Love on a Real Train

"Love on a Real Train" is an instrumental written by Franke, Froese and Schmoelling. It runs 2:15 on the LP, 2:18 on a 1984 French promo single on Virgin, with "Guido the Killer Pimp" on the other side, and 3:58 on the CD. The producer Jon Avnet and the director Paul Brickman traveled to Berlin after finding the first score unsuitable, and the band improvised rhythmic patterns and loops that Brickman said were the atmosphere he needed; the full score was recorded in two days and two nights.

The editor Richard Chew told CineMontage in 2014, quoted by American Songwriter, that the script specified only Jeff Beck's "The Pump", that Brickman overheard an assistant editor playing Tangerine Dream and swapped temp cues for the band's music, and that test screenings sold the idea. The music changed the opening so that night shots of the skyline became the title backdrop, and the band reworked the piece as "Running Out of Time" for Miracle Mile. It plays under the train scene with Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay on a Chicago elevated line.

The Cambridge Companion to Krautrock calls it a clear homage to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians; Franke told Sound on Sound in 1995 that they stumbled upon a minimal kind of thing, and Reich is reported to have called it an out and out ripoff. Pitchfork put it on its 2015 list of the 200 best songs of the 1980s, and AllMusic calls it a standout. It has appeared later in The Squid and the Whale, Mr. Robot and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. No chart history, covers or play counts were found.