Long before he became known for writing the novels that would inspire Hollywood blockbusters such as such Jurassic Park or Twister, Michael Crichton discovered the story of the three boxes of gold bullion stolen from a South Eastern Railway train on May 15 1855. He wrote the novel The Great Train Robbery in 1975, which was turned into a film, the First Great Train Robbery, starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down, in 1978.
The film depicts the southeast of England in the Victorian era. However, the railway sequences in this adventure were actually filmed in the Republic of Ireland, on the former Midland & Great Western Railway line between Athlone and Mullingar.
This line had the advantage of being lightly trafficked (it now has no traffic, having closed in the late 1980s) and ran through an area devoid of modern intrusions. A further advantage was that
