Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 09, 2006 at 07:15:37 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Why Arctic and not Antarctic ? posted by PeterH on September 08, 2006 at 23:32:20:
Ah yes, having changed from a taper-boilered locomotive to a parallel-boilered one, and back, without stopping. And a firehole door is shown left open when the fireman wasn't firing - this was never done. One must beware of accepting films/TV as 'gospel' about anything.
Well of course, except under very special circumstances. In that case the technical limitations of the kit (film speed, cameras), the sheer shortage of material and the need to tell a coherent story, meant that they flitted from day scenes to night scenes without a blink, mixed locomotives, used the head of a shot in one geographical place and the tail in another. It's strictly 'poetic' truth, and probably true enough at that.
I read that when, recently, a society came to restore one of those Mail coaches, there were no surviving blueprints or instructions and the film was one of the sources of 'what goes where' and how the apparatus functioned. It's remarkable the extent to which facts and ways of life simply disappear unless they're maintained. We see that here, in the discussions about things like stone bottles and telephones.