10 Movie Scenes With Hidden Tricks You Totally Missed
3. Back To The Future III - Train Scene
Back to the Future III ends with a pulse-pounding race against time. Marty McFly attempts to return to the 1980s by pushing his time-travelling DeLorean up to 88MPH using a fuel-injected steam locomotive. This exciting sequence is the perfect way to conclude the trilogy.
It's important to note that due to the danger of the nature of the scene some of the shots we see in the final film are actually reversed. Rather than have the train push the DeLorean forwards, it was safer for the actors involved to reverse the locomotive and have it pull the car along. This meant avoiding the risk of the DeLorean being pushed off the curves of the railroad.
The train itself, the Sierra Railway 3, is strangely one of the film’s most prolific actors, having a portfolio that contains dozens of film and TV appearances. It also got a kind of miniature stunt double for this final sequence.
Regarding longshots, the train was too impractical and the last few moments of the Sierra pushing the DeLorean towards the canyon are actually large miniatures. The footage is partly obscured with CGI effects as the time-travelling car reaches 88MPH which, more than anything else, let the crew reuse the footage of the miniatures multiple times without audiences ever really noticing.