Trains in movies

[Fisherman80]

Ever seen "Dunkirk"? It was great until the soldiers at the end were in a Mk1 carriage.......refurbished too!

 

[Chris217]

That is funny!
Most errors are laughable tbh.

 

[KingDaveRa]

I remember watching The Interview film with Seth Rogen in it, in the train scene it shows them on a Diesel engine hauled sleeper service, but an “external shot” shows a Swiss regional electric train!

I was a little baffled by that one.

Another favourite of filmmakers is to use an American train horn. I think it's more to do with how it sounds, than how accurate it is. The TV sitcom 'Spaced' uses one to cut from a scene in a station to a different shot, and I'm sure there's others (can't think of any right now).

I've noticed a few TV ads recently where they've obviously used a preserved railway as the rolling stock is decidedly heritage in looks. There was a recent Vodafone ad, and another one for a payday loans company. The payday loans ad showed the station too, which definitely looked like a preserved station.

I also recently saw an episode of The Two Ronnies which had a sketch set on a railway platform, but had some oddly replaced posters for new rules on Multi-aspect signals, and something else. They looked like something I'd expect to see in a BR staffroom, not on the platform.

As others have said, TV and Movies are interested in telling stories, not always in being exactly right. I've seen TV shows produced; the university I work at was used as the location for the Black Mirror episode 'The National Anthem' (the one with the pig...). Our various buildings and facilities doubled as a hospital (bits of corridor and a landing), a TV news control room (a recording studio), a news desk (computers in the library although I think they cut that scene), and various other random locations along the way, in some cases being the thing they were supposed to be, like a TV studio or meeting room. Sometimes a bit of set dressing and anything can be anything else. As long as it looks good enough, then it works. Oddly, we were also the location for a sitcom about a university...

As somebody who works in IT, seeing computers and technology mis-represented in movies is always amusing to me. There's a whole subreddit on Reddit devoted to hokey computer stuff in movies and TV.

 

[DarloRich]

Back to The Darkest Hour
Winston Churchill gets on at
St James's Park going to Westminster.
Walking through the subway we clearly see a brown band for Bakerloo Line.
This station is not on the Bakerloo Line!
The scene of the journey on the train
uses 5mins of time to complete,whereas the actual real journey time is around 2mins.
Also,and you have to have a sharp eye for this one....when he gets off,he gets off at
St James's Park!!!!!
The LU rounded although fuzzed out of focus shows a 3 part station name upon opening of the train doors.
I love this film even with its inaccuracies.
But makes me wonder how much better it could have been if producers did their homework properly for the authenticity value rather than lazy filming.
I suppose most of the time its
make do with whatever they can get
to get it as close as?
Incidently, the scene with Churchill meeting the French President at the
airport in May 1940 has a C47 plane
in the background which entered service
in 1941.

The bit with Churchill on the tube is allegorical for goodness sake!

 

[nicolaboo]

I'm still waiting for the North West morning travel news to stop showing four-rail electrified track when there are train delays.

Piccadilly to Stockport?

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Piccadilly to Stockport?

My poor phrasing - four-rail in the London Underground sense.

The university I work at was used as the location for the Black Mirror episode 'The National Anthem' (the one with the pig...). Our various buildings and facilities doubled as a hospital (bits of corridor and a landing), a TV news control room (a recording studio), a news desk (computers in the library although I think they cut that scene), and various other random locations along the way,

I was a student in Bristol in the early years of Casualty (a long running popular television drama then made in Bristol m'Lud) and being location finder for Casualty must have been a serious contender for an 'easiest job in the world' award. So when they had an episode with the victim of the week being a student, the hall of residence scenes were filmed at a hall of residence, and the students union scenes at the students union.

 

[sprinterguy]

Piccadilly to Stockport?

That'd be four track, not four rail.

 

[Welshman]

I've noticed a few TV ads recently where they've obviously used a preserved railway as the rolling stock is decidedly heritage in looks. There was a recent Vodafone ad, and another one for a payday loans company. The payday loans ad showed the station too, which definitely looked like a preserved station.

If I'm not mistaken, the payday loans ad was filmed at Loughborough Central station.

 

[sprinterguy]

If I'm not mistaken, the payday loans ad was filmed at Loughborough Central station.

If it's the ad I'm thinking of, then it certainly was; also starring the GCRs' green class 101 DMU.

 

[mpthomson]

I'm not sure about that... Some clearly care, but still make mistakes.




Of course, some make very silly mistakes that even the average UK resident is likely to notice; the James Bond film "Skyfall", for example uses "tube" trains for a sequence that's supposed to be on the District line... And the lights remain on after the train is derailed; any regular tube user knows that the lights often go off in normal service when the train passes a "gap" in the live rails.

