Question: Agatha Christie wrote a famous whodunnit called 'The 4.50 from Paddington'. Is there still a 4.50 from Paddington and where does it go?
Answer: The only timetabled 4.50 from Paddington is a GWR service to Didcot Parkway.
Question: Where was Christie's fictional train going?
Answer:The 4.50 from Paddington was the seventh Miss Marple mystery, tucked between A Pocket Full of Rye and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, and was published in November 1957. In chapter 1 we learn that the train is "the 4.50 for Brackhampton, Milchester, Waverton, Carvil Junction, Roxeter and stations to Chadmouth", all of which are fictional locations. In the book Mrs Elspeth McGillicuddy spies a strangulation aboard a passing train but only Miss Marple believes her, until a woman's body is eventually found in a sarcophagus at a country house beside the railway. The plot hinges on inheritance and arsenic poisoning, and eventually the act of choking on a fish bone uncovers the murderer.
Question: So where was the murder?
The incident in the adjacent carriage occurs about eight minutes before the train reaches Brackhampton, where a member of platform staff announces it as the 5.38. This places the murder around 5.30, approximately 40 minutes after leaving Paddington. We know that this is the Great Western mainline because Miss Marple has to eliminate "the Welsh express for Cardiff, Newport and Swansea" from her enquiries.
I've tracked down a 1956timetable for trains on this line which suggests mainline trains out of Paddington reached Reading after about 40 minutes, suggesting 'Brackhampton' was either Reading or a town just beyond. That would place the murder somewhere between Twyford and Pangbourne. It's hard to be more accurate, especially given the "considerable curve" referenced in the book does not exist. It'd be nice to think that the murder took place close to Wallingford where Agatha lived at the time but that's a tad far for a steam train to have reached in 40 minutes. It's highly likely she was making the whole thing up, including various temporal and geographical inaccuracies. There is no 4.50 from Paddington in the timetable.
Just to properly confuse things, the book was very nearly published as 'The 4.54 from Paddington' but the title was changed at the last minute. This confirms Christie's intricate plotting didn't stretch as far as accurate timings, so I apologise for wasting your time discussing the above.
