Fact1: court order compels Ranken to release him from solitary, Fact2: Manny is forced to advance plan after he is stabbed Planning, Fact3: dispatchers Dave Prince and Frank Barstow are alerted to situation, Fact4: train 's horn blows At is on train point, Fact5: only way to stop train be to climb into lead engine
Output: Oscar Manny Manheim is a ruthless bank robber and hero to the convicts of Alaskas Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. After two previous escape attempts, Manny was put in solitary confinement for three years. A court order compels sadistic Associate Warden Ranken to release him from solitary. Planning a third break out, Manny is forced to advance his plan to midwinter after he is stabbed. Manny recruits young prisoner Buck McGeehy to help in the complicated plan. After an arduous crosscountry hike, including a swim across a freezing river, the two hop on board a train. After the men stow away, the elderly railroad engineer has a heart attack. As the driverless train accelerates, dispatchers Dave Prince and Frank Barstow are alerted to the situation. They try to keep the tracks clear, but the runaway smashes the caboose of another train. The collision damages the cab of the lead locomotive and jams the front door of the second engine, an old EMD Funit. The convicts are now aware something is wrong. Barstows superior Eddie McDonald orders him to derail the train. At this point the trains horn blows, alerting the authorities and the two fugitives that someone is on the train. Barstow cancels the derailment. Ranken concludes that his two escaped convicts are fleeing by rail. Meanwhile, the two fugitives are discovered by Sara, a locomotive hostler, who explains that she sounded the horn and that the train is out of control. She convinces them that jumping off the train would be suicidal and explains that the only way to stop the train would be to climb into the lead engine and press its kill switch, a nearimpossible feat. The dispatchers divert the runaway onto a branch after determining it is only five minutes away from a headon collision. Further ahead the train has a tight curve near a chemical plant. Barstow agrees that they must crash it, thus condemning the three people, rather than risk a chemical explosion. Warden Ranken forces Barstow to help him reach the train by helicopter. Manny tries to force Buck into a suicidal scramble around the outside of the second engines frozen nose. Saras intervention on Bucks behalf forces an armed faceoff. Emotionally broken, all three slump into depression. Suddenly Rankens accomplice dies trying to board the lead engine via helicopter—Ranken has now caught up with the train. Spurred on by the appearance of his archenemy and resolved not to return to prison, Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine. He barely makes it, crushing his hand. Ranken boards the locomotive from the helicopter, but Manny ambushes him and handcuffs him. Ranken orders Manny to stop the train before it crashes, but Manny has chosen to die rather than be recaptured. When reminded of Buck and Sara in the second engine, Manny uncouples his outofcontrol lead engine. He waves goodbye, ignoring Bucks screaming pleas to shut down the lead engine, and climbs onto the roof of the lone engine in the freezing snow, his arms stretched out, ready to meet his end. Buck and Mannys fellow inmates mourn in their cells as the lone engine disappears into the storm. The film closes with an onscreen quote from William Shakespeares Richard III: