Just before the liberation for Paris the Nazis loot many works of art & try to transport them back to Germany by train. Resistance fighter La Biche, played by Burt Lancaster tries all he can to stop them.

The Nazi's make Burt Lancaster work all night to fix the barings on the loco after Papa Boule put coins in the oil line, couldn't they just use another loco? Later on, after the triple smash the loco used has the number 230B711, rather than 230B517 which was the one of the loco used earlier.

There are German soldiers in the guard's positions of the freeweeling trucks, they shoot at the crew as they escpae but don't put the brakes on. By the way the smash was done for real, & Burt Lancaster really is driving the train in all the cab scenes.

(It's been a while since I've seen it) There's a POV shot of someone looking over the train yard, through binoculars, I think. Steven Spielberg used a similar shot in "Empire of the Sun" (building the airstrip), and "Schindler's List" (Goethe overlooking the prison camp).

Burt Lancaster is directing the shunting of the arms train from the signal box with some binoculars. All the points changes are done from here but when Papa Boule insists on taking the train through the yard La Biche has to set the points with a lever mounted on the ground. If he could do this why didn't they use a ground lever to change the set with the pipe-jammed lever in the box?