Vintage railway film - The elephant will never forget - 1953
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2022
- This vintage railway film was produced by British Transport Films in 1953.
Trams in London are a thing of the past - buses have taken over - but many Londoners, and especially the Cockneys, will always remember them with affection, and in song.
The film, completed in London's 'Last Tram Week', takes you round the streets of South London and along the Embankment with two Cockneys who remember a song about trams they sang in the music halls fifty years ago. Finally, 20,000 Londoners cheer and sing their goodbyes to the trams which for ninety-one years had rattled and clanged their way past - particularly through the colourful and lively part of South London near the Elephant & Castle.
This made me sad, not just that trams were gone. But how society was. It used to be so nice. Friendly. London today, especially South London is nothing like it once was. So depressing. Our country gutted its infrastructure.
This made me tear up a little. People today don’t realize the value of those little things, like the trams. They weren’t just there to take people to work, but they were a way of life. You wouldn’t see 20,000 people gather to wish an old tram a splendid farewell now, but Londoners back then certainly knew how to say goodbye. The Railways and the Trams have always been a part of Britain, a part of her identity. They saw the old Trams, Steam Engines, even Ocean Liners off as they would see a family member or a dear friend off, and videos like these help the newer generations, who never knew the beauty of a simple Tram ride to see what made them so special.
You could still see that now, you can find photos how just a few days ago the people of a small Russian town Ust-Ilimsk bid farewell to their trams.
The way Londoners were back then! A fabulous piece of film - thanks for sharing.
29000 Recorded stabbings in London for the 24 months 2019/2020. London is destroyed. Only salvation is to depart.
The way Londoners were, united, peaceful and homogenous. But will never be again.
I remember being met by my father from school one afternoon before the trams were removed and he took us on a tram down the tunnel on the Kingsway and along the Embankment! He wanted us to remember London trams as they were. A memory I cherish, thank you Dad!
In 1949,some executives from the LTB came to Sydney, Australia, to advise the NSW government on our tram system; they told them to close it down and replace it with buses, which we did; ask people who remember the trams, they say it was one of our biggest transport blunders to remove them
Sad. But at least Melbourne had the sense to retain them.
@lwf51 I'm not aware of the background but visiting Melbourne for the one and only time years ago I remember thinking what a far sighted decision it was: certainly avoided the eye watering costs of having to reinstate them decades later (which happened in Manchester and Edinburgh).
Lovely film - especially with the George Lashwood song. And an important record of how London used to be.
I was born in 59 and I wish I had lived when the trolley busses and trams ran! However the world has gone full circle now and what is now replacing busses..........
TRAMS!!!! My parents were Londonders and remember these days. How sad to see them all gone.........
A lovely film, and an important piece of social history, of how London used to be.
Thank God for Robert Risson we still have our trams in Melbourne.
What a brilliant film. Thank you for sharing it with us.
So the trams had to go ! Oops fast forward, now the trams are back! And the railways too!
Seems ironic that we now need the Elizabeth line to cover the same route! Lifting the rails was very short-sighted; as with Beeching a decade later. Alas, the UK can’t get transport provision right at all…
Here here! Vested interests, car and bus lobbies...trams never did a bad job in dense city environments.
@@thomashenderson3901 trams were less flexible than buses and caused more problems for the putting in and maintenance of under road services.
With BR losing £100,000 per day before Beeching was appointed something had to be done. Amongst the causes for BR's losses include the British travelling by bus or car, companues sending their goods by road and rising costs and fares and tariffs being frozen by the government. Whilst some of the closures started by Beeching have proved to be wrong the vast majority of them were not, many of them were even closures envisaged by the Big 4 before WW2 saved them.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Yes of course, but I don't fully believe that argument. In Swansea at least the bus routes have barely changed since I was a child some 40 years ago, so I don't see that inflexibility being that much of a hindrance.
@@thomashenderson3901 close a tramway and you gave to terminate the service at a point were the tram can return to it's starting point. Close a bus route and the driver can take a short diversion and can continue the journey to its destination. That's how flexible motor and electric buses are.
Whenever this film comes round I always get a lump in my throat. Seeing Derby and Joan there on the top deck goes so well with that lovely song.🥲
Were the couple on the top deck the ones who performed the song?
