Elizabethan Express 1954

  • 2 months ago
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Transcript
00:00Summer is singing in streets again, and summertime's travels have now begun.
00:26The cuckoo sings of the burnished grain, and long journeys gilded by the sun.
00:39The superintendent of operating speaks in the ears of his timetable brains, who sit
00:44in their offices calculating how to fit in fast summertime trains.
00:49Cudgel your brains for summertime trains. Draw in a train for the passengers waiting
00:54to hear cuckoos singing a highland fling. Draw in a line for a non-stop to Edinburgh
01:00over the Tyne.
01:03And so the new service comes into its hour. The morning is June, the weather is fine.
01:09At King's Cross Depot of Motive Power, the drivers come in to sign on the line.
01:15Bob Marable, top link train driver, who's always a punctual arriver, wears boots, footplate
01:21size, has colour light eyes, and engine oil in his saliva.
01:29Roly Ruffle, his mate in the team, often sprays out his tonsils with steam, and treats gravel
01:35rashes by damping down ashes and using the paste like cold cream.
01:43The 9.30 non-stop train to Edinburgh, the Elizabethan, will leave from platform 5.
01:52Passengers for Dundee and Aberdeen travel in the front of the train.
01:57At King's Cross, the coaches are filling with passengers. Porters are willing to carry
02:02their cases and find them their places for a tanner, or even a shilling.
02:07The Elizabethan will leave from platform 5. Passengers for Dundee and Aberdeen...
02:13Like a general gathering forces, the chefs checking up his resources.
02:19All the pains in your belt, Mr Wheeler, can melt, and roll your eyes round with his sauces.
02:37The Elizabethan, the 9.30 non-stop train to Edinburgh, platform 5, is about to leave.
02:49We are having a heated conversation...
02:53Though the guard may look calm and laconic, his obsession with time is quite chronic.
03:00But a punctual start binds the train to his heart. The relationship's purely platonic.
03:08At platform 5, the Elizabethan, a special express of the holiday season, summons its strength.
03:14And the time to depart marks an ending for some, but for many, a start.
03:30Music
03:56As the engine goes with a swing and a shine,
03:59across the engine sheds, there's a man on the line who gave her that shine.
04:04He's the fitter, his was the skill, his the hands that uncoupled her rods,
04:09stripped her gear, packed her glands with his firm, skilful hands.
04:22And the boy was one of that servicing crew who gave care and craft to each thread on each screw,
04:28and made it fit true.
04:32They're the fitters, the men with the cunning to bring through each big end and piston,
04:37valve, spindle and spring, all that power and swing.
04:58Music
05:07The buffet is archdeacon of elegance, serves coffee with impartial sentiments, cigars for the swells,
05:14bathbans for blonde bells, and frags for the lads in the regiments.
05:18Music
05:25The passengers sitting at buffet tables, the Howards, the Berts, the Cynthias, the Mables,
05:30enjoying the comfort and ease in their seats, careless of crumbs in turnips or pleats,
05:35admire the gleam on the chromium plate, the polish on tables, the unfaded state of curtains and fabrics,
05:42but rarely give thought to the long years of training, the practice that taught men in large workshops
05:49the best way to take a carriage to pieces, and how to remake it better than new.
05:56The seats that are sat on had to be made to welcome all shapes.
06:00First the material that mustn't fade or wilt under pressure was cut with a blade skillfully guided,
06:07then skillfully sewn, while windows were painted, then carefully scraped, and taps were fitted in shining chrome.
06:17Then the seats were upholstered, material bolstered.
06:21And while a man was writing a sign, and others were putting that last mirror shine on metal and paint,
06:28the seat was finished.
06:30And those who ride in its regal embrace can truthfully claim to sit in the pride and work of a king.
06:38As time gets on, so people get thinner, unless they take lunch or midday dinner.
07:03So the kitchen car prepares to fill the waistcoat of Jack and the waistline of Jill.
07:08Watch them consistently filling the gaps in their faces with food without filling their laps.
07:38They wouldn't be eating as smooth in most cars, or ocean steamers, or even some bars.
07:47As undisturbed as Robinson Crusoe by the train's motion, they swallow their meats.
07:52What in the railways allows them to do so?
07:55One of the factors enabling these feats of filling stomachs without filling laps is the state of the track,
08:02which depends on these chaps of the maintenance gangs.
08:10The chaps who see that the rails are tight in their several chairs.
08:17Who see that they're straight and on the level, unlike crooks or stairs.
08:22Who see that the chairs are firmly fixed, that no evil disturbs the sleepers.
08:29Who see that the gap's not been stretched in the night by clandestine creepers.
08:36Who see that this very important small gap will not cause any damage by wrapping some diner's first class Adam's apple in chicken or cabbage.
08:46Who see that the passengers riding in clover can take meals on velvet at 90 or over.
08:58While the side-slipping countryside changes to town, meadow-sweet speedwell, charter and gown,
09:03dream-like in boxes, unseen watchful eyes, path-setting panel, tell us no lies.
09:08Watch the train's passing, guide her with care, junction and crossing, points in a pair,
09:12with a turn of the wrist, the click of a switch, track circuit magic, vault of the witch,
09:16out of York City and on to the north, past Durham, Newcastle, over Tweed to the fourth.
