Although for years the celebration moved around the calendar a bit more than in the past and was therefore somewhat difficult to track down (no pun intended), today -- we are full of joy to announce -- once again is that most grand fest, National Train Day.  At least it is here at Elisberg Industries, and that's good enough as a starting point.  You won't find it on any calendars for any number of reasons, but the most important is that since Amtrak funding got cut back they stopped promoting it after 2016.

(And the reason for it moving around the calendar is that it was never a set day, but the Saturday closest to May 10.  Why May 10, I hear you cry?  Because that's the anniversary of the Golden Spike being driven in at Promontory Point, Utah, to complete the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.)

But whether or not it remains an officially promoted holiday by the government -- and isn't being celebrated here on a proper Saturday due to prior commitments, think of it as the train running behind schedule -- National Train Day (or as it used to be known around these parts once upon a time as "Let's Make Chris Dunn's Head Explode Day," but no more since he now, at long last, acknowledges Bridge on the River Kwai as a train movie) is nonetheless still one of the most joyous holidays of the year. 

As much as Trump and his MAGOP acolytes in the White House and Congress are swaggering how ICE is now filling in for TSA at airports, it's hard to see how this won't backfire.  That's because the job requires a long process for training.  It's a couple of weeks at the academy, but also 120 hours of formal instruction and several months of on-site training. And ICE agents have zero. So they'll look clueless...because they are.  And it will all be very public.

Already there are news stories about ICE agents chatting at baggage claim (for some unknown reason, since getting your bags comes at the very end of the standing in line to get on your flight process) and meandering around airports.

I wrote about that yesterday morning on social media.  And then later in the day came a story about Steve Bannon saying the quiet part out loud on his podcast: that sending ICE to airports is a test-run for them checking IDs of people standing in line to vote at the Mid-Terms.

Bannon called this a "5-D" chess move by Trump.

"Let's get ICE into the airports to help out, to the lines," Bannon said. "They can't work the machines. You know what to do? Just walk them down. 'Can we check your IDs? That's what's going to happen in the fall of '26 because, folks, we're tired of having an election stolen."

This indeed may be Trump's plan.  In fairness, it also might be Steve Bannon's fevered fascist dream.  Or his blustering to sound like he's inside and knows much more than he does.  Or him wanting to terrify others.  Because not only is there zero evidence of ICE even checking anyone's ID at any airport, but the point might just be that the Trump team thinks the visual of ICE "helping out" at airports (supposedly) will thrill the public and put great pressure on Democrats to settle the supplementary funding bill.

But if it turns out that this is actually the point (if), then it's even worse for how much this will backfire.  This isn't "5-D" chess, this is bad tiddlywinks. 

People at airports are upset at the interminably longlines, not because their IDs aren't being checked.  To be standing in lines for hours, angry, uncomfortable, hungry, and seeing ICE agents doing absolutely nothing to help (as even Bannon acknowledges, "They can't work the machines") and only harassing people, asking for their identification -- which everyone will have to give anyway just to board the plane -- and asking where they're from, and can they prove they're citizens, and questioning their accents can only infuriate the public more.  And this doesn't take into consideration actual foreign travelers who (of course) aren't citizens, so they won't be able to prove they are, and having a passport from their home country might be enough for untrained ICE agents since, for all they know, they plan to stay past their permitted time and sneak into the country. And if they take any of these people -- foreign or even citizens -- for questions, that might force the travelers to miss their flights, even with such long waits.

Besides which, there are around 95,000 polling places in the U.S., which Bannon suggests ICE might want to patrol.  But the numbers are that low (compared to over 132,000 in 2020) because so many people vote by mail now and don't go out to vote.  However, it turns out that the Supreme Court declares voting by mail illegal (I wouldn't think they will, but this is the Roberts Court, so I don't put anything past them until they rule), then the number off polling places ICE will have to cover will skyrocket to over 200,000 that existed in 2018 before people got used to voting by mail.

