Major Road Ahead (December 1958) John Laing Film Unit Building M1 Motorway 

The whole 55 miles was due to be completed in 19 months. Now it takes nearly that long to repair a bit of the M6 near Spaghetti Junction!

My Dad was a quantity surveyor on the M1 project .

That's 1950's pounds, 16 million pounds in those days would come close to half a billion pounds in these day's money.

Fascinating film. The sheer scale of the job is unbelievable!

Love to know what they considered "congested" in those days.

anyone spot the drinkwater lorry this company loaned their dodge tipper lorries for the film hell drivers starring stanley baker

All those Gantt charts and schedule documents, all done by hand, and all update at least once a day. There must have been hundreds of men and women who were involved in just maintaining the schedules. Now would involve maybe fifteen people with everything done by computer and updated in real time.

Love the old background music ! :)...A very interesting film

Richard Baker doing the narration if I'm not mistaken.

Anthony Ashworth {g4zcg} Tony is on this film, in the hut.....ONE OF LIFES GREAT CHARECTORS AND A GREAT STORY TELLER !! I Was one year old when this film was made !

I wonder if there's any clips of the M6 Preston bypass which was completed prior to the M1.

Notice majority look much happier than us these days. Road workers just stand about now taking the piss

Not a day glow in sight!!!

Probably a few more cars than usual and maybe if traffic stopped for just a few seconds. Sedate contrast to nowadays.

Our Route 66.

And still not finished.....

No hi vis anywhere! , how did they do it!.

What country had the first motorway?

We are a highways blog and our viewers would find this very interesting, would it be ok to embed?

Hey A14 are you watching .......

What's the password for findaclip then? Don't make us have to brute force it ;-P!

I would like to embed this video on my Digger Blog, as I am sure it will be of great interest to my readers. Can you please let me know if that is ok ?

Is u paying attention A14 ????

3:54 sad seeing the trees getting flattened and environment destroyed. Same now as then.

Note. Their lack oh health and safety of the road builders.