''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 rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

ways service from London King's Cross to Edinburgh Waverley along the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between its northern terminus at and southern terminus at . The key towns and cities of , , , , and are on the line. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Grea ...

. 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 LNER Class A4 is a class of streamlined 4-6-2 steam locomotive, steam locomotives 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 ins ...

. 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'' and several other British Transport Films. He was later to write the music for the 1959 version of ''

The Thirty-Nine Steps ''The Thirty-Nine Steps'' is a 1915 adventure novel by the Scottish literature, Scottish author John Buchan, first published by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It was Serial (literature), serialized in ''Argosy (magazine)#The All-Story, ...

'', 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 "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 Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

' 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, 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 short documentary films 1954 short documentary films British black-and-white films 1950s British films Rail transport films English-language documentary films

Synopsis

Background

See also

References

External links