Vintage railway film - Wires over the border - 1974 

Just love to hear Maurice Denham’s voice

Health and safety at its best 9:17 Train double headed by 2class 50s pass within feet below 3 men up a gantry.

I'm actually astounded that that new signal post was put up and that concrete sleepered track was moved by hand.

Fascinating history of British Rail, with congratulations from USA FOR conserving this electrification history.

The first time I went over Shap they were in the middle of this. Love the nostalgia. Also the workmen's comments. I expected someone to go "Right," said Fred...

Marvelous old bit of nostalgia. Cheers

Thank you for putting this up .. It's odd ., when we built things .. The music and commentary reminds me of Nogin the Nor..

I'm a train and I approve this video! Choo choo!

a gem

9:56 "Hurry up! I'm bloody starvin'!"

Wouldnt be a 70`s video without a flute playing in the background.

I always wondered what happened to Jackie Stewart when he retired from F1. There he is at 9:50 barking orders to his wee men.

WAS THAT JIM BOWEN AT THE CREW WORKS? GREAT, SMASHING SUPER LOVELY TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT WOULD OF WON A BRAND NEW CLASS 87 ELECTRIC LOCO

Thank you for posting this I really enjoyed it.

thank you so much for uploading this film. 😍

Brilliant video really informative and entertaining

Great footage ! Always very interesting so see (and to hear ... !) Best regards from south Germany

What an awesome video… I love the era of where old started to met new! Best of both worlds as rail technology was in its infancy of evolution! Beaut of a video!

Awesome video Thank you for share video

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

Yet another beauty, thank you.

Health and Safery guys would have a heart attack looking at this video. XD

👍Thank you Brilliant Post

Fantastic video. It had a good cross section of all the different disciplines need to complete that project.

1750 miles of electrical wire ~= straight line distance from Chicago to Los Angeles USA 🇺🇸

Great vid nice to sèe mentor so many times at doni just sat there

Terrible what they did to that old signal box though

Thanks for this. Excellent video.

If only we could turn the clock back to then, life was so much simpler.

You can't imagine working today in a foundry wearing shirt, tie and a cardigan @7:18!

11:30 hip-hop beats in 1974!🎤

Brilliant video

Fortunate to travel all over the UK by train. A great country is built up by great railway systems.

LOL - the dubbed voices were amusing - Enjoyable video

Wikipedia tells me the Class 87's (or some of them) are still in operation in Bulgaria.

Hah! The narrator is Maurice Denham, who appeared as a corrupt judge in 'Porridge'.

Great bit of history, imagine working the signal box at the beginning! People got things done ASAP then and not faffed about rearranging cones for months/years 👍👍👍

Love the Jethro Tull style music!

I enjoy all of these videos very much - particularly the "training" ones. A note: I am well into "elderly" but can't help but notice that most ALL of the workers I ever see actually working on the railroad are EASILY in their 50's... no shortage of gray hair. No young people?

I believe the Class 87s live on but in Bulgaria hauling goods trains over the 300 mile run between Burgas and Pirdop. I saw a couple in the sidings at Burgas station in 2016

15:05A rare glimpse of 86202 as 86202 before it was renumbered 86102

"The construction system was based on a series of work strains" 😧

Great insight into the mammoth project. Shame it was over dubbed with dodgy actors playing the workers voices.

Hello! I found your video accidentally and clicked immediately on SUBSCRIBE button! Such an interesting video, thanks for sharing! I will stay here and waiting for some more cool videos! Best regards from Romania! :)

So your man drove around in a Ford Escort or Bedford van and hooked the wires with a giant fishing rod 🎣 to check the lectric was flowing through it?

Narrated by Maurice Denham? Certainly sounds like him.

How many linesmen does it take to raise a signal lol! I'm sure that's not to code 🤣

Is it just me or is the driver at the controls of the Class 87 Reg Varney of "On The Buses" fame..?? 🤔 Obviously "On The Trains" in this but still... 🤣

How fake is the voiceover? "Tea? We haven't got time for tea!" No British worker would EVER do a stroke of work without a brew!

Great time-capsule film. Thanks for posting it. I couldn't help wondering if Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull worked part-time on these documentary music scores in the early to mid 70s?

Health n Safety, right lads, get on top of that carriage and sort those wires out. If you fall....well, you'll be in hospital for sure.

Built without gloves and safety harness etc etc etc.

Have you got the rest of the programmes from this video of transport information films... I bought it from the National Railway Museum when I was 8 around 34 years ago lol... Obviously since then the VHS tape has gotten lost - not like I could watch it now anyway as video players don't exist... 🤣 Would love an upload of the rest of these too if possible... 👍👍

Im so glad America uses Diesel locos for the vast majority of our railways

to me to you to me to you

Do you have "Queens Day, A"? A 9 min BFi film of H M The Queen at Preston in 1974 opening the northern section of wcml?

Wow, that flute is really really annoying, but par for the course in a 1970s information film!

Aahhhh.....the good old days, when every member of the permanent way, whether from London, Crewe, Preston or Motherwell spoke in cockney because they were working class.

Lol this as old as me. I bet most of those folk including the stereotypical bbc style Scottish and cockney overdubbed voices are long gone👍

This of course ruined the unions control over things as well because back then drivers didn't work end to end but depot to depot and it meant that at Carlisle a piloted Scottish Region engine had to enter onto English rails to pick up the train to go to Glasgow say and the same back and back then ASLEF was a very powerful union that governments didn't mess with and part of that was no demarcation and so your London to Glasgow express enjoyed several stops along the way to swap engines over adding quite a bit of time to the overall journey. Thatcher kicked the unions into touch somewhat and drivers started covering further and further and nary a squeak from ASLEF these days. Then British Rail says "why can't a class 86 go all the way from London to Glasgow" and privatisation really helped that immensely because British Rail were no more and private operators owned the trains, locos and crew.

The days when foremen(management ) weren't narcissistic pratts

Only took UK almost 25 years to then electrify the East Coast mainline and another 25 to electrify the Great Western lines...😒

Just wait for a solar flare to reduce the wonderful electronic signal & switch thingy gadgetry to fry and fizzle. Keep the old system as a redundancy? Nawww, just better to have shiny newy thingy without any backup. There isn't any need, no need, no need, no.... Everything will be fine, Everything will be fine, Everything will be fine, Everyth...... Oh sh.t, it's all fried, we'd better go back to hoomans waving fuel lanterns and using whistles powered by lungs, and hand-operated switching.... Gonna take some time to remember how to do it, look in museums how to re-make everything