Director
Based on instructional material, this film explains the preparation and procedures for the operation of a then modern AC electric locomotive, also taking in diesel haulage and shots of steam traction. The opening sequence features an early use of the double-arrow BR logo.
Writer
Southampton's role as a major cargo centre, showing cargo operations at the deep water quays and in the modern transit sheds.
Writer
Through the forward-looking windows of the new diesel multiple-unit trains reveals a new world of signs, signals and railway sights to those who ride behind the driver. For children, particularly, find this is a fascinating experience. This film communicates something of their excitement and wonder as well as some of the wry, un-conscious humour with which their pertinent and amusing questions and comments are so often interlerded.
Script
‘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.
Writer
A 200-ton transformer is moved by road from Hayes, Middlesex, to Iver, Bucks. Behind the story of the journey there is another tale: the problems which had to be solved before the task could be undertaken. This background story is told by the voices of those responsible for the various aspects of the operation, until the transformer is placed within a 'bee's wing' of its intended position.
Writer
Short documentary hymning the wonders of 'modernisation' on the railways.
Writer
The history of the BRS (British Road Services), the general haulage network of the UK. Part of BFI collection "Points and Aspects."
Writer
A random selection of housewives around the UK take a day off from their traditional domestic chores.
Writer
A short film about the recovery of a snowbound train in 1950s England.
Writer
Elizabethan Express is a 1954 British Transport Film that follows The Elizabethan, a non-stop British Railways service from London to Edinburgh along the East Coast Main Line. Although originally intended as an advertising short, it now acts as a nostalgic record of the halcyon years of steam on British Railways and the ex-LNER Class A4.
Writer
People will always need transport and transport will always need people. Addressed particularly to boys of school-leaving age and to young men completing their period of military service, this film shows some of the wide variety of careers which British Transport has to offer, whether in railways or in the docks, on the orads or on Britain's inland waterways. The good transport worker combines individual initiative with teamwork, and the work of the transport team is vital to the nation.
Writer
The transporting of a distillation colurm, 137 feet long, 500 miles by road from Greenwich to Grangemouth in Scotland. The commentary, spoken by the rigger in charge and one of the tractor drivers, expresses the humour and resourcefulness with which these transport workers tackle their job; and the camera has captured moments of beauty as well as some amusing episodes in this journey of the longest load to travel by road in Britain.
