The movie "Peyton Place" - filmed in Maine

I recently viewed the famous movie Peyton Place on the Turner Classic Movie Channel. I had seen the film many decades ago and had forgotten most of the content of this American Drama Film, released in December 1957, nominated for nine Academy Awards. The film is based on the best selling 1956 novel by Grace Metalious of the lives, loves of a small New England mill town....in the film's case, a woollen mill........in the years just before and after World War Two.

On one of my several visits to Camden Me. over the last two decades, a restaurant on Maine Street had a mural display of information of the movie Peyton Place. I had not known till that time, that the film was shot primarily in Camden, along with exteriors in both Rockland and Belfast Me. The familiar quaint landmarks of Camden are most visible in the Movie.

At the beginning of the film, one of the main characters is driving on a rural road approaching a rail crossing with flasher signals. There is a brief view of a freight train with the classic Maine Central dark green coloured box cars with caboose.

I was wondering if anyone familiar with the scenery in the movie, knows where this view of the train may have taking place.........the MEC Rockland Branch perhaps ?

I'll have to see if it's available from the library. Never seen it, but now I definitely have to watch it!

Highball wrote: At the beginning of the film, one of the main characters is driving on a rural road approaching a rail crossing with flasher signals. There is a brief view of a freight train with the classic Maine Central dark green coloured box cars with caboose.

I was wondering if anyone familiar with the scenery in the movie, knows where this view of the train may have taking place.........the MEC Rockland Branch perhaps ?

Tomorrow November 06th @ 3 pm Eastern, the movie Peyton Place is to be shown on the Turner Classics Movie channel.

Just so everyone can see what Highball is talking about (oops, sorry, pictures came up in reverse order):

Thanks for the pictures! It would be very interesting to know if that scene was in fact filmed on a Maine Central line, or if MEC rolling stock was created/imported to some other location.

It's the Maine Central Rockland Branch, all right, and I think it may be crossing on the road to South Thomaston. (Been a while since I've been down that way; I'd have to look.) The giveaway is the telegraph pole. During mid-century, there were only five branches on the MEC and B&M in which the top crossarms of the poles were shorter than the lower crossarms: the WN&P between Worcester and Ayer, the Worcester & Peterborough Branch between Worcester and Holden, the B&M main between Mechanicville and Rotterdam Junction, the Calais Sub between Machias and Ayers Junction, and the Rockland Branch between Brunswick and Rockland.

>>there were only five branches on the MEC and B&M in which the top crossarms of the poles were shorter than the lower crossarms<<

The Academy is proud to present the lifetime achievement award for the most incredibly obscure trivia ever encountered during the entire history of an internet forum on the subject of railroading. All hail to the king.

PBM

Why, thank you.

You are most welcome (deep bow).

PBM