'Night Mail 2' Documentary - 1986.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ม.ค. 2020
- 'Night Mail 2' - A documentary about Royal Mail operations including the Travelling Post Office. It was shown immediately after the famous 1936 original during the 'Going Loco' season on Channel 4 in the early 1990s.
I am a former Duty Station Manager at Derby. Night shifts were always my favourite, with the hubbub of the postal trains. Happy memories.
Might even have worked with you as I worked at Derby too 2000-2002! Loved the Mail trains.
As a former Drivers assistant/secondman for BR I was stationed at Carstairs for a couple of years 1972/73 and my biggest giggle was that every night when the Postal as we called it (not the Night Mail) ran in from Glasgow about ten or more posties would jump off the train run up and over the overbridge to the Carstairs Junction Hotel where the barman would have about twenty pints of heavy!!! sat on the bar waiting for them!!! Heavy is what we call bitter in England and they would down these dead quick then get back to the train and on to Carlisle!!! Happy days what!!
Thats right ladies and gentleman. you used to have 2 deliveries a day by midday. Ex postman. london. ec1 to ec4. 1988/89.
The postman at the end of this is my Dad! :)
Handsome fellow
Yous nearly famous !!! ;-) :-P
Mine too! Hello half brother!
Your Dad’s technically immortalised here
How splendid! So few have such a memorial!
Night Mail 2: Diesel Electric Boogaloo.
Thanks for sharing this video.
Thanks for the nostalgia! I joined POHQ in 1980 and was there 30 years - I was part of the team who scheduled the mail that went on the BCal international flights. Nice to see a clip of Bill Cockburn who was Managing Director Posts at the time - his secretary was a drinking mate! The number of times I accompanied international visitors to view the underground railway, MailRail as it became. So sad it is no longer in operational use
How proud you must feel to see your dad in this documentary, well done, I feel proud for you. From Stephen in Australia.
This was a great watch. What an amazing operation it was.
I remember seeing this on Channel 4 back in the 90's when they had the 'Going Loco' series on. Ah the memories!
Does trains that passed in the night ring a bell
@@RailPreserver2K there were a few programs and I was very young at the time. I only remember parts
@@RobertdMacGregor here's the documentary th-cam.com/video/GfId5bbfC2Y/w-d-xo.html
An amazing trip down memory lane. Thanks for posting
Thanks for posting, it brings back memories when I was a postman back in the 1980s. Great times..
Me aswell at KEB St Pauls in 1988/1989
Fantastic documentary, thanks for posting such golden nuggets as this!
My grandfather....had nothing to do with any of this.
Been looking for this for a long time. Features the original red roofed BG
Some of the TPO trains also had a passenger coach, for example the York-Shrewsbury train which at one time even went all the way Aberystwyth. This connected at Huddersfield with another mail train, but I don't recall which one. I also recall once going down to London from Sheffield on an overnight mail train. There were never many passengers on these trains and you could usually stretch out over the width of the compartment, in a Mark 1 coach..
Yes, BR added an open coach to most postal services. It was a handy way for some early morning workers to get into the city. However BR didn't really advertise this service terribly well. There used to be a daily postal/mail service from Glasgow Queen Street to Oban. Leaving Glasgow at 0100 Hrs arriving Oban about 0400 Hrs. It wasn't advertised in the Daily Timetable yet a lot of island folk used it for connections to the early Barra and Colonsay boats.
@@scotsguy422 I went on that once in the 1970's, although of course I missed all the scenery!
That was probably 1M10 the 23:59 Sheffield to St. Pancras
Yes correct. I managed to get on 1 from Manc Vic, fell asleep & got off at Abergavenny! Ooppsss 😂😂
Take it from me, the machines haven't taken over. Road lorries have...for at least as long as they can get drivers.
Thank you for the lovely documentary ❤
So strange to gut the planes each night...
Remember seeing the helicopter film Night Mail along a stretch of track between Kettering and Bedford.
21:34 One of our beloved Peaks on the Parcels!
Brilliant snapshot of social history, thank u for the upload 👍
A fabulous documentary
Letters dropping at 7am?! Not anymore... More like 2pm!
Sadly, British Caledonian (and the BAC 1-11) would only have another couple of years to go, but Loganair (and the Twin Otter) are still going
Great rail documentary with aviation at the beginning!!! 😁 ✈️ 🚆
What the hell went wrong with the nightmail service? Now we have Amazon and Ebay we have more post than ever! And then the mail railway in London has been disused for years. Utter lunacy!
@K F the railways lost the Royal Mail contracts because they tried to charge more that the Royal Mail was willing to pay. Thus ended RailNet.
It was deemed to be cheaper to use road transport in London, so the Royal Mail's system was closed. The management said road transport cost 20% of the cost of the rail network, the unions said road was only a 33% cheaper. Plus it only covered the area between Padington and Whitechapel
When we are being told by everyone from the PM to Greta Thunburg that we must stop using oil it makes no sense that rail is not the ONLY WAY to move mail long distances. The need for a travelling PO must be greater than ever...
