THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE

Image result for the day the earth caught fire

GB
1961
1hr 38mins
Dir: Val Guest
Starring: Edward Judd and Janet Munro

Nuclear tests tilt the earth off its axis and send it spinning towards the sun

This relatively low-budget sci-fi disaster has proved to be one of the classic apocalyptic films of its era. There are a few railway scenes that are used to depict news spreading throughout the country. One is of a train being loaded with mail and newspapers at an unidentified station, and the other is a ‘stock footage’ shot of the front wheel and cylinder of an LNER A4 Class 4-6-2. Later, there is a shot of the frontage to Hampstead Underground station and it can be noted that the external tiling to the station reads ‘Hampstead Heath’. Although the station was never officially referred to by this name, ‘Heath Street’ was proposed, and tiling with this name can still be seen at platform level. When the fog descends on London during an earlier sequence of events Edward Judd and Janet Munro catch a bus. Through the windows of the top deck there are some semi-distant views of SR EMUs in the Battersea area though this appears to be a mixture of models with a matted background behind.

The railway scene depicting mail being loaded onto a train at night.
This is the front end of an A4 Pacific
Hampstead Underground station on the Northern Line. Located at the corner of Hampstead High Street and Heath Street, the latter was a name proposed for the station but it opened as plain Hampstead. The ‘Heath’ suffix was never official, though there is a Hampstead Heath station about half a mile away on the North London Line.