And none of this takes into consideration how much I think the American public will   hate ICE checking for IDs and patrolling voter lines.  I suspect that Americans will be so red-hot furious at such a "show us your papers" fascist action to hinder their right to vote that it will backfire even more and drive even greater numbers of people to the polls.

So, "5-D" chess??  Only if that's the grade school level. 

For that matter, it doesn't even reach the level of tiddlywinks. It's more like Winky-Dink, the old children's TV show where kids put a transparent "magic screen" on the set and drew on it with "magic crayons", pretending to be impacting the action.

Because from all evidence, having ICE at airports doesn't appear to be about this year's Mid-Terms, and the idea of ICE patrolling airports and checking IDs of people standing in massive lines (who know they'll have to give their IDs to actually-trained TSA agents anyone) and questioning them -- or, almost as bad, even if ICE agents do absolutely nothing and just wander around, not helping and wasting taxpayers dollars, that's going to backfire all on its own.  And even worse for Trump and the Bannons of the world, risks creating an annoyed, even angry public at seeing ICE hovering near long lines where they don't belong, while doing absolutely nothing, except being wasteful, overbearing, and empty. Where the feeling of security comes from all the people with you in line.

In soccer, this is known as an "own goal."  An unforced error where you mistakenly score a goal against yourself.

​Just another day in Trump World.

Although for years the celebration moved around the calendar a bit more than in the past and was therefore somewhat difficult to track down (no pun intended), today -- we are full of joy to announce -- once again is that most grand fest, National Train Day.  At least it is here at Elisberg Industries, and that's good enough as a starting point.  You won't find it on any calendars for any number of reasons, but the most important is that since Amtrak funding got cut back they stopped promoting it after 2016.

(And the reason for it moving around the calendar is that it was never a set day, but the Saturday closest to May 10.  Why May 10, I hear you cry?  Because that's the anniversary of the Golden Spike being driven in at Promontory Point, Utah, to complete the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.)

But whether or not it remains an officially promoted holiday by the government -- and isn't being celebrated here on a proper Saturday due to prior commitments, think of it as the train running behind schedule -- National Train Day (or as it used to be known around these parts once upon a time as "Let's Make Chris Dunn's Head Explode Day," but no more since he now, at long last, acknowledges Bridge on the River Kwai as a train movie) is nonetheless still one of the most joyous holidays of the year. ​

​For our part here, we celebrate National Train Day on these pages by posting a list of the greatest train movies.  These are films in which trains are absolutely central to the story.  Where a train is the driving force of the tale, without which you can’t properly describe the plot.

(Think of it like the classic and beloved Santa Claus song, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Santa Claus doesn't actually appear in the song at all.  He hasn't even shown up yet.  In most ways, it's about "you" and what you should do -- or better not do.  But even though there's not a hint of Santa Claus even appearing in the song, without Santa Claus...there's no song.)

We're strict about this.  A friend once recommended The Taking of Pelham-1-2-3, and it was strongly considered, but that was a subway train or light rail.  This list is for full-bore trains, the kind that either have sleeping cars and dining cars, or could if they were hitched on.  But I've added it to our Honorable Mentions category.  And strict, too, is that the list is for feature films only.  Yes, I could have included TV movies and series, but I don't.  It's just where I chose to draw the line.  But that's why I created the Special Mentions category.

Since the list is fluid, we keep adding to it. And so we have an addition this year.  It's Terror on a Train from 1953, with Glenn Ford as an army bomb disposal expert.  No, it's not close to being one of the all-time greats, but it's fun.

As I noted, there are two other categories added a few years back:  Honorable Mention is for movies which you can generally tell their stories without using the word "train," but they have some connection to trains -- usually a great, standout train sequence, supportive to the story, but not essential in telling the plot -- that makes them memorable.  And later, I added a category of Special Mention, for works that don't qualify as a train movie or perhaps even as a movie at all, but deserve a place of honor. 

This year, I've included two new Honorable Mentions -- The first is Some Like It Hot.  It's not remotely a train movie, but has one of the more famous train scenes in a movie comedy.  And second, we have Berlin Express, made in 1948, a story of post-World War II German subversives. Though the title suggests this is a pure train movie, most of it takes place off the train in the city.

