GOING LOCO: Trains on film and TV

As railway history programme Full Steam Ahead continues (8pm, BBC2), we take a look at some of our favourite fictional trains that are the stars of the show…

With its roots in fact (writer T.E.B. Clarke was a neighbour of rail reformer Dr Beeching), 1953’s prophetic The

Titfield Thunderbolt – about villagers fighting to keep their imperilled local line open – is a delightful ode to people power. Viewers of a certain vintage will fondly remember the antics of

Ivor The Engine (1), the little green loco who lived in the ‘top left-hand corner of Wales’. The show started in black and white, in 1959; the colour version ran from 1975 to 1977. In the 1974 thriller The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three – much of which was filmed on a disused stretch of New York’s subway – the train of the title is hijacked by blackmailers. It was remade in 2009, but the original is the best. The Reverend W. Awdry’s Thomas The Tank Engine

(2) stories first came to TV in 1984, and have been chugging along nicely ever since. Thomas was inspired by a real toy belonging to Awdry’s son, Christopher, who is also now a children’s author. The ground-breaking 2004 film The Polar Express – about a boy’s yuletide adventure – was directed by Robert Zemeckis (of Back to the Future fame) and starred an animated version of Tom Hanks as the train driver. A real locomotive, the Pere Marquette 1225, served as the inspiration for the Express.