Vintage railway film - Forward to First Principles - 1966
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2021
- This vintage railway film, produced by British Transport Films in 1966, scans the present and the past to show those economic principles governing the early railways have been rediscovered as a basis for modern freight trains.
There have been railways in Great Britain for over three hundred years. In the nineteenth century, railways spread across Britain and changed the geography, history, economy, and the life of a nation, but already there existed primitive railways for moving coal and other minerals from the pits and quarries to navigable water and roads.
What a fabulous film. I started to watch this largely out of nostalgia for my 1960's youth, but I found it absolutely fascinating.
Someone talking to the camera without waving their arms or jumping about. So good to see.
You can see why so many young people back in the 50's 60's grew to admire our steam trains in ever increasing numbers. The introductory pic is so inviting, I would love to be able to sit on that platform bench for just 5 minutes, while I open my picnic basket, and just take in the wonderful atmosphere from that great decade. Wonderful old film,
The first shot is coming out of Dove Holes tunnel at the south portal and the next is going through Great Longstone station (now a private house) with the passenger train passing the steam powered mixed goods train going up grade to Peak Forest.
I'm not sure how on earth youtube got me to this video but it was surprisingly interesting. Really high quality production, impressed it's over 50 years old now.
It got you here because you're brilliant!
a great film, nice to be informed in an interesting way without being yelled at, 'amused', given sentence fragments or lazy speech by somebody who thinks it's all about him, or her.
I watched this because I was born in 66. Best year of the 60s! Fred Dibnah would've loved this film.
The commentator who appears at several points in the film is Professor Jack Simmons whose books on the history of railways in Britain remain among the best still to read. He is not captioned, only introduced verbally, and his name is not in the credits. Fascinating to see him discuss the history of railway freight in 1966.
A great, interesting footage from the homeland of the steam engine. Best regards from south Germany
Thank you. Same to you mate.
Astonishing production, in all respects. A masterpiece of documentary making.
The BTH P Paxman class 15 with the proper sound in the beginning of this film is rather unique.
Steam may have been on the way out but the 'grease top' still part of the uniform. Loved that massive steam dredger.
Very historic shots; the Cromford and High Peak closed entirely in 1967.
My dad, my brother and I went on the Cromford and High Peak before it closed on a special excursion. It rained, we were in open wagons and we were miserable. Great memory though. The first scene is the exit from Dove Holes tunnel and the station with the banking engine is Great Longstone where my grandparents lived. My grandad worked on the railway until he retired.
@@paulnicholson1906 I spotted the film of a train going through Great Lonstone station immediately and played it through several times. Thought it seemed familiar. I've walked through there many times as the the Monsal trail never lucky enough to be around whilst it was still a railway
@@regcotterill7332 nice walk. I want to cycle it sometime soon.
In this months Model Rail, there is a small feature on a company offering the CHPR Mineral wagons. They look very nice so have ordered 4 about £15 each and postage in UK is £4. HTH
The High Peak is now a walking\cycle path. It joins up with another ex-railway at Parsley Hay that goes down to Ashbourne. At the Ashbourne end, there's a tunnel where you can still hear the trains! ;-)
The overlooked portion was the lack of continuous brakes,as British Rail,in the 1950's,still had 500,000 wagons with hand brakes(ONLY),and that put them 30+years,after practically everyone else! The reason that was so,was the lack of investment,and a concerted campaign by the oil and road interests,to disinvest in the railroads! The irony,was and is that the roads,can only handle 25% of the railroads traffic,and the costs are 10 times more! Banquo's ghost,has come back to haunt the feast! Accountants,and lawyers should never be allowed anywhere near operations,as the lack of understanding of simple physics is beyond them! Thank you,for a very educational video,and really more people should be made aware of the history 👏! THANK YOU!! 😊🙏👏
Actually, the reason that so many goods wagons had only parking brakes at this time was because vast numbers of them were not owned by British Railways, but by private companies, such as quarries, steel merchants, coal merchants, and all sorts of factories, etc - and it was THEY who stubbornly refused to pay the costs of fitting their wagons with continuous brakes.
