Telling the railway y’s story on film
GREG MORSE traces the history of British Transport Films and looks at how the unit’s work is being continued by Network Rail
There’s something about film that inspires, enraptures and captures thought, holding it in the mind far longer than the printed word - despite the best efforts of everyone from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, Waugh to Amis, Deighton to Dexter, and so many others.
Film is, after all, “like writing history with lightning” (to quote former US president Woodrow Wilson). And since the earliest days of the medium, transport in its various forms has used it to tell a story or send a message.
Take the famous Night Mail. This classic piece, with its commentary by W H Auden and score by Benjamin Britten, was made by John Grierson’s GPO film unit in 1936 and featured not only the Post Office staff of the famous train, but also the work of the LMS which ran it.
The company’s own film unit was also active by this time, with the Southerns not far behind, although it was during the Second World War that the documentary really took off as a genre.
The LMS stopped filming for the duration, so the Southern covered the war effort, while the Ministry of Information produced public information films and propaganda shorts such as the Dylan Thomas-scripted Our Country, a sentimental tour of Britain designed to remind audiences of what was being fought for.
After the fighting came nationalisation, when not only the railways but also the waterways, road hauliers, the London Passenger Transport Board and the Tilling bus group (inter alia) fell under the aegis of a new British Transport Commission.
Within 18 months (in May 1949), British Transport Films was launched, with Grierson protégé Edgar Anstey in post as Producer in Charge.
In 1936, Anstey had co-directed Housing
Problems, which featured direct dialogue recording - allowing the subjects of the film to speak for themselves. As Anstey said: “At the time nobody had done it, and we gave slum dwellers a chance to make their own films.”
His new concern incorporated the remnants of the LMS and thriving Southern operations to make BTF the biggest industrial film unit in Britain. And the first fruits of BTF’s labours were premiered on May 19 1950. Four films were shown that evening at the Empire, Leicester Square, and the Dorchester Theatre, Hull.
Hull was chosen because one of the four - Berth 24, the first BTF film to be shot - had been filmed there to show the hustle and bustle of a busy docks complex. Inland
Waterways promoted canal transport by following two barges en route from London to Birmingham, Moving House promoted British Road Services, while Transport wrapped up the whole subject in a bid to demonstrate the value of an integrated, publicly owned system.
And there, for some in Parliament at least, was the rub. ‘Propaganda’ was seen as a bad thing, too close by half to Nazi indoctrination, and as a result Conservative MP for Monmouth Peter Thorneycroft tried manfully to get Transport withdrawn. Thankfully, it wasn’t, and BTF went on to produce its first full railway film two years later.
Train Time (1952) invited viewers to “open any railway door”, the key point being that if you do, you’ll “come across something to cope with”.
So, if you watch the film, you’ll understand the effort taken both to cope with and to overcome various problems - from a Station Master in Cornwall getting on the phone to Marazion for more wagons to carry broccoli up to London, to a motive power shortage, to
Train Time was shown to schools and clubs, but also at cinemas ahead of the main feature. Here, it would help inform the audience of the day about what it was like to work on the railways, and what was involved.
the difficulties of planning a new freight that doesn’t get in the way of passenger services.
Swap the tweeds, pipes and fountain pens, and modern rail staff would recognise many of the issues (and many of the workarounds) today. But would a modern general audience?
Train Time was shown to schools and clubs, but also at cinemas ahead of the main feature. Here, it would help inform the audience of the day about what it was like to work on the railways, and what was involved. Its drip-drip of information would get through, would make important books such as Red for Danger easier to understand, and make that delay on the 0815 easier to understand, too.
BTF produced many other films on the complexities of running trains day in day out, but a favourite will probably always be
Elizabethan Express (1954).
The action takes place with summer “singing in streets again”, and we soon find ourselves on board this nonstopper from King’s Cross to
Edinburgh.
On one level, the joy of the film is its rhyming couplet commentary, written by the late Paul le Saux and read alternately by Howard Marion Crawford and Alan Wheatley, which adds rhythmic pace to the already fast-paced editing. On another, it can be taken as a celebration of steam, of travel, of travel by rail.
Yet the real importance of Elizabethan Express is that it shows the supreme effort to get “the Howards, the Berts, the Cynthias, the Mabels” to their destinations.
The film is therefore really about the driver taking control of his charge… the fireman creating a fine head of steam… the signalman keeping the traffic moving safely… the platelayer keeping the track in good order… the train planner creating a smoothrunning timetable… the waiters waiting… the upholsterers upholstering… the fitters fitting… everyone doing their bit to the right standard, at the right time, to minimise the sorts of problems that cropped up in Train Time.