Production
Shooting was largely carried out near Bath, England, on the recently closed Bristol and North Somerset Railway branch line along the Cam Brook valley between Camerton and Limpley Stoke, formerly part of the Great Western Railway. Titfield station was in reality Monkton Combe station, whilst Titfield village was nearby Freshford, with other scenes being shot at the disused Dunkerton colliery. Mallingford station in the closing scene was Bristol Temple Meads. The opening scene shows Midford Viaduct on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, where the branch passed under the viaduct. The scene featuring Sid James' character's traction engine, and the Squire's attempts to overtake it, was filmed in Carlingcott.
The scene, where a replacement locomtive is 'stolen' was filmed in the Oxfordshire Village of Woodstock. The 'locomtive' was a wooden mock-up mounted on a lorry chassis; the rubber tyres can (just) be spotted sitting inside the driving wheels.
The locomotive is an actual antique museum resident, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway locomotive Lion, built in 1838 and so at the time 114 years old. Lion is one of the earliest British locomotives, only nine years younger than Stephenson's Rocket, and really under steam in the film. It was repainted in a colourful red and green livery to suit the Technicolor cameras. In filming the scene in which the Thunderbolt is "rear-ended" by the uncoupled train, the locomotive's tender sustained some actual damage, which remains visible beneath the buffer beam to this day. The scene where Thunderbolt is removed at night from its museum was done with a full-size wooden prop and was filmed in the (now demolished) Imperial College building opposite the Royal Albert Hall
Read more about this topic: The Titfield Thunderbolt
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“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)