MISS POTTER

US / GB
2006
1hr 32mins
Dir: Chris Noonan
Starring: Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor

The life of children’s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter

This popular biographical film has one scene that was shot at Horsted Keynes station on the Bluebell Railway with a train departing that is hauled by ex-SR Maunsell U Class 2-6-0 No.1638. To recognise Miss Potter’s Lake District connections the locomotive has spurious ‘NORTHERN’ lettering on its tender and the station is posing as ‘Windermere’. Of all the scenes to have used Horsted Keynes over the years these are some of the very best, the whole sequence takes place in the pouring rain and is hugely atmospheric. The viaduct seen twice in the film is Arten Gill Viaduct on the Settle-Carlisle Railway line though the steam trains crossing it are entirely a CGI creation.

Arten Gill Viaduct on the Settle-Carlisle line. The train crossing is a computer-generated effect.
As the rain pours down the side of the carriages the guard gives the ‘right away’. Note the small ‘Windermere’ sign top right.
Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor getting soaked. The loco is U Class 2-6-0 No.1638, and the ‘Southern’ wording on its tender would have been easily amended to read ‘Northern’
Arten Gill Viaduct again, but from a more distant viewpoint