Movies: British Transport Films

Comprising train and track footage quickly shot just before a heavy winter's snowfall was melting, the multi-award-winning classic that emerged from the cutting-room compresses British Rail's dedication to blizzard-battling into a thrilling eight-min...

The electrification of the London Midland Region main line between London, Manchester and Liverpool at 25KV AC, using overhead wires and drawing supply from the National Grid, was a major undertaking involving civil, electrical, mechanical and signal...

Young Robbie, a keen footballer and a railway enthusiast, is persuaded by his big brother to go through a hole in a railway fence on to the track for some reason. His laces become caught on the tracks and he has an accident so serious that he will ne...

Britain operates the most experienced diesel and electric railway in tne world. A century and a half ago she invented the steam engine and introduced a new system of transport; and in only nine years British Rail and the British locomotive industry d...

Southampton, a deep-water port with four tides a day, is an ocean terminal for the world's largest liners. Their coming and going, and the people who work with them are the subject of this film as they reflect in their personal lives some of the dram...

Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from ...

Originally intended as an advertising short, this film follows The Elizabethan, a non-stop British Railways service from London to Edinburgh along the East Coast Main Line. A nostalgic record of the halcyon years of steam on British Railways and the ...

The Nine Road is the busman's name for one of London's oldest and most used bus routes, running between Mortlake and Liverpool Street. The film takes us along the route on a summer's day, and shows the operation and control of the Number Nines from e...

This fly on the wall-style documentary from 1961 won an Oscar for best documentary, and shows the changing patterns of human emotions during 24 hours in the life of Waterloo Station....

When a schoolboy's day-dream of a fantasy sports day includes events where acts of vandalism and trespass are required, dire consequences ensue. Originally created as an educational film, this somewhat surrealist short has a serious message at its co...

The re-signalling of 1000 track miles from the River Weaver to the Clyde brings the whole line from London to Glasgow under one system of push-button control and colour light signals, and completes the main line electrification. The film follows the ...

Blue Pullman is a 1960 short documentary film directed by James Ritchie, which follows the development, preparation and a journey from Manchester to London on new British Railways Blue Pullman units. As with earlier British Transport Films, many of t...

Exploration of the Slimbridge Wild Fowl Trust in Gloucestershire, England, which boasts the largest collection of living wild fowl in the world....

An illustrated lecture given by Dr. Beeching on the development and improvement of Britain's major railway trunk routes. Offers a forecast of the requirements of 1984 outlined in his 1964 report....

Introduces the principle of newly developed computer techniques for planning train movements, crew and locomotive rosters and for producing and printing timetables. Explains the programmes, shows the equipment in action and some of the changes in wor...

A largely animated exposition of the need for, and methods of improvement, in British Rail Corporate Planning....

Sir Brian Robertson addresses the staff of British rail on the subject of the rationalisation and modernisation of the railways as set out in a new paper outlining the changes to take place in the period 1959-1963....

A stop-motion animation aimed at young people, discouraging vandalism on railway lines, by pointing out the dangers....

A celebration of inter-city trains, from British Transport Films....

The British Railways modernisation programme of the 1960s radically changed the rail network, and the British Transport Films unit and the TV news were there to capture it. Compiled here is never before released colour footage of Southern steam at Wa...