Never realised the importance of these trams for the Working Class of London - as the beauty of their communal song celebrating the last of the trams in London will attest to @8:44
I wish I could somehow step onto those streets..& take a slow stroll back home. Despite all the Bomb sites & hardships, there was a make do - joyful expectation in the air - all around - a togetherness, that will never come again. It makes what's out there 'today'...so hard to bear.
Well said, Micky, my old son!
Bring back the old trams
Brilliant. I was only six years old when the last of them disappeared but still have a clear memory of them rounding the curve at the junction of Thornton Heath High Street and Parchmore Road, on their way to or from the bridge over Thornton Heath station - and yes, it was wet and gloomy...
To be honest that corner is still gloomy.
A "47" lad myself and still rember going with my Mum, to see my Grandad, who was a Tram driver, ... Coooh I was so ptoud of him
Totally brilliant. Thanks so very much. Why is this so touching. Cos it is!!!!!
I read that the Chief of British Transport Films told the maker of this film not to make it, as BTF only looked to the future, but the fellow made it anyway. Having viewed the finished film, the Chief said,"Good film but I told you not to make it, you're fired".
Very true, but many BTF films often look back at history and are very reflective.
@@iainclark5964 You are right, and I think we are all grateful that these films were made, and some of them in colour. A big thanks to this channel for bringing them to us.
@@skellertons113 I have all the BFI British Transport Film DVDs and never tire of watching these gems. These and the GPO films will never be on streaming services which is why if prefer DVDs to streaming.
Such a shame so many British cities and towns ripped up their old tram tracks in favour of better road transport. It's not just the Brits though, New York, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, were all guilty of closing down their vast network of tramways. Surely a lot of these lines could be upgraded for modern use. I found it quite miraculous that Hong Kong got to keep its double decker trams after the MTR opened, I don't use them very often, but do enjoy looking at them on my daily commute, a remnant of those old days I never got the chance to experience. :)
My mum took us up to London to see the last tram.
My late father used to tell me he went to see the last tram come into tram shed in Dover back in the 1930's ,this brought back memories of his stories ,thanks.
Many happy ghildhood memories, of seeing my Grandad drive a London Tram, Thank you so much for posting this film
Great film of a bygone era.
What a fantastic bitt of history, I remeber riding on the last tram down the Old Kent toad from the Globe cinema to the ABC. Many a happy time going to borstal and Abbey woods by tram. Thanks for sharing
Superb night filming great film
My Dad took me on this last tram for the length of the High Street all those years ago. Am I that old?!!! Chuckle.
Very evocative.
At the end of the film we learn that London tram drivers had to stand up all the time, as steam locomotive drivers did. That was not the case in Edinburgh, where the trams went on until 1956. I remember the drivers had something like a bicycle saddle on a stick, which fitted into a hole in the floor. They carried it round to the other end of the tram when it was time to change the direction of travel.
Watched this a few times,lovely. Old couple upstairs remind me of my grandparents.
Born in 1948 and only 5 years old in November 1953 I vaguely remember the trams but the tracks lasted longer. Great video, thank you for showing this.
I was 4 yrs old that year, we will never see the country like that again. It's sad that all those people have passed on now, but I am glad they can't see the country and London like it is today.
Yet another wonderful film. Thanks for sharing.
It was metal and fabric and cable and wire....but to Londoners the tram was a living thing. A poignant film telling you something about how people can endear themselves to machinery.
My parents were in the crowd on the last night, they were always proud of that.
The tram is a space craft for children.
It was for me in 1952 and still is
when I see the same old tram in 2022,
now being as a tourist tram in Rotterdam.
A very nice send off to something that would probably be a asset to the city. Farewell to the trams. 🇬🇧👍🇺🇸
Such short sightedness, not just London but across the country! Brighton stupidly got rid of theirs too. Jammed up roads and charges trying to stop people using them.
As for what was a slum and now the Kingsway Tunnel, still there, still unused, just much more congested.
York had its trams too, as did Leeds, and many other cities. If you know what to look for, you can still find remnants of the tram service. I could take you the last remaining iron pylons which carried the overhead cables, or several places where the last few pieces of track were reused for other purposes. The tram depot still stands, though you wouldn't immediately recognise it as such.
