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THE INNOCENTS - British Railway Movie Database

THE INNOCENTS

GB
1961
1hr 40mins
Dir: Jack Clayton
Starring: Deborah Kerr and Michael Redgrave

A governess at a lonely house suspects that her charges are possessed by the dead

This supernatural Gothic horror is based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. It includes a nice shot of a train arriving at Horsted Keynes station on the Bluebell Railway, formed of the Metropolitan carriage set hauled by P Class 0-6-0T No.323 Bluebell. The loco is not visible in the film, but in the background we do get a distant glimpse of ex-LBSCR Class AIX ‘Terrier’ 0-6-0T No.55 Stepney. This was the very first film to be shot on a preserved standard gauge line in the UK, a full seven years before BR main line steam was abolished. Bluebell and Stepney were the only two operational former BR locos present on the line at the time.

As Martin Stephens looks out of the window, the guard hangs onto his door as the train pulls into Sheffield Park station sometime in 1961. The station had been in the hands of the preservationists since closure in 1958 and had reopened as part of the privately-owned Bluebell Railway in August 1960. Stepney can be seen standing in the far background.
History is made in this scene, which was the first time the preservation movement recreated the arrival of a train. The line had been operated by BR only three years earlier.