Railway footage in feature films and television...

[flapland]

I agree, although its pretty good and depending on your musical tastes some great music. 

[doilum]

5 hours ago, Phatbob said:

Worst anachronism of all, a supposed pre-WW2 posh totty referred to a "train station".  In those days EVERYBODY this side of the Atlantic would have referred to a railway station by its proper title.

 

When, and who decided that "railway lines" " railway station" were to be removed from our language?

[RichardT]

49 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

Not too difficult if a suitable location with a high level road alongside could be found - mount the camera on an open top bus and away you go! 

Find a suitable location within easy reach of the studios that you can close for filming with no-one objecting, arrange for trains on the mainline railway to pass on cue, then simply mount your camera on top of a 1930s double-decker and off you go: boggler boggler boggler, bounce, bounce, vibrate vibrate......  :-)

 

RT

[Rugd1022]

I caught another 'Talking Pictures' gem last night, a 1948 Michael Powell / Emeric Pressberger film called 'The Small Back Room' about a WWII bomb disposal chappie set in 1943. The short but delightful railway scenes were shot at the GW branch terminus at Abbotsbury in Dorset with a filthy 14xx tank and an equally filthy Collett coaching stock, including a very tatty one in chocolate and cream livery.

 

 

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

12 minutes ago, Rugd1022 said:

I caught another 'Talking Pictures' gem last night, a 1948 Michael Powell / Emeric Pressberger film called 'The Small Back Room' about a WWII bomb disposal chappie set in 1943. The short but delightful railway scenes were shot at the GW branch terminus at Abbotsbury in Dorset with a filthy 14xx tank and an equally filthy Collett coaching stock, including a very tatty one in chocolate and cream livery.

 

Good film, too.  The branch scenes were an eye opener - absolutely filthy!

[Rugd1022]

3 hours ago, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

 

Good film, too.  The branch scenes were an eye opener - absolutely filthy!

 

I've yet to see a GWR period layout where every item of rolling stock isn't weathered to high heaven! 

[Pacific231G]

On 17/05/2021 at 12:07, hmrspaul said:

In Pursuit of Love on BBC last night had a 1937-8 section where a train was joined. Not only did it a have a BR double sausage sign on the window with British Railways printed on it but the compartment she went to sit in had a typical Mk1 bench seat with what appeared to be a double door alongside - was this a modern heritage railway conversion to an "accessible coach". 

The depiction of Paris Nord station was interesting as well!

 

Paul

There were some excellent railway scenes in the episode of Poirot "The Plymouth Express" that I watched yesterday. How could I have failed to know that the GWR main line from Paddington to Bristol was single track, that GW express locos were maroon without brass safety valve covers and that in the 1930s the GWR used maroon BR  Mk 1 coaches?  Actually I can forgive the mk 1s though rather less (in that or possibly another episode)  their being open saloons. They usually got round that when Poirot and Hastings were on a train by having them eating in the dining car, while travelling  on another of those mysterious single track main lines that clearly littered the British countryside before the war. 

 

In the same episode, Croydon Aerodrome seemed remarkably similar to Shoreham. The latter's Streamline Moderne terminal building - possibly the only one still in use in Britain-  is from the right era though, unfortunately, the actual Croydon terminal is neo- classical. But then, not every factory building at that time looked like the Hoover Building, though avid viewers of Poirot might thnk so.  

 

To be fair, I do understand the film makers logic in this. They were trying very hard to convey a sense of the 1930s as a terribly modern age to its residents rather than the more common "Hovis nostalgic" portrayal, and largely succeeding. Unfortunately though, that also makes having all the railways looking like bucolic branches but served by dining car expresses even more incongruous.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Pacific231G

[jetmorgan]

Finally got my finger out to screenshot some scenes from the penultimate episode of the original BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seris. Some scenes at Dover Marine I believe. Also a sort of non-railway related pic but showing a Sealink ferry with an SNCF funnel.

