Exclusive:First look inside Tom Cruise Mission Impossible rail carriage converted into Pitlochry Thai restaurant

The Wee Choo Choo is due to open on a specially-built platform beside the town’s railway station on Saturday. It will seat 40 diners inside a former Norwegian railways coach that featured in a stunt in last year’s Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One that involved Cruise running along the roof of a train before it plunged off a cliff.

The carriage has been coupled to a former British military brake wagon that has been converted into a kitchen, under head chef Isara McCallum. The rolling stock was sourced by her husband Fergus, the business’s finance and governance manager, while their daughter Mia is the restaurant manager.

Ms McCallum, 22, said: “I have been working on the idea of opening a Thai restaurant since I was about 16 while still at school, because I knew I wanted to do a different type of job when I grew up. When my dad brought the idea of a train to me, I thought ‘that’s quite a good idea’.”

She spotted the carriage in a storage shed and said it looked “absolutely gorgeous”.

Ms McCallum said: “It will all be authentic Thai food. My great-grandfather was a chef and we are twisting his recipes a little bit, but it is still family recipes we are using.

“Dishes will include Panang curry and Bua Loy dessert, with tapioca hand made by my mum. She spends hours rolling it.

“It blows my mind sometimes that the restaurant is actually here now. The 16-year-old me would never believe that I had managed to make it come true.”

The restaurant will employ five staff, with applications coming from as far away as London. Mr McCallum said using a train carriage for the restaurant had followed difficulties finding premises in Pitlochry, where the family have lived for six years, because of their popularity.

They had originally hoped to use a former siding at the station, but Mr McCallum said Network Rail decided in 2020 it needed the space as a marshalling yard for planned future electrification of the line.

Then, two 1970s British Rail inter-city carriages which he had bought - one of which included a kitchen - proved too wide to be positioned side by side.

Mr McCallum said he was now looking for another station on the Perth-Inverness line, where similar trains are still operated by ScotRail, to site the carriages as another restaurant.

The Wee Choo Choo carriage was built in 1969 and believed to have been in service in the Trondheim area of Norway until about five years ago.

It was bought for use in the Mission Impossible film and remodelled to resemble a 1930s French train. The coach was later put in storage, with the owner considering converting it into a shed for his garden.

The restaurant received planning permission last year after revised plans were approved by Perth and Kinross Council. The original application was turned down.