The Ghost Train

The Ghost Train is a stage comedy-thriller, written in 1923 by the English actor and playwright Arnold Ridley. The story centres upon the social interaction of a group of railway passengers who have been stranded at a remote rural station overnight, and are increasingly threatened by a latent external force, with a denouement ending. The play ran for over a year in its original sold-out London theatrical run, and is regarded as a modern minor classic. It established the 20th century dramatic genre of "strangers stranded together in a railway scenario in constrained circumstances" thrillers, leading to the films such as The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and Narrow Margin (1990). Background Ridley was inspired to write the play after becoming stranded overnight at Mangotsfield railway station (a now "lost station", on the defunct Midland Railway Company's main line), during a rail journey through the Gloucestershire countryside. The deserted station's atmosphere, combined with hearing the non-stop Bath to Gloucester express using an adjacent curved diversionary main line to by-pass Mangotsfield, which created the illusion of a train approaching, passing through and departing, but not being seen, impressed itself upon Ridley's senses. The play took him only a week to write. After a première in Brighton, it transferred to London's St Martin's Theatre, where – despite unenthusiastic reviews from the theatre press critics – it played to sell-out audiences from November 1925 to March 1927.