i did 42 years on the railway ,,,,if i could relive my life? i would do it all again, and i am no train spotter, fantastic people who dedicate their lives to give a good service...made me a better person , happy days

33:53 Dude has some serious guts reading a playboy magazine so openly and while being recorded

Our formerly wonderful railways. What utter vandals and crooks were Richard Beeching and Ernest Marples! The rot started with them in the 1960’s.

Being both a railway enthusiast and a Half-Life fan myself, I thought my brain was playing tricks on me at first when I noticed your channel name and picture. Trains and Half-Life always have gone together after all.

When the BBC started regular colour television transmissions an exhibition was held in a temporary building in front of Euston Station. It was one of the first times I had been up to London on my own. I can still remember how impressed I was with the station; it was like no station I had ever seen before. I don't think it was even completely finished at the time.

42:37 - Spiderman to the rescue !

This doco is defo a ripper. Thank ya mate.

I rode to London. It has have been a steam loco so I shut something. I think diesel was better for the crew. But in Japan, the first 'bullet' train began. In France & Germany very fast trains are in service. In America, only the coasts have decent trains but we in the midwest have much less. The problem was trains were privately owned with the airports & highways receiving subsidies , etc.

the steam locomotive and its age are apples and the diesel locomotive and its era are oranges. If you like extreme cleanliness and computerized systems then you are happy. If you like steam locomotives then the modern age is rapid, clean, stylish and dead as a doornail. Comparing a steam locomotive to a diesel locomotive is like comparing a dog to a good quality clean stylish picture of a dog.

Many thanks for posting.

4:25 We found him! The one person that likes Euston Station!

Every British documentary mentioned about union with old mindset that brought down British industries, from cars to train to factories.

i love a good train journey and i always carry some beer and whiskey and if there are a few chatty passenger's i will get the beer flowing. i have met some good people on trains over the years. on a recent trip from london to Yorkshire our train was stopped for one hiur due to a problem further up the line and myself and 5 others got chatting and we all ended up later that nite pissed up in a leeds bar. i think it was the first time in years that some if them actually had a good time.

'Privatization' just a word used to describe 'put the cost on the public and keep the profits private.'

people who knock the railways, really do not understand, they really work hard at keeping things running

A Pint of Ale please. "Witbread"? Yes please! Two slices thankyou!

IC 125 was and is the best train we have got..... it will be a shame that it will be scrapped soon. I hope that some of the IC 125s will go into preservation, they deserve it...........

4:10 Looks more like a Bond villain than a Vicar...

shame about the APT which was a really impressive piece of kit

I’d say it would be a more success if the branchlines weren’t closed down

I thought Black Mesa was based in the USA, I love all nation's railways

"There's nothing wrong with you that a blow on the coast won't fix" His doctor came from a time before phrasing was discovered

Classic British transport film

The employees of British Rail mostly did the best they could given the consistent underinvestment by government ministers who had their eyes on their own interests and those of their industrial paymasters rather than those of the general public. What I find interesting is the lack of any mention about "Maglev" the system developed by BR, politically discarded and now used to great success in other countries while we still use the rails that we have used for almost two hundred years.

Well I for one toatlly enjoyed this, thank you

I always wanted to ride on the blue Pullman, too expensive so my parents bought me a toy one 😊

6:55 holy shit, they made sunglasses that were basically double sided mirrors LMFAO I hope the APT-E will be brought back to operating condition for its anniversary

If the Brits want to see how good the British Railway is and how it can help a nation,they should look at the Indian Railways. They built the entire thing.

Fonts are everything

When that network southeast and crossrail drama was going on some years ago.

There is a Huge difference between the private companies pre 1948 and today. Prec1948 the companies owned everything including the network. Today the network is owned by the government and the services are privately run for profit. I think the railways are far to important to be there simply for making a quid. We need trains to serve people, also trains are far more energy efficient than road vehicles. How many more cars and trucks can Britain sustain.

This is definitely golden age of British Rail.

Does anyone know what that contraption is at 10:22 ?

The British rails should be studied by all other countries aa what not to do to run a national railway.

25:48 what is the name of that song?

