Corrected entry: The "Constitution" steam locomotive in the film carries a builder's plate reading "Mason Locomotive Works, Philadelphia." There was no such firm in Philadelphia, the only locomotive builders in that city were the Richard Norris and Son's and the more well known Baldwin Locomotive Works, the design of the plate closely resembles that of the latter. There was a firm known as the Mason Machine Works, founded by William Mason as a textile machinery builder, but later entered the locomotive building business as well. However, the Mason firm was located in Taunton, Massachusetts. Apparently, the prop designers got Baldwin and Mason confused with one another.
Corrected entry: At the end when the train goes over the bridge we can tell the carriages and the wagons are going over the edge. When the one with the bad guy goes over, the shot changes to looking up and the carriages and wagons are going off the end again.
Correction: This isn't a mistake, just a filming choice. Since they can't show both shots at once (without a split screen), they showed Cole going over first to build suspense, but then showed the whole train going over to show the audience what had happened.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film when the train crashes off the bridge, the bad guy is dragged down underwater with the freight wagons and drowns. The water is shown to be very deep, but when Tonto looks over the edge we can see the steam locomotive and coaches only half submerged in the river, indicating that it's not that deep. (02:14:30)
Corrected entry: When the railroad official is claiming the treaties invalid, the flag behind him has all 50 stars, even though some states hadn't been become part of the United States yet.
Correction: You can tell it doesn't have 50 stars as there are only 5 rows of stars, instead of 9 offset rows. There are only 37 stars (the flag used from 1867-1877).
Corrected entry: The train had 3 cars of silver during the chase scene, however, there are 5 silver cars when it comes to the missing span of bridge and tumbles into the river.
Correction: From the beginning of the chase scene there are 6 cars of silver, neither 3 nor 5, and there are still 6 cars of silver when it comes to the missing span of the bridge and the train tumbles into the river.
Corrected entry: The opening scene takes place in 1933 and shows a young boy in a cowboy outfit looking at dioramas in a Wild West exhibit at a carnival. In the background, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" is playing. While the song was written by Bob Nolan in 1932, it wasn't released until 1934.
Correction: This is not entirely correct. Pioneer Trio (which included Bob Nolan) was hired in 1933 as staff singers for radio station kfwb where they sung the song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" (initially "Tumbling Leaves") during some of their radio appearances. It then became their theme song when they were given their own radio show. It wasn't until May 1934 that Sunset Music purchased the copyrights to the song that the song was published, but it was on the radio before that.
Correction: This movie never makes the claim it is a historical movie. They can make up fictional companies for a fictional story.