The great con man Ernest Marples,had a hand in the Beeching cuts,while owning a construction company building motorways,not bent then,mind you,look at the Westminster trough today.
I wonder if they could be brought back? Pullman only. No standard seating unless completely blocked off from 1st class. (Locked doors to prevent econ people wandering thru.) London->Manc? London-> Birm?
What beutifully crisp and vivid colour footage from 1963! I'm an 80s baby so this was the time of my parents, not me, but I love the look of 60s, everything looked classy and elegant. It seems like the UK was also a forward thinking and moving country back then too. I'm not saying things were "better" but certainly the spirit of the age was to get things done, wheras now it feels we've been in a state of managed decline for decades now and thats really beginning to show.
These were the years before you could live your life on benefits. Britain was scruffy and run down in many places though but people could see a brighter future. The rot set in with 24 hour news, the Internet and the destruction of Britishness by mass migration.
As this video shows, half the railway network made up 1% of the income - little dinky branch lines that hardly anyone used. It made sense to close them. And when Labour came into power in 1964 they carried on the closures.
the large wholesale closures were made under labour 1965 to 1970 . labour then gave beeching and award. However something had to be done , british rail could not even tell us how many people it exactly employed!@@WilliamSmith-mx6ze
This was the great era I grew up in as a school boy, inspiring me for taking part in a promising and exciting future. We designed and built everything here and were good at it too. Our country lived and breathed. I take it we don't show films like this in schools anymore.
Sadly most rusted away quickly. I recall that if a customer wanted their new car rustproofed it cost extra. Hardly ever see a modern (2000 on) that’s rusty.
The irony! 1963 and they heil the Blue Pullman which can do London to Manchester in 3 1/2 hours in luxury through the Midland Railway Derbyshire line, 5 years later it was closed !!!
Quite a disconnect there, referencing the need for Dr Beeching’s plan while highlighting the future of the railways with footage of the Midland Pullman, which ran along tracks closed by Dr Beeching’s plan!
Great video...packed with lots of information about the time. Love the cars. How clean those motorways looked. Unfortunately there are too many vehicles on the roads today. I was 6 in 1963 and you were lucky to see any cars parked up outside of someone's house back then, now neighbours are fighting over parking spaces.
Even when I was a young child in the late 1980s this was the case. I have photos from back then of the street I grew up in, and there were probably 2 cars parked in the whole street (about 500m long) and the odd car sat on a driveway. You would probably see a car drive down it once every half hour or so. Went back there a couple of days ago, and the place was heaving. Queues down the road, and there actually was 2 people arguing over a parking space. How I wish time travel was possible!
In the company I worked for there was no such thing as “an accident”, which term suggests that nothing could be done to prevent a dangerous incident. Our active safety culture emphasised the need for thorough risk assessments and safe working procedures. I’m thankful to have lived in the age of the much-maligned “health and safety”.
Rail lobby versus road lobby... Seems the road lobby was getting the upper hand in that period with rail used mostly for goods transport. But then we got too many cars ... Sight of the Forth Bridge under construction took me down memory lane as I have crossed that bridge many times on my bicycle. Thank you! 😊❤
Brilliant video thanks for hosting it. Very interesting but at 12:54 he says "there are some accidents that can't be avoided" I beg to differ, all accidents can be avoided !!
no one was catching the trains! thank goodness he built the motorways , the car gave the working man the biggest freedom ever. Germany, Europe has trains trams galore inc motorways , they work well and are used , why is that . Biased my arse @@chriswalford4161
So the prediction that the roads would not be able to cope with the volume of traffic had already been made yet they continued to close railways despite this ?
This Public Information Film would have been shown in old-style cinemas, surely - alongside the major film and all those 'interesting' local advertisements by Pearl and Dean ?
I agree with you up to a point as yes it was promised that the toll was temporary until the tunnel was paid for. However, a second tunnel was added and then the bridge.
