Willing suspension of disbelief I can do.
My problem with this film is the plot. SPOILERS Why keep Charles McGraw in the dark about the true nature of the journey? And if you are going to run a decoy, why would you put her on the same train with the real girl? Wouldn't it make more sense to send them on, you know, different trains? And why even use a train for the real girl? Send the decoy by train, the real girl by airplane. END SPOILERS Willing suspension of disbelief I can do. Willing lobotomy, no.
Also they put the real witness on a different train, there would not be a movie.
Not true. It would be a different movie, but you could get a very good picture out of a cop-protecting-a-witness-who-is-actually-a-decoy story. Especially if the cop and the decoy fall in love, and then the decoy gets killed. I'd be willing to bet you could make an even better movie with that story than the one told in The Narrow Margin.
Possibly, yes, but they didn't, regardless, I enjoy this more every time I see it.
why, do the locations get even better every time? a train is still a train. (and a damn silly basis for giving a movie a 10/10 if you ask me, no matter how many times you see it )
Its mostly all a sets in the studio, except for Union Station in LA and the Santa Fe Railroad Depot in San Bernardino, and of course stock footage.
And, let me elaborate, it's a work of Studio/Stage Art, the great design of the various rail car sets, the lighting effects, plus an all emersing sound design. This is all intercut with second unit material and stock footage that convey the illusion of " the jornada", a road picture on rails. There are not many road pictures as tight as this one just judging it visually and audibly alone.
--- how likely is it that the police would send a star witness whom they know the syndicate is after on a public train with only a single cop? Especially after Forbes was shot, no way would they go through with that at least without sending extra backup. Today I'd say they'd use a special gov't transportation (cop car) but maybe in the early 50's it was much more common to use public trains for police transport, I don't know, I guess it was before Ike made the interstate highway system, probably would take a year to drive from Chicago to LA.
It's not a question of whether or not it existed.