Vintage railway film - Service for Southend - 1957

[@jdavis460]

Yes it is a great little film especially as I worked with two of the drivers shown. I had a new 16mm print made from the original negative about thirty years ago and also purchased a lot of library prints when BTF closed. Still have them all but my 16mm projector needs a repair. Does anyone know who can still do repairs?

[@douglasmcdermott2830]

If you get an account on RMweb, the railway modeling forum, I’m sure there you’ll find someone who can help you, most people on there have multiple interests.

[@boblatzer]

Old film becomes oxidized. I would recommend getting the film digitized.( If it’s not too late.)

[@jdavis460]

Robert Latzer Hi yes I agree but most is available online now as are a lot I helped shoot for British Rail back in the eighties. I have 16mm rail footage printed from the Movietone news archives many years ago but had to agree not to copy or publicly show. Mind you most of that is now online and can be purchased and downloaded instantly. How things have changed.

[@sri420in]

Ita always emotional for a rail fan to see the steam loco's being phased out. The words " steam propels its way to it's own disappearance" were so saddening. A wonderful documentary. Love from India.

[@InCAdocumentaries]

A really excellent film. Indeed, the music is so far over the top that it's brilliant. And yes, the driver of the new electric does look bored shitless. But what stays in my mind is the last minute or two of the commentary, trying to fill us so full of enthusiasm for the future. It was a diufferent planet, back then...

[@Isochest]

Yes, I love the pure positiveness of the whole film

[@drg111yt]

Thank you - good work - the end of 100 years of steam. I remember my dad taking me onto the platform at East Ham about this time when I was about 3, on the other Fenchurch Street to Southend Central and Shoeburyness line - the steam, the smoke, the noise, I felt somewhere between excited and terrified. I will never forget the smell of steam engines. The nearest these days is chuff chuffs periodically on the heritage Epping - North Weald - Ongar line.

[@Isochest]

I was born in 1964. I just remember steam at Kettering Station. I caught the Pullman train to Manchester and dodged a Bullet as my mum said I met Jimmy Savile on the train but he just made silly faces at me. I don't remember thank God!

[@derekantill3721]

I remember the steam trains from Liverpool St to Southend very well, and the steam trains from Fenchurch St to Shoeburyness, which I used often. Great times !

[@srfurley]

Was the Fenchurch Street Line electrified before or after this one? Do you remember how many additional bay platforms there were at Southend Central, in the area close to the Gents toilets? Returning to the Liverpool Street - Southend Victoria line, was this extension a.c. From the start, and if so was the original section to Shenfield converted at the same time? If so, it would have only been d.c. fore about seven years, is that correct?

[@derekantill3721]

Stephen Furley It was stream trains in my day. Sorry can’t answer the rest of your questions. I was only a child at the time, we used to take the underground from Bow and change at Barking. I have a 4 x 3 b/w photo taken by myself of engine 80102 which I think was taken near Leigh-on-Sea. I think the photo must have been taken about 1954/55.

[@lesleyb5591]

@@srfurley About 15 years ago when they were creating access to Southend East station from Ambleside Drive it revealed the fact that there had once been 2 bay platforms there aswell as the current thru platforms. I spoke to some elderly people I knew who confirmed Southend East used to have 4 platforms. They also mentioned that there were extra tracks at Southend Central (on the opposite side to where the college/university is now) but I can't remember if they said they were bay platforms or just sidings to store carriages overnight so they'd be ready for the commuter trains to head back up to London in the morning.

[@geoffpainting8081]

My father, A stratford depot driver, used to drive those very trains at the time the film was made.

[@vickielawless]

Even the mk1 electric multiple units are now as historic as the steamers they replaced!

[@Steven_Rowe]

What dramatic music sounds like someone is going to the chair in SingSing. Pity they got rid of the old DC trains, I liked them. I can remember when the Suburban service to Enfield was still steam in 1960, it then went over to electric in November 1960. The only suburban steam service on the GE section was Palace Gates to North Woolwich it remained steam till September 1962 when Stratford shed closed to steam then went diesel till Jan 1963 when the line closed.

