The following are three "lost" railroad movies that historians would like to locate for preservation. Anyone with information about these films please email John Kilbribe, President, Camden & Amboy Railroad Historical Group at jktrr@msn.com. Also, feel free to copy and re-post or email to anyone you think can help find these films.
1. Title of the first I think is, "One Minute's Wait," a hilarious movie of only about an hour, made in b&w in the UK (in I believe the early 1950s) about a little narrow-gage train in Ireland that's about ready to depart a tiny Irish station in the bog country. But, over & over again, some absurd or LOL incident occurs (among the funniest - an escaped dog, the pet of a boarding passenger; misplaced luggage; and perhaps the sotted engine crew in the pub inside the depot [it's Ireland] -- after about a half-dozen of these delays). And so, time & again, the stationmaster on the platform hollers in Irish brogue, "there'll be just one minute's wait," with ever-increasing frustration. There's a snooty & arrogant English couple riding in the last and only 1st-class car on the little train who become the butts of much of the humor -- even at the very conclusion of the film: in a 5-second shot, a hand (you only see the hand) of a railway man closes the vacuum brake line and quietly pulls the pin on the last car ... in the following & last shot, the train tootles off, leaving the snooty English couple behind (remember, it's Ireland), and "The End" (looking of course at the receding "new" rear end of the train) ... and, roll the post-film credits.
2. The second, and I'm pretty sure of the title, "A Steam Train Passes," made in color in Australia, in I believe the 1970s. It's an historical documentary style re-creation (about 30 minutes long, if I recall it right) using fully authentic period yard & engine house scenes, scenics, stations, and costumes of the 1940s during WWII. The storyline revolves around a day in the life of a streamlined, bullet-nosed, coal-fired Pacific - steaming in the roundhouse, its crew arriving in the pre-dawn & getting the fire up for a run, warming coffee or tea on the backhead, taking coal & water, getting its train as the sun rises, and running thru the countryside (gorgeous long shots, shots from the locomotive, shots of the loco from the loco, and pan shots), while stopping at stations for passengers leaving or getting on, some of whom are Aussie soldiers. At the last, the loco rolls slowly with its hostler into its roundhouse stall and to the engine house crew's care well after dusk. There's no narration, and there's not much dialogue you can actually hear - just the sound of conversations (in the roundhouse, in the cab, in waiting rooms, aboard the train, on platforms) that are just far enough away or masked by other natural or train and depot sounds, such that you can't make out most of the words. Even friends in Australia can't place it. It's a drop-dead gorgeous film, and a real "time-machine."
3. The third film is a silent movie that featured a trip on the Camden and Amboy. It was named something like "My Train Voyage", and was very funny. Believed to have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York about 20 years ago.