Comprising train and track footage quickly shot just before a heavy winter's snowfall was melting, the multi-award-winning classic that emerged from the cutting-room compresses British Rail's dedication to blizzard-battling into a thrilling eight-minute montage cut to music. Tough-as-boots workers struggling to keep the line clear are counterpointed with passengers' buffet-car comforts.
The re-signalling of 1000 track miles from the River Weaver to the Clyde brings the whole line from London to Glasgow under one system of push-button control and colour light signals, and completes the main line electrification. The film follows the intricate production of equipment, and its installation over, under and between trains. The whole project adds up to a piece of modern technology unsurpassed anywhere in the world.
Documentary from British Transport Films
The film's contents are as follows: Merry-go-round coal trains - between collieries and power stations; Motorail; stations - Birmingham New St., Durham, Sunderland, Kirkcaldy; hovercraft - Isle of Wight service; Cartic car-carrying wagon; testing of wagon bodies - Derby laboratories; Southern House; Glasgow suburban services; Guildford signal box; Freightliners, company trains; hostesses - Seaspeed and at Gatwick Airport station.
Driver Sam Smith is given the privilege of driving one of the new electric trains. But when a problem arises, it takes three very different Sams before the problem is solved.
The British Railways modernisation programme of the 1960s radically changed the rail network, and the British Transport Films unit and the TV news were there to capture it. Compiled here is never before released colour footage of Southern steam at Waterloo (with Nine Elms depot), all the major London stations, The Blue Pullman and early diesels, The Golden Arrow and Night Ferry service, goods and mail, steam on the Metropolitan Railway and building the Victoria Line.
A group of workers from a Leicester shoe-making company travel down south for a day in the Smoke.
Originally intended as an advertising short, this film follows The Elizabethan, a non-stop British Railways service from London to Edinburgh along the East Coast Main Line. A nostalgic record of the halcyon years of steam on British Railways and the ex-LNER Class A4.
The Peak District waits invitingly within a sixty-mile reach of half the population of England. To this green centre of a great industrial area, the first of the National Parks, holidaymakers come throughout the year to enjoy a wide variety of scenery and of pastimes. Some visitors come to glide, others to go 'caving' or climbing, boating or fishing. The lovely surroundings vary from the windy flat tops of heath with their rocky outcrops to the lush sheltered dales of the Manifiold, the Derwent and the Dove; from the simple stone cottages of the quiet villages to the historic architecture of Ashbourne, Bakewell and Buxton, and the great houses of the past like Chatsworth and Haddon Hall.
Report No. 9 in a series of 13 topical films, covering: Euston; ships - Freightliner II, Antrim Princess; container handling Parkeston Quay; Merry-go-round coal trains; permanent way lining and tamping machine; off loading cable troughing; strengthening the Royal Albert Bridge; Old Course Hotel, St Andrew's; car bodies by train - factory to assembly line; Beckenham train control; speed up of West of England expresses.
An express freight train links manufacturers with their customers at the other end of Britain.
A review of innovation and development within BR and its businesses, including: modernisation of freight facilities and service to new companies; progress of the Bedford/St. Pancras electrification project; paved track and permanent way maintenance; Sealink's "Galloway Princess"; Seaspeed's SRN4; and the Research department's magnetically levitated vehicle. For general showing.
First transmitted in 1969, this documentary follows the construction of the world’s most advanced underground system. Macdonald Hastings narrates the story of one of the most complex tunnel engineering feats of its time. He reveals the isolation felt by the miners who spent six years burrowing deep beneath the streets of London, shows what they did beneath one of London's most famous department stores and explains why the ground at Tottenham Court Road had to be frozen during the hottest weeks of 1966. The result is a brave new world of transport with automated trains, two way mirrors, automatic fare collection and closed-circuit television, all choreographed by a computer programme played out by an updated version of a pianola located in a control room somewhere near Euston station.
Britain operates the most experienced diesel and electric railway in tne world. A century and a half ago she invented the steam engine and introduced a new system of transport; and in only nine years British Rail and the British locomotive industry designed, built and tested enough diesel and electric locomotives to replace fifteen thousand steam engines. The transition from steam to new forms of motive power, and its effects on rallwaymen and passengers, is the subject of this film. Produced in association with the Central Office of Information, the British Locomotive Allied Manufacturers' Association and the British Electrical Manufacturers' Association.
The electrification of the London Midland Region main line between London, Manchester and Liverpool at 25KV AC, using overhead wires and drawing supply from the National Grid, was a major undertaking involving civil, electrical, mechanical and signal engineering of a complex and advanced nature. This film depicts some aspects of the problems involved and of the unprecedented operations which were carried out.
A compilation film about the complex railway systems of Great Britain, demonstrating the work and individual responsibilities of many departments.
British Transport film.
Young Robbie, a keen footballer and a railway enthusiast, is persuaded by his big brother to go through a hole in a railway fence on to the track for some reason. His laces become caught on the tracks and he has an accident so serious that he will never play football again. A film for showing to eight to eleven-year old children and their parents, which points out the folly of breaking railway fences and trespassing on the line, and illustrates the immediate dangers. Part of BFI collection "The Age of the Train".
The people of the Scottish Highlands live in small communities set in landscapes of unsurpassed beauty.
Kay Mander kept training and social issues to the fore in the 1940s with her innovative documentaries. Mander, now living in Kirkcudbrightshire, recalls her life and work, with clips from many of her films.