@@BibtheBoulder why are all the big strong Tory voting blokes so scared of a young woman? Pathetic. If it’s not economically viable no one will use it. If you think it could be, toddle off and run the business instead of being a keyboard moaner:)
Mail sorting centres moved out of cities.
KEB St Pauls would have my first post out by 8am and delivered and then 2nd post would be out by 11am delivered and in the boozer by The Old Bailey by 12 o clock midday Loved being a postman. The Royal Mail was ruined by privatization.
Blimey, KEB, that brings back a few memories. I did my engineering apprenticeship with the old GPO London Postal Region, my base was the Eastern District Office on Whitechapel Road but I could be working anywhere from Hook in Surrey out to Romford in Essex. At the time we were called Trainee Technician (Apprentice) which had recently been changed from 'Youth in Training'. KEB was a regular stop for me, we used to have those little green Morris vans which would be driven by the electricians who were training us lads. Happy days, that was a long time ago.
Agreed happy days indeed London in the late 1980s was a great place to live and work.@@petecollins4925
@@petecollins4925 Good old days.
How smart all the people were back then
Were you actually alive in the 80s?
Great documentary!
08:00 How many people remember such a thing as a third collection?!
Bruce Reynolds likes this 👍
So does Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards
The mail train was often a 'belt and braces' after a lateish night in London. If you missed your last train home you cold sometimes swing it to get on that to get home.
When many people cared about each other.
I don’t know who the narrator at 2:47 is but I remember his poetic style from when I was a kid in the 80s/90s and found his voice/style extremely calming
Thank you! Great video! Greetings from Norway! Stay safe, and be safe!
No seats? Just like Ryan air then.
The Postbus, too, sadly now a thing of the past thanks to the obsessive mania for profit 😑
This is wonderful I love it. Just going on about the peace and tranquility of the Scottish Isles and Postie bombs round the corner in a Sherpa that’s screaming. I wish they still made telly like this 😅
What a lovely video-I always wanted to be a postman !!
What a faff taking the seats out every night and putting them back!
Great documentary, privation ruined this mail service that mail used to be.
This reminds me of the training film they used to play to me as a cadet in the early 90’s
This is amazing.
It is things like this that are the best of humanity.
A truly underappreciated marvel of the modern world.
What a joke removing all those seats
How the world has changed since those days. Mostly emails now not letters. Great look back in time .
The underground mail trains still function today as part of a museum piece for Royal Mail.
Only a tiny fraction of it.
The Royal Mail itself is almost a museum piece unfortunately.
British made plane British made train, British made van
Well, the plane's a De Havilland Canada Twin Otter, but otherwise yes
Being a Postie myself I can vouch for the dog bit, been bitten 3 times in 13 years.
Job destroyed by TERRIBLE THOMPSON now
Amazing really
Is the original online? I have it recorded on Tivo, as TCM showed it. Great documentary, I had no idea there was such a train.
I've never seen it anywhere else, just on tv in the 90s. It's good to hear it has been shown elsewhere recently.
The Newcastle -KX postie in the late seventies carried 6 vans- 4 sorting [POS] and two tenders [POT] plus BGs two BSK and a CK. TWO guards were rostered for the train. In earlier days the vans had to be turned so the nets were on the correct side for the return journey. At Newcastle the vans were turned on the Gateshead East/West triangle.
That can't be correct as the last use of collection nets was in 1971.
I remember the good days , 2 deliveries per day , first class if posted before mid-day arrived the following morning , second took up to three days . Then , along with everything else , the country got sold to Europe , and it hasn't worked properly since
Wow removing all the seating feels really inefficient
Not really, during the day its passengers, then at night its mail. If you had 1 plane for each task then you have a plane just sat there doing nothing and being inefficient
get six blokes with wrenches and what? maybee two hours turnaround each way for instilation/removal and two planes function as one. I bet the cost of a seccond dedicated aircraft could cover the wages of the staff required to take out the seats for up untill their retirement XD
It's still commonly done
It may have been procedure at the time. Totally inefficient and no wonder the post office is In its current state.
We could do with an update to 2023 now, to compare the service then and now!
Wow!! I love the steward’s tartan uniform ! That’s amazing. I suppose it had to be for “British Caledonian,” didn’t it 🏴 . Glorious!! Warms the cockles of my part Scottish Kennedy blood !!
Great old documentary but the lack of continuity is hilarious at times.... a Fowler loco with a GWR whistle, an 08 shunter with a Paxman Valenta power unit from an HST etc! That aside, a great nostalgic viewing.
I think that was an HST departing in the background
the good days
Really interesting however nowadays not many TPO's in operation but East Midlands airport is still heavily used by the Royal Mail
No TPOs have run since 2004. A great loss to the railway.
...and in January 4th 2004, eight years later, the Post Office took away the mail contract from the railways and that was the end of the TPO's.
yes, because EWS and royal mail could not agree on a price for both to make a profit.
