South Wales has been a popular location for film and TV producers for many decades. Everything from Sci-Fi such as Dr Who to dramas like District Nurse via James Bond and much more have been filmed all over the country. This Visit Wales page lists just a few of them, largely since 2000. But railway structures have not usually played a prominent role!
Considered one of the wonders of the industrial revolution in Britain, the Crumlin Viaduct carried trains across the River Ebbw for over a century. It might have existed on a different planet to the one inhabited by Hollywood film-makers! As a result, however, of the changing face of transport, fewer and fewer trains crossed the structure following the Second World War. The decision was made to close and demolish the viaduct in the 1960s. Being immortalized on film was the last chance of a moment of glory. The ultimate supporting actor, as it were!
Appearing in countless engravings, photographs and paintings, plenty has been written about the viaduct. Nevertheless, it is worth quickly recounting the facts as context to the following story.
During the mid-1840s the recently opened Isambard Kingdom Brunel engineered Taff Vale Railway (TVR) dominated the transport of iron and coal from the Taff and Rhondda valleys to Cardiff Docks. The costs charged by the TVR combined with a need to get their products quickly to the English Midlands meant that ironmasters were desperate for a quicker and cheaper competitor.
An iron giant spanning the Ebbw and Kendon valleys
Meanwhile, the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) was developing a convoluted route through the Welsh/Englsh border. This allowed the movement of goods from the industrial towns of Pontypool and the Ebbw Valley to Hereford (see our review of the book Origins of the LMS in South Wales)
On 3 August 1846 Parliament approved a Bill for the construction of a line known as the Taff Vale Extension (coloured red on the map above). This ran from a connection with the LNWR controlled line at Coedygric North Junction near Pontypool. It joined the TVR and Great Western Railways (GWR) at Quakers Yard. The Rhymney, Taff and Rhondda Valleys were then accessed directly without having the long detour down the TVR to the South Wales Main Railway near the coast.
Crucial to the proposed route was a viaduct across the Ebbw and Kendon valleys. This was duly opened on Whit Monday, 1st June 1857. The location was around four or five miles west of Pontypool at the then small village of Crumlin.
Spanning both valleys, it was 1650 feet long and rose two hundred feet above the valley floor at its highest point. This made it the highest railway viaduct in the United Kingdom. It retained this record throughout its lifelime, also holding the accolade of beings the least expensive bridge for its size ever constructed. By the way, the LNWR eventually lost out! The Newport, Abergavenny and Pontypool Railway was merged into the West Midlands and taken over by the GWR! Such are the winds of fate.
The fall of the ‘Iron Giant’
One hundred and seven years later and suffering from a lack of traffic, the Beeching cuts spelled the end for the ‘iron giant’. The Taff Vale Extension line closed in 1964. On the 13th June the last passenger train (the 21:10 from Pontypool to Treherbert) passed over the Viaduct. Once the trains stopped ,the ongoing cost of maintaining the bridge threw its future into doubt.
In a BBC Wales history blog post, Phil Carradice noted the decision to close the viaduct:
“By the early 1960s the line was barely used and the decision to close was made.
The last train rumbled over the viaduct in 1964 and, despite proposals to save the unique structure, it was decided that it was in too bad a state of disrepair.”
Carradice, 2011
Demolition work began in 1965, but the work was beset with issues and progress was slow. The following year (1966) director Stanley Donen was looking for a location to set the climax of his action movie, Arabesque. His choice was Crumlin. The film was based on a 1961 novel by Alex Gordon (AKA Gordon Cotler) and followed another thriller by Donen, 1963’s Charades. Arabesque received a lightweight comedy-thriller treatment with innovative, though garish, Sixties camera effects. Movie database IMDB sums up the sub-Hitchcockian plot succinctly:
“Story of international intrigue involving a university professor, an Arab prime minister, a ruthless businessman, a beautiful spy, and hieroglyphics.”
