A KISS IN THE TUNNEL (1898-2)

GB
1898
1min
Dir: Unknown
Starring: Actors unknown

A young man takes a liberty during a train journey

This was an almost exact copy of the film above, remade under the same title by Bamforth and Company of Holmfirth the same year, although they, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, ‘adopted a rather less stylised and noticeably more passionate approach to the brief encounter of the title’. Understandably for a Yorkshire-based company the railway footage is somewhat different. An unidentified tank engine hauls a L&YR train into Queensbury Tunnel which, at 1 mile 741 yards in length, was the fourth longest tunnel in West Yorkshire. Located on the Great Northern Railway’s Bradford-Halifax route it closed in 1963. After the kiss, we see a Midland Railway Johnson 4-4-0 arriving at Monsal Dale station in the Peak District, some considerable distance from Queensbury. Again, the carriage interior is a mock-up, filmed in a glass roofed studio with a simple set and the minimum of props. Although the actors are unknown, the young man was a member of the Bamforth family and the lady worked in the packing department of the Lantern Slide Factory. Both these versions of The Kiss in the Tunnel can be found on Video 125’s Trains from the Arc’ DVD, though they can also be located on many websites.

An L&YR train enters Queensbury tunnel, a monstrous bore well over a mile in length.
And this is it. A passionate embrace 1898-style. Although the cast are not named the lady worked in the packing department of the Lantern Slide Factory and one wonders if she minded such an imposition, or indeed if she was paid any extra. In 1898, the kiss and cuddle was hot stuff indeed!!
The film ends at Monsal Dale in the Derbyshire Peak District with a Midland Railway train arriving behind a Johnson 4-4-0. The station closed in 1961.