Aww.

I agree with you on every point - both my sister and I adored North and South* when we saw it on the ABC, and she was ever so please when I got it for her for her birthday. We both agreed that the end scene was terribly anachronistic and it would never happen in real life . . . but, we just couldn't really bring ourselves to care.

I think *because* it was so good, really. We were like "Oh well, because you've been so well behaved, you can have this indiscretion - but only because it makes us puddles of goo, y'hear."

*now wants to make Andrew watch it*

*We subsequently invented the game Floof on t'Loongs which involved a feather duster and a victim.

It's depressing really - you're the sort of people who watch something good turn a bit silly and say "oh well, never mind, we can forgive it because we like it so much" and I am always "alas, alas, you fiends, you have ruined it!!" I think it was the sheer unnecessary-ness of it that got me the worst. I mean, what difference would it have made to have pretty much exactly the same scene take place in a drawing room? Or a private garden? Or anything!

Have you watched the scene with commentary? That might shed light on the situation. Perhaps they wanted to use the trains to highlight the industrial revolution which was the background for the storyline, or to symbolise Margaret's conscious choice of the "North" as opposed to the "South" (while Thornton's collection of the rose indicates his choice of "South"?).