Goodnight Mr Tom

Just watching the film and I am wondering whether the station used at the countryside is on the SVR as it looks similar to Arley I think. Also, is the locomotive used a re-numbered Manor that they have? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

I seem to recall that 7325 was used for the SVR scenes, but instead of transporting it they re-numbered 6990 for the GCR scenes. Or is my memory playing tricks?

 

Slightly off topic, but only slightly. In the version of "1984" that came out in that year and starring John Hurt there is a scene with a USA tank. The loco was painted grey and had no visible number, the train was three shabby coaches also painted grey with only a few seats in, but plenty of standing room.
Anyone know please which loco and / or line that was?

 

The London scenes for Goodnight Mr Tom were filmed at Loughborough - I think one or more coaches were transported from the SVR but the loco wasn't and hence 6990 was used (in BR Black) and renumbered 7325 (whiich was BR Green!).

7325 was used at Arley for the main scenes.

1984 was filmed on the Ken & East Sussex using largely non-restored stock as the train.

Steven

 

I have noticed one or two films that start at GCR, then skip over SVR and then often finish of back at GCR or some other railway, done well they get away with it.

 

On the topic of steam on the TV over christmas there was a fair bit. On Christmas Eve I watched the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe on BBC 1 as I didn't feel like doing much else as I had man flu. 7802 on the SVR was featured near the beginning and there was some CGI footage too of a grange or Hall as the train the 3 children were on left London. Also a few Poirot episodes shown featured various locations such as this morning with (4)5407 on the KWVR and other episodes featured the Bluebell. Yesterday saw the re-make of the Railway Children which was done on the Bluebell featuring 473, 592 and 0-6-0 Maude from Scotland. The Bluebell was also in some Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett as S.H.) episodes. I also saw something else with the Bluebell in which had one of the U-boats running with Northern instead of Southern on the tender! Can't remember what the programme was though.

 

It's remarkable on TV and in films how often the railway shots are anachronistic when clearly great efforts have been made in other areas to achieve historical accuracy. Why should this be so?

 

Ahh, but are other areas really done accurately or is it just that we don't know enough of the subject to spot the mistakes? Whenever film or TV try to "do" something I know about, they usually get it wrong, so i treat the "accuracy" of things I don't know about with similar scepticism!

Steven

 

That was 30065 Maunsell, towing a collection of our less well loved coaches. The engine had been dirtied down by the film crew, with our help. The coaches included Cambria, an unrestored 6 wheel Pullman coach which was sadly burnt out by vandals while at the Rother Valley Railway. The sequences were mostly shot on the Wittersham Road to Rother Bridge section of the KESR, although some may have been done between Wittersham Road and Rolvenden.

 

Too true! One version of the "4.50 from Paddington" Miss Marple story shows her arriving at Padington to catch her train. The newspaper seller is calling out that the Russians have gone into space so that's 1958 if it was Sputnik 1 or 1961 for Yuri Gagarin. Needless to say all trains in the station are steam hauled and the wording on the tender sides reads "Great Western Railway". Imagine the ridicule if a film showed a Gloster Meteor engaging a ME262 in a film about the Battle of Britain, yet those jets were in front line service only 4 years after the B of B.

 

I agree that sometimes a TV series is let down by "railway" inaccuracy. In the 2009 series "Land Girls", set in the WW2 years a group walking along a country lane were attacked from the air correctly by an ME262, but they had arrived at a railway station (Toddington on the GWSR) with a small prairie in GWR livery hauling BR Mk1's in carmine and cream 1950's livery. Apparently the SVR, who could have provided the correct GWR stock, were approached, but could not agree to the film company's timing for the filming. I guess if you are a Heritage railway that runs daily during the summer then fitting in filming at short notice can be a problem.

 

That tends to depend upon how flexible the film company can be. Many years ago (1987) we on the NYMR did some filming for All Creatures Great and Small at Goathland in the middle of the peak season. The secret was the long, light evenings - all shots were done from about 18:30 onwards after the end of services. When we set out for Pickering mid-afternoon, there was no sign of the film crew at Goathland, when we came back Goathland had disappeared and been replaced by Mannerton! Set in the early 1950s, it was one of the most accurate bits of filming we have done 80135 on 3 Blood and Custard Mark 1s. A lot of Heartbeat filiming was done on summer evening or between trains - as was much of Harry Potter!

