Someone was clearly on the wrong end of a night on the Bourbon when they concocted this tale of poverty stricken, post US Civil War, ranchers who decide that the only way they can get their meagre cattle herds to market is by forcing the railroad to build a branch line to their Texas backwater. It's not immediately attractive to the railroad bosses, this cunning piece of industrial endeavour, so it falls to the seven (more middle-aged than magnificent) led by a way to goody-goody Brian Keith to disrupt construction on their existing project until the railroad cave in. It somehow manages to rope in Robert Culp as "Wild Bill Hickok"; Judi Meredith as a terribly poor imitation of "Calamity Jane" and Jim McMullan as "Buffalo Bill" - I was half expecting General Custer to join in too. The storyline is all over the place, the imagery is a collection of outdoor/indoor/archive with continuity from someone else on the Scotch - and the gatling gun arrives way too late to do any of us much good. It's only 75 minutes, but seemed way longer...
During the Civil War, a Union spy, Andrews, is asked to lead a band of Union soldiers into the South so that they could destroy the railway system. However, things don't go as planned when the conductor of the train that they stole is on to them and is doing everything he can to stop them. Based on a true story.
About to marry Jim Plummer, Kate Foley runs off to Nevada when Ed Bagley convinces her a quick fortune can be made robbing gold shipments that are being transported by the railroad. In Bannock City she meets reformed-bandit Frank Plummer, posing as Frank Norris, brother of Jim Plummer, who has being going straight and working as an express shipment guard. Jim also shows up and plans a robbery by stealing a train and hiding it in an abandoned tunnel. The two brothers are on opposite sides of the law with the now-reformed Kate caught in the middle.
Tom Kenyon and his sidekick Pierre La Farge are hired by rancher Mike O'Day who, with his daughters Toni and Sugar, provides wild horses for the government remount station.
A town—where everyone seems to be named Johnson—stands in the way of the railroad. In order to grab their land, robber baron Hedley Lamarr sends his henchmen to make life in the town unbearable. After the sheriff is killed, the town demands a new sheriff from the Governor, so Hedley convinces him to send the town the first black sheriff in the west.
Just before the Civil War (but after the South has seceded), Southern saboteurs try to prevent railroad construction from crossing Kansas to the frontier; army captain Nelson is sent out to oppose them. As the tracks push westward, Nelson must contend with increasingly violent sabotage, while trying to romance the foreman's pretty daughter Barbara.
An old Chinese man rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts.
After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.
Banker Mason is after the ranchers land so he can resell it to the railroad for a profit. He has the railroad agent killed and replaces him with his stooge who then offers even less than Mason. But Rocky eventually suspects Mason and when Bill Anderson informs him the agent is a fake, they head out after Mason
Grant MacLaine, a former railroad troubleshooter, lost his job after letting his outlaw brother, the Utica Kid, escape. After spending five years wandering the west and earning his living playing the accordion, he is given a second chance by his former boss.
A Mexican bandit is about to be executed in the United States, so his brother takes over a train and holds the passengers as hostages unless his brother is released. Now both the Americans and Mexicans are baffled as to what to do. One of the passengers — who wrote the letter for their captor — has a suggestion: call mercenaries Hank Brackett and Johnny Reech. They do, and as expected they do come up with a plan, but the president of the railroad is not sure if it will work.