Three websites and a book to accompany Talking Pictures TV

By now you will have discovered Talking Pictures TV, the Freeview channel devoted to old (mainly British) films and television.

But to get the most from it there are three websites and a book you need.

The first website, inevitably, is IMDB. With its help you can spot young actors in their earliest roles and occasionally old actors making a final appearance.

The second website is Reelstreets which posts then and now photographs of the locations of British films.

If you have a difficult location question then you need BritMovie.co.uk, On the boards there are people who, particularly for London locations, can look at a still, get a hunch for the area it was shot and find the answer on Google Streetview in a remarkably short time.

And the book? It can only be Horton's Guide to Britain's Railways in Feature Films.

Talking Pictures TV is showing Night of the Demon again this evening, which features climactic scenes on a railway line.

Horton tells you all you need know:

These scenes were filmed on the Watford-St Albans Abbey branch, particularly around Brickett Wood station, although it is believed that Watford Junction station was also used. The giveaway is when Dana Andrews races into the station to catch the Southampton train (!) and there is a timetable behind giving details of stopping trains to St Albans,

It's the book no film fan can afford to be without.