During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.

Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.

The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

During the troubled shooting of several movies, David, the prop man's assistant, meets an aspiring actress who tries to find work in the studio. Things get messy when the stagehands decide to go on strike.

A young orphan boy Jim Button, his best friend Luke and a magical steam engine called Emma travel across the world in search of the truth about where Jim came from. Battling pirates and dragons, outsmarting make-believe giants, they must travel through the Forest of a Thousand Wonders, beyond the End of the World to find the hidden Dragon City.