Synopsis

Mike Watt plays a reckless railroad engineer whose workday quickly turns chaotic. Operating a model train through a miniature landscape, he drinks on the job, ignores danger and treats the railway like his personal playground. The train runs over pedestrians and the engineer ultimately throws a bomb at an ambulance. The deliberately absurd imagery turns Watt's rough, chant-like song into a darkly comic miniature railroad disaster, with the toy-scale setting making the violence feel both cartoonish and unsettling.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Big Train" appeared on Watt's 1995 solo album *Ball-Hog or Tugboat?* and was the record's first single.

• The song is a cover of a composition by Tony Kinman, whose work with Chip Kinman influenced Watt's choice of material.

• The video used model railroad equipment associated with Union Pacific. The railroad objected to the locomotive's recognizable design and filed a lawsuit against Sony Music and others, alleging trademark infringement and defamation.

• Union Pacific's complaint focused not only on the train's appearance but also on the engineer's behavior: drinking while operating the train, running over people and attacking an ambulance.

• Sony re-edited later versions to obscure identifying details on the locomotive. The legal dispute greatly limited the video's distribution and helps explain why it became much less visible than many other 1990s alternative-rock videos.

• The video was made during the period when Watt's first solo project attracted a large group of notable collaborators. The album featured Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, J Mascis, Nels Cline and other musicians, although the video itself centers on Watt's character and the miniature railroad scenario.