It wasn't just motorists who vented their frustrations at the trams, but I guess even back then, cars were already being vilified by the media. Cyclists despised the trams' tracks, which posed a special hazard from skidding, or worse, when a bicycle's front wheel dropped into the the groove, and the rider went "Arse owwer tit over't 'andlebars". The bike usually remaining upright in the groove while its rider moaned in agony on the cobbles, very often with significant facial injuries - Skull fractures were very common back then. Horses were easily spooked by the rails, and with good reason, as my dad once explained to me, a horse with a loaded cart would "skid uncontrollably" when trying to stop, even worse, on an incline, when its hooves couldn't get a grip on the steel rails. People on foot, especially if there was frost, or snow on the ground, were frequently slipping and falling from stepping on the rails. Broken bones were an everyday occurrence where tram tracks were present.
In Leeds, the trams were more developed, but the tracks were laid along the centre line of the roads - The trams ran up and down the middle of the road, which resulted in passengers, en masse, running out into the road in front of traffic - Accidents were a regular occurrence, sometimes fatal, but that was how the infrastructure was laid out, without much in the way of forward planning.
Trams have much to be commended, but we do tend to don our rose tinted glasses when we remember them, a bit like every summer in our childhood was always bright and sunny, until you stop and really remember how things really were.
So why do they still use them in Germany and why is Edinburgh building them? That's right it is someone else's responsibility as to where you put your feet....
Melbourne still has a big tram network, never had any issue with slipping on tram tracks or seen anyone slip, the steel rails are pretty narrow and recessed so you'd have to try really hard to slip on them. Then again, we don't have snow. As for cyclists, since the tracks are in the centre of the road as long as you stick to the side of the road and when crossing tracks keep your wheels at an angle to them you'll be fine, unpredictable motorists are a much greater danger.
Sheffield has a good modern tram service. The only problem is it costs more than the train or bus
...and my Uncle Arthur brought into New Cross depot the last horse-drawn tram. Thank you for sharing this wonderful BTF production.
Great and famous documentary. The single deck trams still run through Croydon and ring their bell - and very smooth they are too. Routes from New Addington and along to Wimbledon.
Lovely old couple up deck seeing the sights one last time.
The day of the trams leaving did not have to come eventually at all. It did, but not out of necessity.
Lovely film. The music hall song lends a deep poignancy. Sad but inevitable to think there can't be many alive today who remember using London's trams. And at 4.40 ..... the happy passengers shown (yes the young ones included) must've all departed this earth a long while ago.
I’m 74 and have a memory of riding a tram from Westminster Bridge to the Elephant and Castle in the last week London’s trams. I’ve still got the commemorative tickets. We lived outside London, but my mother was from Bermondsey, and was probably determined to give me a tram ride.
Such shortsightedness. So many other European cities very sensibly keep theirs
Excellent nostalgia, thanks
What a lovely place to live. What country is this?
London, England.
@@srfurley - lol i think you're missing the point!
a lovely country that no longer exists
@@marcokite and never did.
@@srfurley You fell for that one 😎
Wonderful, thanks as always Bennett Brook Railway!
Greatest BTF ever produced..
Reminds of an old film about the 2rd/3rd ave Overhead Railways being torn down.
The bridge at 8.03 is the Sunderland railway bridge --- it's still there and can be seen on Google Earth. The footbridge was replaced in 1926
Brilliant thanks for sharing, Greenwich place of my birth 😌🇬🇧
I liked the man with the pipe 5:09 on the upper deck. Today the nanny state won't let you smoke anywhere. Bah!
With good reason.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 could you please explain what the good reason is?
@@bertiewooster3326 1. The smell. 2. The mess. 3.The toxic fumes. These are the first 3 reason that spring to mind.
Thanks for that. 😀
As a child my dad took me on a London tram down Old Kent Rd must’ve been 1950? He took me because they were being withdrawn
This a film about London's tramway, not railway. We had a similar system in several NZ cities until the 60s. Trams were a very efficient means of public transport . Great for moving workers and crowds to and from football/rugby grounds.
I wish I could have been born in 1953 or born anytime in the 1950s instead of been born in the late 1960s
A London lost forever. Not one burka in sight.
