ESCAPE ROUTE

GB
1952
1hr 18min
Dirs: Seymour Friedman and Peter Graham Scott
Starring: George Raft and Sally Gray

Scotland Yard join forces with an FBI agent to track down a gang smuggling scientists out of the country

This crime thriller was released in the US as I’ll Get You, its commonly excepted UK title even though it was released in the UK first as Escape Route. It also ran for a while with the working title The Black Pawn. It has a number of brief railway shots during a montage sequence of police making enquiries. In one shot, a police car pulls up outside terraced housing and a train is crossing the railway bridge behind. This was filmed in Hardinge Street E1, with the bridge carrying the railway line running between Shadwell and Limehouse on the route out of Fenchurch Street. This is followed by a brief glimpse of officers keeping watch outside a mainline railway station, in this case London Victoria. The montage sequence with these railway shots later reappeared in Burnt Evidence (1954), but the Hardinge Street shot is truncated so only the train of former LMS (MR) suburban carriages is seen and not the locomotive, which is an ex-LMS Stanier Class 4MT 3-cylinder 2-6-4T. In addition to these shots, the climatic chase sequence ends at London Bridge and in the background to one shot, a steam train can be seen reversing along Cannon Street Railway Bridge, the next bridge west along the Thames.

A Stanier Class 4MT 3-cylinder 2-6-4T crosses Hardinge Street, E1. A truncated version of this shot, showing just the carriages, reappeared in Burnt Evidence in 1954.
As did this shot of London’s Victoria station
Clifford Evans on London Bridge. In the background, a steam train can be seen reversing across Cannon Street Railway Bridge. The locomotive is propelling its stock into the platforms of the station, which is out of shot to the right.