Another example is in Agatha Christie’s short story The Girl in the Train (1924) which features a dissolute playboy, George Rowland, who has taken a train from Waterloo to a place he spots in an ABC guide called Rowland’s Castle. The journey changes his life dramatically when a beautiful girl bursts into his first-class compartment begging to be hidden from a villainous foreign man who then appears at the window and angrily demands that Rowland gives his niece back. The chivalrous George calls a platform guard who detains the man. The train departs and the adventure begins.
In Dinah Mulock Craik’s (1826-1887) A Life for a Life (1859) a passenger notes the perils from drunks of travelling in a carriage late in the day:
I am liable to meet at least one drunken ‘gentleman’ snoozing in his first-class carriage; or, in second class, two or three drunken men, singing, swearing, or pushed stupidly about by pale-faced wives. The ‘gentleman’, often grey-haired, is but ‘merry’, as he is accustomed to be every night of his life; the poor man has only ‘had a drop or two’, as all his comrades are in the habit of taking, whenever they get the chance: they see no disgrace in it…It makes me sick at heart sometimes to see a decent, pretty girl sit tittering at a foul-mouthed beast opposite; or a tidy young mother, with two or three bonnie children, trying to coax home, without harm to himself or them, some brutish husband, who does not know his right hand from his left, so utterly stupid is he with drink.
A more eerie story is Basil Cooper’s The Second Passenger (1973) where a man travels in an empty third-class carriage from Charing Cross and reflects on his past. The passenger is not all he seems in this macabre tale of a tall figure, green slime and a porter shouting ‘what was it?’
The success of Britain’s early railways inspired groups of businessmen to plan extensions to the rail system. Many did so with good intentions, others were no more than conmen and criminals. This latter group had no intention of building a railway, despite promises to investors who had lodged money with them. During the 1840s accusations of fraud and corruption abounded. Fraudulent and greedy railway speculators come under critical scrutiny in Anthony Trollope’s (1815-1882) The Way We Live Now (1875). The central character, Augustus Melmotte, is a mysterious international financier described as a ‘rich scoundrel… a bloated swindler… and a vile city ruffian’ who desires to be accepted into the influential circles of Victorian society. He believes he has almost achieved this when he convinces a number of prominent London businessmen of a get-rich-quick scheme which turns out to be a corrupt corporation with the impressive name of the Great South Central Pacific & Mexican Railway. Among those convinced are the Carburys, an aristocratic but cash-strapped family desperate to recoup their fortunes by whatever means necessary.
In between the financial goings-on there are romances such as the one-sided romance between Melmotte’s daughter Marie and the dissolute Sir Felix Carbury. The novel also includes the exploits of an American adventuress with a predilection for shooting her lovers. Melmotte manages to get himself accepted into high society as well as being elected as an MP on the strength of his dealings in railway stock which entail borrowing huge sums of money for other ambitious projects. Melmotte is eventually exposed by one of his creditors, Paul Montague, who does not wish to be a part of Melmotte’s fraudulent deals. The railroad company’s stock begins to plunge causing Melmotte’s fortunes to sink as quickly as they rose. Meanwhile his angry creditors try to press for payment on their rapidly sinking investment.
What Trollope effectively does (and this has a contemporary ring) is to turn a critical eye not only on the aristocratic and middle class sections of society but also anyone who blindly worships money and aspires to have it. The sycophants who sucked up to Melmotte, like those who toadied to presentday financiers, get their fingers burnt. The aristocracy, in typically hypocritical fashion, was always happy to attend the parties at Melmotte’s house and partake of his generous hospitality but now they spurn him. Shades of Hudson.
A comprehensive knowledge of railways was the defining mark of the stories written by Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957). Opinions differ over Crofts. Some consider him to be the doyen of British railway crime writing whilst others, less kindly, view his work as humdrum and plodding. For Crofts, attention to a well-constructed timetable could take precedence over human emotion, intrigue or evil cunning. Born in Dublin he worked in railway engineering and wrote detective stories as and when he could. His long series of novels, written between 1920 and 1957, feature his best-known character, Inspector French.
