Railway footage in feature films and television...

[papagolfjuliet]

This episode of Brian Clemens' ATV anthology drama series 'Thriller' involves a series of murders on a Euston-Glasgow sleeper, which starts authentically enough with a rail blue 86 leaving London. The 86 then magically becomes an unidentified AC loco in 1960s electric blue, then as night falls transforms into some sort of European electric, and eventually reverts to being an 86 just in time to arrive at a 'Glasgow Central' which is in the middle of nowhere and has no OHL or overall roof.

 

 

[mac1960]

On 13/01/2024 at 15:50, papagolfjuliet said:

Double headed blue Warships at 17' 20" in this newly-uploaded episode of 'Hadleigh.'

 

 

I had a pair of those Waders !
 

Cheers

Mr Mac

[Dan Randall]

On 13/01/2024 at 15:50, papagolfjuliet said:

Double headed blue Warships at 17' 20" in this newly-uploaded episode of 'Hadleigh.'

 

 

Great find - Taplow station, before Network Rail came along and ruined it…😐

 

 

Regards

 

Dan

[steve1]

Anyone recognise the railway location from Vera last night?

 

4 tracks but most of them rusty and 2 were just sidings. 143 action for the ‘service’!

 

steve

[KingEdwardII]

32 minutes ago, steve1 said:

the railway location from Vera last night

My first guess is that it is somewhere on the Wensleydale Railway, but they have few places with 4 tracks in parallel. There was a Pacer in the background - and they have one. Certainly, I envisage that it was done on some heritage line - you can't see Network Rail giving that kind of access on an operational line.

 

Yours, Mike.

[31A]

1 hour ago, steve1 said:

Anyone recognise the railway location from Vera last night?

 

4 tracks but most of them rusty and 2 were just sidings. 143 action for the ‘service’!

 

steve

 

It was at Redmire, beyond the station where the line opens out into 4 sidings that have been used in the past by the MoD to load / unload Army tanks.  I presume it's where the quarry loading pint was in the past?

 

I was very disappointed in Vera (although perhaps I shouldn't have been having been involved with how these things sometimes go!) in that the dead body wasn't on the railway line at all, it was outside the railway boundary and there was no sign that it had been hit by a train, but she said they could start running trains again when she was good and ready!

 

[KingEdwardII]

8 minutes ago, 31A said:

she said they could start running trains again when she was good and ready!

When there are deaths involved, I think that this is the first reaction of the police. They won't know where any evidence is likely to turn up, plus they need to protect the folks working on the case.

 

Yours, Mike.

[31A]

1 minute ago, KingEdwardII said:

When there are deaths involved, I think that this is the first reaction of the police. They won't know where any evidence is likely to turn up, plus they need to protect the folks working on the case.

 

Yours, Mike.

Appreciate that, but having seen from the railway operating side of things how delays mount up and the disruption caused, and also as a passenger being delayed myself, I am always frustrated by how long it takes to restart the service after a fatality.  This fatality wasn't even on the railway and there was no train involved, it was in a field on the other side of a solid wall!

 

[The Stationmaster]

26 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

When there are deaths involved, I think that this is the first reaction of the police. They won't know where any evidence is likely to turn up, plus they need to protect the folks working on the case.

 

Yours, Mike.

The police have a duty to regard deaths like that as suspicious and have to treat the site as a criime scene until it can be clearly established that it is not.   What takes the time on railway lines is carrying out the necessary searches (although it might spoil your day to tell you what is being looked for),

[Pacific231G]

On 03/11/2023 at 20:14, DY444 said:

Iirc that footbridge also featured in the opening titles of Citizen Smith

It's only a couple of miles from Ealing Studios (which were the BBC's Television Film Studios for many years)  and runs between two fairly quiet roads so ideal for a location shoot. I can't think of anywhere else round there where  you could have found that combination of busy main line and footbridge in a fairly quiet urban area. 

 

Edited January 15 by Pacific231G

[papagolfjuliet]

More from Lew Grade's stable: Denham Golf Club Halt at the start of this episode of 'Man in a Suitcase.'

 

 

Edited January 16 by papagolfjuliet

[papagolfjuliet]

And there's more. Thanks to stock footage, in this episode of 'The Champions' two of our heroes manage to travel on the Talyllyn and the Ffestiniog at the same time.

