CHENNAI: Shiv Rawail, who is receiving positive response to his directorial debut The Railway Men, has detailed the production design of his series which tells the story of the courage of the railway employees at the Bhopal junction in the face of the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak.
The director shared that the Bhopal junction which is shown in the series was actually built at a ground in Mumbai University. The area of the station built was around 500 metres and it had everything moving just like a normal railway station.
Elaborating on the same, he states, “The railway station was predominantly a big set and there was no other way than to build a station as it gave us the flexibility in terms of blocking and marking. We flattened the ground out, built a runway and a station 500 feet long with 2 platforms.”
The real magic were, however, that the trains and the locomotives which were built in a similar fashion to what auteur Christopher Nolan did in Inception, mounting locomotive shells over trucks.
He further mentioned, “The cherry on top was that the trains used to move on the station. We built locomotive shells over trucks and had people driving those trucks. Just to be there and experience the set and witness the brilliance of the art department was truly magical.”
The Railway Men is streaming on Netflix.