Railway footage in feature films and television...

[Fat Controller]

On 01/10/2020 at 16:03, DY444 said:

 

It's a long time ago now so my memory may be wrong but I did a number of school trips to Paris in the late 60s and early 70s via both Calais and Boulogne.  I'm sure I recall the trains being diesel hauled as far as Amiens with an electric working forward from there to Paris.

The line from Boulogne and Calais to Amiens is still diesel-worked from Rang des Fliers to Amiens. Calais and Boulogne were still diesel-operated until the early 1990s, when they were wired in conjunction with the Channel Tunnel opening. The nearest wires to either were at Hazebrouck.

[Fat Controller]

On 02/10/2020 at 15:53, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I think that I can recall them in the UK later than that. I think that their demise may be related to disc brakes.

More likely due to the replacement of cast wheels, with separate tyres, by forged ones.

[Joseph_Pestell]

34 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

More likely due to the replacement of cast wheels, with separate tyres, by forged ones.

 

What would be the date for that on UK carriages?

[DY444]

56 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

I thought it was 'Endeavour' rather than 'Morse'

No it was Morse.  The episode was "Sins of the Fathers" which was about a murder in a brewery.  The character with the model railway was Victor Preece played by Alex Jennings.

Edited October 13, 2020 by DY444

[Fat Controller]

1 minute ago, DY444 said:

No it was Morse.  The episode was "Sins of the Fathers" which was about a murder in a brewery.  The character with the model railway was Victor Preece played by Alex Jennings and his mother was played by Betty Marsden.

I wonder if there was one in each series? The Endeavour one had a murder at a disused railway station.

[Fat Controller]

6 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

What would be the date for that on UK carriages?

Not sure, to be honest; with the advent of the Mk1 stock, perhaps?

[DY444]

Just now, Fat Controller said:

I wonder if there was one in each series? The Endeavour one had a murder at a disused railway station.

 

Railway locations have featured a number of times in Endeavour but I don't recall any model railways.

[keefer]

The Endeavour episode was 'Passenger', mentioned a while back:

Edit: showing an error on the link for some reason - anyway, it's my post on p.35 of this thread

Edited October 13, 2020 by keefer

[Coach bogie]

I have just put on Talking Pictures when a film called 'All over Town'. The opening scene (01:25) shows an Adams radial tank 3125 with push pull set in Southern livery at the the fictional seaside town of Tormouth. I am no Southern expert but I suspect it is actually Lime Regis.

 

Mike Wiltshire

 

 

I have just looked it up further. It was shot on location in Lime Regis.

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Coach bogie
Further Information

[ejstubbs]

On 01/10/2020 at 19:17, Pacific231G said:

Genoa and Vengtimiglia on the Cote d'Azure

 

The Côte d'Azur is on the French side of the border.  Genoa and Ventimiglia are on the Italian Riviera ("riviera" being an Italian word in origin).

 

On 29/09/2020 at 01:38, Pacific231G said:

I've just been watching the apparently little shown 1954 Film "Father Brown- Detective" with Alec Gunness that was on Moving Pictures at the start of this month.

 

That'll be TalkingPictures TV (channel 81 on Freeview).  The title of the film in the UK was simply Father Brown; in the U.S. it was released as The Detective (and in Australia as Father Brown-Detective - presumably they couldn't make up their minds which title to use and just went with both).  A 1934 American film which also used the Father Brown short story The Blue Cross as its source material carried the title Father Brown, Detective.  It's all a bit confusing.  The 1954 British film with Alec Guinness does come up reasonably regularly on TalkingPictures TV.

 

(IMO Flambeau is one of the most irritating baddies ever devised, and seems to exist simply so that Chesterton could try to make a fairly heavy-handed theological point.  He appeared in a lot of the short stories and so pops up from time to time in the modern BBC TV series as well - and is no less annoying.)

[ejstubbs]

On 13/10/2020 at 15:42, DY444 said:

No it was Morse.  The episode was "Sins of the Fathers" which was about a murder in a brewery.  The character with the model railway was Victor Preece played by Alex Jennings.

 

Here's the model railway - in a rather nice upstairs room rather than in the attic:

 

 

Anyone recognise it?  It looks too big to have been put together just for the programme.

 

And here's the staircase with the railway memorabilia:

 

 

There is at least one shot where the camera pans from the staircase to a view in to the railway room, so it looks like the house might have been chosen precisely because it did contain a railway, rather than using set dressing on the staircase of a different house to suggest that the railway room was in the same house.