They're not 'silly mistakes', it's because, and I really don't know how to say this in any less direct fashion, no one cares outside a relatively tiny number of people. Average UK residents won't have noticed either of the things you've pointed out as the average UK resident doesn't use the Underground unless they live in London. I'd also hazard a guess that most London residents hadn't noticed the difference between the two stock types either, as they simply aren't interested in that.

Films are about storytelling, not fine detail for trainspotters

 

[mpthomson]

What's that supposed to mean? Is it supposed to be an insult or a lazy attempt to dismiss my point?

I simply posted my own observations, showing that much of the time filmmakers do do substantial research to make settings accurate and that often inaccuracies are more "mistakes" than "we don't care". The rest of the time when they truly "don't care" (as in the "Skyfall" example), it's often on the level of "it breaks the immersion for the majority of people familiar with the setting" rather than the "wrong sound effect" that only a serious rail enthusiast would notice.

Is it really wrong to want historical/setting accuracy in movies and TV? Do you not think that aids in immersion and appreciation of media? Or are you happy of the thinly-veiled propaganda that features in so-called "historical" films by the likes of Mel Gibson?

I don't think the filmmakers researched any detail re the underground. They just decided they wanted a scene set there and asked the designer to come up with models/CGI of real tube trains then chose the ones they thought looked best. That's it, that's as far as they'll have gone re realism.

That's as far as any film really needs to go unless it's specifically about that mode of transport. Films are fiction, even if around historic events, mainly because real events don't often happen in the way that a film has to be constructed to remain engaging to a viewer. There's no reason for any transport methods to be anything other than vaguely in the ballpark because the population as a whole doesn't give a stuff. A plane is either big or small and has jet engines or doesn't and a train is either long or short, old or newish and from vaguely the same continent. That's as far as it goes.

 

[mpthomson]

The only bit about Skyfall which annoyed me was when Bond split the train with the digger, and the broken brake pipe didn't stop the train.
But if they were going to use a Jubilee line train, then why not set that scene on the Jubilee line rather than the District ?

Because nobody cares except a tiny number of trainspotters. Bond films are a global thing, not just for those who live in the area of the Underground.

 

[DarloRich]

Well said @mpthomson ! It is, of course, wasted effort.

 

[MatthewRead]

My poor phrasing - four-rail in the London Underground sense.



I was a student in Bristol in the early years of Casualty (a long running popular television drama then made in Bristol m'Lud) and being location finder for Casualty must have been a serious contender for an 'easiest job in the world' award. So when they had an episode with the victim of the week being a student, the hall of residence scenes were filmed at a hall of residence, and the students union scenes at the students union.

Yes it was supposed to be Bristol but they did film well outside the city on railways such as the Nene Valley and North Yorkshire Moors.

 

[pdeaves]

Half the fun of watching movies it to spot the places where you know 'that's ridiculous' but carry on . Granted, it's usually not worth complaining to the producer or whoever. However, there is nothing wrong with intentionally looking for anachronisms, errors, etc., whether in railways, cars, hospitals, weather patterns or whatever you know a bit about. It's just a bit of fun, nothing to get offended by.

 

[AndyNLondon]

I also recently saw an episode of The Two Ronnies which had a sketch set on a railway platform, but had some oddly replaced posters for new rules on Multi-aspect signals, and something else. They looked like something I'd expect to see in a BR staffroom, not on the platform..

That sounds like they were covering over the advertising posters, and rather than making dummy adverts with fake brands to use while filming, they asked the station to swap out the ads with something non-commercial that they had around.

 

[KingDaveRa]

If I'm not mistaken, the payday loans ad was filmed at Loughborough Central station.

Hah! I stand corrected then!

That sounds like they were covering over the advertising posters, and rather than making dummy adverts with fake brands to use while filming, they asked the station to swap out the ads with something non-commercial that they had around.

It was a studio set. I can only assume the set designers just used whatever had a BR logo on it.

 

[PeterC]

I could ignore TOPS codes on goods wagons supposedly in wartime Poland (The Password is Courage) but I did find the words "British Railways" on the side of a supposedly Victorian locomotive (The Secret Agent) jarring.

 

[keith1879]

Ever seen "Dunkirk"? It was great until the soldiers at the end were in a Mk1 carriage.......refurbished too!

