Caulfield station on TV in 1989

One day back in 1989 I was at Caulfield station when I noticed an old train at platform 1. They seemed to be filming something. People milling about on the platform appeared to be dressed in clothing to make them look like it was somewhere in Asia.

I don’t remember how I found out it was for the 1988-89 version of Mission: Impossible, which was filmed in Australia. This was some 7 years before the movie versions with Tom Cruise started.

The scene is in Season 2, Episode 5, an episode called Countdown.

First there’s a glimpse of the entrance to platform 1:

…and our heroes enter onto the platform:

There’s a glimpse between the carriages over to platform 2:

There’s a better view of platform 1 in this shot. Note the old school Next Train indicator on the right.

Here’s the platform from a similar-ish angle recently:

After the train leaves the station, we get a view of Steamrail’s K class loco 153, steaming through the countryside, with more characters sabotaging the signalling to stop the train. Maybe someone can recognise the location.

If you’d like to see the video, there’s a copy on Youtube.

It’s 5 episodes edited together, but you can view the scene below. It starts from about 2h:54m:30s.

(A previous copy on Youtube was taken down due to a copyright claim, so this might eventually happen to this one too.)

These days they wouldn’t tie up a platform at Caulfield for filming. Even at a quiet time it would be impossible to do without major disruptions to regular services, given recent changes to the track layout.

In fact quiet times are few and far between. It’s busy every day, all day, and set to become even busier next year as a major interchange for the Metro tunnel… underscoring how badly the station needs an upgrade to increase capacity and provide accessibility compliant entrances to the platforms.