The ConDor service ALWAYS ran with the Bo end leading. Pairs of Co-Bo's were coupled Co end to Co end and single locomotives would be turned at destination. This was due to the Co end being very noisy and giving a poorer ride for the long distance involved.

I feel sorry for Beeching. Few people understand the many positive influences he tried to persuade the government to implement on the railways. He strongly recommended large scale investment in trunk routes, which was ignored because that did not suit the government's narrative ("railways are a thing of the past"), as well as the introduction of containerised services which were a huge step forwards. But sadly all he is remembered for is an excessively swingeing set of cuts to branch lines, in which he was effectively made the fall guy of the crooked transport minister Ernest Marples who wanted the railways closed so his family firm of motorway builders could get the contracts for building all the new roads that would then be needed. Even for the branch line exercise, Beeching was set up by Marples with a brief and a set of assessment parameters that made the outcome inevitable. Marples even went so far as to make sure that huge sums of public money were spent unnecessarily destroying the newly abandoned railway infrastructure (stations and bridges), just to make sure the rails could never be put back. Marples made his fortune, fled to Monaco after he swindled the taxpayer (for which he was later prosecuted) and set us up with the huge inadequacies we now have in our railway system. And Beeching still gets all the blame, quite unfairly. Corruption and self-interest in government as always the greatest enemy of society, just one man Marples is solely to blame for this sorry state. Sickening. Marion

Excellent Production. I remember this at the time. This is a very well presented account. Comprehensible Narration and no inappropriate 'soundtrack. Top Work all round.

I have never become bored seeing a Class 08 shunter :) It must be one of the most successful designs of all time

That is so cool to see the old gasometers in the background at 8:20. They were a great design and worked quite well from what I have heard about them.

Great Scammell footage. Thank you for sharing

In 1923 you could drop a parcel into a newsagent's shop in Inverness and it could be ANYWHERE in the UK within 24 hours. Something impossible these days.......so much for progress. At least Condor worked most of the time.

What a great little documentary. Well worth a subscription.

An enjoyable 10 minutes watching. I never witnessed the "Condor" in action but it evoked exciting memories for future freight services. It was a shame the class 28s were not succesful as I found them to be an attractive designed diesel loco.

love this. im too young to remember the short wagons.Born 1966. missed everything by five years. totally stinks. the films are priceless.

Excellent video, great narrative and no electronic din. Thank you

You taught me a lot about the Condor. And it is unfortunate that the Class 28s were so unsuccessful.

Really enjoyable and educational video. The only thing I found a little annoying was having the narrative on just one channel, rather than across both.

Excellent, concise video.

These are some really good videos, I hope your channel does really well!

Interesting video….excellent documentation and graphics, nicely presented.

It's nice to see more freight returning to the main lines, usually hauled by the type 66. The large lorries now dominating the motorways are the cause of most accidents and fatalities!!

Fascinating, thanks 👍

Interesting, thank you. This is a great channel.

Great to see a class 28 on video.

Amazing Story glad to hear someone has recored it for prosperity. I guess you have already covered to faults with the Freight-liner stuff and container service in general up to modern time.

One minor correction. "Conflats" were the wagons. The van-shaped type A and type B boxes that went on them were just called containers. Conflats were the lightest wagons in regular use on the railway in my time, with a tare weight under seven tons. As I think you mentioned, "Conflat" is short for Container Flat. I was a railwayman in the 1970s. In 1971 I was a clerk working in ATI (Advanced Traffic Information) and Traffic Monitoring, the forerunners of TOPS. For the rest of the decade after that I was a Goods Guard working freight trains, based at first at Cadder (between Bishopbriggs and Lenzie) and later at Glasgow Sighthill. I'm a bit surprised you say that Gushetfaulds was the Glasgow terminus of the Condor service, as I always thought it was Glasgow College, but you're probably right. The reason I thought it had been College is that in the early 70s there was a fading advert for the Condor service outside the by then closed College Goods station, so I assumed the Condor service had started and finished there. Against that, College goods faces the wrong way to go to Carlisle. It stretched my memory of railway geography to think of a way to get onto the Caley main line south, but then I remembered a way (and I think it still exists). Head out of College, heading towards Airdrie. But at Coatbridge Sunnyside take the right hand fork through Whifflet to Mossend, and on to Carlisle. Only possible problem is that that route through is Route Availability 5, but I doubt if that would be a problem for the Condor or the Type 2 diesels that worked it. (I remember an argument with the Control when Eastfield sent a Class 47 diesel - Route Availability 6 - to work a train that had to go that way. I think in the end the Controller agreed to accept responsibility if the bridge collapsed under the weight of the loco. It didn't!) But anyway it's a long way round, and it would make much more sense to start and finish at Gushetfaulds, which is on the Caley main line. By my time Gushetfaulds was the Glasgow Freightliner Terminal, and Freightliners were of course the successors to the Condor, so it would make sense for the Freightliners to inherit the old Condor terminal. I knew Gushetfaulds well, because one of our regular turns when I was at Sighthill was the 4S52 Willesden to Gushetfaulds Freightliner, which we worked north from Carlisle to Gushetfaulds. Still I wonder if there was any connection between College and the Condor. Maybe College was used briefly in the early days, until Gushetfaulds was ready. I'll try to see if I can find out any more about it. Anyway, a very interesting video. Thanks!!

excellent , learned a lot. cheers

Great video, Jack.

Quality KZfaq! Very nice video.

Hi, brilliant video, i've just bought the rapido 28 with 3 conflat wagons, i wish rapido would do the birds eye ones!

