Great Western Coffee Shop

Wow, what a  feast of nostalgia !
For those of you that missed it , it is repeated on BBC 4 this coming Thursday 27th Feb at 2200

Another fine railway programe from the BBC and this was made here in Bristol too. ;D

I hope to catch it on Thursday, was too busy last night.

Very rose picture.  Yes there were good things, but in WR terms intercity only meant Paddington to Bristol.  Swindon was not included and was only left with a service every 2 hours! That is why the old down platforms were removed.

No mention of the underlying culture of decline. Removing capacity even when it was still being used. Yes they rebuilt some stations, but for the rest and for things out of sight, it was a culture of neglect as railways were said to be in terminal decline in competition with the car.

With that attitude of course they were the cheapest railway in Europe. It was being asset stripped! HTC and APT were high profile smoke screens to conceil this.

 

For anyone interested the BFI has published on DVD a very comprehensive collection of the British Transport films. Most of the historic programming on last night's programme seemed to come from this collection.

Thanks for posting, chuffed!  :)

Simply to avoid any confusion, the repeat is at 22:00 on Thursday 26^th February.  :-X

It's also available on demand, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b053pxdr/timeshift-series-14-5-the-nations-railway-the-golden-age-of-british-rail  ;)

highly recommended they are too

Many of the films featured last night are available on YouTube also.

Oh, YouTube is absolutely brilliant for - well, miles - of old railway footage!  :o ::) ;D

Excellent documentary, throughly enjoyed it apart from at the end when it showed the APTs being broken up. Very sad and a shame it didn't work out for APT and the team who worked on it.

Oh, how did I miss that, I wonder?  Still, it's bound to be shown on one of the minor channels before long; many of them seem to survive on the repeats from other stations.  Perhaps it'll be on iplayer....

Just after the bit where Peter Parker inspected a 6d superloo, I thought I caught a glimpse of a half-remembered character with long blond hair wearing a rather flamboyant suit. But no; it was my imagination. Airbrushed out. Quite right too.

Yes it's on I Player don't worry.

See my post above.  ;) :D ;D

Which did get a mention I thought.

Didn't those films mostly come from the 60s?....so before the time you refer to?

Now then, now then, young Squirrel...

It must be very difficult to make a documentary about 1970s British Rail without archive material featuring that man.

On a par with the 'Sounds of...' and 'Top of the Pops' repeats on BBC4. There's only so much untainted footage. Seems these days only Noel Edmonds, Peter Powell and Tony Blackburn feature.

The last three Celebs that it's still safe to refferance ?.

I decided to look for it on demand, and am now watching "The Golden Age of Steam", which was on Yesterday. As I had to sit through 2 minutes of adverts, I'll watch the programme I was looking for next. This is quite good, all about rebuilding closed lines.

Is that the BBC Four two parter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p8w38) from late 2012? Heavily featuring the Severn Valley Railway? if so it's a very good documentary.

It's available to watch online currently via UKTV Play:
http://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/shows/the-golden-age-of-steam-railways/watch-online/

I'm sure it is, although I haven't seen the SVR yet. I'm watching via my clever telly box thingy (electric), so I don't have the URL.