Cinema: The New Pictures, Oct. 19, 1953

(2 of 2)

The villains in this whimsy are a pair of busline operators who first try to eliminate the line's 50-year-old engine by charging it with a steam roller. Thwarted, they resort to even darker skulduggery by stealing the three-car train at night, derailing and wrecking it. Faced with the loss of their franchise, the embattled citizens raid the town museum, drag out the original 114-year-old Titfield Thunderbolt locomotive and just barely make the required-by-law run to Mallingford. Both actors and plot take a back seat in this film to the charming Technicolor photography of what seems to be an ancient toy railroad running through an equally quaint toy countryside.