[jetmorgan]

Nearly forgot about this one. From the 1941 film Ferry Pilot, lots of lovely early second world war images of RAF aircraft from the classic Spitfire's to Oxfords, Harvard's, Whitley's, Anson's and many more. But there was one very quick shot of a goods train. No idea where it is or what it is.

[Darius43]

Just watching “Blue Pullman” on Talking Pictures - wonderful footage of the train travelling the line through Monsal Dale to Ambergate.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[PatB]

On 17/05/2021 at 20:50, RichardT said:

The long high-level tracking shot at the beginning which ends with a zoom-in between the wagons & then cutaway to the real actors talking in the car would have been quite a feat in real life with 1930s equipment - no cherry pickers or drones.  But we take that kind of shot done in real life so much for granted these days that we don’t notice it, and see how models would have made it much easier for Hitchcock.  
 

Ironically the “close shave”  action sequences on a working steam railway probably would have been just as easy for Hitchcock to do in real life with clever editing  - but nowadays *they* would be the ones for which we’d need models or CGI (which doesn’t always convince - see the BBC John Malkovich “Poirot” from a couple of years ago...)

 

Richard T

I agree with that last bit. I actually enjoyed that take on The ABC Murders, and Poirot in general, but the chase across the railway lines was just ridiculous. Especially the Triang inspired colour light signal. Rather took the gloss off the whole thing. 

[steve1]

I was pleased and amazed to see my Grandfather in an episode of Portillo's Railway Journeys. It's the episode where he goes to Sloug, there's a clip of shunting activity on the Slough Estates Railway. It's him with the shunter's pole behind engine No 3.

 

He was a shunted/driver on the railway from 1920s to the 1960s. One of the perks was a regular bag of Mars 'seconds'.

 

steve

[jetmorgan]

If anyone gets the London Live tv channel they had Lady with the Lamp showing on Saturday 12th, the story of Florence Nightingale but there is a short section of the film at a station with Lion pulling in with some Liverpool & Manchester style carriages. 

 

It's being repeated on Monday 14th at 2:50pm

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by jetmorgan

[whart57]

On 19/05/2021 at 18:55, jetmorgan said:

Finally got my finger out to screenshot some scenes from the penultimate episode of the original BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seris. Some scenes at Dover Marine I believe. Also a sort of non-railway related pic but showing a Sealink ferry with an SNCF funnel.

 

 

 

 

 

That series was made in 1979 and Dover Marine was then a shadow of its former self. Go back fifteen or twenty years and the trains by the platforms would have had Pullmans in them, and ordinary Kent passenger trains would not have called at the Marine station but would by-pass it to go direct to Dover Priory. In fact Dover Marine had already been renamed as Dover Western Docks and the 47 headcode was an ordinary service from Victoria, not a boat train.

 

In 1979, Britain had also been a member of the EEC for six years. A physical manifestation of that is the railing in the tunnel Hywel Bennet is filmed walking through. That tunnel incidentally is from the foot passenger entrance to the station and would not be used by a ferry passenger arriving by train. Before the customs and immigration bits were reconfigured after EEC accession the railing extended all the way down the tunnel. One side would be for travellers going to the trains, the other went direct into the passport areas. We often went to collect my grandmother who had travelled by train and boat from Amsterdam. To get to the exit from the Arrivals we would have to walk all the way down the platforms because Dover Marine was laid out on the assumption that all ferry passengers wanted a train to London.

[Pacific231G]

On 19/05/2021 at 18:55, jetmorgan said:

Finally got my finger out to screenshot some scenes from the penultimate episode of the original BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seris. Some scenes at Dover Marine I believe. Also a sort of non-railway related pic but showing a Sealink ferry with an SNCF funnel.

I also watched the series. I actually understood it this time and I'm hoping they also run Smiley's People. The scenes at Dover Marine brought back a few memories of the period when the decidedly nondescript train you boarded at Victoria was really, if you believed the International Departures Board, the Direct-Orient-Express, Arlberg Express, Anglo-Swiss Express, Tauern Express or several others, often several at once.   

