This vintage transport film, produced by the Rank Organisation in 1963, promotes the attempts at improved integration between UK road, rail and shipping sectors in the 60's.
I wonder if they could be brought back? Pullman only. No standard seating unless completely blocked off from 1st class. (Locked doors to prevent econ people wandering thru.) London->Manc? London-> Birm?
What beutifully crisp and vivid colour footage from 1963! I'm an 80s baby so this was the time of my parents, not me, but I love the look of 60s, everything looked classy and elegant. It seems like the UK was also a forward thinking and moving country back then too. I'm not saying things were "better" but certainly the spirit of the age was to get things done, wheras now it feels we've been in a state of managed decline for decades now and thats really beginning to show.
These were the years before you could live your life on benefits. Britain was scruffy and run down in many places though but people could see a brighter future. The rot set in with 24 hour news, the Internet and the destruction of Britishness by mass migration.
The great con man Ernest Marples,had a hand in the Beeching cuts,while owning a construction company building motorways,not bent then,mind you,look at the Westminster trough today.
As this video shows, half the railway network made up 1% of the income - little dinky branch lines that hardly anyone used. It made sense to close them. And when Labour came into power in 1964 they carried on the closures.
the large wholesale closures were made under labour 1965 to 1970 . labour then gave beeching and award. However something had to be done , british rail could not even tell us how many people it exactly employed!@@WilliamSmith-mx6ze
This was the great era I grew up in as a school boy, inspiring me for taking part in a promising and exciting future. We designed and built everything here and were good at it too. Our country lived and breathed. I take it we don't show films like this in schools anymore.
The irony! 1963 and they heil the Blue Pullman which can do London to Manchester in 3 1/2 hours in luxury through the Midland Railway Derbyshire line, 5 years later it was closed !!!
Quite a disconnect there, referencing the need for Dr Beeching’s plan while highlighting the future of the railways with footage of the Midland Pullman, which ran along tracks closed by Dr Beeching’s plan!
Rail lobby versus road lobby... Seems the road lobby was getting the upper hand in that period with rail used mostly for goods transport. But then we got too many cars ... Sight of the Forth Bridge under construction took me down memory lane as I have crossed that bridge many times on my bicycle. Thank you! 😊❤
Sadly most rusted away quickly. I recall that if a customer wanted their new car rustproofed it cost extra. Hardly ever see a modern (2000 on) that’s rusty.
no one was catching the trains! thank goodness he built the motorways , the car gave the working man the biggest freedom ever. Germany, Europe has trains trams galore inc motorways , they work well and are used , why is that . Biased my arse @@chriswalford4161
So the prediction that the roads would not be able to cope with the volume of traffic had already been made yet they continued to close railways despite this ?
In the company I worked for there was no such thing as “an accident”, which term suggests that nothing could be done to prevent a dangerous incident. Our active safety culture emphasised the need for thorough risk assessments and safe working procedures. I’m thankful to have lived in the age of the much-maligned “health and safety”.
I agree with you up to a point as yes it was promised that the toll was temporary until the tunnel was paid for. However, a second tunnel was added and then the bridge.
This Public Information Film would have been shown in old-style cinemas, surely - alongside the major film and all those 'interesting' local advertisements by Pearl and Dean ?
Marples was nothing more than a smiling assassin when it came to the railways. How the Chairman of one of the country's biggest road builders was allowed to be Minister for Transport I'll never know. Oh, hang on. I do know... and it involves a large supply of big brown envelopes....
There are so many cars, trains and places in this video which are familiar to me from my teens. That said, I prefer to watch steam trains from the 1950s, which proves the old saying; nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Those Railways need to be improved once more to get freight off the roads. If only we weren't paying for the infrastructure maintenance while the private rail companies reap the profit.
How ironic that @05:24 we can see the then Minister of Transport, a biased road builder promoter & businessman (joint founder of Marples Ridgeway, who had held 80% of the shares) who eventually suddenly left the UK for Monaco to avoid UK taxes… Just the sort of figurehead for reaping profits from grandiose schemes & overblown puffed-up changes.
What happened to the benefits family with five kids, mobility car scheme of £500 pcm to allow those that limp outside with a few car with no modifications?
