I just watched this movie on USA. I'd always caught the very end of it, but never seen the whole thing. Now I'm sorry to say that I have. While I don't know much about the atomic end, I was a chemistry major in college. First of all, sodium is a metal, not a liquid. There is no way it could "leak" out of a barrel. The only thing leaking would be mineral oil with is what sodium is stored in. Secondly, while it does react violently with water, I cannot imagine it reacting with a huge fireball. I still have no idea how the movie gets from this point to the end because I was so disgusted with the lack of research into simple chemical reactions that I changed the channel.

From the creative masterminds who probably brought you "Walker Texas Ranger" comes the action packed suspense movie extravaganza of last century!!Starring Rob Lowe, Mena Suvari, and a dozen other people I don't know, it's..... Atomic Train!! Watch as NTSB investigator John Seger tries to stop a freight train carrying a nuclear weapon race out of control through the scenic Rocky Mountains to the city of Denver!!See corny effects like CGI images of trains rushing past trees and mountains. Watch in amazement as actors come within mere inches of hitting each other in the face, and yet their victims' heads still fly backwards.Marvel at geniuses who park their helicoptors on the train tracks even when they know that there's a runaway train on the loose. Wonder in awe why professional school bus drivers with two dozen kids in tow would cross a railroad crossing without even looking, only to have the engine stall when they reach the middle of the intersection... what are the odds!!!!Be entertained by the intelligent conversations such as the one featured here...John's Daughter: Where's my Dad? John's Wife: I don't know. Last I heard, he was on the train when it derailed. John's Daughter: So... where is he?Brilliant!! And the catchy one-liners are even better. The comedy never stops!! But you'll have to see for yourself. This movie is a riveting two and a half hours long, but don't ask me how it ends... I shut it off with an hour left!!!!That's "Atomic Train," possibly airing on great networks like USA... check local listings for the next showing. If you miss it, you might cry!!

In all honesty, I have to express my sympathies to Lowe, Davis, Morales, Suvari, and all the others involved in this cinematic debacle--either the paychecks just weren't rolling in, or they were conned into thinking this script had potential. I just saw it on TV, and I would have laughed a LOT, had it just not been so tragic and head-shakingly bad.I'm an actor and director, so I can speak to the quality of their performances, which were very good, considering the material they were given and the direction and production values and hideously implausible script. I would have loved to see more conflict between Lowe and Morales, and I could tell they were itching to inject it into their performances, but the script and production prevented any meaningful characterizations from coming out.I'm also a moderate geek, so I can state some disputes with the story which destroyed my suspension of disbelief from the first moment of the film. Buses don't move and stop that quickly. Trains don't zip along that fast without camera tricks. Air brakes, of the kind used on every train and commercial tractor-trailer vehicle in existence, by design, lock up tight as a drum when air pressure is lost. And these are all within the first few minutes. I lost track of all the technical non-sequiturs and outright lousy whiskey-tango-foxtrot moments early on, and came to the conclusion that the writers and producers had but a nodding acquaintance with reality and know no fact-checkers. I won't even get into the fact that no one of our erstwhile heroes should have been left alive after around the halfway point.Why the writers chose to make this flick run as long as it did...the mind lacks the courage to boggle. There's no legitimate climax to the film. What should have been the climax, the obvious 'boom', was reduced to a simple complication in the tale. from there, it was up-and-down rising action and denouement, leaving no fulfillment, only a feeling through the last third of the film of, "Dear God in Heaven, isn't this bloody thing over YET!?" No satisfaction from the resolution, no standout performances, no tour-de-force effects work (it was serviceable to the story...and that ain't a compliment), no plausibility, only a numbness and a feeling of having lost several hours, possibly an entire day, to a script that never should have gotten the green light.Thank heavens the marquis names have moved on to bigger and better projects and made names for themselves, so they can say that they've all dodged the career-killing Atomic Train bullet.

I'm late to this party; it just came on TV (actually, is on as I write) and I, unfortunately, tuned it in thinking it the least of many evils. Should have watched the Mayberry RFD marathon of episodes I've already seen 10 E3 times, including the original airings. At least they bring back memories of a simpler time, when we literally left our doors unlocked and didn't bat an eye at hitchhiking to Florida, not worried about being raped, sodomized, dismembered, and dropped in a 55 gallon drum off a bridge.This movie is execrable. Others have already pointed out the many, many, MANY, errors of fact. I will simply note that the basic premise of the movie itself, the runaway train due to lost air pressure, should have clued the producers before they read past the first five pages of this abomination of a script. It has been 135 years since Westinghouse patented his first air brake. This is NOT state of the art technology, and how any moron, even the cretins who produce made-for-TV movies, could base an entire movie's plot on this idea simply escapes me.Loved the cast, hated the maudlin shyte they had to spout to play their roles in this misbegotten, miserable mess. What a joke! Fortunately, after the first 15 minutes I realized that it was irredeemable and spent the remainder of the air time doing some much-needed cleaning out and organization of my email folders. It was (is) on mainly for background noise, although I must admit that I did give it my attention during the more spectacular moments, the only thing offered by this garbage, and those regrettably separated by the batcrap that passed for dialogue and character development and interaction. Oh, well, at least it was abridged for this showing. GOK what it must have been like to watch the whole bloody thing when it was released.