[Simon Lee]

On 19/05/2021 at 19:55, jetmorgan said:

Finally got my finger out to screenshot some scenes from the penultimate episode of the original BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seris. Some scenes at Dover Marine I believe. Also a sort of non-railway related pic but showing a Sealink ferry with an SNCF funnel.

 

The SNCF ferry is the Compiengne, on of the French components of the Sealink fleet.  Behind is one of Townsends "European" class freight ships this photo being taken at the Eastern Docks.

 

The headcode 47 shown on the arriving unit is in fact a Boat train, the regular boat codesbeing  46 Victoria via Herne Hill and Orpington to DWD, 47 via Catford Loop and Orpington to DWD. The domestic headcode for Victoria services being 74.

 

 

 

 

[wombatofludham]

21 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I also watched the series. I actually understood it this time and I'm hoping they also run Smiley's People. The scenes at Dover Marine brought back a few memories of the period when the decidedly nondescript train you boarded at Victoria was really, if you believed the International Departures Board, the Direct-Orient-Express, Arlberg Express, Anglo-Swiss Express, Tauern Express or several others, often several at once.   

Reminds me a bit of Birmingham New Street in the 80s when there was an early evening boat train to Harwich.  The announcers would go to great lengths reeling off the continental destinations accessed from Harwich, including such (then) exotica as Moscow, Berlin and Warsaw (the latter usually causing mild panic amongst some of those waiting like me for the Walsall train).  To the uninitiated, it must have sounded like it was going to be some swanky, high class express. 

It wasn't.  Instead of a Trans-Europe Express, you got an asthmatic Class 31 which could barely pull it's own shadow, and a rotbox collection of gaffer-taped Mk1 and early Mk2 stock, which took the thick end of 4 hours to dump you at Parkestone Quay having ambled across country at speeds that would be overtaken by a horse and cart. 

[Arpster]

The death of David Edwards of Datblygu today prompted me to watch this clip from The Tube in 1986ish. I've no idea where this is filmed, but there's a Class 08 shunting some rusty 21 ton hopper wagons in the background!
 

 

[Aire Head]

On 26/05/2021 at 21:02, jetmorgan said:

Nearly forgot about this one. From the 1941 film Ferry Pilot, lots of lovely early second world war images of RAF aircraft from the classic Spitfire's to Oxfords, Harvard's, Whitley's, Anson's and many more. But there was one very quick shot of a goods train. No idea where it is or what it is.

Loco looks like a 4F to me

[Ben B]

The film "Buster" about the notorious 60's train robbery is on BBC i-player at the moment.  Some reasonable scenes on the GCR I( think?) to portray the train robbery itself.  Though very dramatically lit; surprising the loco driver saw the fake red signal lamp with the blinding white light of the 'moon' illuminating the scene...

[DY444]

On 18/05/2021 at 16:00, Pacific231G said:

There were some excellent railway scenes in the episode of Poirot "The Plymouth Express" that I watched yesterday. How could I have failed to know that the GWR main line from Paddington to Bristol was single track, that GW express locos were maroon without brass safety valve covers and that in the 1930s the GWR used maroon BR  Mk 1 coaches?  Actually I can forgive the mk 1s though rather less (in that or possibly another episode)  their being open saloons. They usually got round that when Poirot and Hastings were on a train by having them eating in the dining car, while travelling  on another of those mysterious single track main lines that clearly littered the British countryside before the war. 

 

In the same episode, Croydon Aerodrome seemed remarkably similar to Shoreham. The latter's Streamline Moderne terminal building - possibly the only one still in use in Britain-  is from the right era though, unfortunately, the actual Croydon terminal is neo- classical. But then, not every factory building at that time looked like the Hoover Building, though avid viewers of Poirot might thnk so.  