There are so many cars, trains and places in this video which are familiar to me from my teens. That said, I prefer to watch steam trains from the 1950s, which proves the old saying; nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Marples was nothing more than a smiling assassin when it came to the railways. How the Chairman of one of the country's biggest road builders was allowed to be Minister for Transport I'll never know. Oh, hang on. I do know... and it involves a large supply of big brown envelopes....
Those Railways need to be improved once more to get freight off the roads. If only we weren't paying for the infrastructure maintenance while the private rail companies reap the profit.
How ironic that @05:24 we can see the then Minister of Transport, a biased road builder promoter & businessman (joint founder of Marples Ridgeway, who had held 80% of the shares) who eventually suddenly left the UK for Monaco to avoid UK taxes… Just the sort of figurehead for reaping profits from grandiose schemes & overblown puffed-up changes.
What happened to the benefits family with five kids, mobility car scheme of £500 pcm to allow those that limp outside with a few car with no modifications?
wasn't it all so wonderful? its not real life though, this is a stage managed and directed film with every shot selected and directed for a reason. they didn't get this by just going out and pointing a camera at stuff, they filmed brand new roads, bridges and signs so of course it all looks new and clean. it would be different if it was a film about the worn out and dirty railway stations or underground, or the slums and tenements of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow or Liverpool in the same year. plus because in this time most things were filmed on Technicolour film stock, Technicolor was a popular color film process that was known for its rich and vibrant hues. Technicolor films utilized a dye transfer process that produced vivid colors and high saturation levels.this is why film in the 60s always looks so bright and colourful, all the colours are saturated.
Apparently more concrete, tarmac, cars & people is progress. 18m more people here thanks to 70 years of mass immigration = an extra population the size of Norway, Finland & Bulgaria combined mostly squashed into England
Why would you compare GB to America?? The land mass difference alone negates the population comparison for travel. We have to utilize the interstate system. Next time they should compare to another island state instead of a entire large continent.
"Without diversity?" You must be kidding! All this, and all the new houses in the 60's, were built by imported Irish labour! Millions of Irish came to the UK to build all this, including my relatives. Remember the great firm WIMPEY? An acronym standing for "We Import More Paddies Every Year"! A joke, but true. Many more came to work in our car factories as well, there is still a massive Irish diaspora in Oxford, Dagenham and Birmingham due to immigration in the 60's to man the lines making all the new cars you see here on the new motorways. Also, without the Windrushers, there'd be nobody to drive or man the buses or tubes! The London Transport recruitment advertisements in the West Indies urged them to "come and help your mother nation, we need you!" Then as now, we depended utterly on imported labour to fill the jobs at the bottom of the pyramid. It's been the same in Britain for 2,000 years.
"Those who didn't want to move for any motorway have gone and the motorway builders have come". Sod your house, I'm building a motorway through it. Probably lost a house for a council flat in a tower block.
Do you know how many Europeans relocated to Britain during the post war period ? Or how many Irish navvies it took to build the railways and motorways ?
'Extravagant Victorian Railways' built by 'Cheap Labour' to be replaced by 'Waiter Service For Businessmen as well as Ordinary Passengers.' I assume this was made during a Tory Government tenure, it certainly appeals to a, err, 'Certain Type.' Same Railway Cutting Tactics still used: Cut service to a minimum, say one train just after the morning rush hour and one just before the evening rush hour: Point to "Falling Passenger Numbers" etc etc. Another money making scheme employed by the Brits: don't publish local train times in order to push people onto the premium Airport Service.
