Pat Heigham
Years ago, while working on “Fiddler on the Roof”, based in Zagreb, after a late Saturday night in town, wending my unsteady way back to the hotel, the other side of the railway, I passed under the bridge, as a steam hauled train was approaching very slowly, gently sounding its bell.
Looking up, I could see on the carriage boards:
“Orient Express Paris-Istanbul”
For a mad moment, I wondered if the rest of the crew would notice my absence next day, if I had climbed aboard!
I did a shoot at Bulmers about the apple/cider harvest, for ATV, I think. After filming apple crushing etc. they said to go and have some hospitality.
“Go out of the building, towards the railway line and turn right.”
It was a TRAIN! two carriages Pullman seating, one a lounge bar, one a cinema, and further down the line, in an engine shed, a steam loco, being lovingly polished by ex-GWR drivers! They would take this train to various County Shows, if there was a suitable line. (Dunno how many were available!)
I’ve got lots of other stories involving steam trains – gleaned from my time in the film industry!
John Howell
This is going to read like a commercial but I can recommend “Steam Dreams” who run the “Cathedrals Express” with a variety of engines to city destinations across England. They are a bit expensive but fun days out.
I went on the one that was hauled by “Tornado” and Jeremy Clarkson thought he was going to drive it and it turned out he was expected to fire it! That was the “Top Gear” where the train raced the motorbike and the car to Edinburgh. The enthusiasts on board reckoned that we hit 75mph at one point.
Dave Plowman
I was doing an evening shoot (dark) on location at a block of council flats in Bermondsey. Much of it was on the balcony – where you could almost touch the trains on the viaduct as they went by. As you can imagine not ideal, noisewise, as they seemed every minute or so. At the end of the shoot I wanted a decent wild track or two of passing trains.After what seemed like an age of waiting one arrived. A steam train. And it was near drowned out by crew laughter.
Mike Jordan
I bet you didn’t catch one on the Piccadilly line.
John Howell
One midnight in September 1970 a maintenance train hauled by a steam loco puffed its way through Earls Court on District Line tracks to much cheering and jeering. No ‘steam days’ then; this engine was at work.
Mike Jordan
I had just that day moved into a flatshare in the late 60s in Barons Court (with the oftmentioned Paul Graydon) and gone to bed to be woken by a steam train. Wondered if I was having a nightmare but it was that steam one which used to do maintenance on the District Line and which, some years later, I saw its last trip to Neasden Junction and retirement
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Merlin
Albert Barber, Dave Plowman, John Howell and Chris Wickham
There was an occasion when the Army Royal Engineers crashed a train on a programme called “Saturday Night Out” It was presented by a fairly well known film actor – Robert Beatty. Ruggedly handsome with black hair, as they say. But then everyone had black hair on TV in those days.
(a still from the film recording)
It was the most unspectacular crash ever with the commentator lost for words. The rumour was that an EM called Jack Bellasco suggested that the whistle was taped down to make it more dramatic.
However, the loco slowly and gracefully trundled to a gentle crash over a small embankment, finished up still upright and then stopped.
(a still from the film recording)
“Saturday Night Out” had a memorable title sequence. It always started with a shot of a phone which rang on cue and was picked up by Bob Beatty who would utter the immortal words “We’restarting now”. Cut to exterior shot of Palace of Arts Wembley (where OBs were based) and a fleet of vehicles whizzed out going rather too fast, driven by uniformed rigger drivers.
(a still from the title sequence)
The titles and train crash are HERE on You Tube.
Did you see that the Production Assistant was Brian Cowgill …?
Ian Dow
To get a better angle for the shot, the OB vans were actually heading down a dead end and slammed on the brakes just after the edit.
Alan Stokes
Was Bob Danvers-Walker also involved in a commentary of some sort?
Alasdair Lawrance
A train was crashed in BBC Wales for a drama directed by Jimmy Cellan-Jones. It was after he directed “Where the Buffalo Roam” with Hywel Bennett, but I don’t recall the name. That was on film, however, not telerecorded.
Peter Hider
I was a studio cameraman on “Quiller” in 1975 starring Michael Jayston and produced by Peter Graham Scott. He had just shot a burning train sequence ( I can’t remember if it was for “Quiller”) on the Neme Valley railway only to find on rushes that there was an extra set of sprocket holes down the centre of the picture. The BBC paid for the additional carriages to be burnt for the reshoot and Kodak, true to their warranty, paid for the filmstock.
