Footage of moving trains made up one of the most popular genres in the very earliest years of motion pictures, and the Edison movies featuring the "Black Diamond Express" were far from the only movies of their kind. Much of their interest now lies in comparing them with the other features of the same type.
The most famous and memorable of all such movies is still the Lumière feature, "Arrivée d'un train
", made the year before Edison started making the Black Diamond Express series. The composition in the Lumière feature, with the train coming in diagonally relative to the camera frame, is still the classic shot and the most effective perspective. The Edison features, though, were made more in competition with other American-made movies of trains.
Like most of the features in the Edison series, this one shows the train coming straight on, rather than at a diagonal, creating a different, simpler effect. One other difference is that it catches the train at its peak speed in mid-journey, rather than as it approaches a station. Thus the sensation of pure speed is a little greater, though at the cost of a much less aesthetically pleasing camera angle.
This movie is supposed to have produced the same kind of dramatic effect on its first US audiences as the Lumière feature did in France, and you can see why. Although it does not have the masterful sense of composition to be found in the Lumière features, it succeeds well enough in accomplishing its primary goal of conveying a sense of speed to its viewers.