Recent Features

The Money Train

In the background is the actual 'Money Train". In place of the high current electric motors, used by the New York subway, Phil Cory designed a power plant using, 4, tandemed, turbo charged, propane burning, 454 chevy engines, powering high performance hydraulic pumps and motors. This power plant gave the director the speed he needed to sell his shot. That's 120,100lbs' moving at 40 mph, in less than 400 ft.!

The "Money Train", inside the 3000+ foot long, 20 foot high, 60 foot wide, tunnel and subway station. Built near Chinatown, north of downtown Los Angeles, the set is the longest in film history.

Die Hard with a Vengeance

Among the most challenging and death-defying stunts ever filmed is the subway crash in Die Hard with a Vengeance. Not wanting to settle for optics or models, the filmmakers searched in vain for a New York stage large enough to accommodate the stunt.

They moved to Charleston, South Carolina to an empty General Dynamics plant that is still the largest building in the state. The crew built a true-to-life New York City subway station, complete with real subway cars purchased from the New York City Transit Authority and a quarter-mile of train track in the 10,000 sq. ft. building.

Special effects coordinator Phil Cory's most complicated task was to create an unprecedented stunt in which a detonated bomb causes the last car of a train entering a subway station to derail and speed onto a platform full of waiting commuters. The production had every detail of the stunt worked out prior to filming, and McTiernan had five cameras rolling.

Stunt personnel were warned that the train would be traveling at 40 mph and that if they fell, very little could be done to help them. "We had it controlled with a computer," explains Cory. "When the train was flying around the station, we knew exactly where it was going. We had programmed in the speed, and a set time when it was going to swing around and where it was going to end."

The end result is a white-knuckle experience like no other.

Driving the tank, Richard Cory. The tank was completely rebuilt and outfitted with new hydraulics to drive the tank and deploy the bridge. The bridge was operated via joy stick.


Pictured L to R, (a couple of the masters of Special Effects) Phil Cory, Paul Stewart, Billy Lee and Bill Shirmer. Bill Shirmer designed this rear drive car, using Taxi, Police and Mercedes bodies as needed. The rear drive car was used extensively in the chase through Manhattan.

Mobile gimbal designed and built by Richard Cory. Electronic Hydraulic controls designed and built by Doug Calli.

A Taxi and Mercedes were set up to use this gimbal. The gimbal was pulled with a camera car.

The Money Train

Die Hard with a Vengeance

Mobile 3 axis gimbaled Cars