A Military Film Star

The Longmoor Military Railway, the army's own standard-gauge railway was a familiar sight in films, writes David Brown

- David Brown

If you've seen the 1966 film The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (TGSTTR), you will already know something about the former Longmoor Military Railway (LMR), whether you realise it or not. While the LMR in Hampshire had been established for military purposes, the location became very useful to film-makers over the years.

Longmoor camp and ranges had been introduced before the Boer War, with a narrow-gauge line used for transporting construction materials. Before World War One, an assortment of narrow- and metre-gauge tracks was used to familiarise personnel with the different systems in use abroad, while a standard-gauge system was developed.

Originally, the facility was known as the Woolmer Instructional Military Railway, changing to The Longmoor Military Railway in 1935. A line opened between Bentley and Bordon in 1918, served by eight passenger trains on weekdays plus some Saturday services. The line between Longmoor and Liss followed in 1935. Through troop trains were run from London Waterloo to Bordon and Liss.

The first record of the system being used for filming purposes was a segment for a silent film, Mons, in 1926. Alfred Hitchcock used the location for scenes in The Secret Agent in 1936 and The Lady Vanishes in 1938. In 1937, Jacques Feyder's A Knight Without Armour, starring Robert Donat and Marlene Dietrich, included some scenes shot at the LMR.

The LMR was used as a location for training films, several of which have been released on video and DVD, while a 1961 Pathé News short, Army Railway, can be seen online at britishpathe.com/asset/37122

Scenes for The Interrupted Journey (1949) were filmed there, starring Richard Todd with Dora Bryan (who would feature in TGSTTR) as a buffet waitress, involving characters on an express train and the consequences involving the pulling of the communication cord.