I hope at least one was preserved. Pity if not.
Visit the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. Wonderful collection.
Or go to the tram museum at Crich.
Or the East Anglia Transport Museum in Calton Colville near Lowestoft in Suffolk
@@andycooke6231 Thanks for the suggestion.
And the Beamish “open-air museum” - has a tram line that goes around its rim, as it used to be a quarry
Ironic seeing a Tram en route to Abbey Wood given the recent creation of the underground Elizabeth train line from the docklands and central london to that destination
What a delightful film. I just missed out on the trams, but I remember the trolley buses. I have to admit to being puzzled by the opening footage; I was wondering if some trams had batteries fitted because I never realised that some areas supplied power from a central plough. And how short sighted to have got rid of them, particularly those with the plough supply. Were they stopped for economic reasons or something else?
The biggest reason was that every UK town that ran trams had allowed, or been forced by economics, to let the system become worn out, especially the rails. Some places switched to trolleybuses, until the wiring wore out. Others went straight for buses.
I don't have trouble understanding why it seemed that Trams were old fashioned, but getting rid of all the trolleybuses just 10 years later was extraordinarily short sighted.
@@lesbrown2724 The UK was poisoned by road building. I would bet that the potential cost of replacing the trolley wires on road rebuilds was a major part of why London's rulers killed its trolleybuses.
It was Lord Ashfield, who, originally a tram man, wanted trolleybuses as a replacement in the 1930s. Schemes to widen the Great West Road left out the possibility of central reservations and loading islands were rare with tracks remaining in the centre of the road, endangering passengers. Apart from the LCC's Subway, everything, including publicity was designed to tell the public that trams were a thing of the past. Fuel was cheap and infrastructure renewal costs were used as an excuse so the road lobby won. (Similar tactics were employed by the road lobby during the Beeching era of the early 1960s). Only WWII delayed the scrapping of the tram system - fortunately for the young me to savour Woolwich and the Embankment in tramcar days). Everything I see in European cities today could have been done in London and elsewhere. What do any politicians, even today, do for the good of the common people?
@@glynwelshkarelian3489 you can't just switch from trams to trolley buses, you need to string up return wires that are isolated from the original tram wires. The trams in London were originally planned to be withdrawn prior to WW2 due to deteriorating track work. If they had wanted to relay the tracks it would have resulted in worse congestion than the continued operation of the trams. Also London Transpirg would have had to spend more than the £9 million it cost for an equal capacity of motor buses to the trams they replaced, the travelling public would have had to face fare rises and disrupted services.
The problem for tam operators was that the Tramways Act of 1870 put the financial burden for street repairs in the tram operator even though they didn't cause the wear and tear. In London many streets were really too narrow for both trams and road vehicles to operate side by side and most housing developments were too far away from the tram routes.
Interestingly enough, the same man who was against trams/trolly busses was pro Beaching and pro road... Ernest Marples. Whos family run a tarmac company. Was involved in road construction business. Who was Minister of Transport. Was a bit of a toff. Pretty much cemented the end of trams and more so after, trolly busses.
There is a word for this period of time and the people involved but I cant quite find it.
I was under the impression nostalgia was a relatively modern invention, starting in the early 1970s when people thought it was a good the preserve smelly old inefficient and dirty steam engines so we could stick faces on them at Christmas time and use them to take children to visit Santa .
Emission free (at point of use) transport without the cost of batteries! At least Croydon has got the modern version now.
And of no use when the lines are blocked, unlike an electric bus.
A film that disproves the claim that London has always been multicultural.
I suppose it depends on your definition of "multicultural", but London has had cultural diversity for a very long time, the East End in particular. Remember, one short film cannot show the scope of an entire city.
I love the elderly couple best our for treat riding on the tram . it bring tears to the eyes, they would have been born in the 1970s
I think you mean 1870s ..
Unfortunately, the elephant will forget. There aren't many left who remember London, as it used to be. Where in this film, are all the foreign faces, which we are now told, made up a sizeable percentage of the population? Either they're not telling the truth, or whomever edited this film, performed the best editing job ever.
I think even the old elephant and castle statue went fairly recently didn't it?