[@evelynjiles29]

Brilliant introduction, the words were perfect

[@journeytherailswithaarongi4447]

the music is terrifying! love it!

[@b43xoit]

Such poetic treatment of a job of work. Which is good. "Summer had turned into Autumn and Winter. Month after month, the big steel blade danced into the Earth."

[@mickd6942]

Identical 1500 v DC catenary to woodhead route and the EMU’s were almost identical to the woodhead class 506 units , 1500 v DC was believed to be the future of railway electrification but 25KV AC would be the new standard

[@Isochest]

I have travelled on similar EMUs to the 506 in South Africa back in 1994. Happily they were built locally in Nigel South Africa before the toxicity of Globalisation infected politics

[@None-zc5vg]

The insulators used on the overhead-wires show that the trains were running on 1500 volts D.C., as an extension of the 1949 Liverpool Street-Shenfield scheme. In four or five years, the overhead current-supply would have to be converted to A.C. and the trains would have to be rebuilt to run off the new current.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

1500V DC was the standard electrification for the UK for overhead electrification. There had been experiments with AC traction supplies but the lack of reliable mercury arc rectifies delayed the used of 25kV electrification until the 1950s. They were still problematical in the 1960s when BR completed the first phase of the electrification of the WCML.

[@Steven_Rowe]

@@neiloflongbeck5705 an interesting comment but regarding mercury Arc rectifiers the French experimented with 20 KV and in the early 1950 then went for 25 KVand they used AC motors but then decided to use dc so had rectifiers so I would have thought by 1960 the French would have worked through the problems with rectifiers. By 1960 the GE c converted the existing lines and also the New Enfield and Chingford services to 6.25/25kv.AC.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

@@Steven_Rowe at the British Railways Electrification Conference held in Lonfon during 1960 a presentation was made detailing how the UK had decided upon 25kV AC after the experiments in France and the almost simultaneous experiments kn the Morcambe-Lancaster-Heysham line in 1951. They stated that AC motors were promising but none were currently satisfactory. Nor where semi-conductor rectifiers deemed suitable when the orders for the first AC locomotives were placed due to power levels needed on these locomotives, however the multiple unit trains were fitted from the start with semi-conductor rectifiers due to them needing less power.

[@Steven_Rowe]

@@neiloflongbeck5705 funny to think that today they take 25kv, rectify it and feed it into 2 phase inverters to supply AC traction motors.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

@@Steven_Rowe it makes you wonder what's coming next.

[@hssmrg]

Excellent. Meanwhile down in the West we are still waiting for electrification nearly seventy years later (specifically Chippenham - Bath Spa - Bristol Temple Meads). Hopeless!

[@philnewstead5388]

M Godwin what should have happened is the life of steam should have been extended into the late seventies as in Germany and we should have gone straight from steam to electric traction. The millions of pounds that were wasted by prematurely scrapping essentially brand new steam locos that had not even recovered their build costs, the plethora or truly unsuccessful diesel designs that were not fit for purpose ( the CoBo and the baby Deltic are just two that spring to mind) and some of the more successful mainline designs that were also scrapped prematurely because of not being of standard design such as the Warships and Westerns on the WR and the Deltics on the ER would surely have been better spent on retaining the steam infrastructure whist electrification was installed. The only areas where diesel should have been first choice was on branch lines where the cost of electrification could not be justified and for freight.

[@hssmrg]

Phil Newstead Absolutely. The scandal of commissioning hundreds of new steam locos then replacing them with dud underpowered diesel designs which didn’t last much longer was unimaginable. And it is only recently that the deadly nature of NOx particulates was taken into account by health authorities. Thanks!

[@philnewstead5388]

M Godwin The only thing I would say about the diesel particulates I do believe at the time of the modernisation plan the dangers of diesel particulates were genuinely not understood, even when I was at technical college in the early eighties the thinking was still that diesel was less harmful than the leaded petrol of the day. The real scandal about diesel is that papers released under the twenty year rule show that the governments of both right and left persuasions from the mid nineties onwards were well aware of the dangers of long term exposure to diesel emissions whilst telling everyone to buy them.