 

And, just for completeness, here's Morse walking past a "No Smoking" sign and a cigarette machine on his way out of the house:

 

[ejstubbs]

On 13/10/2020 at 16:09, keefer said:

The Endeavour episode was 'Passenger', mentioned a while back

 

Here's the attic layout from that programme:

 

 

That does look rather more like the sort of thing that the set building team could have knocked up from a few Hornby Track Packs and RTP scenics.

[steve1]

I would agree that the Morse setting is a genuine railway enthusiast and modeller's crib rather than a mere set. Studying the layout room, it has the uncoordinated* look of the real thing.

 

steve

 

*A polite way of saying it's a mess...

[RichardT]

Also that the “Morse layout” looks to be an end-to-end layout, which implies it’s a “real” set-up - as opposed to the standard TV drama assumption that all model railways are continuous runs on a huge flat board  (usually with multiple trains running simultaneously at high speed through unconvincing vibrant green scenery.) 

Edited October 26, 2020 by RichardT

[DY444]

12 hours ago, RichardT said:

Also that the “Morse layout” looks to be an end-to-end layout, which implies it’s a “real” set-up - as opposed to the standard TV drama assumption that all model railways are continuous runs on a huge flat board  (usually with multiple trains running simultaneously at high speed through unconvincing vibrant green scenery.) 

 

It was actually a continuous run.  There were some shots with trains running round and going through the wardrobe, the tunnel mouth to which can be seen on the middle right of the image.  The track forming part of the continuous run in the foreground (at the bottom of the image) cannot be seen but it curved round past the signal at the bottom right.

[RichardT]

4 hours ago, DY444 said:

It was actually a continuous run.  There were some shots with trains running round

Curses! That’s that theory destroyed....

 

Somewhere, following our house move, I believe I have a set of Morse DVDs packed away.  Time to dig them out for a re-watch I think!

 

RT

[Pacific231G]

On 26/10/2020 at 09:41, ejstubbs said:

 

The Côte d'Azur is on the French side of the border.  Genoa and Ventimiglia are on the Italian Riviera ("riviera" being an Italian word in origin).

 

 

Indeed and thanks for the clarifications. I was referring to the part of his drive after he'd crossed the border, presumably at Ventimiglia, after leaving Genoa but I wasn't clear enough. In any case I'm sure the border post wasn't real and, thinking about it, it was perhaps too high in the hills for Ventimiglia. I've only ever crossed that part of the Franco Italian border by train which was at Vengtimiglia but I assume that, if you're coming from Genoa and heading for Paris, there are road crossings further north.

I've only ever heard the French Riviera mentioned in English. In French it does always seem be the Côte d'Azur as in the region's name Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azure (I think the only region apart from Ile de France that retained its name after the big regional reshuffle)  

 

Holiday brochures in English also advertise the Italian Riviera but do the Italians themselves actually refer to the Riviera or Riviera Ligure when talking about the region or just refer to it as Ligurie?

Edited October 27, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

On 26/10/2020 at 10:57, ejstubbs said:

 

Here's the attic layout from that programme:

 

 

That does look rather more like the sort of thing that the set building team could have knocked up from a few Hornby Track Packs and RTP scenics.

Though I don't think it can be the same layout and, as you say, was probably built fairly recently from readily available Hornby etc. materials, it does look rather like the old Blue Peter layout (built in the late 1950s early 1960s by member of the BBC's Railway Club)  with the central operating well filled in. Morse was an ITV programme of course but, if the BBC had sold off the layout in one of its prop sales I suppose it's just possible that a props company bought it. 

This is the schematic plan of the BP layout but the curves were nothing like as sharp as this suggests.

 

Unfortunately (or perhaps not) that table in the middle of the room is probably closer to what most model railway enthusiasts build as their layouts than anything ressembling the actual operation of a railway.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Pacific231G

[luckymucklebackit]

I think it has been discussed on this forum before, but there is also an episode of Morse where one of the suspects, an American Tourist, is under observation and they think he is doing a runner, only for him to be found visiting the GWR centre at Didcot.

 

Jim

[John M Upton]

1 hour ago, luckymucklebackit said:

I think it has been discussed on this forum before, but there is also an episode of Morse where one of the suspects, an American Tourist, is under observation and they think he is doing a runner, only for him to be found visiting the GWR centre at Didcot.

