Royal Train

1 Jan 1896
Silent
1m

Detective work reveals... this very early film was shot at Southampton Royal Pier Station. But who's the VIP on board?

Who's on board? For many years this was a largely unidentified film. Having survived as a mere 25-foot fragment of cellulose nitrate film, and not having been found mentioned in the film catalogues of the day, it was a difficult one to collate, date or locate. But there's several clues to go on...

The footage apparently arrived at the BFI as part of a small collection associated with film pioneer RW Paul - so it was presumably shot by Paul's company. A train arrives at a station, clearly in a port town: there are harbour scenes in the background while visible 'LS' insignia suggest the London and South Western Railway. These two pieces information combined mean that we're almost certainly at Southampton Royal Pier Station. The train's met by a line of police and a large crowd: someone important is on board. Indeed, train markings identify this as Queen Victoria's own conveyance: forelock-tugging train companies often designated 'royal carriages' for her. The remaining question is: on this occasion, is it the Queen herself inside or another top Royal?

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From the collection

Robert Paul: Giant of Early Film

The most prolific filmmaker of the pioneer period of British film

The multi-talented Robert Paul (1869-1943) was the first British filmmaker to project film for a paying audience, in 1896. A contemporary of the Lumiere brothers, Paul had been producing film, in partnership with Birt Acres, for his own brand of Kinetoscope viewer since April 1895. Shortly after, he began producing for his Theatrograph and Animatographe machines, enjoying a long run at the Alhambra in Leicester Square. As an engineer, Paul made a number of significant innovations - such as an intermittent mechanism for efficiently projecting film. But he also made key innovations in film language, such as the first two-shot fiction film, Come Along Do! (1898). To cap it all, he was a shrewd businessman, with an instinctive grasp of audience tastes.