(Black Mesa) & Lack Powell Railroad.

Nice Historic Documentary, you'd think it'd be posted on a Documentary-Oriented Channel, but it's not. Strange seeing it on a Channel focused on the Development of Black Mesa, a Remastering of the Original Half Life Game. Not to mention all the other Videos I've seen so far on this Channel, makes you wonder what the Original Purpose of it entails.

We could either improve signage and lighting of the railway station, or take it down and build it again in an uglier form void of culture and style, but with better lighting and signage. Obviously the second solution was chosen. And Euston Station was born. Now being a dark place with bad signage again.

why do so many of these films dub over passing trains with the recording of an HST??

Things were clean back then, not all dirty like they are now.

Did the individual train companies even wanted to sell off their rail roads or did the government made that dissuasion without with input and simply made it legalized theft of private property?

This video is really cool! It shows how British Rail made big changes to update the old train system after the war. Check out this illustrative video on the golden age of British Rail: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/b-B1jbJ-39GUZYE.html

Fantasy, British rail modernisation was inadequately funded and badly done. The electrification from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool took 8 years from 1958 to 1966 to install by which time Manchester and Liverpool appeared in terminal decline, most of the business and the flagship Manchester guardian had moved to London by 1964. Breeching had no positive view of the Railways, he largely favoured reducing it to an American style freight Railways. He believed most people would fly from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh. His view was electrification beyond Birmingham was economical. He overwhelmingly believed rails future was freight where all the British rail evidence since 1955 and since was the Railways future and success lay with fast passenger inter city and commuter services. But that was Tony Croslands study and structure of the 1976 Orange and 1977 white paper which restructured British rail as a high price intercity passenger with subsidized regional and committee services and recognized mail, parcels, coal, chemicals, nuclear waste are the only profitable freight and mainline container freight might break over operating at marginal cost as an an add on other main lines. Breeching argued freight carried 150 miles was economical , the evidence since is about 700 -800 miles min Wick/Thurso to London and the South or thru the channel tunnel.

Who remembers MaxPax?!

@9:49!!! yes I think we all know what his doctor meant.

all that i know of the inter city was the horn e on

But then that "new" railway also went to shit as it's predecessor did. Also, at 4:15, which British Transport Film is it?

Down-Up and Down again

Where is the Bradshaw Guide?

Gimme steam engines any day, but it is a good documentary.

It may be my imagination but it seems like Amtrak doesn't do as much in terms of its pr as British Rail does.

1:31 Since when was playboy mag acceptable reading material for the train? Hahahaaha

Asset strippers are nothing other than legalised vandals. . We should have gone the other way : from nationalisation towards serious international cooperation with nationalised railways in Europe : the SNCF , DB - even РЖД . In fact , with the aid of P & O between Cork and Halifax carrying them across the North Atlantic, what about a Round-the-World Passenger Train as a noble aim worth going for?!

The 1947 Transport Act that Nationalised the Big Four Railways into BR, was introduced by the Labour Party. Why? Because Britain was bankrupt after WW2, and the Government owed the Big Four Railways (GWR, SR, LMS & LNER) Millions for all the Guns, planes & Munitions they had produced. So it was far cheaper to simply steal these railways from the shareholders who owned them, & ignore the Millions they were owed. (These shareholders were only paid a small percentage of the Market value of their shares !) Having stolen the private railways by Nationalisation, the Government was still not in a financial position to repair & rebuild the war damaged railways. Because this same Labour Government had also "given away" the Empire, which if they had held onto it for a few years longer, would have provided the necessary Capital income, to rebuild not only the railways but the whole country. As a result it wasn't until 1955 that enough money was available to actually start on rebuilding the railway. Then in the mid 1990's the Government told a bare faced lie, when they told us they would "Privatise British Railways". Franchising is NOT Privatisation ! It is renting bits of what was BR to private companies for short term 5-15 year periods. The Government still owns the National Network, as it is a "Strategic Resource" that can still be of critical importance militarily in the event of war. As a result the idiotic Franchising system actually costs the Taxpayer MORE than BR ever did, a lot more, around FOUR times more annually in fact. The most obscene aspect of "Franchising" is that it opened the door to other European Nationalised Railways, to grab some of these Franchises. And of course these Nationalised Railways (including the German, French & Dutch Railways) cream off the profits, and plough this back into their own Nationalised Railways, reducing their countries taxpayers bill, and effectively increasing the costs to the British taxpayer ! More suspicious, is the fact that the British National press in over 25 years of this Franchising idiocy, haven't "noticed" that we have been conned, and BR was never Privatised !!!!