Writing in what is often regarded as the ‘Golden Age of Crime Fiction’, which was the 1920s to the 1940s, his books included The Cask (1920), The Sea Mystery (1928), The 12:30 from Croydon (1934), Death of a Train (1946) and Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express: And Other Stories (1956). In Inspector French’s Greatest Case (1925), a clerk of a diamond merchant firm is found murdered and the safe plundered. Inspector French painstakingly analyses railway timetables (his specialism) as part of his attempt to track the suspects. In many of his books, Crofts demonstrates a detailed knowledge of the railway network and its complexities, as if he enjoys showing off this knowledge and perhaps when it is not always germane to the plot.
In Crime on the Footplate (1955) Crofts starts in his trademark style: ‘The August day was stifling as the 11.55a.m. express from Leeds beat heavily up the grade towards the summit in the foothills of the Pennines. From there the run down to Carlisle would be easy and rapid. The train was on time and travelling at the full thirty miles an hour customary at the place… All seemed well with the train, yet all was not well.’ All was not well indeed, because on the footplate Fireman Grover was planning to murder his driver, William Deane.
Railway tunnels feature as crime scenes in many narratives. In the short story The Mystery of the Felwyn Tunnel (1898) by L.T. (Elizabeth Thomasina) Meade (1854-1914), Robert Eustace, a signalman has been found dead at the mouth of a tunnel in suspicious circumstances. Shortly after another signalman is also discovered dead in the same place. The Lytton Vale Railway Company in Wales calls in a detective to solve the mystery and the investigation begins.
Railway tracks are the setting for the discovery of a horribly mangled body that appears to have been dragged along by a train in Dead on the Track (1943), by John Rhode. In another story by Rhode, Death on the Boat Train (1940), Waterloo station is the site where a dead body is found following the arrival of the Southampton boat train. Another variation on the railway station is Margery Allingham’s Dancers in Mourning (1937) where a bomb planted at a station blows up a murder suspect. Ethel Lina White’s (1876-1944) short story, Cheese (1941), which appears in Peter Haining’s collection Murder on the Railways (1996), sees Victoria station as the location for a tale of murder. Interestingly, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film The Lady Vanishes (1938) is based on the novel The Wheel Spins (1936) by White.
Anthony Trollope (1815-82) achieved success with his ‘Barchester’ novels with their effective plots and characterisation. He used trains extensively during his time as a Post Office Surveyor. In that role, he was responsible for the erection of some of the earliest postal pillar boxes; in this case in the Channel Islands.
Train crashes are not always what they seem. A suspicious accident involving a steam engine and an electric train is the theme in The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem (News of the World 24-31 August 1913) by Ernest Bramah. ‘An ordinary Central and Suburban passenger train, travelling non-stop at Knight’s Cross, ran past the signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just beginning to move out… For the first time on an English railway there was a good stand-up smash between a heavy steam engine and a train of light cars… Twenty-seven killed, forty something injured, eight died since… But was the engine-driver responsible?’
No doubt if most people were asked to name a story involving both railways and crime they would probably say Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) by John Buchan which has also been adapted into a number of film versions. The nov
el, which introduces the famous adventuring hero, Richard Hannay, is set in 1914. Hannay hears of a plot to destabilise Europe beginning with a plan to assassinate the Greek Premier. Our hero is soon fleeing from German spies. Hannay decides to go to Scotland and a ‘search in Bradshaw informed [him] that a train left St Pancras at 7.10’ and would arrive at any Galloway station in the late afternoon. As the train progressed through Scotland, it ‘rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.’ The film has a different take on the railway journey but more of that later.
More recent books about railway crime include those by Andrew Martin and there is no ambiguity about the subject of his books with titles such as The Necropolis Railway (2002), The Lost Luggage Porter (2006), Murder at Deviation Point (2007), Death on a Branch Line (2008), and The Last Train to Scarborough (2009). The first of these, The Necropolis Railway, is set against the engine sheds around Nine Elms, Waterloo and the eponymous Necropolis Railway at Brookwood at the turn of the nineteenth century. The central character is Jim Stringer who starts his career on the railways only to find that his predecessors have met a premature and gruesome end. It seems that Stringer might become the next victim.