 

To be fair, I do understand the film makers logic in this. They were trying very hard to convey a sense of the 1930s as a terribly modern age to its residents rather than the more common "Hovis nostalgic" portrayal, and largely succeeding. Unfortunately though, that also makes having all the railways looking like bucolic branches but served by dining car expresses even more incongruous.

 

I don't dispute any of that but I would question what the producers should have done instead.  I suppose they could have gone to the trouble of arranging to get appropriate period GWR stock and locomotives up to the GCR to achieve the double track main line look or done away with the external moving shots altogether but would the gains in period accuracy have justified the cost? 

 

Imo there is far more validity to criticising lavish Hollywood productions with their lavish Hollywood sized budgets for making a mess of railway scenes and we must remember at the end of a day that Poirot was a TV series with tighter schedules and comparatively small budgets albeit with very high production values by contemporary TV standards.  So as much as we like to point the finger and laugh at the single track main lines, Mk1s complete with eth jumpers in the 1930s and all the rest of it there is a cost balance between satisfying us anoraks and achieving a sufficiently good effect for most viewers.  Whilst they employed CGI in some of the later longer episodes (eg The Blue Train) to try to mask some of the more obvious "Wansford isn't the South of France" aspects, this was in its infancy when the short stories of series 1-3 and 5 and the series 4 ABC Murders were filmed in the late 80s early 90s, and almost certainly not available to a TV series.

 

The things I find most irritating are those which were easy to avoid, the most egregious of which imo is in "The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge" where LMS locomotives and staff uniforms are seen many times and an LMS timetable features prominently in a key part of the plot yet the script refers repeatedly to trains to Kings Cross.  If they'd said Euston or St. Pancras it would have been fine!

Edited June 25, 2021 by DY444

[AMJ]

On 13/06/2021 at 20:14, steve1 said:

I was pleased and amazed to see my Grandfather in an episode of Portillo's Railway Journeys. It's the episode where he goes to Sloug, there's a clip of shunting activity on the Slough Estates Railway. It's him with the shunter's pole behind engine No 3.

 

He was a shunted/driver on the railway from 1920s to the 1960s. One of the perks was a regular bag of Mars 'seconds'.

 

steve

If you want a photo of Slough 3 she is in the museum at the Middleton Railway as the boiler ticket has now expired.

[AMJ]

When I was at the KWVR the other week some of the locos (Bahamas and 4F) have vinyl  numbers and LMS over the BR logos.  All this just for the new Railway Children film.  Has anyone ever seen a green LMS livery?  Hope that in the film they blended them in as they were a different colour compared to the body and it was noticeable.  Lets hope that the stock was not MkI's.

[Ben B]

10 hours ago, AMJ said:

When I was at the KWVR the other week some of the locos (Bahamas and 4F) have vinyl  numbers and LMS over the BR logos.  All this just for the new Railway Children film.  Has anyone ever seen a green LMS livery?  Hope that in the film they blended them in as they were a different colour compared to the body and it was noticeable.  Lets hope that the stock was not MkI's.

 

From what I've seen (living by the line) there's been a bit of BR goods stock, but coaches were generally suburbans that would pass at a glance, and genuine vintage stock like the matchboard and the LNER full-brake.  I daresay it won't be 100 percent accurate to us enthusiasts, but a reasonable stab at it. Moreso than green mk.1s for a German ww2 train on the North Yorks for the upcoming Indiana Jones, but again, probably the best they can do in the current financial/covid circumstances.

 

I will admit I was a little surprised by Bahamas with the LMS decals btw

[Ben B]

11 hours ago, AMJ said:

If you want a photo of Slough 3 she is in the museum at the Middleton Railway as the boiler ticket has now expired.

 

 

Couldn't resist popping this up- the last trains it was working before retirement to the museum (me, Elder Child, and father-in-law took up the invite offered on the MR's facebook page to pop along and see the goods train from the lineside.  The first time I'd been able to get over to the Middleton since the first lockdown, I hadn't realised just how much I'd missed getting in some industrial railway photography).