InterCity routes possibly but the frequency is very poor compared to the uk and the uk trains are full so they’re doing something right,rural services in France and Spain are very sparse,the equivalent service here is at the very least hourly,Spain and France have recently closed lines
France and Spain much better for high speed rail, but their local services are very poor. Here our slower services (local and main line) are much better, but so overcrowded because too many lines were closed and we have failed to build a high speed network to absorb the huge growth in travellers. And now we've built a massively expensive high speed line from nowhere to nowhere, that will do nothing to relieve the overcrowding, thanks to government dithering - it's on - it's off - it's on - we're not sure . . . . In response to the press, who will rubbish anything that's an easy target because of cost, let's build half of it, and end it in the middle of nowhere in suburban West London, just to make sure the money already spent gives no benefit to anyone! Between the press and the politicians, our country has been driven to the dogs!
The great con man Ernest Marples,had a hand in the Beeching cuts,while owning a construction company building motorways,not bent then,mind you,look at the Westminster trough today.
A politician profiteering off current legislation? Shocking I tell you…😅😅😅
I was an engineering apprentice at Metro Cammell in the late 50s early 60s. I worked on the Blue Pullman.
My uncle worked a MCW as an electrician
The current Glasgow subway rolling stock was built at MC in the late 1970's, soon to be retired. Brilliant wee train.
And what a beautiful piece of engineering it was. Style, class and luxury compared to today's imposters. Nice memory Harold, thanks for sharing.
I wonder if they could be brought back? Pullman only. No standard seating unless completely blocked off from 1st class. (Locked doors to prevent econ people wandering thru.) London->Manc? London-> Birm?
In those days you could name all different models of cars: today they all look similar.
What beutifully crisp and vivid colour footage from 1963! I'm an 80s baby so this was the time of my parents, not me, but I love the look of 60s, everything looked classy and elegant. It seems like the UK was also a forward thinking and moving country back then too. I'm not saying things were "better" but certainly the spirit of the age was to get things done, wheras now it feels we've been in a state of managed decline for decades now and thats really beginning to show.
It is a purposeful managed decline yes
Same here. I’m also an 80s baby but I agree what you say and it looks for more organised then. And clean! Even the motorway cafe looked nice!
These were the years before you could live your life on benefits. Britain was scruffy and run down in many places though but people could see a brighter future. The rot set in with 24 hour news, the Internet and the destruction of Britishness by mass migration.
Marples smiling as he opened up motorway sections. But knowing his hitman Dr Beeching had completed his report to shut half the railways down.
and along came the labour government who shut all the lines from 1965 then gave beeching an award, careful who you vote for
A Tory minister embroiled in corruption and sex scandal, so glad things have changed after 60 years.
Smiling because of the corruption and tax dodges he was trying out before he fled the country.
As this video shows, half the railway network made up 1% of the income - little dinky branch lines that hardly anyone used. It made sense to close them. And when Labour came into power in 1964 they carried on the closures.
the large wholesale closures were made under labour 1965 to 1970 . labour then gave beeching and award. However something had to be done , british rail could not even tell us how many people it exactly employed!@@WilliamSmith-mx6ze
This was the great era I grew up in as a school boy, inspiring me for taking part in a promising and exciting future. We designed and built everything here and were good at it too. Our country lived and breathed. I take it we don't show films like this in schools anymore.
I too was a schoolboy in these times and I remember like it was yesterday.
no only rainbow one's and fake history
@michaell1751 Yes, wonderful days they were.
fake history such as?@@bobtudbury8505
What a great clip of this mighty city, Not so mighty today it seems. I'm convinced life back in the 60's was pretty damn good. Well it was for me.
Beautiful old cars
The cars had character then. Now with so many joint platform, cars are all of a muchness.
Sadly most rusted away quickly. I recall that if a customer wanted their new car rustproofed it cost extra. Hardly ever see a modern (2000 on) that’s rusty.
Glad to see" Look at Life "videos are alive and well.👍🤠👍
The irony! 1963 and they heil the Blue Pullman which can do London to Manchester in 3 1/2 hours in luxury through the Midland Railway Derbyshire line, 5 years later it was closed !!!
It closed because McAlpine was Tory transport minister. Yep the same person behind the famous road builders!
@@stevenmoran4060Try Marples. He had a Road building company, Marples Ridgeway.
