SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS (1974)

GB
1974
1hr 32mins
Dir: Claude Whatham
Starring: Virginia McKenna and Ronald Fraser

The adventures of four children in the Lake District in 1929

This family adventure is based on the popular 1930 novel of the same name by Arthur Ransome. The start of the film depicts a railway journey scenes filmed on the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway with a train hauled by one of the line’s LMS Fairburn Class 4MT 2-6-4T’s. There is also a rare shot of the frontage to Haverthwaite station itself. In 2016, the film was remade. Brought forward slightly to 1935, it featured a lot more in the way of railway footage.

The opening shot in the film shows a Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway train passing in the hands of a Fairburn 2-6-4 tank
A Fairburn 2-6-4 tank hauls its train alongside the River Leven on a sunny summers day in the Lake District. The film was set in 1929 and the loco is of an LMS design from 1945. The two that are based on the line were built by BR in 1950-51 so either way they are entirely wrong for the period in which the film was set.
This is Haverthwaite station, playing the part of another Cumbrian station in the form of Ulverston.