Bamforth and Co. made a career of rip-, er, 'remaking' the classics of early cinema, such as 'Rough Sea at Dover' ('Rough Sea') and 'L'Arroseur Arrose' ('The Biter Bit'), presumably because of a shortage of prints to meet burgeoning demand. this is a copy of G. A. Smith's great film of the same name, with a train entering a tunnel, a couple kissing, and the train exiting the tunnel.
Of course, there is no such thing as a straight remake, and any differences will be instructive. This film is franker than Smith's, not only in showing the train, which 'has' the point of view in Smith, but in the treatment of the kiss. Where Smith's couple (played by the director and his wife) were bourgeois guiltily sneaking a peck out of the sight of censorious society, Bamforth's couple are more straightforward. A man sits down, smokes, reads or whatever, very methodically gets up, and kisses the woman opposite him, who is not necessarily his wife; far from pretending to struggle like Smith's wife, our heroine is more than happy to reciprocate.
The story's clash between desire and society takes on an interesting class element, the working class apparently more free with their affections, contributing to the negative reputations of trains and, of course, cinemas, both social sites plunged into darkness where desire has momentary free reign.
The film's treatment of trains is also different, especially as the vehicle leaves the tunnel, the camera lingers rather pointlessly on it, moving from fiction to documentary, the opposite movement of Smith's film. Or maybe the event in the compartment leads us to fetishise this instrument at our leisure; or maybe the filmmaker is making a humorous distinction between symbol and reality.