@@perthdave100 Not what I heard from an EWS manager, and having worked on TPO's for several years I would agree with him. Royal Mail had wanted rid of TPO's for years, and the one delivery a day made sure they could do away with mail trains.
@@michaelhunt4445 thanks for info, i wonder if the TPO was not making any profit for several years before finally being binned in 2004, i guess EWS decided not to invest resources into a loss making contract.
@@perthdave100 then why did they invest into the RailNet system and order the Class 67 and the conversion of ex-EMU driving coaches in to propelling control vehicles.
Keith Heller of EWS ordered the negotiations team to get the best price possible out of Royal Mail. They said they'd do the job for a rumoured £125 Million. Royal Mail said think again. EWS came back with an offer of £85 Million to which the Royal Mail said no. And thus the postal traffic was lost. It didn't help that the majority of the stock being used was based on the Mk1 coach was coming to the end of it's useful life.
Night surgeons, night bakers, and now night mail? We might as well go and start a night city!
The Paxman Valenta in background though 🤤🤤🤤 at derby
Loved that sound.
The sound of some of my favourite childhood memories 👍
this is how my benefit check would arrive.
8:44 *[LEYLAND]*
Also, a bit heartbreaking that railmail as per parcels is going to deminish further, but tbh in delivery parcels it might be on the rise , maybe we'll get 325/2s with their 319 cab and regular traction gears for more redstar better than before , one can dream....
The good old days
Incredible really! Has email eased this off in the last 20 years? Does it still happen today or has it advanced?
Like postage wise ? For letters I’d imagine less but parcels probably equal or more
With ebay and the like of online shopping, excluding Private couriers, Royal Mail Parcels will have gone up in terms of volume, but is definitely less in terms of processing and transportation qualities
But a Mk 1 Ford Capri 5:16! That's done well to last that long in the climate of the Hebrides
Between 13 and 17 years old at the time of filming… I wonder how rigorous the MOT was then?
But there is no Nightmail 2 poem!!
I spotted John Cleese at 22.10!
Nigel Mansell, surely.
Super
Wonderful! Did they get the idea from the Postman Pat series or vice-versa?! 😆
flew with them before they went under, after take off you could smoke at the rear seating area, class when ye on an 8 hour flight
@K F So it's OK for people to be trusted with lit cigarettes in an oxygen enriched tube?
The good old days :)
7:10, you can't do that these days, walk up to a customers car, open the door and put a letter or package in it. Today it would cause alarm for a possible bomb or chemical weapon, as well as you would be breaking into a locked or unlocked car that's not yours.
It's still done here in Ireland.......thank God.
@@Jungleland33 Is it? Our postlady loves just throwing parcels outside the door in the pouring rain
Is it still like this now?
NO
no, today we have EMAIL, and mail trains are long gone, and airlines do not gut their planes anymore for mail-only flights (there is still physical letters and mail today, but its not as streamlined as it was back in those days like the video shows).
And look at it now. Decimated by greedy bosses and shareholders.
There is still night mail
Did they take the seats out every time ? I thought BCal had dedicated mail planes. If they did, v the seats can't have been very securely anchored.
Wonder which ponte station it called at can't remember any staff never mind post
Baghill
No Subtitles 🥺🥺🥺
Did they lift out the seats every day?! 1:00
13:24 Mike Yarwood
Left pulling that lamp off til the last second or so at 22:02 😄
"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border........"
When you could rely on the royal mail.
25:00freight train
Casino Royale Mail!!!!
Royal Mail destroyed now by Simon Thompson CEO of Royal Mail, disgusting human being
Clean men, shirt and tie, happy in their work, uniformed, smiles, no litter, nobody staring at a mobile phone, and absolutely NO GRAFFITI. Is it REALLY better today? What have we become?
There was loads of graffiti in the 1980s and the railway stations were absolutely drowning in litter...BR removed most of the litter bins at main stations due to the IRA bomb threat...still the case today but there are a lot more cleaners picking it up.
Poor old British Caledonian.
Seriously? They unbolted the seats of the plane and removed them? I love this doco and it's easy to think things were better then, but that appears hopelessly inefficient
Got bitten delivering telegrams on motorbike in Dublin 1980
Letters on doormats at 7am? You have got to be kidding!. In Hampshire you are lucky to get mail by 2pm, except Saturdays when they are trying to knock-off work early, of course. Royal Mail today in 2023 is a joke (and I don't blame my local postman).
Enjoyable though I much prefer the rhythm of the 1936 version. Who knew WH Auden was the founder of rap 😉
Surely the volume of mail is not that great in today’s standards? I would say 50% less than what it was here ?
Can you imagine the stench of those seats as they remove them from the plane. All those arses farting 💨 and sweating into the material all day.
I’ll bet those seats are nasty. 🤢
Spoilt only by the ridiculous poetry.
@Ross Bourne Not able to appreciate great poetry is a great loss.
It's an update of W. H. Auden
Meg, you've missed the point royally.