And as I noted in the past, though something I think is likely very obvious, I love train movies.  Here is the current list of Great Train Movies.

3:10 to Yuma
Around the World in 80 Days
Back to the Future 3
Bridge on the River Kwai
Bullet Train
The Commuter
The Darjeeling Limited
Emperor of the North
The 5:17 to Paris
The General
The Girl on the Train
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Great Train Robbery
The Lady Vanishes
Murder in the Private Car
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
The Narrow Margin
North by Northwest
Northwest Frontier
Night Train to Munich
Polar Express
Runaway Train
Shanghai Express
Silver Streak
Snowpiercer
Source Code
Strangers on a Train
Terror on a Train
Tough Guys
The Train
Transsiberian
Twentieth Century
Union Pacific
Union Station
Unstoppable
Von Ryan’s Express
 
Honorable Mention
At the Circus
Berlin Express 
Cat Ballou
Go West
The Greatest Show on Earth
Murder on the Orient Express (2017 remake)
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Some Like It Hot
Throw Momma from the Train 
Trading Places

 
Special Mention
The Railrodder (short)
The Taking of Pelham-1-2-3 (light-rail subway trains)
Murder on the Orient Express (TV version, from the series Poirot)
Great Railway Journeys of the World (TV documentary)
Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose (book) 
Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad by David Haward Bain (book) 

I've also added another new feature in recent years -- a scene from one of the Great Train Movies, or another entry on the list.  And this year we have a critical scene from the wonderful movie The Lady Vanishes, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  The scene features Margaret Lockwood, with a brief appearance by the joyous and (as you'll note) deeply important to the plot, Dame May Witty as 'Miss Froy.'
​

This past Wednesday, Chris Hayes did a terrific story on his MSNBC show about one of the lesser-discussed and major problems caused by Trump's actions, enabled by the MAGOPs in Congress.  And that's tourism.

His point was that, although tourism might seem like a small issue, it's actually the economic area where the United States not only has a surplus, but the one area that has always run a surplus, and a big surplus.  It's money that all goes one way, into the U.S.  Billions of dollars.  And not just money for coming into the country, but for hotels, renting cars, taking trains and buses, tickets for shows and entertainments, buying food, getting souvenirs and more.  And further, and perhaps most importantly, it creates jobs.  Huge numbers of jobs.

And it's cratering, thanks to Trump.

Imagine now, as the report starts out, how this could impact international visitors coming to the the U.S. for the 2028 Olympics.  Or not comings.  For that matter, which the segment doesn't touch on, who knows what conditions will be then and if any democratic countries refuse to even send their Olympics teams.  (I don't think it will come to that, but I don't know with absolute certainty, and it's a question that can't not​ be asked.)

On the Lockheed Martin website, they describe Trump's push for the Pentagon to develop a "Golden Dome" (Trump's version of the failed "Star Wars Defense Initiative" that Ronald Reagan tried) as the "Golden Dome stands as an impenetrable shield, safeguarding the American homeland with unwavering precision." 

There's no way of knowing yet if this effort will be successful, or as foolhardy and wasteful as Reagan's attempt.  The one thing we do have an idea about, though, since we're already seeing the first results, is that Trump is  doing a great job even without any technology creating an invisible force shield keeping other people from around the world out.  And not just minorities from his self-proclaimed "sh*thole countries," but everyone.

​Rather than me describe the segment more, it's best to turn these pages over to Chris Hayes, and let him dive deep into it.

And now, a brief musical interlude from shore to Dinah Shore...

​At the time, I was a little sorry that the poster had as many years as "16."  Little did I know how paltry that number would be.

A couple of fun tidbits about that first production in 1952.  One of the actors in the play was Richard Attenborough, who of course went on to great fame as an actor (in such movies as The Great Escape and Jurassic Park), but even greater fame as a director, winning an Oscar for Gandhi.

And also, when Agatha Christie signed a contract to give away the movie rights, it was under the condition that no movie of it would be made until after the play closed.  That was 72 years ago.  So far...