09:23Now beyond York, the Scots crew prepare to relieve the strain on the English pair.
09:31No driver of trains is more proud of his Scottish descent than Macleod.
09:36He insists every engine has pipes to each piston and burns in its box for Macleod.
09:43His mate, Mungo Scots, cursed with bristle, that's as tough as a John Deere,
09:48His mate, Mungo Scots, cursed with bristle, that's as tough as a John Knox epistle.
09:53When he kissed a young lass in the dark for a lark, she asked,
09:57Was that you or a thistle?
10:18Sir Nigel Gresley designed his A4 with the speed of a greyhound, the strength of a boar.
10:46But when he put fire in her stomach, he taught her to burn with a furious thirst for water.
10:51So when she approaches a water trough, watch Farmer Mungo doing his stuff.
11:16Driver and fireman relieved of the strain, rest now while the pounding refrain that beat itself into the cells of your brain murmurs along in the voice of the train.
11:43Guard, keep your watch on this world of corridors, coaches, while passengers curled in safeguarded rest are rapidly swirled past the vision of Durham, swiftly unfurled.
12:03The Elizabethan goes driving onwards, while buffet attendants or restaurant stewards, performing their corridor service dance, try to anticipate passengers' wants,
12:13waltzing through coaches to serve in compartments, while signals are serving the train with clear distance.
12:32But sometimes breaking this smooth onward flow, though the home signal's clear, the distance is slow.
12:39The regulator slams shut and the cloud clamps on the brakes.
12:44The loud hiss of steam as the train seems to slow to the pace of a cloud breaks the afternoon task and disperses the dream.
13:14At the end of these wires sit men in control rooms, like prompters assisting the course of a play.
13:41Breathing out words like Arabian perfumes, too bad there's no record of just what they say.
13:51They watch every train that moves in their region of thousands of miles of railway distance and try to forestall any slightest suspicion of slack that might make its unholy appearance.
14:04But while every passenger knows the importance of his own special train arriving on time, the men in control rooms must weigh in the balance the claims of 1,109.
14:21But the Elizabethans are particular, special, never-more-smiled-upon, nonstop train. Nothing must stop her. The order's official, and lateness would cause operational pain.
14:32And at last the ultimate cause of the slack over the hills far away up the line is clear, and the train picks up speed on the track through Newcastle City and over the Tyne.
14:43But now the express has lost time. She'll be late unless driver Tony and Mungo, his mate, can make up four minutes and nearly a quarter on the difficult stretch running over the border.
15:03Here's driver MacLeod, mighty old hunter, chasing each minute of Tyne's silent thunder, riding down seconds over the straight track, chasing the seconds lost rounding the curved track, coaxing each delicate petal of power out of steam's suddenly blossoming flower.
15:19Here's muscular Mungo, hard-handed toiler, who keeps water flowing round the tubes of the boiler, keeps up the pressure, heaves tons of coal on, makes sure his driver's got enough steam to roll on, bends till his back aches, shifts as his feet work, rhythmically swinging to make boiler heat work.
15:49Here's driver MacLeod, mighty old hunter, chasing each minute of Tyne's silent thunder, riding down seconds over the straight track, chasing the seconds lost rounding the tubes of the boiler, coaxing each delicate petal of power out of steam's suddenly blossoming flower.
16:09Here's driver MacLeod, mighty old hunter, chasing each minute of Tyne's silent thunder, riding down seconds over the straight track, chasing the seconds lost rounding the tubes of the boiler, coaxing each delicate petal of power out of steam's suddenly blossoming flower.
16:29As they come down from Grant's house, the peak of the climb, they're over the worst. And she's running on time.
16:59And she's running on time.
17:29And she's running on time.
17:55And she's running on time.
18:25And she's running on time.
18:26And she's running on time.
18:27And she's running on time.
18:28And she's running on time.
18:29And she's running on time.
18:30And she's running on time.
18:31And she's running on time.
18:32And she's running on time.
18:33And she's running on time.
18:34And she's running on time.
18:35And she's running on time.
18:36And she's running on time.
18:37And she's running on time.
18:38And she's running on time.
18:39And she's running on time.
18:40And she's running on time.
18:41And she's running on time.
18:42And she's running on time.
18:43And she's running on time.
18:44And she's running on time.
18:45And she's running on time.
18:46And she's running on time.
18:47And she's running on time.
18:48And she's running on time.
18:49And she's running on time.
18:50And she's running on time.
18:51And she's running on time.
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18:56And she's running on time.
18:57And she's running on time.
18:58And she's running on time.
18:59And she's running on time.
19:00And she's running on time.
19:01And she's running on time.
19:02And she's running on time.
19:03And she's running on time.
19:04And she's running on time.
19:05And she's running on time.
19:06And she's running on time.
19:07And she's running on time.
19:08And she's running on time.
19:09And she's running on time.
19:10And she's running on time.
19:11And she's running on time.
19:12And she's running on time.
19:13Here, Edinburgh stands on its rock by the Forth singing its welcome to those who come
19:32North where the Clans and the Heather have fashioned a reason to mingle their blooms
19:38in a festival season.
19:43© BF-WATCH TV 2021
20:13© BF-WATCH TV 2021