@@jackx4311 Good point, and the quarry owners / coal board had another advantage to wagon moved coal and the lack of investment.
The rail sidings when you see them full of loaded coal wagons are land, huge amounts of land that the wagon owners were not paying for. It therefore was cheaper to pay for a wagon and not have it move than it was to pay to expand the holding tip at the colliery etc (often hemmed in by housing). One of the British Rail traffic surveys from the 1960's showed the average speed of a wagon on the British Rail network was 1/2 mile an hour! As someone who'd done the work said to me, we realised we'd have to stop been a land agent and become a transport company!
Finally many people don't realise the cost that the Second World War imposed on British Rail. Most of our European Neighbours arrived at 1945 with destroyed rail networks, but the advantage was they could cut the fat (bin the old working practices), straighten out curves and reorganise marshalling yards.
Much of the British infrastructure had taken a huge beating, but we were bankrupt (we'd not pay of our war debt till 2007!), at the time of this film the UK was paying for the Cold War too, so improvements were often little more than patch up and mend. The bomb damage at York Station was only finally repaired in the 1980's!
@@hypergolic8468 There is another factor,in the fact that,in order to maintain,their supposed power,the British elites,were prepared to bomb their rivals back to the stone age! Consider the fact,that the US,and Britain,prior to the opening of the war,were already having bombers(pre-planned),being built from 1934,on! The minimum time for design,construction,and transport,was at least 5 years! Four engine bombers were,and are expensive,so you have to ask yourself,who really did what to who! For the US,the question is,and was,why were we backing the British Empire,which at that time held 20%percent of the world in its grip! Also,in both wars,Britain declared war,on Germany FIRST,and they had the Fleet at sea,and the reserves called up,so Churchill,and his colleagues,did a very one-sided propaganda campaign,along with Colonel Stephenson,in the US,to influence the outcome of the war! Note also,Britain was already bankrupt,by 1939! So the US,taxpayers bailed out Britain twice,in both WW1 and WW2! See also Roosevelt and Churchill's behind the scenes,skullduggeries,in the years leading up to the war! Remember that they were both Naval Secretary,at points in their careers! Thank you for your time and allowing me,to get a bit of overlooked history into the conversation! Thank you! 😊
Sorry to say that, but the UK is 40 years behind in every aspect of technique, society , health care......
BR started life with 1,223,634 wagons of which only 131,965 had automatic brakes and 1,047,439 were handbrake only. By the end of 1967 BR had 466,623 wagons of which 190,853 had automatic brakes and 275,770 were handbrake only. At the same time average capacity rose from 12.5 tons to 16.94 tons. At the peak (at the end of 1961) BR had only 320,162 wagons with automatic brakes.
Approximately a third of the wagons inherited from the LMS were built prior to the Grouping in 1923.
Greatings to the home of the steam enginge from Germany. We had the same stuff in Germany as well in the Ruhr area in North Rhine Westfalia, but not such beautifull landscapes surroundig it. And why do I watch this? I am 28 and I love that kind of stuff to be honest.
That’s a good film. I’m 68 and I can just remember the end of horse shunting in East Anglia, but until I watched this I had never made the connection between the size of a wagon and the ability of a horse to pull it.
Greetings to the home of the diesel engine, from the UK!!
ua-cam.com/video/fsKrb1gHZ4I/v-deo.html Das Mansfelder Land - Vielfalt auf Schienen | Eisenbahn-Romantik
Rarely see freight trains these days. Used to see them regularly up to the eighties. Seems very short sighted, as it’s still the most efficient way of moving goods and raw materials. Enjoyed watching this old documentary.
Thank you for showing this. Please don't ever delete it
It is actually superb. The photography is excellent. The Colour is excellent quality for a 1966 film. It's incredibly interesting. And Professor Jack Simmons is an academic of the old school.
Designing and building a mixed freight consist was one of the most complex actions in railroading, a near perfect challenge for mechanization and later computerization. The US N&W, a 90% coal road, had it relatively easy. I've read stories of the terror of "riding the hump", being on the cars and separating them before switches. Not my cup of tea. Great video.
A most interesting perspective on the how and the why of railroading. I've not seen this kind of analysis before, and it was most engaging.