Hollywood, Horses and Helicopters
Gregory Peck plays the Oxford Professor, David Pollock, who deciphers the set of strange Egyptian hieroglyphics. Being a thriller, this inevitably leads him into trouble and fleeing for his life from the inevitable baddies. The Crumlin scene sees Peck along with co-stars Sophia Loren (the beautiful spy!), and Carl Duering end up on the viaduct on horseback. Attempting to escape from bad guy Beshravvi (played by Alan Badel) who is firing at them from a helicopter, they climb down to the lower deck. Somewhat incredibly the Professor (Peck) sends the helicopter crashing down by hurling a ladder at the machine!
Robert Horswill of the railway movie database describes the location:
“There are some excellent shots of the viaduct which passed over the Ebbw River and the Western Valleys Line between Llanhilleth and Crumlin (Low Level) stations. Look closely, and in one aerial shot from the viaduct, the former Crumlin (Low Level) station can be seen still intact, despite its closure to passenger services from 30th April 1962.”
The Crumlin scene was, however, perfectly in keeping with the approach forced on the director by circumstance. The film’s cinematographer Christopher Challis explained the problem:
“The more the script was rewritten, the worse it got.”
But, since stars Peck and Loren already contracted to do the film, Donen figured that his only hope was to make it so visually exciting the audience would never have time to work out what was going on. It was to work out well for Challis. Arabesque won him the 1966 BAFTA for Best Cimematography!
YouTube hosts a lovely twelve minute film showing this scene being filmed.
In a 2017 article in the South Wales Argus about Gwent locations in movies, Martin Wade describes the less than star-like conditions they endured filming on location:
“In film shot on the set, both Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren can be seen tottering over mud to get to their not very salubrious caravan. Thankfully the Monmouthshire Division of St John Ambulance were also on duty in case of emergencies, like if bits of a fake helicopter fall on you.”
An enduring memory and a poet’s inspiration
The arrival of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars along with a full film crew naturally attracted a huge amount of interest and curiosity from the residents in Crumlin and beyond. As Christopher Bellew mentions:
“The locals are loving it and Peck and Loren seem tolerant of their intrusiveness. The caravans are truly deplorable, even for 1965.”
An ITV Wales feature on the viaduct included resident Keith Lloyd who well remembered the experience. His story bears out the accommodating natures of Peck and Loren.
“We couldn’t believe it, seeing these two famous stars. They were the most down to earth people that you’d ever meet and they’d chat away to you like you were their next of kin.”
The Crumlin Navigation Oral History Project (financed by the Heritage Lottery fund) was set up to mark the 50th anniversary of the closure of nearby Navigation colliery. The reminiscences of participants Peter and Mary give a sense of excitement at the Arabesque filming which was still palpable even after the passage of decades. Plus they all went to see the film when it came out!
Arabesque filming also made it into the collection of poet Jonathan Edwards, which was nominated for a Costa Poetry award. Writing in 2015 his article is available on the Wales Online site. The poem in question, based on real world experience, imagines Peck stepping from a Rolls Royce and spying a young man with dark curly hair, leaning against a clapped-out 1930s Lanchester. Loren meanwhile steps from her Rolls Royce to a clack of heels that shook the earth! Edwards then reveals the origin of the story:
“It was at that point when the young man, shaking slightly himself, stepped forward with a copy of the South Wales Argus and a pen, and asked two of the most famous people on the planet to sign their names.
That copy of the South Wales Argus now sits in pride of place in my parents’ living room. The young man in question was my father.”
The Final Swansong of a Photogenic Star
The movie industry has been home to the most photogenic people in the entertainment industry. It is only suitable therefore that one of its productions featured one of the most photogenic locations in South Wales railway history. Just like the fading stars of Hollywood the railway which fed the Crumlin Viaduct failed to stand the test of time. This meant that the structure was rendered irrelevant, despite heroic attempts to save it and sadly just before much rail infrastructure found alternative uses as scenic walking routes, cyclepaths and tourist attractions. As such the Crumlin Viaduct in Arabesque stands as a silver screen epitaph.