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Railway footage in feature films and television...


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On 20/07/2021 at 14:01, wombatofludham said:

If anyone is watching "The Main Chance" on Squawking Tinctures, a legal drama made by Yorkshire TV between 1969 and the early 70s, you'll know the title sequence has the "Main" (ho,ho) character sat in a first class Mk2 compartment with a brief dark shot of an approaching train.  Very nice but virtually invisible.  The black and white titles featured a Class 47 before cutting to the carriage mock up, correct for a Leeds bound train of the period.  However, now the titles are in colour, it features, as the approaching train hurtling into the gloom, that very Eastern region loco type, the "Western" diesel hydraulic.

You'd have thought with the distinctive aural cacophony that was the Deltic being familiar to Yorkshire TV executives who will have gone down to London for ITV network meetings on a regular basis, Yorkshire would have used that as a dynamic intro to the sequence rather than a loco more than 200 miles off route.

 

Maybe the Peak meant for the Devonian broke down :jester:

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20 hours ago, Dan Randall said:

It's’s always surprised me that Slough slipped under most photographer’s radar, given how much there was to see and I live in hope that some decent pictures will show up one day, especially of the coal stage, which I have a vague recollection of going inside with my brother, after closure.

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

This book has some good coverage:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Illustrated-History-Western-Railway-Engine/dp/0906867495

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27 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:


Hi Nick

 

Yes, I have that book and there is a superb view of the coal stage, and shed environs.  However, the elevation I’m most interested in faces north and unfortunately, being a sunny day when the picture was taken, it’s in shadow!

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

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1 hour ago, Dan Randall said:


Hi Nick

 

Yes, I have that book and there is a superb view of the coal stage, and shed environs.  However, the elevation I’m most interested in faces north and unfortunately, being a sunny day when the picture was taken, it’s in shadow!

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

As you say, apart from this book, there don't seem to be many published photos of Slough.

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On 05/09/2021 at 11:09, peterd777 said:

Spot on and I didn’t recognise it.

My school was somewhere behind those engine sheds.

There is small figure by the fence at the bottom of the picture. I can’t claim that it is me but this is where my friends and I spent our lunch hours, in our spotting days in the late 1950s. BR era a fair while after this picture was taken I presume.

 

My spotting location in the Slough of 1960s was Horlick Bridge. From my old school, Slough Tech, the WR mainline and Slough Estates railway were just about visible from the second and third floors.

 

steve

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3 hours ago, Pandora said:

The Two Ronnies Sketch features a model railway,  if you view  to the end, it is full  layout and not just a prop. Can anyone identify the layout, the builder, if the layout ever featured in RM or MRC?

 

 

It's the Dovey Valley Railway, which was in the RM from the mid-70s onwards (and I believe is still in existence).

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There's a rather poor quality version of the 1960's film "Dateline Diamonds" on YouTube which features this BR Hunslet (05) shunter at Parkeston Quay right at the beginning....

 

557124776_Screenshot2021-09-10at16-03-20ChesterRailwayStationMuseum-LIVE.png.de39490a6003263364bbe03a86c50409.png

 

Several of the outdoor shots were taken in the Parkeston/Harwich area, plus some filming on the MV Galaxy, the Radio London vessel.  You have to be fairly desperate to watch the whole film, from what I saw of it, unless you really like the Small Faces or Kiki Dee....

 

 

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On 23/01/2019 at 15:54, Rugd1022 said:

A couple of screen grabs from 'The Ipcress File' (one of my favourite films, ever) shot at Marylebone in 1965...

 

post-7638-0-30445700-1548258749.jpg

 

post-7638-0-88081900-1548258798.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Just subscribed to Britbox and watched this film last night, only thing I found odd about this sequence was that the tannoy announcer described the train as going to Nottingham but leaving from platform 13!  Only in Sir Edward Watkin's wildest dreams did Marylebone ever have 13 platforms!

 

Jim

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This music video of Abba's The Day Before You Came contains some atmospheric shots of Sweden's rail network c1982. My guess is that it is on the suburban lines into Stockholm but I stand to be corrected

 

 

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On 10/09/2021 at 11:54, Pandora said:

The Two Ronnies Sketch features a model railway,  if you view  to the end, it is full  layout and not just a prop. Can anyone identify the layout, the builder, if the layout ever featured in RM or MRC?

 

 

 

I thought it was Dick Wyatt’s Dovey Valley that featured in that sketch.

 

Some of the lyrics are perhaps quite accurate for the sort of line depicted:

’We’ve overtaken lots of snails/ But only when we go downhill.’ :)

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One of my favourite films with a railway theme is Von Ryan's Express, (almost enough to inspire membership of the Italian Railway Society), but something  recently occured to me about the plot. By escaping into Switzerland were not the British POWs wasting their time as the country was neutral so, under the terms of the Hague Convention,  surely they'd simply have been interned there, albeit in rather greater comfort than a German POW camp,  but still not getting back into the war?  

