The Ghost Train

John Manners - Charles Murdock
Guy Newall - Teddy Deakin
Louis Ralph - Soul Hodgkin

This earliest film version of Arnold Ridley's popular theatrical play The Ghost Train was filmed at Germanys UFA Studios by a British cast and crew. Guy Newall stars as Teddy Deakin, one of several railroad passengers stranded on a winter’s night in a remote Cornish train station. Adding to the passengers discomfort is the legend that a ‘ghost train’ has haunted the station for 20 years ever since a train went off a nearby bridge into the river. Locals say the phantom train runs along an abandoned rail line, bringing sudden death in its wake. It turns out that the ghost train is a hoax, perpetrated by a gang of gunrunners to cover up their activities. But the seemingly ineffectual Teddy Deakin offers a few surprises of his own before the villains are thwarted.

Playwright Arnold Ridley is perhaps best remembered today as the kindly Private Godfrey in BBC television's long-running Dad's Army series. He wrote the play whilst enduring a four-hour delay during a train journey from the Midlands, Ridley found himself on the deserted Mangotsfield Station platform and quietly conceived the idea.