Jack West

Electrification, and the raiIway men of Rugby adopt new methods and use new machines. In this film they tell in their own words of the great technological changes and the human problems of adapting which each has to face. As with seamen and farmers, railwaymen even today remain curiously close to nature; and gain flexibility of mind from the relationship.

There have been railways in this country for over three hundred years. In the nineteenth century, railways spread across Britain and changed the geography, history, economy, and the life of a nation, but already there existed primitive railways for moving coal and other minerals from the pits and quarries to navigable water and roads. This film scans the present and the past to show those economic principles governing the early railways have been rediscovered as a basis for modern freight trains.

Five and a half minutes from Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill, in the driver's cab of the Blue Pullman to the accompianiment of Johann Strauss's "Perpetuum Mobile", the camera makes the journey at a speed of about 960 mph! Inside the train, passengers eat and drink, sleep or read, oblivious of the speed at which they travel.

A film about one of the most responsible and professional jobs on British Railways. Practical work in shop and signal box, on gantry and trackside, coupled with instruction in mechanics, electricity, electronics and draughtsmanship, lead the apprentice intro the intricacies of design, the excitement of research and experiment, and the intense satisfaction of being in on a big changeover from old-style semaphore signalling to a new coloured light system.

‘St Christopher’s - for the children of Railway Servants’. About a hundred children are cared for at this Derby railway orphanage and this film gives a selection of scenes from a typical day: the breakfast mail, a boy with a problem, a girl with a worry, a visit from two widowers, a birthday tea party. An official insight into a forgotten aspect of railway operation.