The Titfield Thunderbolt



A 1950s comedy film produced by Ealing Studios set on a fictional British branch line between Titfield and Mallingford which has been condemned for closure by British Railways. Vicar Sam Weech, the village vicar, and Squire Gordon Chesterford, the grandson of the founder of the branch line, decide to buy the branch line and operate it themselves, with the help of a sizable donation from Walter Valentine, a wealthy regular at the local pub.

This plan is bitterly opposed by the local bus company, who were looking forward to a monopoly with the closer of the railway and call those wanting to run the Railway "Amateurs", they are also viewed with some trepidation by George Blakeworth, the town clerk.

After an inquiry where both sides put forward their arguments for and against the railway being run by the amateurs, those wishing to run the railway are granted month's trial period before a Railway inspector comes to decide if they can sufficiently run the railway. Weech puts himself in the position of Driver, Mr Valentine puts forward Dan Taylor, a retired railwayman who live in a field in an old railway Carriage, for the position of fireman and Chesterford takes up the position of guard.

After the bus company attempts at sabotaging the railway's work, Including blocking a crossing with a lorry full of bricks which is pushed aside by the train, leading to a jousting match between the steamroller and the train, and shooting holes in the water tower, leaving the passengers of the train to dash to a nearby farm to get containers to get water to the engine from a nearby river before the engine blows up, The railway becomes a huge success so the bus company offers a merger between them and the railway, which is outright refused so the bus company derail the branch line's only engine and carriage on the eve before the inspection and the town clerk is mistakenly arrested for derailing the engine after trying to stop the runaway train before it crashed.

Valentine and Taylor get drunk and take a pump trolley to Mallingford to steal another engine for the railway. This plan goes awry when they drive the engine through the town across a park and into a tree. Meanwhile, Weech figures out where they can get an engine from for the inspection and rushes to the police station to release the town clerk. As they are wheeling the old engine out of the museum Weech realises that they haven't got a carriage to which the clerk says that Taylor can help them. So they they take Taylor's home and stick it on a flatbed truck.

The next morning the Inspector arrives to see the ensemble the railway has put on to replace the damaged engine and carriage, but not before Ollie Matthews, The Bishop of Welchester, a fellow railway enthusiast and an old friend of Weech's, shows up for a visit and is drafted in as fireman because Taylor and Valentine were arrested after the previous night's antics. They are told by the local handyman that he's had to use rope to connect the engine to the flatbed because of the incompatible couplings between the two. Because the engine only has a weak handbrake if they stop the train suddenly using the brakevan's stronger brake the weight of the whole train would be put on the rope connecting the flatbed to the tender. The lorry taking Taylor and Valentine to prison crashes with the bus from the rival bus company, the owners of which assume they've been rumbled causing one of them to admit their crimes.

Back at the station the train starts to leave but is stopped, putting strain on the rope, and commandeered by the police to take them to Mallingford with the prisoners, now consisting of Valentine, Taylor and the two bus company owners. The train then continues until the inspector decides to test the emergency brake and the rope snaps, leaving the carriage and brakevan at a stand still and the engine continuing onwards. Chesterford ropes in several locals to help push the stranded train down the hill to catch up with the engine which had come to a halt by the now repaired water tower, on the way they borrow a set of Chains from the Steamroller they jousted with, to replace the rope.

Once the train is recoupled to the engine they set off again, feeling there is now no hope of them making it on time after all the delays. They arrive at Mallingford ten minutes late and feel all is lost. They are then informed that had they exceeded an average speed of 25 mph, the Maximum speed allowed on Light Railways, they would have failed. The Villagers celebrate and the other drivers at the station blow their engines' whistles in celebration of their Success

The story is based on the preservation efforts of a group of people that went on to save the Talyllyn Railway, which could be classified as a Cool Railway, entirely worked, preserved, and funded by volunteers and indeed the first Preserved Railway in Britain.

This film provide examples of:

 * Arson Murder and Jaywalking: The long list of charges against Valentine and Taylor, amounting to stealing a locomotive and driving it through a town, including 'being drunk and disorderly,' 'driving an unlicensed vehicle on the highway,' 'defective tyres' and other minor offences.
 * Break Out the Museum Piece: The Titular Thunderbolt
 * Cool Train: Two of them; The first is a generally normal-looking tank engine, a BR 14xx Tank engine to be exact, used to joust against a steamroller. Not forgetting the titular Thunderbolt. It should be noted that Lion, the engine that played Thunderbolt, was well over 100 years old at the time the film was made.
 * Free Wheel: when the railway's first locomotive is derailed.
 * National Rail
 * Rail Enthusiast: Vicar Sam Weech and Ollie Matthews, the Bishop of Welchester are both this
 * The Vicar