[@hssmrg]

@@philnewstead5388 Fascinating! As an asthmatic I was certainly aware that every diesel lorry that went by affected my lungs - I was really puzzled about the government ruling that diesels were less polluting. I can't remember when I first heard the word 'particulates' but gradually the policy-makers are taking them on board.

[@philnewstead5388]

M Godwin I too have been asthmatic since birth and like you can remember both lorries and buses emitting great clouds of black smoke every time they pulled away particularly in London traffic in the sixties and seventies and I invariably got I tight chest after spending a day in Central London. The science when I was at college was fairly rudimentary based on the fact that fumes from a petrol engine could kill you and Diesel engine fumes would not therefore diesel must be less harmful. All that said there was a lot of other nasty stuff about then the dangers of which were not fully understood.

[@edwardj.ximipa3125]

A wonderful short movie :) keep up the good work, sir!

[@waterside13]

Remember as a kid going from Fenchurch Street Station, London to Leigh on Sea. Steam powered.

[@barry5111]

Me too only we always went on to Shoebury. Lovely days of nostalgia being pulled along by a tank engine with your head out of the window. Till you got a smut in your eye that is.

[@geoffwalker7716]

Was doing National Service at Shouburyness in 1957. Remember this line well. Geoff Walker 231583307

[@LestrainsdAlex]

Great vidéo

[@arthurrytis6010]

Liverpool St. Possibly the dirtiest main line station in this country at one time.

[@philnewstead5388]

A modern health and safety man would be apoplectic, no hi-viz, no hard hats and generally no PPE, no safety rails on top of the electrification train and as for using a ladder on top of a carriage, well! As for passengers seeing these strange trains that wouldn't happen these days as the line would be closed and the passengers would be on a bus rail replacement service.

[@mickd6942]

The new masts were just stacked on the wagons with a man on top and plenty at the side , if those masts had fell of the side , it would have been half a day out with the undertaker as Fred didnah would have said, there are clips of film with men sat on the wires while steam engines passed beneath during wiring of the woodhead route

[@TheBroomwagon]

Awww.....have we really made Britain so much better?

[@tandemcompound2]

I thought Britain was completely skint after the war so was it electrifying railways, building A-bombs and V bombers.

[@kennethcoxell9449]

I was in Southend only last week and saw 7 B12 locos in store along with 3 d16's , and 3 B17 4-6-0's including 61666 Nottingham Forest . All in rusty condition and all waiting to be recalled to Stratford for scrap. A sad sight indeed.

[@robinforrest7680]

That poor EMU driver at the end looks bored shitless. I wonder if his visible unbridled enthusiasm for the job rubbed off on the steam drivers he retrained 🙄😁.

[@ianpow4563]

Had to smile at this one!

[@darylcheshire1618]

The overhead wire slightly zig-zags so it won’t wear a groove in the pantograph

[@stewartdeerfield]

Yea that's exactly right, keeps an even wear on the carbon. You know the biggest problem I have with electrification is when the wire comes down, and it does, everything grinds to a halt. Be kinda nice to have steam or diesel traction as back up cause no catenary doesn't affect them.

[@beeble2003]

@@stewartdeerfield You can't run anything if the wire's come down because the track's blocked. And it's all very well saying that it'd be nice to have backup diesel trains but how much extra are you prepared to pay for your ticket to cover the cost of having a whole separate fleet of trains that only get used a couple of times a year?

[@stewartdeerfield]

@@beeble2003 I'm just saying diversified is better, downed wire can be cut up and removed quickly, destroyed track can also be replaced quickly, downed O.C..S. is a different story, I've dealt with one our lines out of service for weeks until we could complete repairs.

[@darylcheshire1618]

The other interesting thing was illustrated in the VR General Appendix 1953, how the wire is tensioned, each overhead wire is tensioned in several KM lengths and connected to counterweights in the support gantries at each end. The weighted system counteracts the changes in temperature. It’s not obvious in looking at the trackside structures but the overhead is not continous, consisting of tensioned lengths.

