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Author
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Topic: A Train for Christmas
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted May 22, 2015 03:26 PM
The Kingston Flyer under way
A Train for Christmas
1975, New Zealand National Film Unit
(Derann Film Services, 1x200’, Color, Sound)
Let’s hear it for railroad films! This is actually a significant genre of what is available on 8mm film. Crack open a Blackhawk catalog: Kent Eastin himself was a railroad enthusiast and it shows in their offerings. Entire companies existed solely aimed at the railroad film market.
What’s the big deal?
Scripted dramas and comedies shot in studios are wonderful entertainment, but what is special about films like railroad films is they tend to be more based in capturing events and times exactly as they happened. A lot of them aren’t documentaries in the strictest sense either: very often the most interesting ones were some stray railroad fan with a windup camera, a couple of rolls of film and a Model “A” Ford out on the loose many, many decades ago. My first film of any kind was amateur footage captured in 1935 of a long defunct Maine narrow gauge railroad about which I had read everything my teenaged hands could get a hold of. I never dreamed I could actually see it operate, so when I was flipping through a railfan magazine and found out not only was there a film of it in existence, but it was available for sale on Super-8, I bought a copy right away.
–the fact that I didn’t own a projector or a screen be damned!
It was magical: almost time travel. Here I was a kid born 26 years after they pulled up the rails, all of a sudden I was standing gradeside watching these trains running that I had only known from stories and still photographs in books. It’s what got me hooked on collecting films and is still fascinating to me.
That’s what the best of films like these do: they take the viewer to other times and places and give them a window into worlds they can never experience: maybe born too late, maybe on a different continent.
If I had to pick the one film of all the ones I have that is the best at landing a steam locomotive in my living room, it has to be “A Train for Christmas”. It’s time spent with the Kingston Flyer , a steam powered tourist train that once ran on New Zealand’s South Island between Christmas and Easter every year. This service was started only a few months after the final withdrawal of steam from regular service by New Zealand Railways. It met up with a lake steamer at the northern end of the line and allowed people a day out enjoying both. The years since have not been kind, and the Flyer has been suspended and is now up for sale, but you and I can still enjoy it this way.
What makes this film special is the filmmakers set out to capture the essence of steam power and succeeded spectacularly. They were allowed not only to film the Flyer, but actually directed its movements to get the best shots. This wasn’t always to the joy of the train crew: one of them commented “We would have been on time that day if it wasn’t for the ***king film crew!” in a later interview about making the film.
-for the record: this one is a real documentary. It shows a lot of effort and talent and is obviously the work of skilled filmmakers.
This film gets up close and personal with the machine: there are shots of brake pumps and steam electric generators and the open firebox door. There are shots of coaling, inspection of the running gear, turning around on a human propelled turntable and coupling up to the train. There is a wonderful shot taken with a camera mounted on the locomotive’s pilot with the track streaming underneath at what feels like at least 60 MPH. The sound within these scenes is great as well and what makes this the film it is.
In its own way this is a big film: the subject is literally bigger than life and there are a lot of sounds here you never hear indoors. It’s just begging to be released onto the big screen: it certainly belongs there.
I set it free at CineSea 11 a few weeks ago at the Saturday night screening. Between Doug Meltzer’s Xenon GS-1200 and his 10 foot tall screen it did just fine . Normally I keep the films I bring down more general interest than this, but I saw the potential and knew even people not into railroading would appreciate it.
I’m showing my screen shots uncropped for a change: not just the film, but the “theater” too.
-Imagine yourself there on a cool Wildwood night, you brought a comfortable folding chair from home and you have a nice glass of wine in your hand.
We’ll let somebody else run the projector just this once!
Between the fact that this is a small locomotive and it was showing up on a large screen, there are more than a few moments during the film where you are seeing this full size and in close-ups even more.
Derann’s print is wonderful: the color is nice, the image is sharp and the sound is great too. It runs a little on the blue side like many later Deranns did, but it’s not troublesome. The shame here is it’s actually a cut-down. “A Train for Christmas” started out as a twenty-five minute film: what we 8mm folk would call a 600 Footer. It came from Derann as a 200 Footer. What’s missing is a lot of the human interest oriented footage. Since this adds more of a story line, I’d gladly have forked over the difference in cost to see this on my screen as it was meant to be!
You CAN still see it full length right here:
A Train for Christmas
[ May 22, 2015, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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