Bring back these times ❤️Born in 1973 ,Love the sound of BR Commuter trains to loco Pulled trains ❤️Long before Privatisation and Network Rail,Which today is a mess .
God no. Those times were bloody awful. What you're really saying there is that you want to be young again. Let's also not pretend that the trains were better then. As you can see in this documentary, everybody thought they were awful then too (and they were awful). The problem we have now is the same as it was then. Chronic underinvestment.
@@zeddeka quite. BR didn’t care to invest either, and it was always one of the first things to get cut by central government when they had to balance things.
Those “all doors” trains seem much better for getting commuters on/off trains quickly without creating crowding around doors. Guessing they were too much of a liability with them probably not locking whilst the train was moving though.
@@veggie42ok I accept accidents happened but self opening doors did make you safety aware due to their design. A friend from my past lost his legs running to try and catch such a opening door train. Its always best to be late than really late.
That 'Overcrowded Railway Carriage' with everyone able to sit down made me laugh. Now that would mean you're stood nose to nose with a stranger for the entire journey!
@@hanvyj2 I was wondering if it was due to population growth, but the UK’s only gone from 55 to 65 million in those 50 years. I suppose it must just be the migration from rural areas to the cities!
@@kaitlyn__L Either that, or the growing popularity of commuting in due to property prices. By the sounds of it, back then it was unusual to travel in for work. Nowadays in many cities it's just not expected that you live near work.
@@kaitlyn__L The rail service has been massively reduced, the network used to be huge but so many lines were closed because they didn't make profit, as if that's the only purpose of a railway or something. Less trains on each track too, for the same reason, you make more money cramming more people onto less trains.
I keep expecting 1976 to look more dated but it constantly surprises me how it doesn't. It still looks like modern society. The station signs even look way ahead.
Yes. The bored look of commuters in London is the same. The clothes don’t look dated at all. I think this would have filmed over the hot summer of 1976.
People forget most had social media accounts, mobiles and laptops and there was a basic internet shopping offering from most retailers albeit with a smaller range of products than in recent times. But in general the experience of daily life was remarkably similar.
It wasn't really over the tannoy, they just added the echo and reverb in post production. You can see when she's actually announcing she's holding the tannoy button. Sorry, a career in film and TV makes you notice these things and spoils everything!
Always love the long-distance shots with the presenter apparently talking to himself, and those around him looking perplexed as if he's just escaped from an institution
@@joedimaggio3146 And that has a bearing on their customer service ability? No. What does though is that taking time to be a daily pleasantry is not nearly compensated for in pay and that I'm sure rail companies and their shareholders would throw a fit if they saw someone showing compassion and not charging people for the privilege.
@@stopthetories Remember proper bin men? Today's snowflakes are so worried about being burned to death, we just got on with it, health and safety gone mad.
They still used those trains until around 2005. I remember the decline beginning around 2003 and it'd be increasingly special if you got to ride on one. They were infinitely cosier and comfier than the brightly lit, uncomfortable and plastic rubbish that replaced them.
People moaned like hell about British Railways in the 1970's. With the state of the railways in 2024, I bet people would go back to 1970's British Railways in a heartbeat!
Not sure, the problem with BR was it was entirely reliant on government for its funding and that led to horrific lack of capital investment from 60s to late 80s. Would a new BR be any different?
Bless you Spud. A unique level of respect and service to the paying passenger. None of this level of care given today in our un-staffed platforms. How regressive and so sad.
Keep adding content like this, I was a happy 10 year old in 1976 with the world at my feet. Things like this make me reflect back to a happier time where I had my whole family around me.
2:05 love it how people were just jumping off the train as it's still moving into the platform. Different time. Also... Please keep posting these little time capsules! I was born in '92, and I find all this stuff before my time to be absolutely fascinating! The BBC has a treasure trove of history in its archives O_O
@@AtheistOrphan Sounds like fun to me! But I can see where someone could get their leg caught or trip and this would be a hazard. Obviously it's MUCH safer to do it the way we do now, but I can't help but think it would be fun to at least try this :)
This was a strangely poetic way to look at commuting and almost feels ahead of its time in 1976. Also, the Helvetica font is literally being used for everything in this video!
I’d love to see John Cleese dressed as a policeman and arresting the reporter who is screaming in the middle of the platform. He could even come into the scene as the Minister of Funny Walks.
Even railway enthusiasts hate commuting, unless their train is a class due to be withdrawn from service soon, people tend to only treasure things when they are gone. 😉
Ah, slam door carriages! I was a kid in 1976 but still grew up to commute (for a few years) on the damn things. So glad to get out of London in the mid-eighties.
Those seats had a distinct smell, as did the carriages, and also the doors had a specific “clunk”. Lot’s of things one just take’s for granted then one day they are all gone
I thought this would be quite dull but it was a lovely piece of footage, Spud is a delight, and every station should have a Spud U Like lol (90s joke) and the writerly creativity of the commuters, plus the old solicitor chap was very much like my much missed grandfather in his demeanour and speech. Wonderful stuff. The attractive lady announcer in the booth had such a nice voice as well.