[@GaryNumeroUno]

@@darylcheshire1618 shhhhhh... dont tell everyone our secrets.!

[@romeo9017]

So much for health and safety - wry smile....

[@darylcheshire1618]

Rather dramatic music.

[@beeble2003]

Daryl, _nothing_ is too dramatic for a film about a wah carrying pah for a train with no fah. Nothing!

[@trainshavewheels]

@@beeble2003 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@clivehughes2179]

Awful music( if you can all it music no tune at all) - for me it spoils a really interesting film

[@nmccw3245]

Technically, steam was alive and well at the power plant - and still is today.

[@Isochest]

I would expect an emu would have run the distance before the last day to proive things

[@beeble2003]

Listen to the music from the first two minutes or so with your eyes closed. Now answer the following question. What is this short film about? Is it a) people running for air-raid shelters during a WWII bombing raid; b) the testing of the first hydrogen bomb; c) a steam train departing for Southend?

[@davidwpinkston4226]

music is appropriate for a sad time

[@beeble2003]

@@davidwpinkston4226 Seems more appropriate for a scared-witless time to me!

[@Steven_Rowe]

I have seen this film before and thought the same thing about the music. Yes some atomic cold war movie. Still a very good film. The 1500DC sadly didn't last to long as BR wanted to be seen as state of the art. By 1960 the lines to chingford and Enfield town had been electrified at 6.25kv / 25Kv and the Shenfield Southend service had been converted too. .

[@beeble2003]

@@Steven_Rowe Higher voltages have a definite technical advantage in that they reduce power losses in the cables: that's why power lines are at such high voltages.

[@Steven_Rowe]

@@beeble2003 yes I realise a AC is used. That wasn't the point of my comment. In France they still have a huge amount of 1500 dc, most in the south is still DC and DC still runs to Paris. Of course if they were electrifying it now it would be 25KV They still manage to reach 200kph using DC by loco hauled trains. But your right, 25KV uses only 1/16th the current so wiring is lighter and so are the masts.

[@mercomania]

Why don't workmen turn down the top of their wellies anymore? 😊

[@davids8449]

And what have we ended up with in 2023......... Rolling stock like cattle wagons....easy clean to save yet more money

[@philipboug]

And not a hard hat in sight!! :-)

[@peacefullpeople7714]

میں اس ملک کو دیکہنا چاہتا ہوں جنہوں نے بڑی مشقت سے ریلوے منصوبے بنائے ریلوے لائنیں بچہائیں بڑے بڑے بھاری سامان سیکڑوں میل دور تک پہنچائے سردی گرمی میں خلوص و لگن سے کام کیا میں ان مزدوروں کو ڈرائیورز کو انجنیئرز کو سلام پیش کرتا ہوں۔ میں اس ملک جانا چاہتا ہوں مجہے یقین ہے اب ان لوگوں میں سے کافی نہیں ہونگے فربہی ان کے اولاد سے ملنا چاہتا ہوں

[@markdaly6978]

What class was the steam loco?

[@tinkermccardle7393]

Why don’t British loco’s have a headlight??

[@tandemcompound2]

Damn I hate electric trains and their wires. Ruins the landscape.

[@peacefullpeople7714]

میں اس ملک کو دیکہنا چاہتا ہوں جنہوں نے بڑی مشقت سے ریلوے منصوبے بنائے ریلوے لائنیں بچہائیں بڑے بڑے بھاری سامان سیکڑوں میل دور تک پہنچائے سردی گرمی میں خلوص و لگن سے کام کیا میں ان مزدوروں کو ڈرائیورز کو انجنیئرز کو سلام پیش کرتا ہوں۔ میں اس ملک جانا چاہتا ہوں مجہے یقین ہے اب ان لوگوں میں سے کافی نہیں ہونگے فربہی ان کے اولاد سے ملنا چاہتا ہوں