here can’t be many railway enthusiasts who haven’t seen the celebrated documentary from 1955 which details when BR Standard ‘2MT 2-6-0 No. 78018 got stuck in a snowdrift whilst heading over Stainmore on a minerals train. The weather was so bad that the rescue train did not arrive until five days later, although fortunately for us, it arrived with a film crew also on board. No. 78018’s crew clearly had a rough few days, though the weather was bad everywhere; it was around that time that the morning Ramsey to Douglas train on the Isle of Man Railway (the Isle of Man!) took hours to reach its destination! Not many years after the iconic film was completed, another harsh winter (that of 1963) prompted another BTF documentary – , this time with a jazzy soundtrack as opposed to the curiously ‘Soviet style’ narration of the earlier documentary.
