London To Brighton In Four Minutes

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''London to Brighton in Four Minutes'' is a short film produced by the

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Film Unit in the early 1950s showing a train journey from

London Victoria Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street (not the Q ...

to Brighton in England. The camera was manually undercranked to produce a

fast motion Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and th ...

film so that the journey lasted only four minutes instead of the actual time of about one hour. It was originally shown on BBC Television's ''Children's Newsreel'' and over the years its frequent repeat transmissions became very popular with British television viewers of all ages. Later versions were produced, particularly in 1983 and 2013, showing some of the cultural and operational changes that had taken place. The films show the train driver's view ahead during a journey aboard the ''

Brighton Belle The ''Brighton Belle'' was a named train which was operated by the Southern Railway and subsequently by British Rail from Victoria Station in London to Brighton, on the Sussex coast. Commissioned as the flagship of the Southern Railway's mas ...

''.

1953 BBC Film Unit film

The BBC Film Unit's ''London to Brighton in Four Minutes'' is a short film about a London to Brighton train journey, produced in 1953. It was mostly filmed from the driver's point of view looking straight ahead with the filming done so that the journey was spectacularly fast, lasting only four minutes instead of the real travel time of about one hour. The ride was aboard the ''

'', a Pullman train, along the

Brighton Main Line The Brighton Main Line (also known as the South Central Main Line) is a major railway line in the United Kingdom that links Brighton, on the south coast of England, with central London. In London the line has two branches, out of and station ...

from

to Brighton on the south coast of England. The film was made by Don Smith and the first version was narrated by David Lloyd James for an edition of BBC Television's ''Children's Newsreel'' regular weekend programme. For the most part the camera was manually undercranked at about two frames per second for

display at 25 frames per second. The film's commentator described this as "trick photography" and said the train was appearing to run the at an average speed of .

35 mm film 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format commonly referred to as 35 mm film * 35 mm movie film 35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on f ...

was used and each time a film magazine ran out and was replaced, normal-speed shots of the engine driver were slotted in for continuity. The soundtrack of music and background noises were recorded magnetically for over-dubbing – the sound of the train was actually that of a jet engine and clapping was used for the noises at station platforms and through bridges and tunnels. The music is "Sabre Jet" composed by David Hart. Later, a version with a different commentary was made for the main ''

Television Newsreel ''Television Newsreel'' is a British television programme, the first regular news programme to be made in the UK. Produced by the BBC and screened on the BBC Television Service from 1948 to 1954 at 7.30pm, it adapted the traditional cinema news ...

'' programme with a name change to ''Go Slow on the Brighton Line''. Whereas the children's version only has narration at the beginning and end of the journey, in the revised version with a different narrator the names of some of the stations being passed are mentioned.

Subsequent programmes

In the early years of BBC television the film was transmitted quite often as part of their normal schedule and became very well known to the television audience. As such it was a dramatic variation on the BBC's rather frequent "interludes" (such as the "Potter's Wheel") which were merely gap-fillers between programmes and which had a generally tranquil atmosphere. The BBC still shows the film on rare occasions. To show the changing conditions over two periods of thirty years the journey was also filmed in 1983 and 2013, again using

time-lapse photography Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus ...

to show the journeys at high speed. In addition, a version was produced showing the three films synchronised side by side.

Changes between 1953 and 2013

In 1953

was operated by the

Southern Region of British Railways The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948 until 1992 when railways were re-privatised. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s. The region covered south London, southern England and the south ...

, then recently nationalised. The ''Brighton Belle'' operated using

electrical multiple unit An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a number ...

s running on the third-rail system previously introduced by Southern Railway. In 1958 the small station for

Gatwick Racecourse Gatwick Racecourse was a racecourse in the county of Surrey, England near to Horley and Lowfield Heath. It was in use from 1891 to 1940 when it was closed at the start of the Second World War. The land is now part of London Gatwick Airport. ...

was enlarged and renamed

Gatwick Airport Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after H ...

serving the rapidly expanding

. The 1963

Beeching Report Beeching is an English surname. Either a derivative of the old English ''bece'', ''bæce'' "stream", hence "dweller by the stream" or of the old English ''bece'' "beech-tree" hence "dweller by the beech tree".''Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames' ...

led to steam locomotives being withdrawn from the line and the closure of many branch lines and nearly all goods yards. The ''Brighton Belle'' named-train service was ended in 1972. In 1982 Southern Region became the London and South Eastern

sector Sector may refer to: Places * Sector, West Virginia, U.S. Geometry * Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc * Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc * Spherical sector, a p ...