Yes ....I went with a friend who is in no way a train spotter. She couldn't tell a Mark 1 coach from .......well a mark 2 or a Gresley teak I don't suppose. However - when the soldiers got in to the train she was pulled right out of the story by the sight of formica panelling and a 60s style moquette. It was just obviously not 1940s decor. So the use of incorrect rolling stock in this case didn't just cause a problem for the train spotter. A bit of wood panelling and all would have been well I suspect - I thought that was poorly observed by the film makers.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Yes ....I went with a friend who is in no way a train spotter. She couldn't tell a Mark 1 coach from .......well a mark 2 or a Gresley teak I don't suppose. However - when the soldiers got in to the train she was pulled right out of the story by the sight of formica panelling and a 60s style moquette. It was just obviously not 1940s decor. So the use of incorrect rolling stock in this case didn't just cause a problem for the train spotter. A bit of wood panelling and all would have been well I suspect - I thought that was poorly observed by the film makers.

This. Accepting we all have things that trigger us more than they would the general populace, it's quite important that dramas of whatever sort don't jolt you out of the level of belief needed to go with the show. So I rather lost faith with Genevieve (the 1953 film) when they pulled up outside a pub which is quite definitely not on the route from London to Brighton, and had the same problem with the final episode of Outnumbered when (some sixty something years after Genevieve) they lunched at the same pub, which isn't between London and the New Forest either.

 

[PeterC]

Yes ....I went with a friend who is in no way a train spotter. She couldn't tell a Mark 1 coach from .......well a mark 2 or a Gresley teak I don't suppose. However - when the soldiers got in to the train she was pulled right out of the story by the sight of formica panelling and a 60s style moquette. It was just obviously not 1940s decor. So the use of incorrect rolling stock in this case didn't just cause a problem for the train spotter. A bit of wood panelling and all would have been well I suspect - I thought that was poorly observed by the film makers.

SWMBO will always pick out anachronisms in furnishings, clothes, hairstyles or make up. I pick up trains, buses and occasionally street furniture. We both wince at the ones (The Eagle Has Landed and the Father Brown TV series) which use medieval parish churches as modern Catholic churches, has nobody heard of Henry VIII?

 

[Highlandspring]

I went to see Stan & Ollie yesterday which I really liked. There were lots of railway shots all filmed at the Great Central Railway, one showing a train running wrong line on the double track or perhaps the shot had been reversed. Another shot has them sitting in a carriage with an announcement saying “Now arriving at London Terminus” as through the window they pass Tower Bridge looking from about 50 metres above HMS Belfast! You can see it in the trailer here -

 

[pieguyrob]

In the re-make of Poseidon, the ship is laying on its side, and the lights are still on. The emergency generator would not work rotated 90 degrees. The batteries are for bridge navigation equipment, LORAN-C, ECDIS, Sat-B, Sat-C, UHF AND VHF radios.
Also in speed 2, a bow thruster won't change the direction of a ship, if it is travelling over 7 knotts. It certainly can't do a Williamson turn at 17 knotts.
Then where do you go with Airwolf and tge same Hughes corporation helicopters being shot down every other episode.
Then you have a talking, self driving pontiac trans am in Knight Rider.
The less said about The A-Team, the better.
Then what about marvel and DC. I mean flying aliens that can't put their underpants on properly!
Getting back on topic, anyone can pick faults with things. But, surely the point of a fictional film/tv programme is escapism, and to be entertained by being told a story.

 

[pieguyrob]

Though if you want an exampl of train inaccuracies, watch the music video to Robson and Jeromes version of unchained melody. I'd advise turning the sound off. Its awful.

 

[bastien]

There's a very amusing account on Twitter called @movie_goofs which takes satirical aim at this kind of over-literalism... Example:

"The Love Bug (1968) Revealing mistake There are several shots where the car appears to be moving even though there's nobody in the driver's seat."

 

[Ih8earlies]

Has anyone come across Howl (2015).

It is available to stream on Amazon Prime I believe.

Interestingly the Poster has what appears to be a Class 185 shown - but the interior shots of the train scream TfL.

Does anyone know what trains and stations are actually in this movie?

 

[LOL The Irony]

Not really a film but 456013 was used in a Colgate Total Advert recently

Where the drivers/guards announcement is made through the platforms PA or someone in an office in the station or control makes it. Either way, pretty unrealistic.

 

[LOL The Irony]

That happened in Paddington 2 as well. I mean, for goodness sake, I was so angry. It's absolutely ridiculous that, in a good, old-fashioned bit of escapist cinema fun like Bond or Paddington, the film-makers should be so ignorant as to ignore the laws of train braking!

No, it's just ignoring several scientific laws.

 

[colchesterken]

There was a Tellie version of Poirot where he and Hastings went to Plymouth on the overnight express
They arrived pulled by a Pannier Tank, It must have been tired after all that effort

 

[Antman]

Caught an episode of the Professionals earlier. Apart from a very pretty Pamela Stephenson, it started at Paddington.

1978, blue class 50 on mk1 sleepers, plus early HST. And the old drive on platforms for the parcels..... I remember Paddington looking like that the first time I came down spotting at London terminals .....