The truth of that situation in the summer of 1943 was a huge blunder by MI9 when Italy surrendered that led to British and Commonwealth POWs being ordered to stay in their camps, often prevented from escaping by guards posted by their own officers  so leading most of them, 50 000 or so, instead of fighting their way to the Allied front, being  captured by the incoming German forces and transported in freight wagons to German POW camps in Germany and Poland where 4-5% of them died.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/01/second-world-war-british-pows

 

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43 minutes ago, talisman56 said:

I was reminded yesterday of the Mission: Impossible Series 1 episode 'The Train' in which thinly disguised Union Pacific F4A(?), Switchers and coaches were used...

 

Your mission Jim, should you chose to accept it.......  is to have a good laugh at the UP rolling stock!

 

 

Edited by Johann Marsbar
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On 06/12/2011 at 20:57, Rugd1022 said:

Prompted by the timely mention over in the Dapol thread of the NBL Class 29 footage in 'Ring Of Bright Water', I thought it might be fun to see how many films and TV programmes we can recall with railways in them.... anything goes, home grown or foreign, ancient or bang up to date, whether it be a brief snatch of something passing by in the background or with the railway as a central feature.

 

I'll kick things off with one of my favourite examples....

 

'Bedazzled', the orignal feature film made in 1967 with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eleanor Bron and Rachel Welch.... in one of the early scenes our heroes Pete and Dud are stood talking in the street near to Westbourne Park station, a growling sound becomes apparent in the background when lo and behold, a filthy Hymek potters by on the other side of the brick wall, on one of the empty carriage lines heading towards Paddington. It's a 'blink and you'll miss it' moment but the whole scene is typical of the area at the time, with it's run down buildings and an air of neglect. The approaches to Paddington were about to be remodelled and the Westway section of the A40(M) was yet to appear....

 

Over to you chums ;)

 

PS : Goerge Spiggot for PM!

 

There are so many.

A Hard Day's Night

The Ballad of John Axon (radio)

Born and Bred

Brief Encounter

Casino Royale

Educating Rita

Enemy at the Gates

Goodnight Mr Tom

Goldeneye

The Good Wife

Heartbeat

Jonathan Creek

Live and Let Die

The Looming Tower

Mad Men

Midsomer Murders

The Navigators

Sliding Doors

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends

Trainspotting

 

There are lots of others, but I can't remember the names of the films/shows or can't remember if the films/shows had a railway scene in them...

 

If people want to diverge in to adverts and music videos, there is the Lloyds advert.

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On 06/12/2011 at 21:05, Ozexpatriate said:

I think we did something similar to this before in the "what would you recreate" thread.

 

Nevertheless, here's a start:

 

The Ladykillers (1955) Alec Guiness, Peter Sellers - King's Cross?

Two-Way Stretch (1960) Peter Sellers, etc

Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

Oh, Mr. Porter (1937)

The Great Train Robbery (1979) Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland

The Railway Children (1970)

Richard III (1995)

Harry Potter and the *** (multiple)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) - GWR

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) - LT Underground

 

I haven't touched the non-UK ones.

When you say Richard III I presume you mean the Ian McKellen version when he mounts a dysfunctional motorcycle and sidecar exclaiming the classic line "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"? Great call on that one.

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15 minutes ago, JN said:

 

There are so many.

A Hard Day's Night

The Ballad of John Axon (radio)

Born and Bred

Brief Encounter

Casino Royale

Educating Rita

Enemy at the Gates

Goodnight Mr Tom

Goldeneye

The Good Wife

Heartbeat

Jonathan Creek

Live and Let Die

The Looming Tower

Mad Men

Midsomer Murders

The Navigators

Sliding Doors

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends

Trainspotting

 

There are lots of others, but I can't remember the names of the films/shows or can't remember if the films/shows had a railway scene in them...

 

If people want to diverge in to adverts and music videos, there is the Lloyds advert.

 

Mentioning the Bond movies whilst missing the three obvious ones? :prankster:

 

Octopussy - filmed on the Nene Valley

A View To A Kill - Amberley Chalk Pits

 

From Russia With Love - Orient Express with Continental locomotives but also has footage of Royal Scots pulling green coaches! Obviously colourised so they look like the same train

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Mentioning the Bond movies whilst missing the three obvious ones? :prankster:

 

Octopussy - filmed on the Nene Valley

A View To A Kill - Amberley Chalk Pits

 

From Russia With Love - Orient Express with Continental locomotives but also has footage of Royal Scots pulling green coaches! Obviously colourised so they look like the same train

 

 

Someone had already mentioned From Russia With Love... I had also mentioned that I was doing it from memory. Nor did the original post say "...only from the most obscure Art House film..." I was surprised no-one had mentioned a few of the films I mentioned especially Brief Encounter or Thomas the Tank Engine.

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