Mani Ratnam to shoot vintage train scene
The Newindpress.com
Saturday April 29 2006 12:32 IST
HUBLI: A vintage steam engine and coaches hired to shoot a scene for Mani Ratnam’s latest Hindi film, ‘Guru’, starring Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, is expected to arrive at Hubli railway station on Friday evening.
The crew will shoot a song sequence, besides a scene on the moving vintage train, between Somapur and Banapur (19 km) in the Hubli railway division on Saturday and Sunday.
AVRK Sainath, public relations officer, South Western Railway, Hubli, told this website’s newspaper that shooting was scheduled to begin on Friday but was postponed for a day as the diesel locomotive that had to haul the vintage train from Delhi, had halted in Pune due to some technical problems.
The steam engine has been hired from the Railway Museum at Delhi at Rs 1 lakh per day.
Explaining the arrangements made to smoothen rail traffic between Somapur and Banapur section on the day of shooting, Sainath said rail traffic might not be disrupted on Saturday and Sunday on the said lines of the Hubli railway division as Mani Ratnam and his crew had been asked to shoot till it was time for the next train to arrive and then move the steam engine and train to another line. After the scheduled train leaves the station, the steam engine would be brought back to continue the shooting, he added.
Mani Ratnam’s crew has been shooting for the past week in the backdrop of the historical locations of Badami and Aihole, on the banks of a lake in Muchakhandi village near Bagalkot and in Halakatti’s century-old bungalow of Bagalkot.
According to sources, the Somapur railway station has been undergoing a huge makeover to create the scene of 1857.
People in the Somapur-Banapur area are eagerly awaiting to have a glimpse of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan.
