by Mark Found

The Isle of Man Steam Railway

This it what it's all about, and not to put to finer point on it, the sight on the platform looked bloody great! Engine number 4, Loch, was our motive power and it looked great bathed in a warm blanket of steam. Our cameraman for the trip, John Collins, is also a rail enthusiast and he was in seventh heaven - and I think he made a pretty good job of capturing the ambience surrounding the loco for our piece. We also got to speak to John the driver and Brian the firemen. Together they've got well over seventy years experience on the engines, John having started on the railway in 1961!

One of the great pluses of working with a film crew is that you can get people to, well, do things for you. For instance, we said to John that we would be a bit further down the line as the train passes quite close to the sea. "Any chance of giving us a bit on the whistle?" we asked. John duly obliged and you can see the end result in the piece on tele. Nice. And what about the shot of the loco entering Santon? Doesn't it look great with steam emanating from every pore? Terrific.

It's a shame that we have to edit stuff down fore the television, it's all about fitting it into a programme that's only 25 minutes long. We did get to travel on the train as far as Port Erin, and we saw the weed killing train at Port Soderick, but, unfortunately neither footage made it in. You can see a couple of stills on this page though. Apologies for that, but, hey! why don't you get over there and try it for yourself?

Trainspotting.links (will open in a new window)

Oakwood Press
make high quality videos, and have several on this subject.
Isle of Man
has its' own website for tourists, and very good it is too.
Isle of Man Transport Heritage
this has links to all the railway websites

www.iomguide.com/transportation

very good website, and has lots of useful links

Books

loads on this subject, but I really enjoy "The Railways and Tramways of the Isle of Man" by Barry Edwards and published by OPC. Great pictures and well written text.