All Aboard, eh? (PART 2)

Downtown Durbin is a ghost town on a Sunday night. (Hah! I kill me!) Not a single store or business was open including, as we later found out, the bar. But that didn't stop us from walking its length in search of something open. Other than the sounds of the train and some cool wind breezing through, everything was perfectly quiet. If it weren’t for the sole Coca Cola machine, which looked quite out of place set against its backdrop, we could have convinced ourselves that we'd taken a twilight zone trip back to the 1940s.

Eventually, after walking all the way down to the end of town and then back up, Devin and I found the bar. It looked closed from the outside, but one of the two doors on its storefront was unlocked. We entered to find chairs on tables, the lights dim and not a soul to be seen.

"Hello?" Devin called.

"Meow," a kitty voice answered. But no human voice returned our calls. There were some lights coming from beneath a door that appeared to be an office for the bar, but no noises came from within. We decided that they really were closed and that shotguns might become involved if we disturbed the place further, so we left, shutting the door firmly behind us. Only in a place like small town WV could the bars leave their doors unlocked on a Sunday night.

Back at the depot, there was a family waiting on one of the benches. We'd had a few curious on-lookers throughout the day, but at 9 at night these folks were determined to stick around in case anything interesting happened. I believe they were related to Durbin's mayor, who had welcomed us earlier and had been very gracious.

"Excuse me, but aren't you the man who was filming over by the train earlier?" a little boy asked me. "You helped carry that woman's bags?"

"Yeah, that was me," I said. The kid beamed up at me as though I was the most famous person he’d ever met. (In fact, I might very well be.) His sisters and grandmother were soon talking to me about the filming process and seemed very eager to hear what I had to say.

“Do you know when they're going to film the ghost on the front of the train?” the grandmother asked. She had heard that there was a scene in which the ghost, (i.e. Jessica), was to ride on the front of the engine itself as it rode down the track. Even then Jessica was getting into her ghost garb and was cinched up eight ways from Tuesday, not only in a corset so she could squeeze her thin frame into that even tinier wedding dress, (she couldn't even eat more than one slice of pizza because she had no room for it in there), but also with a harness with which she was to be affixed to the front of the engine for her upcoming scenes. The harness was woefully uncomfortable, difficult to remove for bathroom-break purposes and her ghost costume was not the warmest either. But she was a trooper

I told the grandmother that from what I heard there were several scenes that had to be filmed elsewhere before they would get to the ghost on the train, so it would likely be a good wait.

Then the grandmother surprised me.

"Would you mind, maybe, finding a piece of paper and signing it for us. Like an autograph?" she asked.

"Um, ma'am, none of us here are actually famous, or anything. We’re just from Lewisburg."

"Well, I know. But you might get to be famous. You're going to be on TV."

Only then did it truly hit me how surreal yet oddly cool this situation was. Sure, I might think it was absurd for them to want our autographs, but I was seeing the matter from backstage, where we’re just a bunch of community theater players. In front of the curtain, though, life was still glitzy and this little documentary program looked like the big time.

I went and told the cast that their autographs had been requested. They thought it was cute too. Devin suggested we sign a copy of the script, so I volunteered mine (hey, I hadn't used it so far, what were the chances I'd need it?) and we all signed our names and our character names. The family was overjoyed.

Eventually, a flat-bed car was attached to the front of the engine, Jessica was attached to the engine itself and the cameras and lights set up on the flatbed for filming of her first ghostly scenes. The family loved that too, Jessica less-so, as she spent much of the time wearing a very non-ghostly jacket over her ghostly duds.

Around midnight I was starting to get sleepy and my remaining scenes-whatever they might be, as I wasn't really sure myself-still didn't look like they were any closer to being shot. I tried napping on one of the depot benches, but didn’t get any sleep. So mostly I just sat up talking to my castmates, a couple of whom had played engineers and were just grinning from ear to ear that they’d actually been allowed to drive the train during their scenes.

Soon Devin came back to the depot and told us we'd missed out on all the fireworks. While the crew were filming near a small building just down the tracks from us, the wind whipped up and tipped over one of their $35,000 (Canadian dollars, mind you-probably about $10,000-$15,000 American) arc-lamps. It struck ground, went out and seemed a lost cause. Then, while rushing over to check on the lamp, the director caught his foot in the camera cable and down the `spensive hi-def camera went too. If not for the barn-door shutters on the front of the camera, its lens would have likely smashed when it struck one of the rails. Instead it was mostly fine and so was the light.

Our next technical difficulty came when Bob the Real Engineer announced that his steam-powered locomotive was nearly empty of water and thus out of steam. It would take an hour to fill it back up. This put the Director Bill into fits, as there were still several shots of the train moving in the darkness that he needed. He moved on, though, and wound up filming some locomotive perspective shots using a tiny gas-powered service car. I can't say enough good things about Bob and Al. They were fantastic and really seemed to enjoy the process.

Around 2 a.m. it was my turn before the cameras again. We set up several scenes on a boardwalk beside the stationary train, only to have Bob back the train out of our shot several times. By then the trains tanks were mostly full again and he was busy switching out the train cars we'd used onto side tracks in preparation for bringing on the more modern-looking cars and even a new engine which would be used for tours next weekend. So every time the Climax Engine backed up or came toward us, Bill would interrupt our shots to quickly get footage of the train passing. This helped him secure the shots he needed. Pretty smooth. We finished up our shots and Bill announced we were at a wrap.

Our actor carpool didn't leave until nearly 3 a.m. and didn't get back home until 5 a.m.

I don't know when or if my episode of Creepy Canada will be broadcast in the United States. If it is, it will likely be part of a program called Creepy Countries, on the American version of Outdoor Living Network or possibly the Discovery Channel.