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Railway footage in feature films and television...


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2 hours ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

The sign displays a rather unorthodox version of the BR logo.


Yes it does!  I noticed that yesterday, when looking at the stills again on “Reelstreets” - I think the top of the sign was out of sight on my TV screen.

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

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I watched ‘4 Kids and it’ on sky movies over the weekend, a modern take on the old E Nesbit book set in modern times 

 

it’s supposed to take place in Cornwall and at one point the kids run away and have to return to Cornwall, the filming took place in Ireland (Wexford) so the train they catch is actually an ‘enterprise’ service, don’t now which station it’s filmed in though 

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On 30/03/2020 at 13:59, jetmorgan said:

Another short film on Talking Pics TV...this one was about the South East of England...my neck of the woods. A few railway bits, some of steam at Chislet colliery and some of southern EMU's. Sadly the film isn't of great quality, I think it was one of those that got shown in cinemas back in the 60's (and probably in the 70's without realising how out of date it was)

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What was it called do you know?

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23 hours ago, Dan Randall said:

 

I looked it up on ‘Reelstreets”, a web site that pinpoints locations used in movies and though not all the stills are railway related, it’s a brilliant snapshot of Britain as it was in 1970....

 

https://www.reelstreets.com/films/take-a-girl-like-you/

 

Thanks so much for that link, I knew there was a site like this but couldn't remember the name

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Just been watching a bit of The Wrong Box with Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and there is a railway crash scene in it which looks like it has been made up of LSWR salmon liveried stock. Sorry no pics at the moment I'll have to record it and do some screen shots when I see it on again

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17 hours ago, jetmorgan said:

Just been watching a bit of The Wrong Box with Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and there is a railway crash scene in it which looks like it has been made up of LSWR salmon liveried stock. Sorry no pics at the moment I'll have to record it and do some screen shots when I see it on again

If  Fowler Locomotives by Brian Haresnape is correct then there is an apple green painted LMS 3F No 47276 renumbered to 727 with a pair of low roof BPGV coaches in this fillm. Other stock could be involved as well of course.

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7 hours ago, slilley said:

If  Fowler Locomotives by Brian Haresnape is correct then there is an apple green painted LMS 3F No 47276 renumbered to 727 with a pair of low roof BPGV coaches in this fillm. Other stock could be involved as well of course.

 

Filmed at Bath Green Park (on the day in 1965 when closure was announced, according to Robin Atthill). Seen only briefly unfortunately.

Edited by Andy Kirkham
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As someone who has watched numerous episodes of Fireman Sam (Grandkids!), it regularly features a standard gauge ‘tourist’  line despite being in Wales(!).

 

The more I look at it, the more it looks modelable, A Peckett, 4 wheel coach. couple of wagons, the rail mounted fire engine would be a challenge too.

 

I must be getting stir crazy...

 

steve

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4 minutes ago, steve1 said:

As someone who has watched numerous episodes of Fireman Sam (Grandkids!), it regularly features a standard gauge ‘tourist’  line despite being in Wales(!).

 

The more I look at it, the more it looks modelable, A Peckett, 4 wheel coach. couple of wagons, the rail mounted fire engine would be a challenge too.

 

I must be getting stir crazy...

 

steve

Wales has got at least three standard-gauge tourist lines, Steve:-

The Llangollen Railway (N Wales)

The Gwili Valley, near Carmarthen

The Blaenavon , near Pontypool

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On 19/04/2020 at 23:34, steve1 said:

As someone who has watched numerous episodes of Fireman Sam (Grandkids!), it regularly features a standard gauge ‘tourist’  line despite being in Wales(!).

The sad excuse of a tv show that is the latest Fireman Sam incarnation may have a train of some weird form, but the original classic series does not. That is the only series that should have been. Once it changed, it lost so much. The same as Thomas the tank did. They used to be about morals and teaching kids lessons. Now they are just sad excuses for money grabbing. 

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On 17/04/2020 at 18:36, jetmorgan said:

Just been watching a bit of The Wrong Box with Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and there is a railway crash scene in it which looks like it has been made up of LSWR salmon liveried stock. Sorry no pics at the moment I'll have to record it and do some screen shots when I see it on again

 

Is that the one with giant cardboard cutouts of a Terrier and the LSWR T3?

 

Been years since I've seen it.

 

 

 

Jason

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4 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Is that the one with giant cardboard cutouts of a Terrier and the LSWR T3?

 

Been years since I've seen it.

 

 

 

Jason

Yes that's the one....to me the cardboard cutouts looked pretty convincing...from a distance, close up yes you could tell they weren't real. I have got it recorded on my freesat hard drive but I don't have any blank DVD's to transfer it so I can get screen shots of the scenes. Not sure of the loco classes, I think the scenery people just did generic victorian steam engines.

 

The rest of the film is rather unfunny despite all that comedy talent of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, Tony Hancock and John Mills.

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Did anyone see the 70's version of "Swallows and Amazons" the other afternoon? Opening sequence filmed on the Lakeside preserved line. Some nice dramatic shots of the 2-6-4t and interestingly done from angles where you couldn't easily tell they were Mk.1 coaches behind the loco. 

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2 hours ago, jetmorgan said:

The rest of the film is rather unfunny despite all that comedy talent of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, Tony Hancock and John Mills.

 

Agreed. I've tried a couple of times, but once past  the railway bits it becomes more and more wearisome and I've never got to the end.

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On 13/04/2020 at 22:00, Dan Randall said:

 

 

I looked it up on ‘Reelstreets”, a web site that pinpoints locations used in movies and though not all the stills are railway related, it’s a brilliant snapshot of Britain as it was in 1970....

