The Ghost Train (play)

The Ghost Train is a theatre comedy suspense 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 who are increasingly threatened by a latent external force, with a reveal 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 films such as The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940).

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, impressing itself upon Ridley's senses. The play took him only a week to write. After a premiere in Brighton, it transferred to London's St Martin's Theatre, where - despite underwhelming reviews from the theatre press critics - it went on to play to sell-out audiences from November 1925 to March 1927.

Changes to the cast during the run included Sydney Fairbrother (from June 1926) as Miss Bourne, succeeded in the role by Connie Ediss in November 1926.

(Ridley himself played Saul Hodgkin, the station master, in several productions over many years. He told The Guardian in 1976 that when he first played the part he had to make up carefully to look old enough, but latterly "I had a job to make myself look young enough").

...
Wikipedia