We also did a daytime all day shoot for The New Stateman (ITV comedy with Rik Mayall) at Goathland. This was all day Saturday in July or August and saw the film company desperately running out of time as their key "action vehicle" was 25 191 (on Blue/Grey Mark 1s) and it was needed for the 16:50 from Grosmont. The Signalman negotaited the steam crew to bring the 16:50 up to Goathland which gave them an extra 20 minites. I can still clearly see the scene on Goathland platform when we arrived with this train (I was guard) - Rik Mayal un-noticed by a scrum of passengers surrounding him with the TV crew all huddled around the camera protecting it from the surging hordes of passengers!

Other tricks we have used to enable filming to take place when we run a daily service from Easter to the end of October is filming interior scenes on reserved carriages attached to a service train. This was done for The Detectives (Jasper Carrott and Robert Powell), which was meant to be a diesel hauled train but the interiors were shot on a steam, service train, in a CK with a BSK attached to house equipment and production staff! This episode was directed by top Doctor Who Director Graeme Harper, who is one of the most pleasant TV people you will ever meet while filming.

All this "mid-season" filming depends upon film or TV people who will fit in with what the Railway can do and are willing to have breaks in filming while service trains pass.

Steven

 

BR liveries wandering into pre 1948 scenes is the most common error, however many lines lacking pre MK1 stock make this error unavoidable.

I agree with Bean Counter, i reckon they are making errors all over the place but we can't spot them outside our 'specialised subject'.

You sure about that 4.50 from Paddington ? my memory of that was 7821 & 4141 (i presume anyway) winding through Swithland simulating paralell departures from Paddington.

 

There have been two versions - you are spot on with the ITV one from two or three years back. The one referred to earlier in the thread was the BBC masterpiece from the 1980s with Joan Hickson - vastly superioer in all respects (except, perhaps, the accuracy of the Railway sequences!)

The ITV version starts with a clever CGI shot that puts the Manor under the Paddington roof. The effects guys must have thought it was their birthday as there seemed to be a nice straight line on the Paddington shot to use as the join to the Loughborough shot - which, as far as I could see, was the Heathrow Express overhead wire that thus appeared in shot!

Steven

 

I don't remember the moment but they wouldn't have been attacked by a Me262!

 

I am tempted by that hypothesis yet I know a bit about furniture and paintings and rarely spot anything wrong. I propose a slight amendment: film and TV people are mostly arts and humanities graduates, they know their subjects but little about science and engineering.

 

The film about Beatrix Potter that was shown over Christmas had Railway scenes filmed at the Bluebell with U-Class 1638 with Maunsell stock which is set in the 1920,s where I always thought that Beatrix lived in the Edwardian era? hmm.

Regards
Chris

 

Anyone who watched tonight's Poriot had a treat - although if they were interested in railways, threat might be more appropriate!

The very shot I mentioned from the ITV version of The 4:50 from Paddington (Manor at Paddington) appeared - as Poirot left London for Yorkshire (change at Doncaster when he repeated the journey). What the producers had achieved was a story with more travelling about the country by train than any Poirot (other than perhaps The A.B.C. Murders, which the plot also resembled) without a single shot of railway exteriors being filmed specially for the programme! Poirot visited the South of France with shots from The Mystery of the Blue Train (73050 on Nene Valley Wagon-Lits), Yorkshire (several times) with the above, some more 73050 and what looked like a Standard 4 (tank or tender) probably on the Bluebell. Cornwall was similarly visited two or three times without a shot of Paddington but with a destination board (seemingly on a coach side) for Paddington to Loomouth.

Interior shots were filmed on a set with authentic looking seats and sliding compartment door but a very strange carriage window of shallow depth and with no toplights - perhapas a prototype air-conditioned vehicle? Both the LNER and Great Western coaches had identical windows but the upholstery changed colour depending on whether the destination was Yorkshire or Cornwall.

I am told Poirot's ticket was the wrong colour for first class (I think by some-one getting sick of me being pedantic!) and the Yorkshire Policeman's accent sounded as if it was from over the Pennine's and along the Mersey!

It was rather a pity becuase otherwise the production wasn't bad and the story quite clever, although I am sure I have seen something similar before and not the Peter Ustinov version.

Steven

 

One programme I've never seen but would like to is an apparently 1980s BBC production of the Prisoner of Zenda in which our Castle Caereinion station on the Welshpool & Llanfair in Mid-Wales was turned into Zenda! I'm guessing our 699 0-8-0 looked suitably continental...

Cheers
Andrew C
W&LLR