Edward Marston is another contemporary writer who has written some forty crime novels. His series about the railways involves the dandy Robert Colbeck, an Inspector in the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police in the nineteenth century. Marston’s books include The Railway Detective, The Excursion Train, The Railway Viaduct, The Iron Horse and Murder on the Brighton Express. The Railway Detective is set in 1851 where the London to Birmingham mail train is stopped and derailed, seriously injuring the driver. Colbeck is faced with solving the well-organised train robbery.
In Underground (2000) by Tobias Hill, a mysterious person is pushing women under trains, and a Polish immigrant who works at a north London station – a loner with a complicated past and a secret fear of the dark – is determined to stop the killings.
These, and other, contemporary writers continue a tradition as old as the railways and by so doing reflect an ongoing interest and enthusiasm for those particular areas that still carry a fascination: railways, crime and reading.
The entrance to the former Necropolis Railway part of Waterloo station. The Necropolis Railway opened in 1854 connecting Waterloo with Brookwood cemetery near Woking. Much of this part of the station was destroyed by enemy action in the Second World War.
John Huntly aptly makes the point in his book, Railways and the Cinema (1969) that ‘like the steam locomotive, there is no exact moment in time when the cinema came into existence.’ Whenever that moment was, film-makers quickly tapped into the potential of railways as an ideal subject for films. Starting with a range of silent documentaries such as Express Trains (1898), Railway Ride Over the Tay Bridge (1897) and Building a British Railway (1905), feature films soon followed. Typically it was the United States that responded to this with films such as The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Lost Freight Car (1911) and Helen’s Sacrifice (1914).
British film-makers followed with When the Devil Drives (1907), a rather surreal film, in which a taxi driver of a four-wheeled cab takes a suburban family to a railway station. Suddenly the cab driver changes into the Devil. As he arrives at the station he then mysteriously vanishes, leaving the confused passengers alone with their luggage. As they board the train and settle down the Devil reappears, this time as the train driver. The Devil gets rid of the driver and his mate and then embarks on an incredible journey, much to the anguish of the terrified passengers. The film ends with a close-up of the Devil’s manic, laughing face. Following the success of American serials such as The Hazards of Helen, British attempts at the genre included Lieutenant Daring and the Plans of the Minefields (1913), which involved villains travelling by train from Charing Cross to Folkstone.
Towards the end of the silent era The Wrecker (1929) was adapted into film by Gainsborough from a stage play written by Arnold Ridley. The story concerns an engine driver who believes his engine is malevolent. His fears are confirmed in the finale when there is a huge train crash. Arnold Ridley (1896-1984), probably more well known for his role as Private Charles Godfrey in Dad’s Army which ran on television from 1968 to 1977, also wrote The Ghost Train (1923) which was a huge success for over two years when performed at St Martin’s theatre in London. It was later adapted into a film, first in 1931 with the comedian Jack Hulbert and the better known version in 1941 starring Arthur Askey. Ridley’s inspiration for writing the play came from stories he had heard about Mangotsfield station in Bristol, closed in 1962. The 1931 version made generous use of the Great Western Railway with a number of scenic shots en route from Paddington.
The Ghost Train centres on a group of passengers travelling to Cornwall who miss their connection and have to spend the night in the waiting room of a remote and eerie railway station called Fal Vale. While they wait, an agitated stationmaster tries to persuade them to leave because, he warns them, there is a local legend of a ghost train that brings doom and death to all who see it. During the night the stationmaster is murdered and tensions begin to mount. However, as we discover later, the train is in fact smuggling arms and the story has been concocted to frighten away strangers.
Gainsborough also made the 1941 remake of The Ghost Train. This film was made at the Lime Grove studios because railway stations were unavailable for filming during the war. The film was shot in several locations around Devon and Cornwall. In addition to Askey (who plays Tommy Gander, a concert comedian) it included his straight-man Richard ‘Stinker’ Murdoch (1907-1990) who played Teddy Deakin. Many would regard Arthur Askey’s inane antics as spoiling what is otherwise a good film.
