A short 1896 actuality depicting the Black Diamond Express as it approaches and speeds passed the camera.

Directed by James H. White

A short 1897 actuality depicting a Southern Pacific Railroad train with a mail car exiting a tunnel.

Directed by James H. White

A short actuality from 1901 showing the passage of the Empire State Express train.

Directed by Frederick S. Armitage

Two Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives meet in a head-on collision in this 1904 short.

Directed by Edwin S. Porter

A pickpocket’s simple robbery escalates into a crime far more serious aboard a train.

A benevolent spirit battles a spectral skeleton who has kidnapped women that he keeps captive in his infernal lair.

Directed by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca

A traveler is tormented by ghosts and poltergeists at a haunted hotel.

Starring William V. Ranous · Directed by J. Stuart Blackton

Chariot racer Ben Hur competes against his enemy Messala and against Rome’s occupation of Jerusalem.

Starring Herman Rottger and William S. Hart · Directed by Sidney Olcott, Frank Oakes Rose, and H. Temple

An honest one-armed beggar gets a less than honest artificial limb — one with kleptomaniacal tendencies that land him in jail.

Starring Paul Panzer · Directed by J. Stuart Blackton

Caught off-guard by Indian mutineers, a British soldier saves his last bullet for his daughter lest she be taken.

Starring Charles Kent and Florence Turner