Description
Two British Transport Titles from the BFI:
On The Right Track AND Black Five, The Last Days of Steam for Just £20
with free UK Postage
On The Right Track
2 Discs. Year: 1964 – 1982. Running time approx: 244 minutes. Black & White and Colour.
Disc 1: We’re in Business Too! (1964); British Rail is Travelling (1969); The Class 86 Locomotive (1970); Careful Charlie! (1970); People in Railways (1970); Having a Fresh Look (1970); Solutions? (1972).
Disc 2: What’s Tops (1974); Rubbish By Rail (1977); The Stage is Yours (1979); The 75 Tonne High Capacity Crane (1980); Track 125 (1981); Promises promises… (1982); A New Approach to Hong Kong (1982).
British Transport Films was established in 1949 to focus a spotlight on transport as a nationalised undertaking, to create an appetite for travel and to entice the public to use nationalised transport. Over a period of more than 35 years, BTF produced an unrivalled documentary film legacy for generations of film and transport enthusiasts.
BTF on DVD makes its triumphant return in this 2-disc set featuring 14 films, 13 of which are available for the first time and have been newly scanned in 2K.
Black Five, The Last Days of Steam
OPTIONAL SUBTITLES. 1 Disc. Year: 1967-1970. Colour. Running time approx: 22 minutes PLUS 31 minutes extra material. Director: Paul Barnes.
Three films by Paul Barnes that celebrate and regret the final days of steam on the railways – preserved by the BFI National Archive and remastered for DVD release to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of steam in Britain. In 1968, enginemen faced the last months of steam haulage on Britain’s mainline railways. For those who worked on the Black 5 locomotive the inevitable progress to diesels and electrics prompted mixed feelings.
Black Five (1968) directed by Paul Barnes, records their reminiscences as they faced this great change in their lives – of craftsmanship, camaraderie, and of the ‘personality’ of these great machines. The workers’ comments are an elegy to a time gone by, to skills no longer needed, and they make a poignant background to the beautifully filmed images of the heavy iron beasts trundling their way to the end of the line. Black Five is filmed around Carnforth station in Lancashire, a location which had been the setting for the archetypal railway romance, David Lean’s Brief Encounter(1945) over 20 years earlier.
The DVD also contains two other short films by Paul Barnes. The Painter and the Engines (1967) follows painter David Shepherd’s race against time to record on canvas the magic and romance of steam during the locomotives’ last weeks at South London’s Nine Elms sheds. King George V (1970) charts the history of the celebrated locomotive, which was taken out of service in 1965 but offered a length of siding at Bulmers of Hereford to continue running, in steam.