I used to live close to a hump shunting yard. Always fascinating to watch the 08 class shoving the waggons, watch them roll down the hill.
Same here, Toton.
WOW what a great documentary, TY so much for uploading.
Excellent display of consummate trainmanship from the driver of the Class 25/2 (or /3 maybe?) at about 27 minutes in. Superb film. Thanks for sharing 🙂
A rare priceless treasure!
This is the same type of stuff we all saw in the model Thomas and friends. Finally putting the tv to reality is such a beautiful thing to see and realize. Thanks mate for sharing all of these videos and for being just an amazing person
Thomas the tank engine was evil. Look it up
Thanks for this great video footage.👍🇬🇧
A lovely watch. All gone now and we are none the better for it.
Very professional film with a explanation of the system as at that time. What a difference 57 years makes though! I passed my driving test that year. So did thousands that then bought cars and left the railway. British Transport Films were very solid and fair and truthful.
This was incredibly interesting to watch - I'm generally interested in steam engines, and in horses, and have never been terribly interested in diesel or electric locomotive power, but this was a fascinating look into how railways very much are highly specialized in carrying fixed freight. It has given me things to think about with regards to my views on moving the majority of freight back off the roads, and onto the rail network, in order to avoid quite so many wildlife habitats being fragmented by roads and highways - clearly, small freight quantities are ill-suited to the railways, and yet the continuing growth of the road network, and the pollution that comes with it, is something that I think we need to come to a reckoning with if we're to still have human life on this planet many generations from now.
Great view of Great Longstone!
An excellent railway documentary and there are so many on You Tube. I was envious of the young people out on such a great and educational school visit. My geography teachers in the early 60s took us nowhere.
In the United States, we are still waiting for the day the trains primarily serve passengers, and not just freight.
Your a fucking joke you bloke. Here in the states, we prioritize FREIGHT. Passengers were left behind when “Amtrak” was created. After the war, America’s passenger lines were becoming less popular with the advant of the jetliner and coach bus.
The United States is a different animal from Europe. The government run passenger service, Amtrak, exists because the private railroads could not make long distance passenger service work. And Amtrak has not once made a profit, which is telling. It has operated in the Red since it's inception, May 1st, 1971. And it primarily operates over tracks of private freight railroads. If private railroads could not make this service work, then there is no future in it. Short-haul routes, however, can be profitable and the Brightline service in Florida is an ambitious example of a private entity making passenger rail service work.
@@tommythomason6187áááaa
@@tommythomason6187rubbish. If shareholder profits were removed then it could be profitable
@@tommythomason6187 too be fair they did operate less in the red last year iirc
Beautiful compilation, love it
It's not a compilation. It's a single documentary.
I thought that was a William Mathias score - he was professor of music at UCNW, Bangor during my time there - a very distinctive sound. As for the railways, fantastic - nice to see how freight developed and sad that all we get nowadays is freightliners and block freights.
I hope this line can reopen between Great Rocks and Matlock. Interestingly the greatest pressure is coming from freight as it would relieve the congested less ideal Hope Valley route.
Despite this being such a well-presented short film overall, my favourite part actually is 18:44-19:33; just the ambiance of a bustling railway at night, coupled with a soothing yet thought-provoking musical composition, is a treat for me to watch. Regards, Samuel Farris.
what a brilliant video,,,,,,,, thanks brian d.
First class! Thank-you!
And, of course, in my own life-time all that has been turned into an inevitable museum: there is no such thing as Sustainable Mining.
lovely history film about the goods that the railways carried. the historian's voice sounds posh a bit like the teacher I knew during my Collage days in Cornwall
An extremely interesting video, so to all who made this great video, l say a very big thank you to all who made this great video.
Nice! Love it
I never realized that wagon size was directly related to draft horse capacity. Most enlightening.
Yes, right until the end of steam, wagons in small yards and at customer sites were moved by horses. A locomotive would be too expensive. Today, single-wagon traffic is dead in the UK but, in the US, they either use winches, front-end loaders or tiny locomotives called trackmobiles to move freight cars at customer sites.
I realized it.
