1960's British Branch Line Cab Ride Films

So while this is a rail signaling blog and not a railfan video blog, sometime I like to highlight sets of videos that really show off the signaling.  Recently YouTube suggested a number of grainy 8 or 16mm film film compilations taken out the front of old school British DMU's running on long since defunct branch lines.

The videos were posted by the appropriately British sounding Alen Snowdon and were narrated by his wife.  Due to the limitations of old school home film recording, the clips are all about 3-5 seconds long and show only a fraction of the route.  However this fraction contains a large proportion of the signalboxes and signaling apparatus that the train passes.  It's sort of like one of those low frame rate fast motion videos, only the frames are a few seconds of every passing semaphore signals.



Not all of the videos are cab rides or even rail related, but the ones that are, are a wonderfun time capsule showing the anachronistic state of the British rail network in the 1960's.  Thanks to two World Wars even the main lines were stuck in he Victorian era, with very little power signaling and steam hauled trains galore.  Just before the infamous Beeching Cuts, the branch line infrastructure is absolutely decrepit, sort of like how the Amtrak Harrisburg Line and Conrail in general looked in the 1970's and 80's. 



Also worth noting is the astonishing level of employees needing to keep these old branch lines in operation with both signalmen and station agents working every 1-3 miles along the line.  It is interesting that instead of cuts British Rail didn't simply try massive cost reductions like CTC or even ABS!



There's even a little main line action out of london, although one would never know it due to the state of disrepair. Also note the high quality railfan view despite a full width cab. Anyway, enjoy the videos, they aren't hours long and the archive isn't intimidating.