Burt, Babbitt and Thomas

Pouring a 28" Babbitt Pedestal BearingPouring Babbitt Bearing Beaumont

I had a video clip from the movie The Train (1964) that had Burt Lancaster pouring a Babbitt bearing for a locomotive connecting rod. Alas, it has vanished, so now we have new guys casting a really big bearing.

A while back I put up a post about Babbitt bearings. Today, Jack points out this scene in The Train where Burt Lancaster is casting a bearing for a locomotive. Watching the movie, I got to wondering about some things, like was Paris really an "open city", and did they really haul a train load of paintings off to Germany? Well, yeah, mostly.

Fifteen masterpieces filled railroad boxcars were sent to Germany with Goering's personal train. - Wikipedia

On June 12 [1940], the French government, in Tours, declared Paris to be an open city, that there would be no resistance. - Wikipedia

So when the French Army was defeated by the Germans at the opening of WW2, France declared Paris to be an open city to prevent its destruction. However, did that declaration transfer when the Germans took over? I don't think so. Germany was still fighting and I'm not finding anything that says they declared Paris to be an open city. So while the Parisians might want it to be an open city, they were infested with vermin that needed to expelled or exterminated. So, yeah, there's going to be collateral damage.

The Métro repair shops in St Ouen were also destroyed during the same Allied bombing raid
St Ouen is a suburb of Paris

The most terrible bombing raid took place on the night of April 21, 1944 in the area of the Porte de La Chapelle, in the 18th arrondissement. The entire area was destroyed (Anglo-American bombers targetted the La Chapelle marshalling yard, which they largely missed). - brisavoine

Reading about the movie, I follow a chain of links that aren't really connected:

Paul Scofield, who played the villain in The Train, also played Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, which was not about Thomas Becket, nor was it about Thomas Aquinas. All three Toms were Roman Catholic clerics of one sort of another. I have a hard time keeping them straight.

Beckett gets mentioned in the The Pillars of the Earth as something of a villain, being as he is part of the feeble power structure that is doing a sad job of ruling England. He doesn't actually appear in the story. I have almost reached the end of the book, which takes place in the 1100's, and Henry has just invaded England.

The cathedral being built in The Pillars of the Earth is inspired by the cathedral in St Denis, which is next door to St Ouen.

Map of train stations from the movie

Update: the movie is available on Netflix, but only on a DVD.

Update March 2021 replaced missing video with something related.