Holy crap I grew up 3 miles from Wellingborough in the village that the ironstone quarry railway came from!
enjoyed that thank you,it was interesting to be explained why the marshalling yards were out of date
And yet still they built new ones, at great expense, and then closed them all 15-20 years later.
brilliant film thanks for that
fantastic!
I'm fairly sure that we used to show this film at the Southern Region training centre at Beckenham.
Outstanding look at steam railways in days gone by!
An historical film covering an historical period of British rail working, surely.
great video.
beautiful movie!
excellent
Nice one.
Great views of Great Longstone Station on the Midland mainline ,38 seconds in ,closed to passengers in march 1967 and totally in August 1968 , now part of the monsal trail in Derbyshire.
Always informative these videos, cheers, felt for the horses though, definitely beasts of burden.
Yep, but those horses appeared to be Clydesdales. They were bred to be very strong and powerful. They are tall horses, standing about 16 hands high on average, give or take a hand or two.
The Clydesdale breed originated in the Lanarkshire area of Scotland in the early 18th Century.
From the National Museums Scotland website:
"The Clydesdale breed was founded in the early eighteenth century when two breeders, John Paterson of Lochlyoch and the 6th Duke of Hamilton, imported Flemish stallions and mated them with native draught mares in the Clyde valley."
Just a little info for you. 🙂
Great video. Since I don’t know of any film footage of narrow gauge lines and trains in mines in Pennsylvania, USA, I’ll have to settle for this. Though we do have the East Broad Top 😃
What a gem of a film
Nostalgic, but highly enjoyable and interesting.
@ 23:11, I was half expecting him to say "I am now telling the computer exactly what he can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate"
Wonderful film that's the third time I've seen that
And now the fourth time!
I know that exact hill he is standing on at 15:27 I grew up only a mile from it, especially considering what has become of ambergate now, the junction looks absolutely amazing, I was born far too young to see it, and I'm sad that I never will.
considering i've never been there ,or enland for that matter . i kinda want to make it a goal in my life to go to that hill and compare past and present
No one is ever born far too young
Very rare shot of a Class 15 there at the beginning !! And in Colour !!! at 01.15.
Nice.
Always amazed given how strict they were with other things back in the day when approving railways that they allowed stations to be actually built on the curve.
That's one of the main differences between Britain's railways and the North American railroads. Up to and including incredibly complex track work and points on curves as well. North American prototypes have so much more real estate to utilize for their switches, and their loading gauges are quite a bit larger too.
At 23 minutes, "I am now going to question the computer ..." Wow this is totally where the Willy Wonka filmmakers got the computer interlude from, the tone is identical! WW: "I am now going to tell the computer EXACTLY what he can do with a lifetime of chocolate!"
great old film very interesting schools should show this to their pupils compulsory viewing
LOL how would that work?, they all have the attention span of a fkn fly.....
that's true and absolutly no respect
@@davidfarrell7318 you must hate our kids today.
Fabulous historical record. Its interesting to look back with clear hindsight and realise how wrong they were about the future of the railways. If only they had known much damage the 'bulk load' strategy would do to the railways and the country, maybe they would thought again!
Unit trains dominate in the US, with trains carrying large loads from point to point without stopping. The US has the highest per capita usage of freight railways in the world after Switzerland, so I guess they did something right by inventing this strategy.
You have it backwards. In your description, the railways decided to concentrate on bulk traffic and that forced everything else onto the roads. It was the exact opposite. Freight shippers moved non-bulk traffic to the roads, and that forced the railways to concentrate on bulk traffic.
1966 was the last great year on this planet
I wonder how much of that industry (at 12:01) is still active along with the demonstrated knowledge and even awareness of that activity and its value.
Enthusiasm and classic technique.
17:11 I believe this is the only footage of a Frenco Crosti 9F, only one without the other smokebox
Amazing. Astounding. To think that what should be demonstration 'working' museums are actual enterprises using manuel labor and literal horse power at the same time (admittedly primitive) computers are used elsewhere. Talk about 'railways in transition'!
I d like to see videos about passenger trains in the 1960s
Railways are so functional and the landscape so beautiful. That is masc and fem energies in a nutshell!
