Tony Scott must be a bit of a train spotter at heart; the British director helmed last year’s poor remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 and now this. Not only that but he’s also brought his Pelham star Denzel Washington along for the ride.

It’s the start of yet another busy day at Fuller Yard in Wilkins, PA. Two hostlers are getting some grief about needing to move an engine out of the way, so that an excursion train full of schoolchildren on an educational day out can get out of the yard. Dewey (Ethan Suplee) jumps into the cab and gets the train rolling.

As it slowly moves off, Dewey can see that the points switch ahead is set to the wrong track. Going against the advice of his fellow hostler telling him on the radio not to, Dewey jumps out of the train to change the track manually. However, as he does so he’s unaware that the lever in the train that controls the speed, moves of its own accord. As the train begins to get faster, Dewey soon realises that he can’t get back on the train. Not only that, but he also forgot to connect the train’s air brakes. D’oh. And off the train goes.

Meanwhile, veteran engineer Frank Barnes (Washington) starts his day by being paired up with rookie conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine). They have to move a train and some wagons from the yard in Stanton, Pa. What neither of them were counting on however, is having a runaway train, travelling at over 71 miles per hour, coming at them from the opposite direction on the same track. Oh and it just so happens to be pulling a load of highly flammable materials too.

Oh wow, I think I can see my career from up here. It's over there, on the distant horizon. Tell me you can see it too?

It’s a truly laughable premise; after all it’s just Speed 3 under another title. Remarkably though, and somewhat worryingly, it’s actually based on fact. In 2001, there was a runaway train in Ohio that travelled over 61 miles with no-one at the controls. Plus, it really was pulling two wagons full of toxic chemicals.

But as this is a Tony Scott film, there had to be a few embellishments to spice the story up a bit. Like a trainful of young students on a fun day out at a train yard, and a horsebox stuck on a train crossing. The only real surprise is that he left out a pregnant dog about to give birth to a huge litter of cute puppies on the line.

Still, it’s no surprise that the train did take off on its own, what did they expect by letting Earl’s brother Randy (Suplee) drive the train?

Not only is this a dangerous journey on the tracks, it’s also a journey back in time – for the dialogue at least. Much of the script could have been lifted from the pages of a b-rated disaster film from the seventies. It’s scarily clichéd and unintentionally amusing. Scott should have gone the whole hog and had Shelley Winters and Red Buttons CGI’d into the plot.

And then there’s Washington, who’s once again wasting his talent on a weak project. It’s been nine years since he really flexed his acting muscle and impressed in Training Day. Since then, he, a little like engine 777 in this film, has been coasting along. This is the fifth collaboration with director Scott, and it’s certainly not helping his career any. And yet he’s the best thing about it. No one does blue collar quite like Denzel, who just reeks of charm the entire time.

But when the film does work up to a full head of steam, Scott does enough to make the film’s conclusion a semi-thrilling experience. But the journey to get to that point however, is quite the grind.