Midland Red Film Find 

Midland Red Film Find
In 1967, a wood-lined metal case containing reels of 35mm film, was found in the vaults of Nuneaton Council House. At that time, I was Chairman of our local film society and I had the opportunity of looking into this box to find out its contents. On examination and with help from our local cinema manager, we found out that most of the films were of Nuneaton carnivals between 1932 and 1938. There was a smaller reel that, on examination, turned out to be nothing to do with carnivals. Instead, it contained a film of an outing to Wicksteed Park in August 1932 that had been arranged by the Red Rovers Club, a social club of the Midland Red Omnibus Company. After showing the film on the cinema screen one Sunday, the films were sealed, placed back in the box and forgotten.
In 1980, the Curator of the Nuneaton Museum contacted me because he had found this box on the local rubbish dump. I had written a report on the contents in the box, and he wanted to know whether there was anything we could do to save the film. The problem was that the films had been made on nitrate film stock and was highly inflammable. At that time, I knew a man who was experimenting to convert old films onto the then new medium called video-tape. I went to see him and after some experimentation, we managed to transfer the film image onto video- tape. The film shows scenes of many models of Midland Red in 1932 leaving Nuneaton with children waving their arms out of the windows, and in the case of the char-a-banc coaches, over the top of the drivers' windscreen. It also shows scenes of the vehicles going along the road on their way to Wicksteed Park. The rest of the film shows scenes of Wicksteed Park (near Kettering) a theme park with miniature railways and other attractions. The film sequence closes with an egg and spoon and three-legged races carried out by the drivers and conductors, employees of the Midland Red Company, and a quick scene of the return home. The film ran for approximately fourteen and a half minutes and was silent. At a later time, after some research, I added a sound track in keeping with the old thirties newsreels. The film was shown around the town at various social clubs, along with the carnival films, as a look into the local history of the town.
Here then are six still scenes from that film. These pictures have never been seen before and so we are looking into the past at buses as they were in 1932. A review of these films and an article of how I managed to transfer them onto video also appeared in the Midland Red's own newspaper in 1984.
Malcolm Curtis
Nuneaton