In January, we were looking at this item in set 477:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...15/pic2775.jpg

which shows a valve key for turning off a water supply.

And Alexander Thesoso wrote:
In the 1964 Burt Lancaster movie, "The Train", he uses a tool
exactly like this to undo the track fastening bolts on a WWII
french railroad line.

And I (Mark Brader) wrote:
I'm going from memory here, but I say not exactly. In the movie,
the bolts in the track have hexagonal heads, and the business end
of the tool is like the socket you'd find on a socket wrech.

Having now seen the scene again, I was almost right. The tool that
Labiche (Burt Lancaster) uses does have a socket like a socket wrench.
But the heads of the track bolts aren't hexagonal; they're square.

But because they're square, a tool like the valve key, bearing on only
two sides of the head, would also work.

And there's another scene where we see the bolts being turned -- that's
a little earlier, where Labiche blows up a bit of track and the Germans
patch it by moving a rail from behind the train. And the tool *they*
use does have a head something like the valve key. (I picked exactly
the wrong moment to walk away from the TV and locate the image from
set 477, so i can't say if it was exactly the same, but it certainly
was something like it.)

Now you know.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "Men! Give them enough rope and they'll dig
| their own grave." -- EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY

My text in this article is in the public domain.