Railroadin'

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

While playing in the train yard, Fat Joe Cobb, Farina & the Gang go RAILROADIN' in a runaway train, which none of them knows how to stop...

A funny little early talkie. Due to its age, some of the dialogue is difficult to hear. Highlight: Farina on the tracks. Fat Joe & Chubby are so obese it's painful to watch them.

There are plenty of hair-raising thrills and spills in this second Little Rascals sound film. The orphanage from which they came is now left far behind, and we see none of the adoptive mothers in this film either. The film takes place entirely in a rail yard and along the rail tracks leading from it. The film begins with Farina and Harry playing on a railway turntable in the rail yard. Then the little fat boy Joe, and a new friend of his who is also a little fat boy, Chubby (though we do not hear his name mentioned, played by Norman Chaney), bringing sandwiches in their metal lunch boxes to their fathers (Joe's being adoptive) who are railway engineers who operate a locomotive. Joe's father invites the boys up into the locomotive to see all the levers and controls, and permits Joe to blow the horn. They all then leave the locomotive and go to a bench where the men sit and eat their lunch. Meanwhile, the other five Little Rascals plus Pete the Dog are also playing in the rail yard. They have put together an elaborate den for themselves in an empty rail freight car which has no roof. It rests on a side track, far behind and not attached to the resting locomotive. Mischief begins when Joe and Chubby leave their fathers and go back to the train and climb up into the locomotive again. They fiddle a bit with some controls, but do not know how to start the train. The rail yard has been plagued for some time by a former rail worker who has gone mad, and who hangs around leering at people. He spots the boys in the locomotive and climbs in with them. He starts the locomotive for them and then leaps out. The only lever Joe knows how to control is one which causes the train to reverse its direction. The train moves ominously forward and in panic, Joe reverses its direction, so that it begins to go backwards towards the freight car where the other Rascals are playing. Joe reverses direction just before crashing into them. Meanwhile Farina has caught his foot in a switch and is sitting on the track helplessly in front of the oncoming locomotive. He sees it coming, puts his hands together in prayer and says 'Now I lay me down to sleep …' Then he leans back flat and the locomotive passes over him, leaving him unharmed. Joe reverses again and it passes over Farina in the other direction, and this happens several times. Harry comes to free his foot and says: 'How come the locomotive passed right over you and you ain't dead?' And then Joe fails to reverse in time and the locomotive does collide with the freight car, so that it becomes attached to the locomotive, with the children in it. Then he successfully reverses and begins to move forward at increasing speed, and they go through the town and into the countryside on the wild runaway train, with numerous cars and even a streetcar narrowly missing them at crossings. Then another trains carrying passengers is coming straight at them and disaster is narrowly averted by a quick-thinking signalman who pulls a switch for the passenger train to divert it at the last second. All of these goings-on are very much in the tradition of the silent films, such as Buster Keaton's, with split-second escapes and terrifying near misses. Eventually the locomotive is brought under control and the Rascals are returned to the rail yard, which they say they will avoid in the future. Farina then has some further adventures of his own, for which the viewer must remain in suspense, but I will give one cue: what comes first, the chicken or the egg? It is not always possible to make out what the children are saying in this film, the most difficult to understand being Harry and occasionally Farina. Pete the Dog is a passive participant in this episode, suffering the indignities of collisions with his commendable canine passivity. Truly, he was the Marguerite Dumont of the cinema dog world. This film is only 20 minutes long, five minutes shorter than its predecessor, SMALL TALK.

This is the second Our Gang film shot with sound. However, the sound quality is much worse than the first--and it's often tough to hear exactly what the kids are saying. It's a darn shame that the DVD set did NOT include captions--they really needed it on this one.

This film was a bit unusual in that it added a second incredibly obese kid to the mix. In addition to the long-time member of the Gang, Joe Cobb, this film marks the introduction of Chubby Chaney--who plays Joe's brother.

The kids are all playing around the railroad yard (the dynamite factory and acid vats at the nearby chemical plants must have been closed). Joe and Chubby's father is an engineer and with all the railroad noise I had no idea what was being said much of the time. Joe begins bragging and pretends that he knows everything about trains--and even invites some of the kids aboard the engine. However, an evil hobo comes along and deliberately sets the train in motion--and it's soon out of control. At this point, the film gets a bit stupid--and the train keeps nearly killing poor Farina. Who thought all this was funny?! Plus, the special effects were pretty poor--and almost none of this looked very convincing. You'd have to see all this to know what I am talking about here. However, after all these close calls around the rail yard, the train takes off on a trip through the Los Angeles countryside--and they miraculously survived. It's all very diverting but the effects sure could have been improved--even for 1929 they were weak.

The morals of this story seem to be that Joe and Chubby have the worst father in history AND you shouldn't trust crazy hobos! Also, I didn't rate this one any higher as it's essentially a remake of the Our Gang silent film "The Sun Down Limited"--which starred Joe and Mickey Daniels are the INSANE kids to take a train joy-riding.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Railroadin', is the ninetieth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the second talkie. This one is a partial remake of the silent The Sun Down Limited with Joe and Chubby-newcomer Norman Chaney-at the controls this time with Harry and Farina in tow, but not before Farina once again gets himself stuck on the tracks with the train once again almost flattening him several times! Since this was early in the talkie era, the sound seems mostly live except when obvious undercranking is used and there's no music score-which might have helped make this a little more funny-except when "The End" shows on print. As a result, this isn't very funny but it's still interesting to watch especially when the camera dollies across the scenery at a steady speed. So on that note, Railroadin' is worth a look. P.S. These first two talkie shorts had as the series title, "Hal Roach presents His Rascals' Voices".

Joe tries to impress the boys by taking them aboard a locomotive. A lunatic hobo arrives and sets the train in motion, which literally runs OVER Farina. Eventually, they leave the rail yard and careen out of control through city and country.

I was enthralled by the location filming of this two-reeler. It gives some interesting glimpses of 1929 Los Angeles. It's also one of the first "Our Gang" comedies with sound, so some of the dialogue is a little hard to understand above the background noise-- but that hardly detracts from the genius of this great short.

This episode is another example of why I feel Farina was the heart and soul of the "Gang." Hal Roach often gave him the most memorable scenes, and for good reason.