Battle of Britain (1969?) has a sequence at the beginning in which Reichsmarschall Herman Göring's luxury private train pulls up at a small halt - supposedly somewhere near Calais - hauled by a RENFE 4-8-4.
RENFE 4-8-4? Drool, drool, drool. Massively impressive machines to look at - except their silly tenders (a big like the early Princess Royals with a Fowler tender). I caught some in the last years at Miranda d'Ebro. Never heard anything about how they performed (or not). They outlasted the 4-8-2s though, so must have had some merit.
Now you mention it, I think I do remember spotting that scene, but had forgotten about it.
I think the film did come out in 69. I remember seeing it on Sept 15, 1970 - by coincidence, BoB Day!
Another WW2 film - The Malta Story (1953) has a sequence in which the three Malta-based Gloster Gladiator bi-planes take off on a bombing raid over Southern Italy. Coming out from the clouds, they find an FS freight train trundling along behind a class 740 2-8-0 and proceed to bomb and strafe it.
Wow. Typhoon pilots used to need nerves of steel straffing ground targets in France near the end of they war. Imagine straffing a ground target at 90 mph in a Gladiator! You'd have been prone to being shot down by troops with revolvers
Going back proper on topic - I don't think either of the next two have been mentioned in this thread, but I've been busy and not kept up with posts.
1) I forget the name of the film, I think it was some sort of escape film from a German POW camp, but anyway, there is, somewhere in the depths of the area near the original service station at the first Southern end of the M1, a Fowler 2-6-4T loco which was used in a freight-crash scene, fell into a pit and was never recovered. Not worth the bother. Filmed in about 1962.
Supposed to be a German loco, but anyone 8-year old spotter would have realised it was a fake.
2) Right near the end of "The Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" there is a shot of HR 4-6-0 103 dressed up as a French Nord Railway engine. In an absurd scene (well, it's an absurd film all round) one of the biplanes supposedly has its engine cut out and it 'happens' to land on top of a train, whiich is jolly whizz funny until the pilot realises it's heading towards a tunnel. Train enters tunnel and comes out with aeroplane minus-wings, but still on top of train.
Filmed at Southill Tunnel, about 5 miles south of Bedford on the old Hitchin main line. The very non-1910s looking Goldington Power Station in east Bedford can be spotted in the early sequences.
Quite why the production company wanted and paid for 103, which had to work down and back to Glasgow for the shoot - must have taken two days each way, I have no idea.