So, no longer do we have mashalling yards. Instead we have motorways full to capacity, and as I type (August 2021) a severe lack of lorry drivers meaning supply issues....
. . . and all in the name of efficiency . . .
@@jackx4311 Or lack of in the current instance, we moved backwards not forwards with the Beeching era.
Marshalling Yards were a waste of money. Investment should have been made in to more modern freight handling such as containerisation, which the LMS were at the forefront of promotion prior to nationalisation.
@@inregionecaecorum Beeching was a necessary no one on British rail had costed the branch lines, they all lost money.
@@tonyclough9844 ever heard of public service, you know, that's the taxpayer,
GREAT! REVOLUTION!
Great to see Wellingborough iron stone railway
Dont forget the horse also manufactures its own replacement.
1:19 That's the first time I've seen a class 16 caught on tape.
Class 15.
@@PenzancePete Not exactly, I thought that at first, but look at the differences in buffer design.
Yayyy, Wellingborough gets a mention,.. must be the old ironstone works at Irchester country park,..(now open as a museum)
The line we see is identifiable by its distinctive wagons. It was not the Irchester one, but another, operating quarries mostly, to put it briefly, in the area south and south-west of Finedon. The whole area, as you probably know, had loads of ironstone lines, with many changes over the years producing quite a confusing picture. Highly recommended is the series of books by Eric Tonks, 'The Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands' - Part IV The Wellingborough Area for this line in particular.
It fed Wellingborough steel works ..
We had it all..... and we wasted it and threw it away......
they did not know that within 15 years they would disappear coal & miners, any English car, entire railway networks
I was 15 in 1966, it was a much nicer time.
the modern world is rubbish.
You bet it was! It wasn’t perfect, but it was totally removed from the ghastly shit we now have on our hands!
I remember watching the steam trains go under the bridge by the old Wimbledon power station, probably about that time. Who would think the world got so bad it such a short time
It wasn’t that 1966 was a much nicer time it was just that being 15 was a much nicer time
@Eddie Riff We never realized we had hardships. People were nice to each other, that's all that counted.
The horses were filmed at Newmarket where they remained in use, primarily but not solely, for the movement of racehorses.
Though horses were used throughout the country, until about the 1960s.
@@beeble2003 most were gone by the 1950s replaced the internal combustion engine. The last horse used for shunting, Charlie, retired in 1967. Five years later BR stopped handling racehorses and cattle.
nice Quarry Hunslet engine
I knew nothing about railways, until now.
18:44 Bro what is this song. It’s beautiful. It fits with the scene perfectly too.
It was composed for the film.
This was the head of BTF, Edgar Anstey's, favourite BTF production.
I didn’t know about the ironstone quarries in Welly….
And yet marshalling yards are still being used, and extended elsewhere in the world.
Love the music at the beginning! Do you know the name of that theme? Thanks!
Nice video what is their current status
1:08 class 16 NBL diesel locomotive hauling freight🎉
Just can't beat a good British steam engine
23:00 Baccy tin sticking out of the pocket, bet they hid the ashtray 😁
These guys pushing the wagons and shinning up a rope dont look like they've been sitting around waiting for pizza and hagan daz to be delivered.
27:46 Has this Peak lost it's silencer, they normally sound very quiet? 🚂👍
Sputnik and the steam train marched in unison. Yes that's right, actually. 'The Rocket' prophetic.
"Oh, hey, son. Hi. How was your first day? Good. Oh,, come on, dad. ...." The beginning of an advert on this video. I don't let it play long enough to find out what it's for, but if I did I would avoid that product. What a twee irritating dialogue with a pair of adult English voice actors trying to sound transatlantic. Really good BTF documentary, by the way!
Such an amazing film, but I wonder who would have watched it?
In those days, films like this would be shown before the main movie at the cinema.
Was the quarry operation shown at the beginning still a serious operation during filming, or was it a tourist operation?
The slate quarries in Ffestiniog didn't close for a further 3 to 4 years after the film was released. So I'd say what we saw was deadly serious economic activity
@@russeldavis1787 Thanks