@@geoffplywood6112 It was removed from the entrance to the old shopping centre and relocated to Castle Square, a new hub encapsulating Ash Avenue and Elephant Park.
@@sandgrownun66 thank you, that's good to know it has been preserved
@@geoffplywood6112 Sadly, a fibreglass elephant with a castle on it's back, is the only thing that's left. Gone are the English people, who made London the beautiful city, it once was.
@@sandgrownun66 Yes, sadly now gone forever. Thank goodness there are films like this to document how life used to be . .
Why was tram service ended? They seem so clean and efficient!
5:32 Imagine having to tell people that .
It's no matter what you do , where you're coming from or where you're going to .
You can do what you like in the queue , but I don't want no spitting on the bus .
Just think how much pollution was avoided by the trams and trolley buses. The diesel buses that replaced them pumped out carcinogenic particulates and nitrogen oxides (NOx) all of which damage our lungs.
How shortsighted can you get?
Edit; admittedly the electricity to power the trams and trolley buses came from coal fired power stations but as we now know the emissions from power stations were an easy fix.
Does anyone know the name of the song that the crowd are singing at the end, I can't find it anywhere.
Edit: It's Auld Langs Syne, I dunno how I didn't know that tbh
Yes brilliant footage or should I say (more PC) Meterage? Great quality film. I was 7 yrs old when that film was made and I remember going on a tram. Looking back it was an era when values were different - very different from today.
should be back in service next year lol
I often wondered how the word Elephant got on that line
No one remembers that now !
Actually my mother does. The trams were her first introduction to london as a 17 year old girl from Ireland. Going into Holborn was a big thrill at that age. She is 92 now and can remember it like yesterday but can't remember yesterday dur to dementia...
so sad
I'd be interest to know what happened to the Lewisham Darby & Joan Club mentioned in the credits?
Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing. The uk’s love affair with the car, and the uk’s complete inability to accept that paying higher taxes to fund modern public services is a good idea will always hold us back. Europe in general has superior public transport because there is a higher collective sense of paying for what we need. The uk just continues to stumble on behind the USA with self and greed is good, and that socialism is somehow unpatriotic, as opposed to a good idea for the collective. It’s fascinating that there was nostalgia and sadness for the end of the trams AT THE TIME, and not just us blethering in about “the old days being better”. We knew back, then but no one spoke up. The Titfield Thunderbolt and it’s fight with the bus, was more real than we know. Since about the 1960s public transport has been progress for its own sake, when all it needed was modernisation not complete change.
Interesting
What was the first piece?
They had switchable points for trams?
One of the greatest acts of transport insanity.
It’s just a bus on rails no big deal !
Why was there two types of power pick up? - surely it would have been a lot easier to just have one? - Was the centre pick up only used in the Kingsway Tunnel?
I like the Narrator, at least you can understand him not like some modern narrators, a properly trained actor, he appeared in 'The Dambusters' I believe .
the third rail's advantage was that the line didn't obscure the view with overhead wires so it was preferred in the city center, but it was more expensive to build and maintain
They couldn't have put in a driver's seat?
Haha lets get rid of clean transport !!!
They thought fossil fuel was king and the future.
It still is.
Fossil Isn’t gonna last forever.
It literally takes thousands of years to form, and at the rate were consuming it. The supply will run out by 2100-2150.
Marples the conservative transport minister had so many vested interests against trams and railways, the government’s all of them let everything run down with little investment and no thought of the public, you only have to look elsewhere to see how popular tram and railways are and now it’s costing millions to replace what they ripped out all those years ago and the ones who did all the damage, their smiling ugly faces are looking down at you from the city and town halls,
And Marples had nothing to do with the ending of London's trams - that all started in 1935. And as for the railways Marples wasn't even a Minister when the decision was taken to Capt fares and freight tariffs on BR. He just had to deal with the outcome of another bloody stupid decision taken by his party. Since the publishing of the first Bechingbreport we have had the Pound devalued by 14%, several recessions, a decade and a but of industrial unrest and Brexit which made it harder to trade with the closest single market we had. Many closures if rail routes were of lines than never made money for the initial builders and were targets for closure by the Big 4 and pre-Beeching BR, Beching just accelerated the date of closure. Some lines that survived Beeching were the victims of the recession of the late 1970s/early 1980s, such as the GN/GE joint line from March to Spalding. This line closed about 40 years ago when traffic volumes were falling across the entire country. Yes, they could have mothballed it, but for how long could have BR justified that to Margaret Thatcher and her government? Mothballjng is expession and unless for a short period pointless as train crew would need training on the route after not using it for several months.