Blue Pullman was a great looking forerunner of what was to come. It was itself unfortunately a bit of a lame duck.
@@perkinscrane Yes it wasn't really powerful enough but the concept was ok.
Quite a disconnect there, referencing the need for Dr Beeching’s plan while highlighting the future of the railways with footage of the Midland Pullman, which ran along tracks closed by Dr Beeching’s plan!
Great video...packed with lots of information about the time. Love the cars. How clean those motorways looked. Unfortunately there are too many vehicles on the roads today.
I was 6 in 1963 and you were lucky to see any cars parked up outside of someone's house back then, now neighbours are fighting over parking spaces.
It's exactly these neat clean motorways that made cars a more appealing mode of transportation so now thre's so many of them.
Even when I was a young child in the late 1980s this was the case. I have photos from back then of the street I grew up in, and there were probably 2 cars parked in the whole street (about 500m long) and the odd car sat on a driveway. You would probably see a car drive down it once every half hour or so. Went back there a couple of days ago, and the place was heaving. Queues down the road, and there actually was 2 people arguing over a parking space. How I wish time travel was possible!
There aren’t too many cars today
@@andywatts8654you must be a car sh@gger
A interesting video this day. A travel back in time! Thank you. 🇬🇧👍🙂🇺🇸
12:46 "...There's a toll in human life... There are some accidents that can't be avoided."
"Good" old days...
In the company I worked for there was no such thing as “an accident”, which term suggests that nothing could be done to prevent a dangerous incident. Our active safety culture emphasised the need for thorough risk assessments and safe working procedures. I’m thankful to have lived in the age of the much-maligned “health and safety”.
Good spot, shocking attitude to the working class
Rail lobby versus road lobby... Seems the road lobby was getting the upper hand in that period with rail used mostly for goods transport. But then we got too many cars ...
Sight of the Forth Bridge under construction took me down memory lane as I have crossed that bridge many times on my bicycle. Thank you! 😊❤
Lovely old scenes and memories. Traffic jams! Nothing changes.
Any equivalent traffic jam would have been much worse then in terms of vehicle emissions 😷
Brilliant video thanks for hosting it. Very interesting but at 12:54 he says "there are some accidents that can't be avoided" I beg to differ, all accidents can be avoided !!
Everything has its cost.
While it's cheaper to compensate than prevent, "some accidents" are _uneconomical_ to be avoided.
Growing up in that era, it felt very modern. But Marples had his fingers in the M-way construction, so was bias to the railways unfortunately.
Yes Marples was a notoriously corrupt Tory, nothing new then.
yes labour closed the lines in 1965, fact
biased against
no one was catching the trains! thank goodness he built the motorways , the car gave the working man the biggest freedom ever. Germany, Europe has trains trams galore inc motorways , they work well and are used , why is that . Biased my arse @@chriswalford4161
Very interesting video. Thank you for uploading and sharing!!
So the prediction that the roads would not be able to cope with the volume of traffic had already been made yet they continued to close railways despite this ?
And built lots of roads. The motorway network hardly existed when this was made.
Solely for one reason, to boost the income of Marples Ridgway the motorway builders, owned by the transport minister Marples!
This Public Information Film would have been shown in old-style cinemas, surely - alongside the major film and all those 'interesting' local advertisements by Pearl and Dean ?
Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba-bah ...
This fascinating. Seeing the M4 being built. Wow
So £11m to build the Dartford tunnel and we're still paying for it today???...what a disgusting con by past & present Govt's.
You still got to keep the tunnel form collapsing somehow
I agree with you up to a point as yes it was promised that the toll was temporary until the tunnel was paid for. However, a second tunnel was added and then the bridge.
It's privately owned
They call it a congestion charge to get round the fact it's been paid for, multiple times over.
