Halcrow have had a long association with London's Transport infrastructure, and as Annie Mole over at Going Underground has highlighted, they now have an interesting glimpse into the Victoria Line's past on their website.
This is the half-hour film, the title card of which is shown above - Report Number 1 Over and Under, Operations at Oxford Circus, created in 1964 by British Transport Films.
This can be viewed on their website here (but not embedded unfortunately) and provides an interesting snapshot into coverage at the time. It describes the route of the new line, some of the expected problems, and focuses on various elements of work being carried out at Oxford Circus. It also includes some rather wonderful footage of a worker drinking from a fire bucket - something I suspect your average modern Underground worker wouldn't have gotten away with, even during Metronet's time in charge.
Thanks to Annie for highlighting the video's existence.
I watched this when Annie first linked to it a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteIt brought back early childhood memories of the work around Oxford Circus.
The quality of the film on the Halcrow site is extremely poor (probably an unloved film print that has been through a projector a few more times than it should have been).
There is an almost pristine version(probably scanned from the master negative) here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZBpjbSYEQ&feature=related
The subsequent reports are also there.
Fascinating insight into a bygone era of construction and film making techniques.
ReplyDeleteI think there's 3 more
ReplyDeleteI found the one where they talked about diverting the Piccadilly Line at Finsbury Park (I think) really interesting
Unlike today's transport films, they went into real detail in these films. They are fantastic
I hope that we get a similar thing with Crossrail
"The hole is then filled with reinforced concrete... after first removing the engineer"
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, with a couple of other very dry lines like that.
They certainly don't build 'em like they used to.
The 4 reports are all on YouTube
ReplyDeleteThe Oxford Circus model shown in report 1 is sitting in the Acton museum depot and a whole reason by itself for going to an open day.
Number 1 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZBpjbSYEQ
Number 2 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV3xbA__KKo
Number 3 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htGu7yLE2_c
Number 4 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn62ckeR558&NR=1
Are there equivalent films of the construction of the Jubilee Line and the rebuilding of the East London Line? if so could you point me in the right direction?
ReplyDeleteDon't think so. The significant thing about it at the time was it was a report - an update made at the time to report on progress. By the late 1990s we had the internet for that and consequently reports are in smaller but more frequent chucks - basically press releases.
ReplyDeleteShowing my age, I cannot remember which one I saw at the time but I saw one of these reports as a schoolboy in a small room in what is now Embankment tube station. You just wandered in off the street and they showed the latest update every half hour in a tiny room (30 people max) using a traditional projector.
The modern press releases pale in comparison to these reports.
ReplyDeleteIn Safari browser, go to the Halcrow page with the video on it. Open your 'Activity' window from the top menu and look for the long URL with a size of 121MB. Copy that URL and paste into your 'Downloads' window.
ReplyDeleteYou'll now be downloading the mp4 video file to keep.
This works on Mac. Not sure about PC.
The versions from YouTube can also be kept by pasting the URL into the box on this site: http://keepvid.com/
ReplyDeleteThe videos are now locked as 'private' :(
ReplyDelete