My great grandfather said at the time that the Conservatives had got their money in concrete, I imagine Marples is the chap he was talking about. Being an MD of a road construction business was a small conflict of interest for a minister of transport! Appointing Beaching to head of BR turned Britain from a railway country with a fantastic public transport network into a country of motorways, traffic jams, and pollution.
@@gord307 the railways closed by Beeching in the main were branch lines that had little or no impact on road traffic levels. Lines who stations were a mile or more from the village they were named after. The same lines that the Big 4 were planning to close. An example of this are the lines serving Whitby, all of which the LNER considered to be financial blackholes. BR managed closeart of one of them (the Whitby to Loftus line, which west of Loftus still had plenty of freight to support the line at the time of the truncation). None of the other routes handled sufficient passenger or freight volume by the 1930s let alone the 1960s to contribute enough revenue to cover sufficient of the operational and maintenance costs. The only time the coastal routes to Whitby were busy were on Saturdsys during the summer months and those extra trains played havoc with the operation of the lines leading to delays.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 We lost around half of the railway network in the 60s. Many, many towns were suddenly left isolated because of it, including major towns in the Midlands like Dudley and West Bromwich, but also many towns and villages around the coast. It is also well known that he report did not take into account seasonal traffic, so our tourist industry will have suffered greatly as a result. There were, no doubt, some lines and stations which had become obsolete, or were duplicated, but on the whole the reshaping of Britain's railways was a catastrophe for our country.
@@gord307 yes, there were lines that probably shouldn't have closed, but in the 2 cases you mention all I have no access to any information used to justify the closing of the line they served. All I can say is that BR(LM) withdrew the London trains from Wolverhampton Low Level route along much of the freight services on the line, especially those not serving businesses on the line, as these could be accommodated on the WCML now that electrification had been completed. I do know that the local bus network would have been able to cover most local journeys as was the case when representatives from the line's TUCC, BR and the WMPTE returned from inspecting the line by train in 1971 as part of the closure process.
But on the seasonal traffic issue you are forgetting that all stations and goods stations would keep books of tickets sold and revenue coming in since the day they had opened. BR would have access to this data. If you look at the maps in the first Beeching Report they give details of annual traffic levels and average incomes (in both cases split into 3 bands). This information has to have come from the account books for each station in the network. Seasonal traffic would have been taken into account, but as package holidays to Spain and other places in the sun were becoming more common in the 1960s and continued to grow the seasonal traffic to the traditional seaside resorts started to fall away. Making the seasonal traffic less and less remunerative to BR.
cyclists were delighted,they were able to steer at will,( an old boy) told me getting a cycle front wheel stuck in the sunken track took you to places you has'nt intended!y
Ppl claimed these trams were taking up spaces of London. I think London itself is not properly planned and built to accomodate tram lines when compared to Amsterdam & Copenhagen.
Is funny they ripped up the rails, on 8 th May 62 all the wires were down finished as the Trolleybus ended
Full steam ahead internal combustion,Needing chopped railway service.
Now he tram is back all g with battery powered buses.
Another ecological disaster, batteries.
So many terrible jobs that just don't exist today, fancy being a pointsman standing on a corner all day in all weathers waiting for Trams to hove into view and swinging your level - or worst standing in the middle of the road guiding centre rail shoes about .
Ghosts of Christmas Past,and in Croydon,of all places! So the mistakes(?),of the past come back to haunt the present! Los Angeles scrapped their streetcar network in the 1960's,but they have literally rebuilt the old Pacific Electric from the ground up,plus they built a subway,that was proposed in 1909! The subsidies of the automobile were far too enticing for the politicians,and the disaster that followed,was overlooked by the,also,bought and paid for media,now it's here,and hauntingly so!! Have they ever learned from their stupidity,and greed?? Thanks for the forum!! 🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚎🚎
Babylon is brilliant. 1980. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_(1980_film)