Beatle Mania

NEWTON ABBOT | 1964

Ringo Starr looks out from train's First Class carriage

Ringo on the train | SWFTA Collection @ The Box, Plymouth

In 1964, 500 adoring fans flocked to the unlikely location of Newton Abbot station for a glimpse of the Fab Four.

Beatlemania was in full swing in March 1964 when the group started filming “A Hard Day’s Night”, the first of their five major motion pictures.

The first scenes are of the band dodging screaming fans to get a train from what is meant to be Liverpool Lime St station down to London.

The trailer shows some of these scenes which were filmed at Marylebone station in London:

The director, Richard Lester, was keen to shoot the train scenes on an actual moving train, rather than use a set at Twickenham Studios where much of the film was made.

Apart from the opening scenes at Marylebone, all the train action happened on board the train so it didn’t matter where it went, they just needed a decent length journey to be able to get the necessary shots.

The Studios chartered trains for five days in total, from Monday 2 to Thursday 5 and then Monday 9 March and the trains headed west from London. Newton Abbot was one of the destinations.

The Beatles' train visited Newton Abbot at least twice – a reporter from the Herald Express saw it on Thursday 5 – reporting that there had been no fans waiting when the train arrived.

The following Monday, it was a very different story as a crowd of around 500 excited fans met the train on its arrival – this news footage shows the scenes:

Watch the full footage from Thursday 5 March (Newton Abbot) and Monday 9 March (Newton Abbot) and Monday 2 March (Minehead).

Just four months after those filming days on the train, “A Hard Day’s Night” hit cinemas across Britain and the US. It was a great success as was the album of the same name which is one of the Beatles’ most iconic.

See this timeline for more information about the 1964 timings of both the film and the album.