Apparently more concrete, tarmac, cars & people is progress. 18m more people here thanks to 70 years of mass immigration = an extra population the size of Norway, Finland & Bulgaria combined mostly squashed into England
Why would you compare GB to America?? The land mass difference alone negates the population comparison for travel. We have to utilize the interstate system. Next time they should compare to another island state instead of a entire large continent.
wasn't it all so wonderful? its not real life though, this is a stage managed and directed film with every shot selected and directed for a reason. they didn't get this by just going out and pointing a camera at stuff, they filmed brand new roads, bridges and signs so of course it all looks new and clean. it would be different if it was a film about the worn out and dirty railway stations or underground, or the slums and tenements of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow or Liverpool in the same year. plus because in this time most things were filmed on Technicolour film stock, Technicolor was a popular color film process that was known for its rich and vibrant hues. Technicolor films utilized a dye transfer process that produced vivid colors and high saturation levels.this is why film in the 60s always looks so bright and colourful, all the colours are saturated.
"Without diversity?" You must be kidding! All this, and all the new houses in the 60's, were built by imported Irish labour! Millions of Irish came to the UK to build all this, including my relatives. Remember the great firm WIMPEY? An acronym standing for "We Import More Paddies Every Year"! A joke, but true. Many more came to work in our car factories as well, there is still a massive Irish diaspora in Oxford, Dagenham and Birmingham due to immigration in the 60's to man the lines making all the new cars you see here on the new motorways. Also, without the Windrushers, there'd be nobody to drive or man the buses or tubes! The London Transport recruitment advertisements in the West Indies urged them to "come and help your mother nation, we need you!" Then as now, we depended utterly on imported labour to fill the jobs at the bottom of the pyramid. It's been the same in Britain for 2,000 years.
"Those who didn't want to move for any motorway have gone and the motorway builders have come". Sod your house, I'm building a motorway through it. Probably lost a house for a council flat in a tower block.
Do you know how many Europeans relocated to Britain during the post war period ? Or how many Irish navvies it took to build the railways and motorways ?
InterCity routes possibly but the frequency is very poor compared to the uk and the uk trains are full so they’re doing something right,rural services in France and Spain are very sparse,the equivalent service here is at the very least hourly,Spain and France have recently closed lines
France and Spain much better for high speed rail, but their local services are very poor. Here our slower services (local and main line) are much better, but so overcrowded because too many lines were closed and we have failed to build a high speed network to absorb the huge growth in travellers. And now we've built a massively expensive high speed line from nowhere to nowhere, that will do nothing to relieve the overcrowding, thanks to government dithering - it's on - it's off - it's on - we're not sure . . . . In response to the press, who will rubbish anything that's an easy target because of cost, let's build half of it, and end it in the middle of nowhere in suburban West London, just to make sure the money already spent gives no benefit to anyone! Between the press and the politicians, our country has been driven to the dogs!
Great video...packed with lots of information about the time. Love the cars. How clean those motorways looked. Unfortunately there are too many vehicles on the roads today. I was 6 in 1963 and you were lucky to see any cars parked up outside of someone's house back then, now neighbours are fighting over parking spaces.
Even when I was a young child in the late 1980s this was the case. I have photos from back then of the street I grew up in, and there were probably 2 cars parked in the whole street (about 500m long) and the odd car sat on a driveway. You would probably see a car drive down it once every half hour or so. Went back there a couple of days ago, and the place was heaving. Queues down the road, and there actually was 2 people arguing over a parking space. How I wish time travel was possible!
Thing is Germany still has their marshalling yards, still operate wagon load traffic. In Europe it's common to trunk Artic-trailers and swap bodies by rail on long distance routes , here most of it's still crawling along the slow lane of the motorways.
Could you even imagine news presented like this in the present day? Just listen to that positive outlook! Factual whether the statement is good or bad. Just beautiful!
'Extravagant Victorian Railways' built by 'Cheap Labour' to be replaced by 'Waiter Service For Businessmen as well as Ordinary Passengers.' I assume this was made during a Tory Government tenure, it certainly appeals to a, err, 'Certain Type.' Same Railway Cutting Tactics still used: Cut service to a minimum, say one train just after the morning rush hour and one just before the evening rush hour: Point to "Falling Passenger Numbers" etc etc. Another money making scheme employed by the Brits: don't publish local train times in order to push people onto the premium Airport Service.
Brilliant video thanks for hosting it. Very interesting but at 12:54 he says "there are some accidents that can't be avoided" I beg to differ, all accidents can be avoided !!