On a period film production called “Lady Audley’s Secret” we went up and down all day on the Bluebell line and had to stop regularly to swap sides with the camera. As I was Associate Producer it fell to me to travel on the footplate and give instructions to the driver. Happy days! When the film was edited the Director realised he had forgotten to take a long shot of the train so the editor used a stock shot of a Castle Class loco which was some 50 years out of period. It caused some mirth at the press launch.
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Bernie Newnham
My 60th birthday present was a problem that my wife was eager to share with me, and I ended up with this – a day learning how to drive a steam engine. It turns out that Stepney may be pretty and terribly iconic of a bygone age etc etc, but it is also engineering rubbish.
You would think that over a working life of eighty years or whatever they would have fixed the more obvious problems, but they didn’t. The worst bit was the reversing lever, much like a big signal lever down the left hand side behind me there. You squeezed the release and put it forward to start off forward and all the way back to start off backwards. Once going, you change up a gear by putting it somewhere mid range. The only problem was that it has no counter-weight and if you don’t hold on to the cab side when you squeeze, the thing pulls you forward so that you bang your head on the conveniently placed hot brass vacuum brake thing. There were seven of us on the course, and I think we all did it at least once. Also the throttle was just like an early Heron, off or on, with lots of hysteresis slack. I went home with a bruised right hand from trying to gentle hit it into “go”, and a bruised forehead from banging the vacuum brake.Our task through the day was to hit a mark on the platform – just like a Heron – after chuffing a few hundred yards down the track from the northern dead end. I did get a lucky break at the end of the day. I was driver when the lady who was fireman said she’d run out of water, so I got to taxi over to the sidings to park up very precisely by the water tank, then back to the platform.Lots of fun – highly recommended.
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Alec Bray
If I hadn’t worked for BBC Tech Ops, I would not have seen the last official BR steam train – IT57 (the 15 guinea special).
Because of the irregular hours (and irregular days) that we worked, often months went by before we bumped into acquaintances from another crew. One TO that I was very friendly with was Stuart Nottingham, who came from the Huddersfield area initially (Brighouse?) (his parents then lived in Poole: he got married to his childhood sweetheart at Ottery St. Mary).
Stuart had a friend in Huddersfield who had preserved a bus (the bus lived in a railway arch), and this bus was to be taken to Ribblehead Viaduct on 11 August 1968: I was invited along for the ride (OK, so this was technically after I had left Tech Ops to go to college).
So off we set: driving the bus (sorry, dunno what sort of bus!) into a fuel station to get diesel, the owner checking the fuel level by sticking a broom handle down the filler tube. Arriving at Ribblehead, we parked some way from the viaduct – there are published pictures of the scene at Ribblehead which actually show the bus.
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/71592768@N08/7757683064/) (Thank you to whoever …)
Most people made their way to the station, but I stayed out in the country to get a view of the train passing through the scenery: here’s a snippet:
On the way back, we went via the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (of course) and, as night was falling, drove back to Huddersfield via Bradford. As it was a Huddersfield bus, “Huddersfield” was on the destination blind: the bus number was on the route indicator blinds. There were a lot of people in Bradford who stuck their hands out to catch the bus as we trundled past the bus stops.
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Pat Heigham
“Eye of the Needle”
This was a film starring Donald Sutherland as a Nazi agent operating in England during WW2.
I was brought in (by Claude Hitchcock – Mixer) with whom I had previously worked, to rig the silent stage at Shepperton with PA gear for the Director to give instructions to the artistes on board a fishing boat in a storm sequence.
Subsequently, this extended to keeping me on for a night shoot on the Watercress Line, for a shot where the agent had to jump off the train. No sound effects were required, as these had all been picked up previously, and my job was to look after all the W/T kit. As I didn’t fancy sitting in my cold car (it was November!) I offered my services as a temporary AD, with a walkie-talkie.
“Oh, Pat! Would you?”
“Yes, but one condition – I’m the one that rides with the driver on the footplate!”
(This being calculated as being possibly the warmest place!)
This established – we rehearsed in daylight, with the stunt double doing his bit.
Come the night, a few takes were shot, until the engine driver asked me how many more times were we to chuff up and down. We hadn’t yet got a suitable take, so I asked him why. Apparently, the original plan had been to transport all the lighting kit up the line in the afternoon, then back to the station to pick up any extra stuff needed, where the engine would take on more water.
This never happened, so the engine was running low on water. There was enough for one more run.
Over the radio came the query – what if we need one more?
Driver’s answer: “Tell ‘em it’ll f*ck*ng blow up!”
The next take was perfect!