 

Jim

 

The Wolvercote Tongue, one of the best episodes. Quite amusing seeing Morse and Lewis casually strolling among the locos at Didcot eating ice creams.

 

Also a few shots of a Class 117 DMU departing Didcot that manages to switch between blue/grey and NSE livery in the same shot....

[Pacific231G]

There's a rather improbable loco in the new Tom Cruise Mission Impossible 7 which is due to be released next October. It purports to be a French Pacific numbered 462.09.MO and is named “Le General Rive-Reine” but appears to have been based on a full size "practical" model of Brittania Pacific dolled up to look "Continental". It's been seen on the GCR around Loughborough, on a low loader somewhere in England, and in Norway where they've been filming one of the stunts with it and a train of Wagons Lits "Pullmans". 

Needless to say, French main line steam locos stopped being named over a hundred years ago;  when French loco numbers incorporate the wheel arrangement,  as SNCF's did, they're  based on axles not wheels, so 231 not 462 for a Pacific; and Rive-Reine is the mythical station (in reality Acquigny in Normandy) where much of the action of the Burt Lancaster film "The Train" was set.    

Edited October 27, 2020 by Pacific231G

[DY444]

4 hours ago, John M Upton said:

 

The Wolvercote Tongue, one of the best episodes. Quite amusing seeing Morse and Lewis casually strolling among the locos at Didcot eating ice creams.

 

Also a few shots of a Class 117 DMU departing Didcot that manages to switch between blue/grey and NSE livery in the same shot....

 

There's also a shot of an 08 in Didcot yard and even the brief sound of a Class 50 at one point

[TravisM]

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Needless to say, French main line steam locos stopped being named over a hundred years ago;  when French loco numbers incorporate the wheel arrangement,  as SNCF's did, they're  based on axles not wheels, so 231 not 462 for a Pacific; and Rive-Reine is the mythical station (in reality Acquigny in Normandy) where much of the action of the Burt Lancaster film "The Train" was set.    

I know someone will shoot me down but the Burt Lancaster film “The Train” is really quite good for a Hollywood film, not just as a film but continuity as well.

[PatB]

10 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Though I don't think it can be the same layout and, as you say, was probably built fairly recently from readily available Hornby etc. materials, it does look rather like the old Blue Peter layout (built in the late 1950s early 1960s by member of the BBC's Railway Club)  with the central operating well filled in. Morse was an ITV programme of course but, if the BBC had sold off the layout in one of its prop sales I suppose it's just possible that a props company bought it. 

This is the schematic plan of the BP layout but the curves were nothing like as sharp as this suggests.

 

Unfortunately (or perhaps not) that table in the middle of the room is probably closer to what most model railway enthusiasts build as their layouts than anything ressembling the actual operation of a railway.

 

The BP model railway wasn't getting many outings by the time I was watching on a regular basis, although I do remember a piece in one of the Annuals, from which I think that track plan came. I don't remember it having much, if anything in the way of scenery, beyond, IIRC, a Triang Grand Suspension Bridge on the high level line. 

 

Another apparently "real" model railway appears in an early episode of Kingdom, occupying a room in Stephen Fry's character's  house. We don't see that much of it, but I remember sections of an obviously portable layout leaning against a wall. Again, not a typical set-dresser portrayal. I also remember a 00 van with its roof missing, prompting me to wonder why old Triang/Triang-Hornby/Hornby Railways vans are so often roofless. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

15 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

There's a rather improbable loco in the new Tom Cruise Mission Impossible 7 which is due to be released next October. It purports to be a French Pacific numbered 462.09.MO and is named “Le General Rive-Reine” but appears to have been based on a full size "practical" model of Brittania Pacific dolled up to look "Continental". It's been seen on the GCR around Loughborough, on a low loader somewhere in England, and in Norway where they've been filming one of the stunts with it and a train of Wagons Lits "Pullmans". 

Needless to say, French main line steam locos stopped being named over a hundred years ago;  when French loco numbers incorporate the wheel arrangement,  as SNCF's did, they're  based on axles not wheels, so 231 not 462 for a Pacific; and Rive-Reine is the mythical station (in reality Acquigny in Normandy) where much of the action of the Burt Lancaster film "The Train" was set.    

 

It's such a pity that there are these railway errors creeping in, especially when you consider how real and believable the rest of the film will be!

 

Mike.