Faviourite railway adverts

[jamessolomon]

Just thought of this as an interesting topic after watching my favs on youtube and seeing some id saved

 

Intercity 125 promtion video

 

British Railway Concerto Advert

 

Now you're looking at Railtrack

 

looking forward to seeing everybodys faviourites

[Zomboid]

The only TV one I remember is the pre-First Great Western "we're building the model railway" one.

 

I suspect I won't be alone in being a fan of the promotional posters from further back. I particularly like the Southern Railway's "Southern Electric" ones, but most of those 1930s type posters are good.

[DavidB-AU]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMa02qn8Elc

[Kelly]

A few from a quite google search:

 

 

 

And not quite an advert, but it is famouse:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WO7JxYlhOM

[HillsideDepot]

There are lots of adverts which are competing for "favourite" in my mind, but the later INTERCITY ones are something special to me. Whilst in many ways I prefer BR's Blue & Grey era, the INTERCITY adverts seem to portray a real self confidence, built on a strong tradition, leading to deep pride in the system.

 

Starting with the Relax campaign http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media/play06.htm the theme continued with Untwist http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media/play18.htm and Relax More http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media/play20.htm leading to the launch of the IC225 which was heralded by this comparative advert http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media/play03.htm "...just thought you ought to know"

 

"Welcome to the City.... INTERCITY" http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/media01.htm I think, is the pinnacle. For all the achievements of the railway since, the huge passenger growth, the numerous new trains, all the flashy liveries, nothing captures the essence of the railway like these adverts. But I think this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XQf7_Z1fMQ from Trans Pennine Express yesterday comes close, and has a similar feel.

 

There are lots more to enjoy here http://www.srpublicity.co.uk/brs/brs22.htm#t6 . Oh, and footage from the Britain's Railway advert, referred to above, is available in a 1 hour version from Transport Video Publishing http://www.transportvideo.com/aerial-voyage-209-p.asp

[Huw Griffiths]

There are some interesting choices in this thread.

 

I know I liked those "relax" ads, when they were on the telly.

 

Some of the other ads generated a range of responses - a range of views - for various reasons.

 

 

I never particularly liked any ads featuring Jimmy Sa-vile. For some reason, I like them even less now - and I doubt if I'm alone in this respect (well I've certainly got none for that waster).

 

"This is the age of the train." Please don't get me started (or a lot of other people, for that matter). Unlike some people, I've actually got no problem with old trains - as long as they're in a decent state of repair - and as long as they're basically suited to the route they're on and the number of people who've paid to travel on them (often paid a lot of money to travel on them). When I was commuting, there was no guarantee that either of these, perfectly reasonable, aspirations would be met - and newer trains weren't always much better.

 

 

Those Great Western "We're building the model railway" TV and poster ads generated some cynical responses from long-suffering commuters, who'd paid to travel on some of the company's less favoured routes - but were routinely plagued by connections that were cancelled, or so late they might as well have been - followed by excessively long waits at "change stations", while trains that could have got us where we needed to be were allowed to fly through without stopping.

 

I can remember one of my fellow commuters at the time parodying these ads, referring to "Boy George's train set" (a sideways reference to Richard George, the company's then MD - who was famously rebuked in his absence by Mr. Justice Scott Baker, because he was not present in court to answer questions about the Southall crash).

 

 

I must admit to quite liking a number of the video linked ads mentioned earlier in this thread - the footage on some of them providing interesting insights into eras before I was born:

 

• "Goodbye to Steam" - with footage of a Woodhead electric loco, while the narrator talks about diesels.
   
• "Night Mail" - which, somehow, seemed slightly incongruous without some guy reciting poetry:
  
  "This is the Night Mail, crossing the border,
  Bringing the check and the closure order ... ."
  
  OK - I probably didn't remember the words quite right - and I'd definitely never make it as a poet - but there were a series of these films, one of which featured WH Auden's famous poem (with the correct words).
   

In fact, these two films had a lot to say about the railways of their respective eras (and there were loads of others produced then). I'd imagine that they might have been shown with film newsreels, but I might be wrong.

