''Elizabethan Express'' is a 1954 British Transport Film that follows '' The Elizabethan'', a non-stop

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

ways service from

London King's Cross King's Cross railway station, also known as London King's Cross, is a passenger railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, on the edge of Central London. It is in the London station group, one of the busiest stations in the United King ...

Edinburgh Waverley Edinburgh Waverley railway station (also known simply as Waverley; gd, Waverley Dhùn Èideann) is the principal railway station serving Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the second busiest station in Scotland, after Glasgow Central. It is the north ...

along the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

. Although originally intended as an advertising short, it now acts as a nostalgic record of the halcyon years of steam on

ways and the ex

LNER Class A4 The Class A4 is a class of streamlined 4-6-2 steam locomotive designed by Nigel Gresley for the London and North Eastern Railway in 1935. Their streamlined design gave them high-speed capability as well as making them instantly recognisable, ...

. It was directed by Tony Thompson, with a tongue-in-cheek poetic commentary written by Paul Le Saux. Retrieved 4 February 2008. It is also notable for its music by Clifton Parker, who also wrote the score for ''

Blue Pullman Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ob ...

'' and several other

British Transport Films British Transport Films was an organisation set up in 1949 to make documentary films on the general subject of British transport. Its work included internal training films, travelogues (extolling the virtues of places that could be visited via th ...

. He was later to write the music for the 1959 version of '' The Thirty-Nine Steps'', which also features an A4.

Synopsis

The film follows the preparation behind the service, as well as focusing on one particular journey. The 'star' of the film is the Gresley A4 60017 ''Silver Fox'', although the film makes a point of featuring many railway employees, for example the maintenance men, the driver and fireman and the station master at

Waverley station Edinburgh Waverley railway station (also known simply as Waverley; gd, Waverley Dhùn Èideann) is the principal railway station serving Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the second busiest station in Scotland, after Glasgow Central. It is the north ...

"who has a very high sense of occasion". The train completes its journey in its timetabled 6 hours 30 minutes. It is still highly regarded for its well-filmed sequences by cinematographer Billy Williams showing the operation of the East Coast main line and the Gresley A4 as it was in mainline use, for example the water scoop and corridor tender, although the whimsical verse commentary dates the work considerably. The film also offers a social record of the different hierarchies existing within the railway, as well as the fashion and people in the 1950s, albeit in a romanticised portrayal.
Elizabethan Express
'' at Moving History. Retrieved 4 February 2008.

Background

'' The Elizabethan'' was a daily non-stop service in celebration of the new '

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

' era of the early 1950s. Departure from both ends was in mid-morning, for a teatime arrival. It ran only during the summer months, including in 1953 and 1954. It was able to make the journey from London to Edinburgh non-stop by using

steam locomotives equipped with a

corridor tender A gangway connection (or, more loosely, a corridor connection) is a flexible connector fitted to the end of a railway coach, enabling passengers to move from one coach to another without danger of falling from the train. Origins: Coaches in Br ...

, enabling a change of crew en route. It also required drivers to take up as much water as possible at the troughs, since the journey called for over of water. The journey time of 6 hours 30 minutes gave an end-to-end average speed of just over , regarded as a creditable achievement given the poor state of British Railways infrastructure in the immediate postwar era. At the time this was the longest scheduled non-stop railway journey in the world. The article includes the full log of the up ''Elizabethans journey on 17 August 1954, when 60009 ''Union of South Africa'' brought it into King's Cross one minute early.

References

External links

British Transport Films website
* * {{Screenonline title, id=705726, name=Elizabethan Express

British Transport Films Films scored by Clifton Parker 1950s English-language films British documentary films 1954 documentary films British black-and-white films 1950s British films

Synopsis

Background

See also

References

External links