Description

The programme opens with 1950s film of the Eastern Region, focusing on London’s Liverpool Street Station and its suburban services. Further afield: Wickham Bishops, Maldon East, Kelvedon and Tiptree feature, whilst at Cambridge former GER and LNER locomotives were still an everyday sight. On the ECML at Retford, steam traction monopolised the almost non-stop workings through the station.

Next is North East Lincolnshire, with film of freight movements around Scunthorpe, together with rare footage of the Grimsby and Immingham Tramway. Enthusiasts specials working to Horncastle and Winterton.

Bradford Forster Square Station is the starting point for a journey to Keighley, where a DMU is boarded in December 1961 on the final day of BR passenger services on the Worth Valley Branch. After Keighley, scenes at Skipton are followed by film taken at Carlisle and on the Waverley Route at Whitrope and Hawick, before arrival at Edinburgh St. Margarets MPD.

North of Edinburgh, steam at Kirkcaldy and Thornton Junction feature, together with the Lochty Private Railway and its famous occupant, Union of South Africa. From Fife, the ECML is followed north to Dundee and its busy freight yards and in the north of Scotland views of the Fortrose Branch, the Dornoch Branch, Achnasheen and Grantown-on-Spey.

Returning south, views of condemned Pacifics at Glasgow Polmadie MPD contrast sharply with film of A4 Pacifics operating from Buchanan Street Station. Locomotives from Stirling MPD worked the short branch between Killin and Killin Junction. At Perth, Gresley A4 Pacifics were a regular sight, but to find four A4s on Perth MPD at one time was most unusual.

Additional information