 

 

Edited January 16 by papagolfjuliet

[Butler Henderson]

On 15/01/2024 at 10:12, 31A said:

 

It was at Redmire, beyond the station where the line opens out into 4 sidings that have been used in the past by the MoD to load / unload Army tanks.

 

In one shot you could quite clearly see the "mainline" ended at slightly more distant buffer stops than the other two sidings 

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, papagolfjuliet said:

And there's more. Thanks to stock footage, inn this episode of 'The Champions' two of our heroes manage to travel on the Talyllyn and the Ffestiniog at the same time.

 

 

You're overlooking their special powers - these not only allowed them to be on two different railways at the same time but to depart from Towyn Wharf as the train was leaving Abergynolwyn.  Apart of course from being in a train which was completely different from one operated at that time by either railway.   Just don't believe everything you see on tv!

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

You're overlooking their special powers - these not only allowed them to be on two different railways at the same time but to depart from Towyn Wharf as the train was leaving Abergynolwyn.  Apart of course from being in a train which was completely different from one operated at that time by either railway.   Just don't believe everything you see on tv!

Never mind, just sit back and enjoy watching Alexandra Bastedo......

[The Stationmaster]

1 minute ago, Northmoor said:

Never mind, just sit back and enjoy watching Alexandra Bastedo......

Funny you should say that because until I saw it on here I hadn't even noticed which railways and starions had featured in that programme!

[Pacific231G]

4 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Never mind, just sit back and enjoy watching Alexandra Bastedo......

Even if her name did always sound to me like something inflicted by the Inquisition.

 

If you think we have athenticity problems, I've just been watching "Un meurtre de première classe" a 1999 episode from the long running French TV production of  Maigret with Bruno Cremer currently being shown on Talking Pictures TV. In this story a man is murdered in the first class carriage of an international train  during its 50 minute stop for customs and immigration at Jeumont on the French side of the border with Belgium. You'd think that a French production would have little trouble finding a suitable French station and train to use but the series was actually  filmed in Czechia (Czech Republic) and the locomotive, station and rolling stock are distinctly Central European and distinctly not French even to the sounds of steam loco whistles.   

 

Genuinely French railway scenes (though not many of them) are to be found in the BBC's original Maigret series with Rupert Davies made in 1960-1963 whose filmed exteriors were all shot in France (interiors wer recorded electonically in the studio) so a valuable trove of authentic street scenes and vehicle types for anyone modelling French railways of that time and also being shown by TPTV. 

[papagolfjuliet]

More 'Hadleigh': a brief glimpse of a 40 at speed, followed by a Deltic and an 03 at York. How Hadleigh manages to arrive from London on a southbound train is a mystery for the ages.

 

Edited January 17 by papagolfjuliet

[31A]

11 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Even if her name did always sound to me like something inflicted by the Inquisition.

 

If you think we have athenticity problems, I've just been watching "Un meurtre de première classe" a 1999 episode from the long running French TV production of  Maigret with Bruno Cremer currently being shown on Talking Pictures TV. In this story a man is murdered in the first class carriage of an international train  during its 50 minute stop for customs and immigration at Jeumont on the French side of the border with Belgium. You'd think that a French production would have little trouble finding a suitable French station and train to use but the series was actually  filmed in Czechia (Czech Republic) and the locomotive, station and rolling stock are distinctly Central European and distinctly not French even to the sounds of steam loco whistles.   

 

Genuinely French railway scenes (though not many of them) are to be found in the BBC's original Maigret series with Rupert Davies made in 1960-1963 whose filmed exteriors were all shot in France (interiors wer recorded electonically in the studio) so a valuable trove of authentic street scenes and vehicle types for anyone modelling French railways of that time and also being shown by TPTV. 

 

I watched that; it was interesting!

 

In another episode (sorry can't remember which one) they filmed some railway scenes in Belgium on I believe the CF3V line, Mariembourg-Treignies.  At least it looks a bit more like France than the Czech Republic does!  The SNCB station at Binche also featured in one of them.  From the credits at the end it looks as though TV production companies from Belgium, Czech and Switzerland as well as France were involved in making the series.

[Rugd1022]

3 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

More 'Hadleigh': a brief glimpse of a 40 at speed, followed by a Deltic and an 03 at York. How Hadleigh manages to arrive from London on a southbound train is a mystery for the ages.

 

 

I binge watched 'Hadleigh' on DVD early last year and really enjoyed it - in a couple of episodes he drives round in a RHD Monterverdi 375 Coupe, one of just six built.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, 31A said:

 

I watched that; it was interesting!

