Probably a lot of tourist railroads and trains at railroad museums have the ALL ABOARD!
loudly shouted when the train is ready to leave. My wife was watching a recent Downton Abbey in the other room just now, and I heard that All Aboard! Had her run the recording back a little bit, but couldn't see whether it was a trainman or perhaps station agent. Was this a standard thing done on British railroads? I always thought there was a loud whistle blown when a train was ready to leave, but perhaps I'm wrong. Can anyone tell me if this was authentic? Thanks.

Les

Perhaps in days gone by....when I was there a few years back, a guy blew a shrill whistle and waved a badminton racket around.

dave

If you need me to cite chapter and verse, that'll cost you, but as far as I am aware, no British railways used "all aboard" shouted by the guard (what we call conductor) for ANY reason. The "standard", pretty much what you'll see today on a lot of commuter lines around the world, is for the guard to wave a hand signal to the engineer/driver when he judges all have boarded or detrained, typically supplemented by radio or electrically wired supplemental communication. Typically in days of old this was done in Britain with a blow of a whistle akin to the American stereotype police whistle, the classic being the Acme "Thunderer", then a wave of a flag on a stick, typically green, to give the driver the "rightaway" from the station.

Acme Thunderers are still in production: http://www.acmewhistles.co.uk/xcart/home.php?cat=1

I'm fairly certain that the movie in question was either written or audio-engineered by someone clueless about actual railway practices that learned what s/he knew from old Hollywood films.

Not a movie, "Downton Abbey" is a rather popular ongoing PBS series produced over in England. I think I heard that the particular episode takes place in 1924. Usually the British get these period series down accurately, that's why I was surprised to hear the ALL ABOARD yelled. I guess that someone could have added that for U.S.A. consumption.

Les

Ten Quid for a bleedin' tin whistle?!? No wonder that the actor yelled "All Aboard".
GME

You think that's pricey? Try finding an original one of the WW2 era ones (or worse, an RAF-marked one). They're almost worth their weight in gold now.

In film and TV, there are people called "foleys" who add ambient sounds to filmed content. Ambient sources aren't mic'ed. They have a shockingly small collection of sound files, so you hear the same door creaks and slams over and over, and by golly, if there's a bird in the scene, you WILL hear the exact same hawk screech that has been used for decades. (probably because it's rights-cleared.)

With trains, they exaggerate engine noises and always honk the horn, ignoring context. Simply to say "Hey, the film crew froze their buns for an hour while losing the light, specifically so there'd be a train in the background of this shot. You better notice it!"

That is why trespassers have a very specific expectation of what a train sounds like. Expectations are powerful. They are caught off guard when they DON'T hear that sound and a train shows up anyway.

Libraries of recorded sounds are available at very low cost. That's why you may hear the same door slam in several different movies or TV shows. Back in the days of network radio drama shows, the sound libraries were extremely small and occasionally you could even hear record scratch. However most programs had a sound man with a cart that had several different doors and sound making devices mounted on it.

The recorded sounds were fairly low fidelity and frequently only suggested the real sound. Once I recorded an actual baby crying for a drama show rather than use a poor quality recording. On the air, surprise! The high fidelity baby crying detracted from the lines read by the actors.

Mt Rainier Scenic RR supplied the trains for the movie "Born to Be Wild" (Basically "Free Willy" with a gorilla instead of a whale.)

At a couple points during the movie you can hear a steam whistle. I'm pretty sure it's from Centralia & Chehalis RR #15, which was used to haul the boxcars to the filming location. All I can guess is that the sound man heard it, said "That sounds cool" and grabbed it. I think it shows up as background noise for some shots in the city.

All of the on screen work involved the NP F unit, so there really wasn't any reason for the steam whistle to be part of the film other than it sounds cool. Seattle has lots of ships, no steamships though other than occasional appearances by the Virginia V.

The correct term for those who produce the ambient sounds for movies is "Foley artist." They are listed in the credits at the end of almost all movies.

Anyone here ever watch the series "Boardwalk Empire" when it was still on HBO? There was a classic foley goof with a well-rendered digital PRR train going through a crossing and they used sounds of a modern diesel, horn and all.
I snicker about that every time I think of it, as they went to all the trouble to get the locomotive correct only to screw up the easy part of the sounds...

The Internet Movie Database has carloads of data about movies and TV shows old and new. Some of the better known "flicks" have a section on "goofs", more formally known as "continuity errors" and "anachronisms". One of my favorites was the JAG episode where two of the staff members are interviewing a witness at a housing project. This is supposed to be in the Washington DC area, and the red-brick buildings in the project have a typical east-coast look. Then an SCRRA Metrolink train goes by, and Southern Calif. railfans know that they were using the Los Angeles project just north of Union Station.