The Freightliner containers were more modern, but they weren't ISO 668 shipping containers as became widespread in the 70s and still used today. Beeching's ideas of cost-cutting by promoting trainload and containerised freight… I like to think how things would be if the railways had adopted more effective accounting practices earlier on, and if Beeching had been appointed by someone less malevolent as Marples - he might've had much better informed and constructive ideas for the railway system.

I have my Hornby Dublo class 28 Cobo in its original box along with its wagons.

I remember this from when I was a train spotting anorak .... good presentation. Subb'd.

Very enjoyable presentation, always had a soft spot for this service having having been an owner of a Hornby Dublo Co-Bo back in the day. Now as a 7mm modeller have built a number of Conflat types. Perhaps one day will build a 7mm Co-Bo to go with them.

My Grandparents house bordered the yard at Hendon where the Condor departed from. Happy times.

Very interresting.

Ah, that Black Five Super Rescue!

Why is sound in left speaker only?

And then Ernest Marples, the Minister of Transport with a road building company, came along.

THANK YOU FOR VIDEO

I never hear about the RoadRailer experiment. A complete train of these was formed (I made a plastic model at the time complete with AEC Mandator tractor unit). I believe it was an American idea though the roadrailer concept of interchangeable road/rail wheels went back to the 1930s.

The prototype class 29, D6123, was used for a while on the Glasgow-Birmingham service!

Much more sensible than these crazy sized heavy lorries - totally unsuitable for roads which simply cannot cope with them.

Very interesting. You/ve shown that it was at least a modest success. How about a vid on the 'Railroader', which I believe was a total failure to the extent of never entering revenue service?!

"Aye Aye, Captain Birdseye!" - Jeff Heaney

Have to remember, the railways became in lockstep with the road haulage operations pretty much and they created a virtually unbreakable monopoly which expanded into storage, picking and packing, transit between station and destination in short a company could produce a raw product and BRS would pick it up, package it, sort it, box it then store it for future custom or move it via truck and train and usually a next day delivery window in much of Britain and even special delivery 2 day windows to much of Europe. Of course this arrangement had to go, none of the slimebags could make a decent profit on stuff running at cost and so they set about dismantling BRS and dismantling a great deal of British Rail. It is no mistake that London's incredible congestion grew just about the same time as when Thatcher etc oversaw the closure of London's goods stations, for the vile Tory it was win win, steal the prime building land these places were built on and carry on destroying the unionised and very anti-Tory railways ability to move freight a trend which Bliar carried on closing down all the freightliner network and refusing to reverse the tories butchering of the network.

They used them in Australia too due to theft when loading and unloading due to two gauges of track being used they said the pilferage went to nothing and then we’re put on flat bed trailers for delivery into the bush .

The picture at 4.25 is a train of Bird's Eye refrigerated containers on South Quay tramway at Yarmouth. The train will have been hauled through the streets (Hall Quay and North Quay) by a Drewry diesel shunter to Yarmouth Vauxhall via the rail/road bridge over the River Bure. Sadly the tramway is no more.

Excellent video! @2.15 & 4.00 the door to door logo can be seen. I am struggling to ascertain the exact date of its introduction (no guesses please). The term 'door to door' predates the introduction of this logo.

I Love your Videos . Wish you do class 33,25,24,26,27

Good video. Take care for the sound that works only on the left channel.

I agree that this film is about a larger size of containerization its predecessor was the barrel in all its standard sizes. Fish, nails, flour, ale, whisky. etc.. anything could go in a barrel, size being determined by weight to be handled. . It was also inter-model, ship, barge,. dray or cart, rail, truck, or roll one down the street. There are three types of barrel, keeps fluids in, keep fluid out, and open ended to process food or mix components together. (it is a trade name)

Urban myth that the windscreens fell out of their frames. However, they were prone to cracking.

The TOPS system was bought in from the Southern Pacific Railroad of USA, who operated it successfully. An outdated mindset prevented BR from learning much about diesels and their operation back in the early days, a very costly error in retrospect.

hi, the clowns that built the co-bo locos should have load bank tested the power units before delivery to BR. and done test runs with a load on the track,there was also too much clowning around with the cl 15 and 16

Not sure what is up, but after 5 seconds I don't hear any audio. CC shows that something is being said, but I'm not able to hear anything.

Your audio isn't centered. I recommend either changing your mic settings, or simply changing the audio track to mono in your editing software.

Rose tinted spectacles my Dad always went on about how our new milk bottles being delivered by rail half would be broken when they started to be delivered by lorry’s my Father & Grandfather were amazed just one or two were cracked.

The Conflat was the wagon not the container.

🚂👍

Great video...however, you pronounce the name Cuneo wrong. It's an Italian name, and should sound like "Queue-neo". Fun Fact: apart from the famous railway artist, the name gets mentioned by Michael Corleone in the first Godfather film as one of the rival mob bosses he wiped out! :)

Did this inspire a movie in the early ‘70s “Three Days of The Condor” with Robert Redford?

Unfortunately the ISO type of container was launched in the early 50s. A bad mistake, BR's 'containers' were born obsolete.

Yeah. Look where we are today.

Brilliant painting! But, alas, I'd forgotten where to look for the mouse!

0:31 you say misnamed the big four, you called it the “large four”

Jack, you should note that pre-decimal we used (£ s d) pounds shillings and pence why (d) for pennies I don't know, we didn't ask

They made the mistake to design it with a traditional wagon roof, so not stackable. This smells like a NIH, as the stackable container design was already known.

Yep MADE IN BRITAIN.

1:02 ah the British male. Working hard or hardly working. 😂😂

The sound is rubbish !!