We’ll soon have to pay much more to cross at black wall tunnel too, the robbing bastards
There are so many cars, trains and places in this video which are familiar to me from my teens. That said, I prefer to watch steam trains from the 1950s, which proves the old saying; nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Like 6 beatiuful video, greetings 🚂👍👋
After watching this video I stood and saluted. I am keen to get more business for Britain, and not to be out of date.😄
So sad to see what we’ve become.
O the good old days 😊
Funny how earnest marples company got the motorway contract
Marples was nothing more than a smiling assassin when it came to the railways. How the Chairman of one of the country's biggest road builders was allowed to be Minister for Transport I'll never know. Oh, hang on. I do know... and it involves a large supply of big brown envelopes....
Just commenting to mention the video "Wires Over The Boarder" seems to have been removed from TH-cam. I love these old videos.
Copyright claim by third party agency.
@@BennettBrookRailway bet they don't actually own the copyright. bunch of crooks they are.
Those Railways need to be improved once more to get freight off the roads. If only we weren't paying for the infrastructure maintenance while the private rail companies reap the profit.
Love the Jag passing the police car at 5.45. No 70mph limit in those days.
The catering manager if shown on Blue Pullman lived in the Esex Village where I used to live. He even appeate in Get Carter but now deleted
How ironic that @05:24 we can see the then Minister of Transport, a biased road builder promoter & businessman (joint founder of Marples Ridgeway, who had held 80% of the shares) who eventually suddenly left the UK for Monaco to avoid UK taxes… Just the sort of figurehead for reaping profits from grandiose schemes & overblown puffed-up changes.
Openly corrupt…
I can rember the blue Pullman wen I was a teenager fantastic at the time it looks like the hat later on
Ernest Marples MP who ran the railways into the ground to the advantage of the motorways
And then legged it abroad,very honourable man,not
And didn't even pay his tax on the money he scammed us all out of!
What happened to the benefits family with five kids, mobility car scheme of £500 pcm to allow those that limp outside with a few car with no modifications?
33 million cars in the UK, today. 3 x the estimate given here. Phew!
60 years later...
The marshalling yards…..now gone!
no median dividers on those motorways. carnage when an accident happened. that soon changed
Yes, because idiots were doing u turns.
And today the M6 is mainly used as a car park.😂
" Speeds of up to 70 mph!"...and no central crash barriers on the motorway....how many were killed when vehicles crossed into oncoming traffic?
Isn't that a Blue Streak missile on the low loader at 1.36?
Just shows that any growth or benefit to the country has been made in spite of the Governments and not because of them , time for change
What make is the car at 1.32; Elva ?
On reflection; maybe Fairthorpe Electron Minor.
If everything was built today. It wouldn't last 5 minutes
To think since 1963 population has increased by around 15 million
I hope Jay Foreman knows about this film.
Between then and now, where did it all go wrong.
It’s got far better but we don’t have propaganda like this anymore so we only see negativity
Labor Party
Not sure we’ve made much progress since the film was made.
Britain seemed such a nice place back then. What changed?
Run by idiots for too long
The rose-tinted glasses of the film makers have been removed!
wasn't it all so wonderful? its not real life though, this is a stage managed and directed film with every shot selected and directed for a reason. they didn't get this by just going out and pointing a camera at stuff, they filmed brand new roads, bridges and signs so of course it all looks new and clean. it would be different if it was a film about the worn out and dirty railway stations or underground, or the slums and tenements of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow or Liverpool in the same year. plus because in this time most things were filmed on Technicolour film stock, Technicolor was a popular color film process that was known for its rich and vibrant hues. Technicolor films utilized a dye transfer process that produced vivid colors and high saturation levels.this is why film in the 60s always looks so bright and colourful, all the colours are saturated.
When it really stinks, you know it's rank!!!!
a very positive UK today its so negative and divided
Including plenty posting comments here...
A good point. Some, positively today, would not go amiss.
15:30 Non alcoholic. How times have changed!