 

In another episode (sorry can't remember which one) they filmed some railway scenes in Belgium on I believe the CF3V line, Mariembourg-Treignies.  At least it looks a bit more like France than the Czech Republic does!  The SNCB station at Binche also featured in one of them.  From the credits at the end it looks as though TV production companies from Belgium, Czech and Switzerland as well as France were involved in making the series.

I know that the last two British series of Maigret (Michael Gambon and Rowan Atkinson) used locations in Hungary partly because Budapest now looks more like 1950s Paris  than does modern Paris (though location costs were probably also relevant). That didn't though work when Maigret and Madame Maigret were strolling along the Seine with large hills (not Montmartre) in the background It also didn't work when Maigret arrived on a very Hungarian looking carriage to save the local schoolmaster from a miscarriage of justice. I'm not sure if Czech towns and cities make quite such good simalcre of 1950s Paris. 1960s France in the BBC's Rupert Davies series does though looks just like 1960s France. The BBC set their adaptation in the present when Simenon, who was reportedly very happy with the series, was still writing Maigret stories. I've never been too sure though whether he set his stories in whatever was the present at the time of writing or set them all in the interwar period when he first started writing the character) 

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Even if her name did always sound to me like something inflicted by the Inquisition.

 

If you think we have athenticity problems, I've just been watching "Un meurtre de première classe" a 1999 episode from the long running French TV production of  Maigret with Bruno Cremer currently being shown on Talking Pictures TV. In this story a man is murdered in the first class carriage of an international train  during its 50 minute stop for customs and immigration at Jeumont on the French side of the border with Belgium. You'd think that a French production would have little trouble finding a suitable French station and train to use but the series was actually  filmed in Czechia (Czech Republic) and the locomotive, station and rolling stock are distinctly Central European and distinctly not French even to the sounds of steam loco whistles.   

 

Genuinely French railway scenes (though not many of them) are to be found in the BBC's original Maigret series with Rupert Davies made in 1960-1963 whose filmed exteriors were all shot in France (interiors wer recorded electonically in the studio) so a valuable trove of authentic street scenes and vehicle types for anyone modelling French railways of that time and also being shown by TPTV. 

I will admit that it was v back in the late 1990s that I visited Jeumoont (when we were considerting possible re-routing for one of the ENS night speeper trains) but at that time the place was like stepping back aboy ut 30 years or more.  Massive great unused freight transfer/Customs examination building and a crummy station with limited facilities but still some remnants of its time as a border station.  One of the most depressing places I have ever visited.

[Steamport Southport]

5 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

More 'Hadleigh': a brief glimpse of a 40 at speed, followed by a Deltic and an 03 at York. How Hadleigh manages to arrive from London on a southbound train is a mystery for the ages.

 

 

So that's what happened to Adam Adamant!

 

One for the teenagers there....

[papagolfjuliet]

45 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

So that's what happened to Adam Adamant!

 

One for the teenagers there....

 

He played James Hadleigh more or less straight after 'Adam Adamant LIves!' was axed in 1967, first in 'Gazette' in 1968 and then in 'Hadleigh' on and off from 1969 to 1976.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

 

He played James Hadleigh more or less straight after 'Adam Adamant LIves!' was axed in 1967, first in 'Gazette' in 1968 and then in 'Hadleigh' on and off from 1969 to 1976.

I always rather enjoyed Adam Adamant Lives which was I think supposed to be the BBC's answer to The Avengers (and is widely available online).

 

Most episodes were fairly unmemorable but frustratingly the one episode I'd love to see again is the one episode from series one that seems to be completely lost. Ticket to Terror is the one where a crowded Waterloo and City train disappears with its 400 passengers including Adamant's manservant William Simms (Jack May) somewhere between Waterloo and Bank.  The train  later reappears but its passengers are now skeletons. Later on the train disappears again, this time with Georgina Jones (Juliet Harmer) aboard. It turns out that the trains had been diverted into an old tunnel near Bank (the points might have been a bit of a giveaway) and the passengers used as slave labour by a gang tunneling into the vaults of the Bank of England.  

I don't remember whether any of the other episodes had a strong railway presence but several of the early Avengers episodes did (including a miniature railway) .

What I also didn't know was that three episodes of Adam Adamant Lives were directed by Ridley Scott at the start of his directing career.