Yesterday was train day, strike three. And it poured with rain…. but it didn’t matter because we were indoors. It was a very strange experience to have a big roof thing over our heads and some kind of weird light (sunlight, I think they call it) shining about. I can’t count the number of times I thanked God I hadn’t gone ahead with the outdoor location. We would have been up to our knees in mud and all of the models would have been ruined.

I spent Thursday putting the finishing touches on the train. At 2:30pm, a time that will live in infamy, the complete train travelled along the rails for the first time. In the evening I decided to knock off four of the simpler shots in my dad’s garage.

At nine o’ clock in the morning (that’s right, in the morning) we began in earnest on the train shots in the youth centre hall. Aided as ever by Colin, and also by AJ and his mate Mike Staiger (he of the swift death in The Beacon‘s opening melee), we shifted around furniture, old kitchen cupboard doors, the rails and some very handy theatrical flats to create a 15 metre set. We did suffer from some derailment, particularly when the rear wagon had to push along the Mustang, and in the end we put my die-cast DeLorean inside the wagon to weigh it down and keep it from tipping over. (Back to the Future saves the day again.)

We overran (some things never change) but when we wrapped at 7:30pm I was very pleased with what we’d achieved. I cut the shots in today and although some of them will need some further work in the digital domain, a lot of them looking fantastic, particularly the ultimate demise of the vehicle.

Yay! Nothing else difficult to do on this movie! (The countdown to me regretting that statement begins NOW.)

See the stills gallery for photos of the train.