Although the sound film appeared in Britain in 1928, there were still long periods of silent footage. The Flying Scotsman (1930) which starred Ray Milland was such an example, and for the first half-hour it was silent. In the film an elderly engine driver, who is due to retire the following day, reports a fireman for drunkenness. The angry fireman sets out to get revenge by striking the driver on what is his last journey. The daughter of the driver comes to the rescue by taking over the train and bringing it to an eventual standstill. Despite some unfavourable reviews the film endeared itself to railway enthusiasts by depicting many scenes showing locomotives and trains of the London & North Eastern Railway.
More interestingly, according to John Huntley, the director Castleton Knight managed to make use of Gresley Pacific No.4472 Flying Scotsman for ten Sunday mornings from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. In the 1933 film Friday the Thirteenth (nothing to do with the ‘slasher’ series of films) with Jessie Matthews and comedian Max Miller, King’s Cross station is used as the location in which to introduce two of the main characters.
The Silent Passenger (1935) was the first adaptation of a Dorothy L. Sayer’s story involving Lord Peter Wimsey (played by Peter Haddon). The story, which was written specifically for the screen, involves a scurrilous blackmailer who is murdered by the husband of one of his victims, railroad detective Henry Camberley (Henry Wolfit). However, it is the innocent John Ryder (John Loder) who is suspected of the crime when Camberley stuffs the dead body into his trunk. Wimsey sets about to prove his new friend’s innocence and the action takes place on a train trip from London to the English Channel.
Flying Scotsman at Doncaster resplendent in London & North Eastern Railway apple green livery. Opinion continues to be divided about the aesthetic effect of the later modifications with the German-style smoke deflectors and the double chimney. This is arguably the world’s most famous steam locomotive.
Kate Plus Ten (1937), which features some lively sequences of trains at speed, is a light-hearted comedy based on an Edgar Wallace novel written in 1917. The eponymous Kate Westhanger (Genevieve Tobin) is the leader of a gang of crooks as well as secretary to Lord Flamborough. Kate and her gang are planning to rob Flamborough’s £600,000 gold
bullion shipment which is on a train between Seahampton and London (the scenes were filmed in and around Bath). Scotland Yard Inspector Mike Pemberton (Jack Hulbert) is onto Kate’s scheme and unbeknown to Kate the gang members are double-crossing her. As the bullion arrives at Seahampton docks the thieves uncouple the carriage and make off with the bullion on a runaway train. Kate and Inspector Pemberton board a locomotive in an attempt to cut off the gang’s getaway cars.
Another film dealing with car and train chases and starring Jack Hulbert again in the pursuit of thieves is Bulldog Jack (1935). Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond (Atholl Fleming) is injured when his sabotaged car is involved in a crash, and so Jack Pennington (Hulbert), a first-class cricketer, agrees to impersonate Drummond in order to help the heroine, Ann Manders (Fay Wray). She needs to find her jeweller grandfather who has been kidnapped by a gang of crooks who want him to copy a valuable necklace which they intend to steal. Their plan backfires in the British Museum and the film climaxes in an exciting chase on a runaway train in the London Underground. The interesting railway part of the film includes a number of scenes shot at the disused British Museum tube station which was closed in 1933.
Seven Sisters (1936) moves from Nice and Paris to Hampshire and includes a murder, three train crashes and a gunfight. The Last Journey (1936) like The Flying Scotsman, features an engine driver making his last journey. However, in this film the driver, finding it difficult to come to terms with his retirement and dwelling on his domestic problems, drives his train at breakneck speed, ignoring all signals. As the passengers become increasingly fearful they all wish they knew how to stop the train. The passengers include two petty criminals, a crook in a bigamous marriage and a detective in disguise. The Great Western Railway gave full co-operation to the film company, allowing them extensive use of track and signal boxes, trains and coaches as well as providing materials and technical advice.
Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain Page 21