The Titfield Thunderbolt, comedy, 1953

The Titfield Thunderbolt is a 1953 British comedy film directed by Charles Crichton and starring Stanley Holloway, Naunton Wayne, George Relph and John Gregson. The screenplay concerns a group of villagers trying to keep their branch line operating after British Railways decided to close it. The film was written by T. E. B. Clarke and was inspired by the restoration of the narrow gauge Talyllyn Railway in Wales, the world's first heritage railway run by volunteers. The name "Titfield" is an amalgamation of the villages of Limpsfield and Titsey in Surrey, near Clarke's home at Oxted.

The Thunderbolt itself was represented by 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, built only nine years after Stephenson's Rocket and running under its own power in the film. It was repainted in a colourful red and green livery to suit the Technicolor cameras. When 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 filmed in the (now demolished) Imperial Institute building near the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, London. All these shots were made using a studio-built model.

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