McCartney Times

The excitement was all too much for hundreds of Beatles fans when the band stopped off at a Somerset seaside town in March 1964 during filming for their highly acclaimed big-screen debut A Hard Day’s Night.

At Minehead, now part of the West Somerset Railway heritage line, one schoolgirl had to be escorted off the tracks by a police officer as she attempted to greet the Fab Four. While other youngsters stood in an orderly fashion next to the railway line, others stormed the tracks, clamouring at the windows of the restaurant car to get their pop idols’ attention.

Everywhere The Beatles went at the peak of their fame there were screaming fans, so the movie’s director decided to head west in search of filming locations off the beaten track for the musical comedy.

Regarded as a classic of the period, its plot mimicked the group’s real life, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr seen charging through a busy railway station, pursued by dozens of teenage schoolgirls. Then they jumped on a train that, in the story, was transporting them to London for a TV show.

In fact, the engine and carriages they chartered for exclusive use that March carried the band, other cast members and the film crew, from Paddington Station to the branch lines of Devon and Somerset. On board, as the fields of the West Country flew by outside, they captured the amusing action scenes which make up the opening 15 minutes of the movie over several separate journeys.

Read more, click link below…

Source: Amazing unearthed photos show fans mobbing The Beatles’ train at a Somerset railway station in 1964 – Somerset Live