Hi all, While watching a behinds the scenes segment on Dads Army about Arnold Ridley (grandfather of Daisy of recent Star Wars fame) which mentioned he was a playwright and wrote a stage play after being stranded overnight at a station called Ghost train in the 1920s well before his fame in Dads Army. It was made into a film in 1941 I dont know how our GWR fans will be with their rolling stock being coopted for nefarious purposes. Dont know the film location but it does provide a potential layout idea Cameron
I could be wrong, as I haven't seen this film for a while, but I seem to recall that, at one point, the main line train is represented by a shot lasting a few seconds of a GWR train headed by Manorbier Castle, complete with its half-hearted attempt at streamlining.
Probably Arthur Askey's best film, although he is, I suppose, a bit of an acquired taste, and some of his humour has not aged well. To me, the best performance in the film was by Kathleen Harrison, who had an exceptionally long career in films (and later, television) starting in 1915 and ending in 1979. She also had an exceptionally long life, passing away in 1995 at the age of 103. Always an asset to any film she played in. There was an earlier version of the play filmed in 1931 starring Jack Hulbert but, unfortunately, only an incomplete (half the soundtrack is missing) and partially decayed copy survives.
A local theatre company put this show on, I had a few free tickets as we loaned them Some props, until a few years back my Dad ran a Railway museum.
I'm doing a bit of ironing tonight and put on my DVD of The Ghost Train - There are a few shots of GWR expresses in action early on in the film, all too brief to identify the locomotives, but this non-GWR person reckons they are all Castles. At the start, they are normal engines but, as Arthur Askey pulls the communication cord, the locomotive gains streamlining (if you can apply such a word to the bulbous nose that the GWR tried out as streamlining). Perhaps a GWR fanatic can say for sure, but I think Manorbier Castle was the only locomotive to be inflicted with this indignity.
