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Replica French/German/Swiss/British (delete as appropriate) locomotive produced and destroyed for new Mission Impossible film.

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Llandudno

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Driving through Derbyshire this lunchtime and I had to a double take, there was a huge French steam loco being transported on a low loader along the A619 between Chesterfield and Baslow.

Does anyone know anything about it and where it was coming from and going to?
 
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Cowley

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Ah. This again… :)

 

birchesgreen

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Lot of railway interest in this film, i saw on twitter that Tom Cruise was filming at Birmingham New St yesterday.
 

D6130

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It's a prop for a Mission Impossible film. A scratch built, self propelling fake steam engine.
Looks very much like a not-too-well-disguised Britannia....nothing like a French loco - they usually had most of their internal pipework on the outside!
 

LowLevel

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Looks very much like a not-too-well-disguised Britannia....nothing like a French loco - they usually had most of their internal pipework on the outside!

It isn't anything but a film production company's fantasy. It was scratch built and it has a power unit for self propulsion in the tender. It cost 7 figures I believe.
 

Townsend Hook

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It isn't anything but a film production company's fantasy. It was scratch built and it has a power unit for self propulsion in the tender. It cost 7 figures I believe.

Although as I recall it does bear such a resemblance to a Brit that when it first appeared at the GCR quite a few enthusiasts seemed to be genuinely believing that it was ‘Britannia’ or ‘Oliver Cromwell’ dressed up..
 

clagmonster

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Does it have train brakes fitted? Would there be any potential for it to work a passenger service once its filming duties are completed?
 

TheEdge

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Although as I recall it does bear such a resemblance to a Brit that when it first appeared at the GCR quite a few enthusiasts seemed to be genuinely believing that it was ‘Britannia’ or ‘Oliver Cromwell’ dressed up..

Apparently its going off a cliff as part of the filming and there are genuinely people clamoring to protect our heritage and save it...
 

LowLevel

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Does it have train brakes fitted? Would there be any potential for it to work a passenger service once its filming duties are completed?

It can move and stop, I'm not sure beyond that. The answer is no though as I believe they're going to destroy it during filming.
 

61653 HTAFC

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Lot of railway interest in this film, i saw on twitter that Tom Cruise was filming at Birmingham New St yesterday.
Sounds like Hollywood budgets have been slashed by the pandemic effects... "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make an invalid 3 minute connection at New Street!" :lol:
 

70014IronDuke

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Apparently its going off a cliff as part of the filming and there are genuinely people clamoring to protect our heritage and save it...

Quite right too! Call in Unesco for World Heritage Protection!

Americans think they can do what they like avec notre heritage - mais nous disons "Non!
C'est une insulte à nos deux Grandes Nations!"


We propose protestation massive, immediatement!

They should be forced to build a replica rather than destroy this beau locomotive à vapeur, original et historique.

:)
 

shaun44

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I just joined the forum to post some close-up shots taken today. Although there is clearly an unusual amount of scaffolding in this loco I am not convinced that there isn't also a large amount of heritage material about to be destroyed. This vehicle has been run at 40mph so it clearly isn't all scrap quality. But given what a poor approximation this is to a French example it is amazing just how much pointless Britannia detail they have bothered to incorporate - if they actually have! Look at the cab sides - a combination of rivets that match Britannia positions exactly, and then hex bolt heads which don't. Why bother with such rivet detail given you're going to weld a skirt under the running boards which is a very basic nod to the required French appearance? Why cast motion parts with holes to which nothing connects? Is that a burn mark in the paint around the firebox washout plug which has been replaced with perforated metal? Why leave a gap for the lube pump in the running plate, with the back part of the mechanism present and damaged, but not the arm because the skirt gets in the way. It doesn't make sense. I'm intrigued - does anyone else have suspicions that "mock-up" is only part of the story and there's rather more actual loco here than they'd want you to know?
 