and the following year all signal boxes were replaced by three

rail operating centre A rail operating centre (ROC) is a building that houses all signallers, signalling equipment, ancillaries and operators for a specific region or route on the United Kingdom's main rail network. The ROC supplants the work of several other signa ...

s. The express service between Victoria and Gatwick Airport was taken over by the

InterCity InterCity (commonly abbreviated ''IC'' on timetables and tickets) is the classification applied to certain long-distance passenger train services in Europe. Such trains (in contrast to regional, local, or commuter trains) generally call at m ...

sector in 1984 and rebranded ''

Gatwick Express Gatwick Express is a high-frequency rail passenger service between , Gatwick Airport, and in South East England. It is the brand name used by the Govia Thameslink Railway train operating company on the Gatwick Express route of the Thameslink, ...

''. The

privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. The deregulation of the indust ...

in the mid-1990s led to six different rail franchises all running on the Brighton Line;

Connex South Central Connex South Central was a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Connex that operated the South Central franchise from 26 May 1996 until 25 August 2001. History On 26 May 1996, Connex commenced operating the Network SouthCent ...

Connex South Eastern Connex South Eastern was a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Connex that operated the South Eastern franchise from October 1996 until November 2003. History On 13 October 1996 Connex commenced operating the South Easter ...

Thameslink Thameslink is a 24-hour main-line route in the British railway system, running from , , , and via central London to Sutton, , , Rainham, , , , and . The network opened as a through service in 1988, with severe overcrowding by 1998, carrying ...

Thames Trains Thames Trains was a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Go-Ahead that operated the Thames Trains franchise from October 1996 until March 2004. History The Thames Trains franchise was awarded by the Director of Passenger Ra ...

and

Virgin CrossCountry Virgin CrossCountry was a train operating company in the United Kingdom operating the InterCity CrossCountry passenger franchise from January 1997 until November 2007. Virgin CrossCountry operated some of the longest direct rail services in t ...

. By 2013, while freight on the Brighton Line had almost disappeared and the complexity of branch lines had diminished, passenger traffic boomed with a new town at Crawley, expanded business at Brighton and

Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...

, and increased traffic at Gatwick Airport. The 1988

project opened the way for through trains to run between Brighton and

Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population of the Bedford built-up area (including Biddenham and Kempston) was 106,940, making it the second-largest settlement in Bedfordshire, behind Luton, whilst ...

, north of London – this route does not go to Victoria but branches off to cross the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

Blackfriars Railway Bridge Blackfriars Railway Bridge is a railway bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and the Millennium Bridge. First bridge There have been two structures with the name. The first bridge was opened in 1864 and was d ...

and reaches north of London via the reopened Snow Hill tunnel. BBC ''

South Today ''BBC South Today'' is the BBC's regional television news service for the south of England, covering Hampshire, Isle of Wight, West Sussex, much of Dorset and parts of Berkshire, Surrey and Wiltshire. Since 2000, an opt-out of the main program ...

'' produced news reports in 2013 describing the changes on the journey between 1953 and 2013. Because of heavier traffic there were no longer any non-stop journeys between the two stations so the 2013 film had to be filmed on a special train running early on a Sunday morning. All the same, the fastest scheduled journey time had been reduced from 60 minutes to 47 minutes with the maximum train speed being increased from to . Ticket inspectors had been replaced by automatic barriers and by 2013 the railway staff were no longer nearly all men. In 1953 there were still steam trains running on the line although the ''Brighton Belle'' itself was electric. The number of railway branch lines had been reduced so there were fewer points and sidings but the number of trains had doubled and there were more than twice as many passengers. The railway line and train operators had both been

privatised Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

and the trains had become air-conditioned. In 1953 the return fare was 15 /- (75 pence), that is to say £18.75 by 2013 allowing for inflation, while in 2013 the fare was actually £28.80 ($ in 2013).

Route taken

The Brighton Main Line runs from London Victoria and terminates at Brighton. An animated map of the route, synchronised with the 2013 film of the journey has been produced on an external website using innovative software. A map showing the position of the train as it travels is displayed along with the film of the 2013 journey. London to Brighton Main Line locations

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

* {{cite book , last1=Jeffs , first1=Simon , title=The London to Brighton Line Through Time , date=15 May 2013 , publisher=

Amberley Publishing Amberley Publishing are a firm of publishers in Stroud, Gloucestershire, who specialise in non-fiction transport and history books. They were established in 2008 and the chief executive is Nick Hayward who previously worked at AudioGo and Simon ...

, isbn=9781445609799 1953 in British television British short documentary films 1950s short documentary films BBC television documentaries Films set on trains 1953 documentary films 1953 films Interstitial television shows 1950s British films