This is absolutely brilliant "Corporate image BR" era footage. Peak BR you could say. Everything in standard blue or blue/grey, standard rail typface and double arrow symbols everywhere. Captures the hum drum (you could say drab) look of 70s commuting experience perfectly. Hum drum that is except for characters like Spud Murphy who take that level of pride in what they do. He was absolutely in his element, and it showed! Today the station would be unstaffed most likely and you'd get your tickets either via a card-only payment machine or via an app. Progress....?
"It's amazing, in a packed train, how little conversation you hear..." (from 7:49) - oh, if only that were still true nowadays! There's no reading newspapers or staring out of the window any more, it's all non-stop yapping into phones. (And the irritating audio bleed of television programmes and music from cheap headphones.) What a blissful place the natural British reticence to be a nuisance made the world in1976!
ahhhh this is such a wonderful video and brings back many memories. the newspapers, the smoking, no mobile phones and the old slam door emu units on the southern…. and those orange curtains and first class compartments…amazing good days!!
What’s a bizarre line to take. Commuted on the Brighton line from 1980 to 1990 and it was thoroughly enjoyable - buffet cars, card games, chess.More fun than working.
Good old Spud, he was one in a million, the EPITOMY of good customer service. With a sense of duty that really did make his patrons feel highly valued.
I can remember that being broadcast! It was the lady in the booth talking back to the reporter using the PA (although I can see now it was not real) that jogged the memory.
Sadly BR got rid of the station manager posting at that station in the 80s, they were awful about cost cutting too. But it’s certainly true that privatisation hasn’t done anything to help!
“Some will pay up to £1000 a year for a season ticket”.. wow and that was in 1976 when houses in Manchester and Liverpool were still like £5000. That’s an expensive season ticket
No door locks,no platform train interface,nobody shouting stand behind the yellow line and yet the trains still ran! It’s all to bloody OTT today. I wonder if any of those East Farleigh ties still exist?
Yeah, and far more accidents, many fatal, than there are today. Plus the odd murder in compartments, one of which infamously remains unsolved to this day.
@@theblindfoldep Smoking on the actual tube trains was prohibited in 1984, along with smoking on the escalators. You could still smoke in the station when past the top of the escalator until 1987, after which it was banned everywhere following the Kings Cross fire. It was argued that the 1984 ban was the worst of all worlds as it encouraged people to light up on the escalators heading out of the station and drop the match, this of course is what caused the Kings Cross fire in the first place.
If you pay closer attention you'll realise that other than the buildings and rails being in the same place, and that people still commute, literally everything else has changed. From the technology through to the people themselves and how we interact today. People are complete strangers today and the cohesion in the society you see in the video is now completely vacant.
1976: Commuters choose to live in the country and the lifestyle, spend 3 hours sitting in comfort, finding a use of the time. Typical job: Well payed Solicitor 2022: Commuters who can't afford the housing costs in the city are forced into a lifestyle, spend 4 hours standing or sitting in discomfort, unable to find a good use for the time. Typical job: Cleaner on minimum wage It's crazy
The caustic sounding commentator seems to have a negative view of commuting. For him, commuters 'scurry' along when they are merely boarding or leaving a train en masse. They may not enjoy the journey, but it can't all be purgatory. I suppose he is setting himself up for rebuttal by Limerick writers, authors and bridge players.
they even had smoking carriages back then. if you got in one of those it was full of people smoking like a chimney at 8am. you choked on the air and your clothes would stink the whole day. a different time. i dont miss that
Absolutely, I don't miss it either. My parents were both smokers so I always had to travel in smoking carriages with them, I really hated the stink. Killed them both really young as well.
Love seeing these old trains. I was 7 in 1976. My dad would often take me to London Waterloo for days out. I was obsessed with trains. These days I find this same journey torturous.
They weren't comfy armchairs unless you forked out for first class. The 2+3 seating in a 1950s vintage BR suburban carriage was horribly cramped, and you got trodden on and blasted by the weather every time the train stopped at a station.
Lovely voice spud Lovely educational program Not much difference today Hell..... No seats Strikes Very expensive Scam symptoms But beautiful stations For site seeing Most likely just musuem These days
I'm a Cambridge method student of English and I tried to emulate the voice of Bernard Falk. He has a true british accent! The problem is that even with my xenoglossia (ability to emulate voices and accents easily from others), it was difficult. It was for an school video in the high school and achieving Falk's accent in 3 days was too difficult Also, talking about commuters, in Mexico we will have a commuter between Mexico City and the new airport in Tecámac, but no one uses it. As in the Mexico City Subway, the commuter between Mexico City and Huehuetoca is falling down in pieces, causing delays even if it was opened in 2001.
