Bill Fraser as Hedley Green

The Train Now Standing was an LWT sitcom for ITV which ran for two series in 1972 and 1973.

It starred Bill Fraser as Stationmaster Hedley Green, a name that sounds like a railway station itself, but he's been stationmaster of Burberry Halt for the past 30 years, an insignificant little station where only three trains a day stop, near the (fictional) town of Milchester (whether intentional or not Milchester was also the fictional big town near Miss Marple's St Mary Mead village in Agatha Christie's Marple novels). Whilst a contemporary 1972 series somehow the Beeching Axe of the 60s seemed to have forgotten Burberry Halt and the Milchester line even though it is little used. Despite this insignificance the pompous Hedley runs his station as if it were Euston or some other mainline terminal.  Hedley Green is a very old fashioned sort who likes to uphold traditions and standards. Although he's now long under British Rail nationalisation since 1948 he still wears the stationmaster uniform of the former Great Western Railway and carries around and quotes from the 1933 GWR Rule Book! When he's not talking about the railways he's regaling people about his exploits as a Desert Rat under Monty during the Second World War (much like Deryck Guyler's school janitor Potter in Please Sir!)

Under Hedley at the station is dim porter Peter Pringle (Hugh Walters) whilst above him occassionally visiting is Area Manager Mr Potts (Denis Lill). When not at work at the station they can be found at the local pub run by barmaid Rosie (Bill Fraser's real life wife Pamela Cundell, best known as Mrs. Fox in Dad's Army). Locals at the pub and on the railway included George (Norman Mitchell), Mr Foskins (Bartlett Mullins), Fred (Arthur White), Bill (George Waring) and Charlie (Geoff L'Cise).

Several TV critics obviously made comparisons with the classic of the setting, Will Hay's film Oh, Mr Porter!, and in fact Bill Fraser himself in some publicity for the series said "I'd like to think that the results of our efforts will place us somewhere between Oh Mr Porter and The Railway Children". There was even a nod to the Will Hay film in that Hedley also had a knack for kicking the Nestle chocolate vending machine on the platform in just the right place to release a penny chocolate for free,

Unlike a lot of forgotten sitcoms, The Train Now Standing was a reasonable success at the time, both with the TV critics (there were a few dissenters) and the viewing public, so it was recommissioned for a second series but with tweaks and changes. The first series aired on Saturday's in an early afternoon slot of 17:10, almost as if they had no faith in its success but after doing well anyway the second series was moved to peak viewing for a sitcom at 21:30 on Sundays. But only Bill Fraser as Hedley Green and Hugh Walters as Peter Pringle returned from the first series, the large supporting cast were removed or replaced, even Bill's wife Pamela Cundell. Instead Brenda Peters came in as the new barmaid Brenda and Area Manager Mr Potts was replaced by the similarly named Mr Pitts played by Garfield Morgan. The second series also got a longer run of eight episodes instead of seven. Although it did reasonably well it wasn't a runaway success and a third series was not commissioned.

The series ran on ITV as follows;

Series 1

1.1 Double Top - 20/05/1972

Station master Hedley Green is expecting a visit from the Area Manager, Mr Potts, with two important visitors from abroad.

1.2 Just Like Old Times - 27/05/1972

Area Manager Mr Potts is coming to Burberry Halt for the stations' first inspection in 30 years and Hedley isn't happy.

1.3 They Also Serve - 03/06/1972

Hedley learns that the Blue Line buses are running a special cheap day to Milchester.

1.4 Send Him Victorious - 10/06/1972

Burberry Halt prepares for the Best Kept Station contest just as a black spider escapes from its box and runs riot through the station.

1.5 Royal Flush - 17/06/1972

Burberry Halt is preparing for the annual passing through the station of the Royal Train, which usually never stops there but Hedley marks the occassion ceremoniously anyway. This year the Royal Train grinds to an unscheduled halt. 

Ironically, the scheduling of the episode was just as put out as the scheduling of the train! This episode was held up twice for some reason. Initially announced in the papers at episode 3 for 3rd June it was pushed back a week with episode 4 brought forward then it was pushed back a second time with episode 5 going out as episode 4 and Royal Flush finally airing as episode 5 on 17th June.

1.6 The Tannoy - 24/06/1972

Hedley requests a tannoy public address system for the station from the Area Manager and when the request is refused he builds his own loudspeaker providing a customer service complete with commercials and commentary on the train driver's private lives.

1.7 It Never Rains - 01/07/1972

Hedley is determined to celebrate his birthday but the train timetables threaten his shindig. 

Series 2

2.1 Brief Encounter - 27/07/1973

Hedley is speaking of his first love Celia (Gwen Watford) when who should get off the very next train? Hedley's love life becomes the talk of the local pub.

