Train of Events is a 1949 British portmanteau film made by Ealing Studios, directed by Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton and Basil Dearden and starring Jack Warner, Peter Finch and Valerie Hobson.

[3] In the film, as a train is heading for a crash into a stalled petrol tanker at a level crossing, four different stories are told in flashback.

Plainly, there is not enough room to stop but, just as the collision is about to occur, there is a fade-out succeeded by a view of the locomotive sheds at Euston three days earlier.

They have hitherto endured a miserable secret life in assorted seedy lodgings and Ella is hoping they can start again abroad.

Jim Hardcastle groggily recovers consciousness in a pile of coal from the overturned tender, as shocked passengers wander about.

Philip seems unhurt and makes a dash for freedom, but as he tries to evade the detectives he runs dangerously close to the wreckage and an unstable coach collapses upon him.

He had insisted on learning how a steam engine is driven to get his posture right, but slipped on a patch of oil and fell into a locomotive turntable pit and injured his back.

The episodes are loosely held together by a fourth story, which presents scenes in the life of an engine driver (Jack Warner), his wife and family, cut-to-pattern semi-Huggett cockneys.

There are three directors, stiff, bloodless, highly conscientious, their styles indistinguishable except for Dearden's pronounced use of melodramatic angles.

It's made up of four complete stories and each, extremely well acted, staged and directed, subtly heighitens the other without becoming detached from the main thread.

The direction, like the acting, is uniformly good, but if we had to single out a director for special mention it would be Sidney Cole for his showmanlike handling of the train crash sequences.

"[5] The Times said: "The contrivance at best is clumsy, and there are not any inherent virtues in Train of Events to compensate for the inevitable distraction and division of attention.

There's the engine driver; a philandering orchestra conductor; an actor who's killed his wife; and a girl in love with an escaped German PoW.