THE LINE YOU HAVE ALL LOVED FOR 50 YEARS
From the start, there has evolved a symbiotic relationship between the worlds of railways and drama. Historians have argued that the world’s first railway comprised grooves set in the stages of the theatres of ancient Greece, to facilitate the efficient movement of props and scenery. Today, an encyclopaedia would be needed to provide a complete list of the location filming carried out in Britain’s heritage railway portfolio over the decades. Indeed, in its ability to re-create cameo scenes from our transport history, our heritage lines form one of the greatest stages of all.
The true purpose of drama is not merely to entertain but to enlighten, educate and above all inspire. In 1953, the Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt, which told the story of a group of enthusiasts trying to stop British Railways closing the branch line to their town, was largely based on the exploits of Tom Rolt’s volunteer team which took over the Talyllyn Railway two years earlier and so started the operational heritage railway sector. In those days, long before information was freely available on the internet, the film introduced the concept in the minds of an enthralled audience and may well have sown the seeds of what was to come later.
On December 21, 1970, the EMI Elstree’s movie version of The Railway Children directed by Lionel Jeffries, and starring Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett and Bernard Cribbins in leading roles, was premiered in London. Shortly afterwards, it was screened at the former Ritz cinema in Keighley. The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway (KWVR) wasted no time in capitalising on the film’s overnight soaraway success, and printed leaflets to be given to cinemagoers, outlining all of the featured locations.
The film was the ninth most popular movie at the British box office in 1971, and has remained a firm favourite in the half century that followed. The impact on the KWVR was resounding and continues to this day: coming out two-and-a-half years after steam ended on the British Railway main line, audiences were enchanted by its yesteryear atmosphere. Even families who did not include hardcore enthusiasts amongst their ranks flocked to the locality first made famous by the Brontë sisters, to see and ride behind the steam trains from the film running over the revived 4¾-mile branch line that had been opened on June 29, 1968, six weeks before the curtain fell on BR standard gauge steam in the form of the legendary ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ of August 11.
The film placed the KWVR firmly on the map. Furthermore, it awakened an eager public to the other heritage railway revival schemes across the country that were taking shape.
It is impossible to measure the full extent of the long-reaching impact that The Railway Children had at this crucial period of the revivalist movement, but in short, it was the right product, the right film at precisely the right time.
However, years before the film’s release, the KWVR had broken much vital new ground that
