The Ghost Train is a stage comedy-thriller, written in 1923 by the English actor and playwright Arnold Ridley. The story centres upon the social interaction of a group of railway passengers who have been stranded at a remote rural station overnight, and are increasingly threatened by a latent external force, with a denouement ending. The play ran for over a year in its original sold-out London theatrical run, and is regarded as a modern minor classic. It established the 20th century dramatic genre of "strangers stranded together in a railway scenario in constrained circumstances" thrillers, leading to the films such as The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and Narrow Margin (1990). Background Ridley was inspired to write the play after becoming stranded overnight at Mangotsfield railway station (a now "lost station", on the defunct Midland Railway Company's main line), during a rail journey through the Gloucestershire countryside. The deserted station's atmosphere, combined with hearing the non-stop Bath to Gloucester express using an adjacent curved diversionary main line to by-pass Mangotsfield, which created the illusion of a train approaching, passing through and departing, but not being seen, impressed itself upon Ridley's senses. The play took him only a week to write. After a première in Brighton, it transferred to London's St Martin's Theatre, where – despite unenthusiastic reviews from the theatre press critics – it played to sell-out audiences from November 1925 to March 1927. Original cast Caleb Porter as Saul Hodgkin G. H. Mulcaster as Richard Winthrop Edith Saville as Elsie Basil Howes as Charles Murdoch Edna Davies as Peggy Murdoch Gladys Ffoliott as Miss Bourne Frederick T. Cooper as Teddy Deakin Mary Clare as Julia Price Neville Brook as Herbert Price Vincent Holman as John Stirling Walter Pemberton as Jackson Wilfred Langley as Smith Changes to the cast during the run included Sydney Fairbrother (from June 1926) as Miss Bourne, succeeded in the role by Connie Ediss in November 1926. Ridley himself played Saul Hodgkin, the station master, in several productions over many years. He told The Guardian in 1976 that when he first played the part he had to make up carefully to look old enough, but latterly "I had a job to make myself look young enough". Plot summary The plot revolves around a party of assorted railway travellers who find themselves stranded in the waiting