The train-top fight in the new Bond film Skyfall has is less than unlikely.
SIR – Following your excellent review my wife and I went to see Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, recently. Yes, it is possibly the best Bond yet. But why, when Bond is fighting with an assassin on top of a train in Turkey during the pre-credits sequence, do the filmmakers ignore one of the most basic safety features of rail travel?
When the assassin Bond is chasing shoots through the train coupling, the train begins to leave Bond’s carriage behind. However, if the baddie has been lucky enough to uncouple the part of the train containing our hero – couplings being somewhat resistant to light calibre bullets – then the brake hoses part, and the brakes are applied automatically. This simple fact applies throughout the world.
So, thanks to Victorian design, Bond would have got his man, and the world would have been saved, before Adele even started singing.
Neat, but perhaps by suspending our belief for just one moment, Sam Mendes, the film’s director, does it better.
Ralph Ingham
Tingley, West Yorkshire
SIR – Robin Hanbury-Tenison (Letters, November 4) identifies the weapon used by Bond in Skyfall as a 12-bore shotgun. In fact it is an Anderson Wheeler double rifle, which would be chambered for a .500 Nitro Express cartridge. A fairly easy mistake to make, unless you’re on the receiving end.
Martin Bastone
East Grinstead, West Sussex
SIR – Skyfall shows a train at Temple station, which is on the Circle and District line. But it was a Northern line train: a Tube train, not a full-size train like those that run on the Circle or District Line.
Paul J Meek
Southsea, Hampshire
SIR – I saw in the credits after Skyfall that there were two male draughtspersons and one male drapesmaster. Wonderful.
Malcolm Watson
Welford, Berkshire
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