When a schoolboy's day-dream of a fantasy sports day includes events where acts of vandalism and trespass are required, dire consequences ensue. Originally created as an educational film, this somewhat surrealist short has a serious message at its core. This won't be a lesson you'll forget in a hurry.
Lively holiday in Blackpool, with jazz accompaniment.
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".
"Rail" captures British Railways at a major turning-point in its history. In certain respects, this was a period of considerable upheaval and loss. There was a facing-up to the increasing need for a big modernisation drive. Full and speedy electrification, or the wider promotion of diesel-power on remaining lines, became a matter of top priority. Geoffrey Jones recorded a rapidly disappearing world of everyday steam travel, with its labour-intensive rail workforce : some of the footage in "Rail" (recognisable from "Snow") dates from around 1962.
Underlines the importance of waterways as mans of modern transport. Details the way in which the network of waterways covers britain.
Exploration of the Slimbridge Wild Fowl Trust in Gloucestershire, England, which boasts the largest collection of living wild fowl in the world.
The Channel Islands have had a varied and exciting history. Jersey and Guernsey are ideal places for holidays. Jersey offers a wide variety of attractive bays for sport and relaxation; Guernsey still preserves something of an eighteenth-century atmosphere, and is a place for quieter enjoyment. It is an ideal centre for exploring the other smaller islands, and the film ends with a journey by boat to Herm.
Documentary from British Transport Films
A short documentary.
People will always need transport and transport will always need people. Addressed particularly to boys of school-leaving age and to young men completing their period of military service, this film shows some of the wide variety of careers which British Transport has to offer, whether in railways or in the docks, on the orads or on Britain's inland waterways. The good transport worker combines individual initiative with teamwork, and the work of the transport team is vital to the nation.
British Transport film.
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.
A romantic overview of England in the Elizabethan Age.
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.
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.
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.
All freight movements over Britain's rail network are monitored and controlled by an advanced computer-based system known as TOPS (Total Operations Processing System). The film follows the progress of a wagon load of equipment from Truro to the Midlands and shows how TOPS makes it possible to accommodate a last minute change of plan.
The holiday attractions of the Lancashire coast, including a beauty contest in Morecambe, Southport flower show and Blackpool Fun Fair.
Donald Houston plays a Welshman who tells the story of what it's like to live in small town Wales and how the train service helps.
‘St Christopher’s - for the children of Railway Servants’. About a hundred children are cared for at this Derby railway orphanage and this film gives a selection of scenes from a typical day: the breakfast mail, a boy with a problem, a girl with a worry, a visit from two widowers, a birthday tea party. An official insight into a forgotten aspect of railway operation.
