-point safe", meaning that the accidental firing of one of the detonators in the device had a one-in-a-million chance of causing a measurable nuclear yield. However, some device designs still in use today cannot be made completely "one-point safe", and so remain at risk of accidental detonation. Most at risk are so-called "gun-type" devices similar to the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which have only a single detonator, and any accidental firing of this detonator will always cause a nuclear explosion. Although little-used today, this design was used for the four bombs built in the 1980s by South Africa. As the internal design of most Russian devices is unknown, it is not impossible that a Russian device could use this design and so be very prone to an accidental detonation.

When a nuclear bomb goes off, it gives off a electro-magnetic pulse which can damage anything electronic within a large area around the point of detonation. After the blast you see vehicles being used such as the motorcycle, the small car, the mini bus and the truck hauling the trailer, while the people walking to I-70 have working flashlights. This is not a mistake, as while complex electronics can indeed be damaged by the electro-magnetic pulse, simple electrical systems can easily survive - Especially is switched off at the time of the explosion. While vehicles using electronic ignition or engine management systems would probably be disabled by the pulse, those with older coil-based ignition systems (or older diesel engines) would still run - As proved by many nuclear tests in the 1950s where vehicles were deliberately exposed to such effects. Also, simple electrical devices like flashlights would also survive, especially if turned off at the time of the explosion.

The placard on the boxcar is an 'Explosives' placard with a yellow border of paint or tape added.

The chase locomotive (Freight 4920) BC Rail colors. On the side the abbreviation TCNRR is painted, but when Ray mutes the radio, and in following shots the side of the radio sill says "BC RAIL SLP 124", which also does not match the number on the side of the locomotive (4920) or the number boards over the windshield (643).

The tracks at Miller's Bend appear rusty. This would not be the case for a heavily used rail line, as the metal-on-metal contact with wheels keeps regularly used track polished and shiny. Apparently the track shown being dismantled was from some disused branch, or was specially set up for filming.

After the air brake fails, nobody tries to find out why until much later. The crew talks about "damaged hoses" from the engine fire as though that was a possible cause, which it isn't.

For no reason the crew placing the derail has no radio, requiring a helicopter to visit them when they have to be given instruction. There is no need to use a derail to derail the train anyway, as it could just be sent into a siding.

When Seeger and the engineer jumps off the train, we hear that the train is 10 minutes from Millers Bend. The train is moving at a speed at 30-40 mph. That would mean that the train would be anything between 5 and 7 miles from Millers bend when they jump off. Still Seeger claims that they are "only a couple of miles away", and arrives there by foot after about 15 minutes (on screen after a minute).

Why did Seeger and the junior engineer just not try to dump the bomb en route, then they know it would not explode. Either by pushing the crate out the door, or taking the actual bomb, and dump it out the door.

On some of the freight cars, they have reporting marks on them that say "West Rail".

The train carrying the bomb has a caboose on it for most of the time, but in reality railroads stopped using cabooses in the mid 80's and replaced them with FRED (flashling rear end device).

As the train slows and accelerates, from the outside it appears that it is going faster or slower than the speedometer shows.

Denver does not have skyscrapers with the logos of Canada Trust or the Bank of Nova Scotia. (Filmed in Vancouver.)

The crossbucks at the grade crossing where the school bus stalls on the tracks in the movie's prelude read "RAILWAY CROSSING" on them. These are what the crossbucks at Canadian train crossings originally read, newer ones simply have a plain white crossbuck with a red outline. The standard law for the Amercian crossbucks require the lettering to read "RAILROAD CROSSING" on them.

In the movie most of the trains have engines and rail cars with reporting marks of Canadian railroads but in fact the only major rail line that runs between Utah and Denver is owned by UP (Union Pacific Railroad) so it is more likely that we would have seen "armor" yellow engines if the movie was shot in the U.S. in the Utah/Colorado area.

The air brakes on a train are fail-safe. If the hose parts, the brakes go on automatically rather than becoming unusable.

Everyone agrees that if the train derails anywhere after Jackson Summit this will most likely happen at Miller's Bend. It follows that a derailment at this point will be the most violent and hence the most likely to trigger the bomb. Therefore if it gets that far, the best thing would be for it to keep on going, if necessary right through Denver and out the other side; and there is plenty of time to think of this. Yet when the train approaches Miller's Bend, it is deliberately derailed there.

During the entire film, many different attempts to prevent a nuclear disaster where attempted. One thing they didn't attempt, was to simply disconnect the box car.

When the train becomes a runaway it is still 300 miles from Denver, described as downhill all the way so that it cannot stop without brakes. Since mountainous terrain does not allow a continuous steady downgrade, the train would have to descend at least two or three miles to keep it coasting over that distance, making the starting point higher than any point in Utah. In fact, since it would be traveling toward the Continental Divide, it should be going generally uphill for most of the first 250 miles.

When Seger gets onto the runaway train it is suddenly deemed vital for him to locate the bomb. Any of the crew members already on board could have done that.