What?! Nothing from Roger Ford?

What always strikes me most is how well people were dressed in public back then.

The privatisation of railways ar a bad idea

"into a system fit for the 20th century". Really? Really? There's a tendency to see the old British Rail through rose tinted spectacles. Today's railways may be deeply flawed but British Rail was hardly an example of how things should be done.

The best rr vids are the LMS ones from the 30's and 40's. Real railroading without the socialist propaganda.

I STUDY MY ETER LIVE, TO AGE FROM ATLANTID AND LEMURI, AND DEN FROM SUMERIAN, GRECIAN, EGIPTUM, PLATONISCH,ASIEN ÁFRIKA, ROMA, VATICAN EUROPA, AMERIKA NOTH, MEDIA, AND SUD AMERKA, Y KANT AL THE WORLD FROM STUDY, AND NADIE ME ENGANA!!!!!

Me when hearing british railway. Where steam engine. And dont you dare to scrap it.

Our Canadian Government should take note of what was accomplished by the British Government in funding British Rail. No passenger service can expect to make money, however, that is exactly what VIA rail and AMTRACK is supposed to do. No passenger service in the world makes money. They are all subsidized by their respective governments.

All things considered, I'd rather have steam.

its all beechings fault

It is quite thick to suppose that Britain invented this stuff. They surely did not. Steam until 1985, Switzerland electric in 1911. Hourly services, Switzerland 1913. British Rail has been and is a total political failure on an industrial scale. The only thing I can think of about Britain and trains is the fact that Stephenson delivered the first working steam engine some 130 years ago. Since, it has been an embarrassment to any and all.

Then what was the point in privatising BR?

Okay this documentary is like everything wrong with British rail culture at on the pro-nationalisation side. We spend a third of the time talking about logos, promo-films and cutlery. No mentioned of the stupendous collapse of freight which made so much of the Victorian inheritance uneconomic? No attention to bad commuter rail service, the fact that the New Towns are explicitly designed to be anti-rail, the still-intact car consensus, poor rural service, constant and growing subsidies, ending with a nostalgic softcore nationalist "ah wasn't nice even though it wasn't and everything since is bad" ending. References to better foriegn practices are limited to passive-aggressive references to France while absolutely no Germany, Italy let alone Japan.

like most men i love trains. the vibration your body feels when a train goes by, d.e. trains. but i have never ridden 1. in america trains are for freight , not people. we do have small local trains in big cities but long distance is left to amtrak. it's govt and union run. because of those 2 things it's dangerous. the tops of rail cars have skid marks from being upside down. lol if another private non union service started up i would take the ride, but thats not likely so maybe in my next life.

'In 1981, British rail was the cheapest and second to Sweden in efficiency' ... and enter Margaret Thatcher Whomp whomp

hahaha golden age my ass...

NOTLOB

The private rail line I live on in the US only does 70mph tops :(

Beeching's mother should have been tried for treason? Having failed to abort the fetus! :-(

This is better than today but not as good as the the real golden age. The age of STEAM

It may have been the second "golden time", but the new engines were so brutish in appearance. The designers could have thought of streamlining them.

Everything can be made fancy with enough public money . . .

Ah yes, the film unit and the track unit and the station unit. Have you guys ever realized that your one and only job is to move people. No, you haven't. Any rail company of the world has once noticed that if they just did their job of moving people, they would be operating buses and not building tracks. And then the electric show piece some 75 years late.

Typical unions stifling modernisation

And once nationalized its fate was sealed. gvmnt employees couldn't run a bath.

NOO it looks too German!

Look ! Women narrators are very boring !