20 Things You Didn’t Know About GoldenEye (1995)
10. “He’s Going To Derail Us!”
The sequence set aboard Trevelyan’s intimidating-looking converted ICBM train as it tears through the Russian countryside is a tense one.
Even though the railway looks as though it could be on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, it was actually the Nene Valley Railway in Cambridgeshire, which had previously doubled for a section of East and West German railway twelve years earlier in Octopussy (1983). The innocuous-looking Mill Road Bridge near Castor was adapted to look like a tunnel, complete with a Soviet star for the scene in which the train comes to a shuddering halt thanks to Bond.
Additionally, Natalya Simonova, Xenia Onatopp, and General Ourumov boarded the train at the nearby British Sugar Factory in Woodston, Peterborough, which sadly no longer exists.
The train itself was a British Rail Class 20 diesel-electric locomotive, which was significantly modified at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire to include the battering ram at its head. On-set, it was ominously nicknamed “The Darth Train” after the iconic Star Wars character, Darth Vader.
The carriages were British Rail Mark 2 coaches that were also adapted to look far more threatening before they were driven up with the locomotive to the location near Peterborough on flatbed trucks. Overall, the effect of this self-styled train of death was terrifying both on-set and onscreen.