 

I've got no doubt that a lot of this stuff would have been selectively edited - some things might even have been done for the cameras - and there were a couple of mistakes - but these don't detract from what were still basically very good, interesting, films, with a lot to say.

 

In fact, it could be argued that they even had something to say about a far more recent era. The "Night Mail" films - and WH Auden's poem - strongly hint at mail being seen very much as priority traffic. This still seemed to be the case at the start of this millennium, when I was commuting long distance by train. A number of passenger stations had platforms which seemed to be used almost exclusively for mail trains - there were even special stations built for this purpose, like the former facility next to Bristol Parkway station - and platform staff I encountered at a number of passenger stations seemed in no doubt that the mail trains were the one sort of routine trains that were not allowed to be delayed, for any reason.

 

 

All of this brings me to a slightly different issue - at what point does an advert become an advertising feature or "infommercial" - and at what point does an advertising feature become a documentary or an informative article?

 

Some people might think this sounds like an oxymoron - a really stupid question - I disagree.

 

I'd imagine that the films I've already mentioned - plus loads of others of similar vintage - would have been produced to show the railways in a certain light - perhaps to show how well they were run - how effective they were at doing what was required of them despite everything that was thrown at them. Modern equivalents of these films might include the behind-the-scenes, "fly-on-the-wall", TV series, which purport to give a flavour of what the railways / Underground / buses / major hauliers are really like. I don't doubt that they're quite informative - but I also strongly suspect that they're likely to be selectively edited.

 

Are they adverts / propaganda - or are they documentaries? You could probably make a credible case either way.

 

 

Some people will be familiar with the Barrowmore MRG website - or The Railways Archive website - both of which contain a number of documents from the history of railways in this country. Some of these are adverts and promotional pamphlets - some are diagrams and reports - well, there's no doubt about any of these ... or is there?

 

The pamphlets were mainly produced for PR purposes - but some of them contain a lot of information and photos, about the railways of the day - which might have been more than half a century ago, in the case of the "Blue Pullmans" or the Glasgow "Blue Trains". Although they might have helped to project a positive image - one of progress, or whatever - a lot of the then new trains they were promoting have, themselves long been scrapped. Publications like these would have no value now as adverts - but they'd be very useful to historians or people building models (strange concept, I know).

 

Other publications of the era include a technical article in The Railway Gazette, about the introduction of the AM4 (later Class 304) EMUs - which was later published on behalf of AEI, to promote their trainbuilding capabilities - was this an editorial article - or did it become an advert? I guess it doesn't matter now - because these trains were scrapped a number of years ago - and it's quite a while since a British company called Associated Electrical Industries last built any new trains.

 

As it happens, I'm currently finding this document very interesting - very informative - and it it's likely to come in very useful if I build a model of one of these trains.

 

 

Perhaps, this is the real reason a number of people here are actually interested in old railway adverts (or whatever you call them). At some point in the past, a lot of them were used for promotional purposes - these days, even allowing for any "spin", a lot of them are rather more useful for research.

 

 

Huw.

[cromptonnut]

I think this has to be my all-time favourite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN7naLLeB0A

 

Wish I knew how to get videos to embed.

[Horsetan]

The adverts which appear on the sides of the SBB Re460 electric locomotives (and a few other Swiss classes) are mostly quite good, in that they make interesting what would otherwise be quite mundane and boring.

 

[Jongudmund]

I liked this. At the preserved railway in Tenterden.

 

 

Mmm, sound yummy.

[The Stationmaster]

About time we had a bit of class in this thread - so here we go, from the golden age of railway advertising -

 

 

 

 

[russ p]

Although the raven hall hotel at Ravenscar is very nice,I'd hardly call the place a resort.

It was supposed to be a proper seaside town and a map of the proposed development hangs in the foyer of the hotel.

It got as far as a few roads built and a few shops near the station

[wombatofludham]

I like the Transpennine Express ad although it seems more an ad for the "Northern Powerhouse" concept and perhaps unsurprisingly doesn't actually feature any images of Transpennine Express train travel!

[Jongudmund]

"most bracing health resort" means windiest right?

 

Love the comparison between Cornwall and Italy.