The launch of InterCity 225 for the East Coast Main Line electrification from London to Edinburgh.
Note how the ad compares the train not Japan's bullet train or France's TGV on speed (because it was slower) but the quantity - the ad claims that Britain had more 100mph+ trains than both those nations.
Creative agency: J Walter Thompson (JWT)
Some years ago, a BR employee named Frank Dumbleton rescued some VHS tapes literally from a British Rail skip in York. These included many TV and Cinema ads from the 70s and 80s. He digitised them and has given permission for them to be reproduced, here.
British Rail started to advertise on television after it had established the Inter-City revolution in the 1960s. Most of the commercials were aimed at enticing people out of their cars, or dissuading them from choosing internal air travel.
Whilst we can look back at these ads with joy, we shouldn’t have rosy spectacles on. A nationalised rail/operator system was far from perfect: reality was not as these ads portray. They are adverts, not documentaries. Now, British railways carry twice the passengers as they did back then, and are in a far better state.