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LowLevel

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I just joined the forum to post some close-up shots taken today. Although there is clearly an unusual amount of scaffolding in this loco I am not convinced that there isn't also a large amount of heritage material about to be destroyed. This vehicle has been run at 40mph so it clearly isn't all scrap quality. But given what a poor approximation this is to a French example it is amazing just how much pointless Britannia detail they have bothered to incorporate - if they actually have! Look at the cab sides - a combination of rivets that match Britannia positions exactly, and then hex bolt heads which don't. Why bother with such rivet detail given you're going to weld a skirt under the running boards which is a very basic nod to the required French appearance? Why cast motion parts with holes to which nothing connects? Is that a burn mark in the paint around the firebox washout plug which has been replaced with perforated metal? Why leave a gap for the lube pump in the running board, with the back part of the mechanism present and damaged, but not the arm because the skirt gets in the way. It doesn't make sense. I'm intrigued - does anyone else have suspicions that "mock-up" is only part of the story and there's rather more actual loco here than they'd want you to know?

Film makers spend obscene amounts on things they feel to be important. The answer to your theory is a resounding no.

This didn't cost thousands, or hundreds of thousands even to make - that film prop is *several million* pounds worth, they wanted it to look realistic and it needed to be operable too. You could build Tornado again for the same cost.

No doubt they took their inspiration from a Brit or similar but there is nothing in that "loco" that is actually real.
 

DelW

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Clearly the film makers have at last found the location of the Strategic Reserve and extracted a mothballed Britannia from it ...
 

70014IronDuke

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You know that I’ve got to remove any posts referring that don’t you? Otherwise I’ll get a knock on the door…

It's not the knock on the door you've got to watch out for, ...

it's the parapluie in the calfs :)
 

DelW

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I just joined the forum to post some close-up shots taken today. Although there is clearly an unusual amount of scaffolding in this loco I am not convinced that there isn't also a large amount of heritage material about to be destroyed. This vehicle has been run at 40mph so it clearly isn't all scrap quality. But given what a poor approximation this is to a French example it is amazing just how much pointless Britannia detail they have bothered to incorporate - if they actually have! Look at the cab sides - a combination of rivets that match Britannia positions exactly, and then hex bolt heads which don't. Why bother with such rivet detail given you're going to weld a skirt under the running boards which is a very basic nod to the required French appearance? Why cast motion parts with holes to which nothing connects? Is that a burn mark in the paint around the firebox washout plug which has been replaced with perforated metal? Why leave a gap for the lube pump in the running plate, with the back part of the mechanism present and damaged, but not the arm because the skirt gets in the way. It doesn't make sense. I'm intrigued - does anyone else have suspicions that "mock-up" is only part of the story and there's rather more actual loco here than they'd want you to know?
I understand the point you're making, and it is indeed curious that they've chosen to copy a Britannia rather than a genuine French loco of that era - but for your theory to work, there'd surely have had to be at least a substantial chunk of a third Brit kept in storage somewhere for the last fifty years or so. That's not impossible, but it seems unlikely, especially for it not to be fairly widely known about.

The only way that I can think of that it might have come about, is if the prop builders had been able to acquire a significant quantity of used parts removed from one of the real Britannias during overhauls, which would otherwise have gone for scrap, and so were available more cheaply than fabricating them from scratch. They might then have been incorporated into the replica, since it doesn't have to actually run in steam. But would that be a sufficient reason for this odd choice?
 

Gag Halfrunt

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As discussed in the other thread, the replica has to fit the British loading gauge, which might explain why the designers decided to copy a Britannia instead of trying to scale down a French locomotive. Another possibility is that they originally planned to use a real Britannia for some shots.
 

Cowley

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it's the parapluie in the calfs :)

Now that’sh a very good referenshe shir. :lol:

This is a moment when you realise that we’ve become so used to seeing preservation/replica-recreation groups working their backsides off over many many years and fighting for every penny they need. That we’re finding it hard to comprehend a Hollywood film studio just stepping in, clicking their fingers and making something like this without even batting an eyelid, but that’s the reality with something as high budget as this.

I’m pretty sure that either in this thread or one of the other ones discussing it, we worked out that both of the other Brits were accounted for and still retained all of the parts that we see replicated on this strange beast. ;)
 

Ashley Hill

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Perhaps they could build a replica of Kestral for their next film complete with its Russian headlamp! (but not throw it off a cliff afterwards).
 

Spartacus

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Sounds like they’ve scaled up the old Hornby Brit with the motor in the tender and added some plasticard, I hope the tender doesn’t wobble when working hard :lol:
 

krus_aragon

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Perhaps they could build a replica of Kestral for their next film complete with its Russian headlamp! (but not throw it off a cliff afterwards).
The trouble is: if the film doesn't require destruction of a locomotive they'll just hire some existing locomotive in: they've only built this one because they intend to crash it.
 
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