 

https://www.reelstreets.com/films/take-a-girl-like-you/

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

 

(With apologies, if either of the above have already been mentioned).

 

 

 

 

 

Brilliant site, thanks for the link, on the Mission Impossible page there is a cracking still of a TGV crossing Ballochmyle viaduct, did they say that the camera never lies?

 

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Jim

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16 hours ago, HonestTom said:

There's a sinister nuclear waste train that appears in the serial Edge of Darkness, although it becomes a little less sinister when you realise that the class 31 is in fact a wooden shell on top of a pair of diesel shunters.

 

Yeah, Middleton Railway in Leeds was where they shot- it's actually three shunters according to a book on the history of the line ("From Rags To Railway"). An innovative solution to the problem of BR not letting them film apparently, and the fake flasks on the lowmacs look good. To be honest by filming at night they generally achieve the effect, but then ruin it with a couple of rail-level shots which show the body on the loco flex and wobble as it pulls away :)

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3 hours ago, Ben B said:

 

Yeah, Middleton Railway in Leeds was where they shot- it's actually three shunters according to a book on the history of the line ("From Rags To Railway"). An innovative solution to the problem of BR not letting them film apparently, and the fake flasks on the lowmacs look good. To be honest by filming at night they generally achieve the effect, but then ruin it with a couple of rail-level shots which show the body on the loco flex and wobble as it pulls away :)

 

If it weren't for those shots, I must admit that I would have been fooled. The wagon obviously isn't quite right, but I don't think I'd spot that if I weren't a train nut. Given how many films and TV programmes just take any old train they can get, I always admire the ones that make an effort, even if they don't have the facilities to get it exactly right.

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On 22/04/2020 at 09:56, luckymucklebackit said:

 

 

Brilliant site, thanks for the link, on the Mission Impossible page there is a cracking still of a TGV crossing Ballochmyle viaduct, did they say that the camera never lies?

 

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Jim

Would that be the same TGV that then goes through the Channel Tunnel chased by a helicopter with no source of power?

This isn't quite so improbable (the TGV on the viaduct not the helicopter in the CT) as it appears. The prototype TGV001 built in 1972  was gas turbine powered and that was how they were all planned to be until the 1973 oil crisis hit. 

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photograph by Chris Suggi CC BY SA3 

 

I was completely fooled by the sinister nuclear train sequence in Edge of Darkness, or at least suffered no suspension  of disbelief (I didn't think they were filming at a real nuclear waste site) and took the train at face value. Presumably a diesel shunter wasn't considered by the director to be quite sinister enough.

 

 

 

Edited by Pacific231G
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57 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I was completely fooled by the sinister nuclear train sequence in Edge of Darkness, or at least suffered no suspension  of disbelief (I didn't think they were filming at a real nuclear waste site) and took the train at face value. Presumably a diesel shunter wasn't considered by the director to be quite sinister enough.

 

 

I'm speculating but I suspect it was more that Yorkshire Television needed a shooting location within range of the studios, which at the time meant Embsay, KWVR or Middleton.  Embsay was probably too rural, likewise I imagine for KWVR (whilst also being too Northern with too many mills at the Northern end at the time), but Middleton has a motorway crossing the line and an urban/industrial setting, with a backdrop of tower blocks and city buildings.  But they wouldn't have had any large locomotives at the time, so it's an impressive amount of effort to go to, building an entire plywood 31 over some shunters!

 

Class 31 Moor Road Middleton Leeds

 

I found a photograph of it on Flickr, by Paul Corrie

 

32400857595_0ea10b113b_b.jpgClass 31 Moor Road Middleton Leeds by Paul  Corrie, on Flickr

 

It's not bad really- I suspect the lightweight track standards of the time wouldn't have stood up to a real 31 if they'd hired one in (even with the Middleton having at the time -in fact still has- a mainline connection).  Shot at night in the rain and gloom, it looked the part from most angles.

 

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2 hours ago, Ben B said:

I'm speculating but I suspect it was more that Yorkshire Television needed a shooting location within range of the studios

 

Edge of Darkness was produced by BBC Television in association with an American company called Lionheart Television International.  It was first broadcast on BBC2.  Not sure how Yorkshire Television comes in to it, unless you know different?

 

3 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I didn't think they were filming at a real nuclear waste site

 

In the early 1980s lived in a top floor bedsit on a street near Parliament Hill which - on the other side of the road - backed on to the North London Line.  You could feel the Victorian building shaking when a nuclear waste train trundled past in the night, even though we were actually on the other side of the road from the railway.  I imagine they must have been a lot heavier than the usual multiple units, which you never noticed.  That's what the very sinister nuclear train sequence made me think of when I first saw Edge of Darkness on BBC Four maybe a decade or so ago.

 

(Someone is now going to tell me that the nuclear waste trains never went through Hampstead Heath station.  If so then I will stand corrected, and blame various agit-prop articles I would have read in the local press at the time.  But something slow and heavy definitely used to go through every so often in the wee hours.)

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On 14/04/2020 at 16:23, slilley said:

What was it called do you know?

 

The short (18'12") film in question is called "Southern England in 1968"; it looks like it was last broadcast in March this year.  It's in the "Glimpses" series which Talking Pictures TV intersperses randomly between feature films and vintage TV programmes, along with various BFI shorts and 'family features' - including some of the British Transport Films railway-oriented films - and films from the Imperial War Museum archive.

 

(I have a feeling that the "Glimpses" series may not be on Talking Pictures TV much longer: they're produced by Renown Pictures and I'm sure I read somewhere that Renown have done a deal with one of the streaming services which will come in to force sometime this year, which could mean that their content would no longer be available via terrestrial channels.)

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