2.2 A Night To Remember - 03/08/1973

The peace of Burberry Halt is disturbed by a series of thefts and obscene phone calls in the local area. Convinced that his station is going to be next, Hedley makes Peter spend the night on guard duty with him.

2.3 Old Glory - 10/08/1973

Hedley goes on a diet and exercise crash course in order to fit into his demob suit, now several sizes too small, at the forthcoming reunion of his wartime regiment. He forces Peter to join him on a cross country run which proves a disaster.

2.4 The Long Goodbye - 17/08/1973

New travel posters go up on the station walls giving Peter the urge to see faraway places.

2.5 The Shape of Things To Come - 24/08/1973

Hedley is very rude to a woman passenger who has lost her parcel and is dumbfounded when he encounters her again under completely different circumstances when he goes for treatment at a health farm, where he suffers for it.

2.6 The Slings and Arrows - 31/08/1973

Pathetic attempts by Hedley and Peter to administer first aid on a passenger who has hurt a leg leads to a major decision. Hedley enters Peter in a first aid competition, with disastrous consequences.

2.7 Goodbye Sailor - 07/09/1973

Burberry Halt is vandalised by unknown persons but after Hedley accuses him, Peter decides to join the Navy.

2.8 Backs to the Wall - 14/09/1973

News of railway closures on the Milchester line have reached Burberry Halt and Hedley and Peter assume the worst for their station. Not prepared to give up without a fight they march on Downing Street with placards in protest.

Made by LWT, they had in fact turned down a similar idea the previous year in a sitcom also about a sleepy little used railway line. That series was to be called Whistle Stop, a pilot and 5 synopsis were written by three unnamed writers but LWT rejected it. Later John Swallow, a journalist on ATV's Birmingham staff, recalling his days as a boy watching the trains on a little-used branch line near Stafford some 20 years earlier, thought up his own idea for such a sitcom, which he developed as an idea with a friend, writer John Watkins, as The Train Now Standing. He offered the series first to ATV, for whom he worked, but they had to turn it down as they didn't have the studio space to fit in another sitcom, so Swallow and Watkins took it to LWT instead. ATV did buy it from LWT for broadcast though. It wasn't networked across the ITV network, different regions showed it at different times, the above broadcast dates are the LWT dates, other networks were showing them days even weeks later. When it came to the second series originator John Swallow didn't return. Watkins returned to write three of them. Four of the second series were written by Ian La Frenais (unusually on his own without regular writing partner Dick Clement). The penultimate episode was written by Geoff Rowley & Andy Baker, who were also writing episodes of Please Sir!, The Fenn Street Gang, Doctor at Large and Blakey's On The Buses spin-off Don't Drink The Water.

It proved somewhat difficult to find a suitable disused station to film at. Heritage lines were still something of a few and far between novelty then and many disused lines had either already been demolished or were in a poor state of repair a decade on from Beeching and a few years prior to the heritage line renovation boom from the late 70s onwards. In the end they chose Bodiam station on the former Kent & East Sussex Railway line. A rather rural out-of-the-way station opened in 1900, mainly used to bring hop pickers down from London, it closed to regular passenger service in 1954 but goods trains and passenger specials continued till 1961 when it was fully closed. When this series was made and aired in 1972 it and the rest of the line from Tenterden to Bodiam had only recently been purchased by the Tenterden Railway Society in 1971 for £60,000. Bodiam then looked pretty rough and the Society focused on cleaning up Bodiam for the recording, de-weeding the line and platform and sprucing up the exterior of the station for the outside filming (I expect the interiors were done in studio like most sitcoms). After filming Bodiam went unused again until Tenterden Railway Society's successor, Kent & East Sussex Railway, finally completed the line to Bodiam as its new southern terminus in 2000. Bodiam is where they display the Cavell Van, the railway van that carried the bodies of Edith Cavell and The Unknown Warrior to London. The Kent & East Sussex Railway also has a connection to Will Hay's Oh, Mr Porter in that the railway engine Northiam was borrowed from the K&ESR to play Gladstone in the film.

Thematically it was also similar to the contemporary BBC radio comedy series Parsley Sidings, starring Arthur Lowe, Ian Lavendar, Kenneth Connor and Liz Fraser, which was running at the same time between 1971 and 1973. In fact Parsley Sidings' writer Jim Eldridge tried to get a TV version made during the radio run but ITV turned it down as The Train Now Standing was already being done and it was felt there was no need for two such similar sitcoms! Years later in the mid 90s we did get the period sitcom Oh Dr Beeching which also ran on similar (railway) lines.

Sadly, beyond the different broadcast dates on different ITV networks the series was not repeated, not recommissioned for a third series and has never been released commercially which is a huge shame. The whole series survives complete in the archives too so its a great pity Network didn't pick this one out for DVD release before they went bust! 

I do have a bunch of original press publicity photos for the series though, and a piece from TV Times for the start of the second series in July 1973, and various newspaper cuttings below.