Red Signals (Silent) (DVD)

Transcontinental locomotives are being derailed and looted. The Western Limited Railroad Company sends superintendent Frank Bennet to investigate. While searching the wrecks for clues, Frank encounters his long-lost brother, Lee, now living as a hobo. Seeing an opportunity for his brother to improve his life, Frank gives Lee a job working for the railroad. However, he has unknowingly placed his brother in danger when Lee finds himself working with the men responsible for the sabotage.

Red Signals was one of a series of low-budget railroad pictures made by Australian-born director J.P. McGowan, including The Open Switch (1925) and Crossed Signals (1926). Leading man Wallace McDonald had a career in Hollywood dating back to the 1914 Charlie Chaplin feature Tillie's Punctured Romance. At the time, Earle Williams, playing McDonald's brother in the film, was actually better known, having starred in another wildly successful railroad melodrama, The Juggernaut (1915) and having played the titular thief in Vitagraph's version of Arsene Lupin (1917). While Red Signals was still in release, Williams died of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 47. Shot in Los Angeles, Red Signals also serves as a photographic record of Santa Fe's La Grande Station, which was damaged in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake and finally demolished in 1939.

BONUS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF RAILROAD DEVELOPMENT - A celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, filmed in 1927.

• silent