THIRTY short films centred on the life of The Watercress Line were created by university students.

The Watercress Line based in Alresford – through its Heritage Lottery Fund-supported restoration project of their flagship steam locomotive, ‘Canadian Pacific’ (CanPac) - has been working in partnership with Solent University in Southampton on a short film production project ‘A Different Eye’.

Around 30 short films were created at the railway and these were premiered at a recent Film Night at the University.

The films, which covered many different aspects of the railway and its behind-the-scenes operations – from signalling to engineering apprenticeships and other staffing matters - will also provide the CanPac restoration project with a valuable interpretative resource.

Outreach and Interpretation officer for the CanPac project Becky Peacock, said:"It has been a real pleasure and honour working with this hard-working and talented group of students from the University. The screening and awards ceremony was a great opportunity to show everyone the films that they had been working on for months. We hope this learning experience will have set the students on their road to a successful and rewarding career in media production."

Course tutor for the students Roy Hanney said: "Working with the Watercress Line has really challenged the students and provided a real-world environment for their production practice.

"The partnership offered an unprecedented opportunity for our first year’s students to experience the ways in which working for a real client requires not just the ability to operate cameras and record sound, but to engage with people and deal with complex and sometimes messy situations. It also pushed them into researching the topics for their films and thinking about how best to communicate their messages to a real audience."

An Awards ceremony on the same night gave out awards in 3 different categories, with judging from the Watercress Line’s CanPac Project team.

The winners in these categories were:

Best Sound - Jack Morgan (Carriage Workshop film)

Best Narrative - Gareth Tyrell (Medstead and Four Marks station film)

Highest Production Value - Max Tomaszewski (Carriage Workshop film)