English and proud. When we ruled the world
Apparently more concrete, tarmac, cars & people is progress.
18m more people here thanks to 70 years of mass immigration = an extra population the size of Norway, Finland & Bulgaria combined mostly squashed into England
And without those immigrants and the skills, youthful vigour and hard work ethic they brought, we'd be even more broke!
To think that 60 years ago they were striving to make the UK transport network better, and now they’re conspiring to destroy it.
Why would you compare GB to America?? The land mass difference alone negates the population comparison for travel. We have to utilize the interstate system. Next time they should compare to another island state instead of a entire large continent.
No ⛑️⛑️⛑️⛑️⛑️⛑️⛑️⛑️ helmet😢😢😢😢
Back when men worked with minimal health & safety and got the job done in half the time
how did we do this without diversity , woke and quotas !
It's easy not to care about minorities when you are majority.
_While_ you are majority.
It's simple. We didn't.
Had the BBC filmed this there would have been plenty of diversity. Plenty of Windrush etc...
and plenty of fake ' ness @@essexboy5520
"Without diversity?" You must be kidding! All this, and all the new houses in the 60's, were built by imported Irish labour! Millions of Irish came to the UK to build all this, including my relatives. Remember the great firm WIMPEY? An acronym standing for "We Import More Paddies Every Year"! A joke, but true. Many more came to work in our car factories as well, there is still a massive Irish diaspora in Oxford, Dagenham and Birmingham due to immigration in the 60's to man the lines making all the new cars you see here on the new motorways.
Also, without the Windrushers, there'd be nobody to drive or man the buses or tubes! The London Transport recruitment advertisements in the West Indies urged them to "come and help your mother nation, we need you!"
Then as now, we depended utterly on imported labour to fill the jobs at the bottom of the pyramid. It's been the same in Britain for 2,000 years.
& bugger all motorway safety barriers in sight
Could swap 1963 & put 2024 in the title & our transport network is still in the same situation! 🤣
HS2 🙄
"Those who didn't want to move for any motorway have gone and the motorway builders have come".
Sod your house, I'm building a motorway through it. Probably lost a house for a council flat in a tower block.
Nek minute: the 1970s...
When Britain was Great , yet now ?
And 60 years later all that work done has improved precisely nothing.
pre immigration..... l feel sick
Do you know how many Europeans relocated to Britain during the post war period ? Or how many Irish navvies it took to build the railways and motorways ?
What on earth happened to our country
A clean white Britain
'Extravagant Victorian Railways' built by 'Cheap Labour' to be replaced by 'Waiter Service For Businessmen as well as Ordinary Passengers.'
I assume this was made during a Tory Government tenure, it certainly appeals to a, err, 'Certain Type.'
Same Railway Cutting Tactics still used: Cut service to a minimum, say one train just after the morning rush hour and one just before the evening rush hour: Point to "Falling Passenger Numbers" etc etc.
Another money making scheme employed by the Brits: don't publish local train times in order to push people onto the premium Airport Service.
when you could use a train and not fear getting knifed...
not much has changed, still the same shite railway system, Spain and France are much better set up
InterCity routes possibly but the frequency is very poor compared to the uk and the uk trains are full so they’re doing something right,rural services in France and Spain are very sparse,the equivalent service here is at the very least hourly,Spain and France have recently closed lines
France and Spain much better for high speed rail, but their local services are very poor. Here our slower services (local and main line) are much better, but so overcrowded because too many lines were closed and we have failed to build a high speed network to absorb the huge growth in travellers. And now we've built a massively expensive high speed line from nowhere to nowhere, that will do nothing to relieve the overcrowding, thanks to government dithering - it's on - it's off - it's on - we're not sure . . . . In response to the press, who will rubbish anything that's an easy target because of cost, let's build half of it, and end it in the middle of nowhere in suburban West London, just to make sure the money already spent gives no benefit to anyone!
Between the press and the politicians, our country has been driven to the dogs!