DVD: IVO PETERS COLLECTION VOLUME NINE NARROW GAUGE STEAM IN THE EARLY 60s

FILMS shot by the late Ivo Peters are legendary and rightly so. Available for many years in video tape form, they are progressively being remastered and issued as DVDs. This programme, running for just short of 49 minutes, commences by visiting the Vale of Rheidol Railway in June 1963, then still operated by British Railways, followed by footage of the early (1961 and 1963) years of preservation at the Talyllyn, Welshpool & Llanfair and Ffestiniog Railways. At the time the Welshpool & Llanfair footage was shot, the line was only being operated between Llanfair and Castle Caereinion, but film is included of the very last train (a stock transfer) to leave the town of Welshpool and cross the roundabout at Raven Square. A 1963 visit is then made to the (then) newly-built Bicton Woodland Railway, featuring ex-Woolwich Arsenal Avonside 0-4-0T Woolwich steaming round the gardens at the head of a passenger train.

The remainder of the programme, nearly half-an-hour, is devoted to the Isle of Man. Commencing with footage of Bagnall 2-4-0T Polar

Bear in exotic ‘Fairground’ colours at Groudle Glen, the action moves to the steam railway emanating from Douglas. The south line to Port Erin naturally features, but arguably most interesting of all the footage are trains on the long-closed Manx Northern route, high above the Irish Sea on the west coast of the island en route to Sulby and Ramsey.

The programme may not have the crisp images of modern filming, nor would you expect it, although the quality is improved over the original video tape reproduction. What you definitely get is a wonderfully nostalgic record of how things were half a century ago. CT Available from I P Peters, 2 Dark Lane, Steeple Ashton, Near Trowbridge, Wilts BA14 6EY, £16.95 (including p&p)