They regale Porter with tales of the deaths and disappearances of previous station masters – each apparently the victim of the ghost of One-Eyed Joe the Miller.

The cow has been stolen in transit and is being milked by Harbottle, and the team's breakfast consists of bacon made from a litter of piglets which they are supposed to be looking after for a local farmer.

They couple the criminals' carriages to their own engine, Gladstone, and carry them away from the border at full speed, keeping up steam by burning everything from Harbottle's underwear to the level crossing gates they smash through.

The entire railway goes into action, closing lines and re-routing trains until Gladstone can crash into a siding where the gun runners are arrested by waiting police.

[5][6] The title sequence uses scenes shot at a variety of locations on the Waterloo to Southampton railway line and also between Maze Hill and Greenwich in south-east London.

The scene in which Porter travels to Buggleskelly by bus, while being warned of a terrible danger by locals, parodies that of the Tod Browning film, Dracula (1931).

In reality, from the route chosen on the map, the line would have belonged to the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), with Buggleskelly being close to the real town of Lisnaskea.

The director Marcel Varnel considered the film as among his best work,[12] and it was described in 2006, by The Times in its obituary for writer Val Guest, as "a comic masterpiece of the British cinema".

[13] Jimmy Perry, in his autobiography, wrote that the trio of Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and Private Pike in Dad's Army was inspired by watching Oh, Mr Porter!

[15] The film was parodied in the Harry Enfield spoof documentary Norbert Smith - a Life, as Oh, Mr Bank Robber!