Atomic Systems

Anyone know of a good Railway Film database?

If not I'd have thought this forum could have more than a crack at creating one.

I'm sure many of you will know of :
http://www.us.imdb.com/search
The international movie database, and you can of course get loads of info on just about any aspect of film here..... but...... it takes a real enthusiast to pick the wheat from the chaff!

If you're on board with the idea, and want the widest list, you must cast aside all prejudice and national preferrences. Good Railway Films are rare enough without narrowing the scope of the list down. You must also ignore your personal feelings about the film. For example many of you might sneer at "Brief Encounters" as a railway film. None the less much of it was filmed on a railway station in a bygone era. It's even got trains in it!

Many of these films make it onto our TV screens in the early morning when only a video recorder would be "watching".

If we compile a list of titles we'll know what to look out for?

There were some great documentary series a few years ago (in this GOGs timescale) but I guess they were before many members were born!

There are also loads of "Railfan Videos" available commercially. It would be interesting to read independant reviews of these.

What do you think?

Any constructive opinions welcomed.

Geoff

It's a good idea but probably a huge amount of work if you intend to include rail videos (vs just films with rail/locos included). I have only a few videos - they're informative but variable quality (lots of camera shake & poor sound since the original film is from the 50s and 60s). I wish video makers/publishers would use modern digital techniques to improve these rather than just assemble clips, produce a voice-over and sell.

I guess your proposal would help sort the wheat from the chaff if it also provided a scoring system or recommendations. Good luck!

John Huntley's film archive is now partially indexed on the web at huntleyarchives.com. Their search engine shows 847 films containing railway scenes and gives a brief description of each.

Maybe not quite what you were looking for, but quite interesting to have a browse through.

That great film archivist John Huntley produced a book (remember those!) a few years back on railways on TV & Film.

I think it was about 1 inch thick, (good old public library to the rescue), & contained thousands of references, right from the earliest B&W film, (some French wreck arriving at a station in the early 1900's) to the then modern film productions using railways/scenes using railways.

Bob

Hi Tim, DelticBob and mdanie,

Thanks for this. A really useful link. I think I rather underestimated just how much film there was. A quick search on this page led to a 350 page list of films that had Railways in!!!!

Realistically of course the amount of that which would be "purchasable" in a useful modern viewing format would be strictly limited.

The old Halliwell's guides to Film and the Cinema used to list a few films by topic and content but these were only token selections of the more noteable ones.

I very much agree about the quality of some of the "enthusiasts" videos. The other problem is that there is a lot more to making a film viewable than just "loving your subject" and tracking it relentlessly. You need different viewpoints, Wide Shots, Panning Shots, Close-ups, Big Close-ups etc.etc. Also if you ever tried to do one, you'll know why "narrators" or "voice-over" artists get paid so much money! They actually make things sound interesting even if the subject bores you rigid!

I purchased a DVD on "the Marias Pass in Winter" as the landscape and region interested me. It was well shot in high end DV and most shots were steady tripod mounted stuff. Some of the photography was exceptionally good. Even so I never actually managed to watch it in one sitting. It was boring to me....... and I was actually interested in the subject.

Perhaps this would be another area where we could present reviews, although I blush at suggesting this as I haven't "put my money where my mouth is" and produced any of the book reviews that I suggested earlier on the Forums. It's getting higher on my "to do list" and you can shoot me down in flames if I don't come up with the goods.

Thanks again for your help and the leads. Hopefully someone may post some more

Geoff.

P.S. Thanks for the mail Dave