West Country Journey

Operation London Bridge

Work In Progress

The fourteen films of Reshaping British Railways take a look at significant events from 1951 to 1978, highlighting the case for change to a cleaner, more efficient motive power. The films look at the ‘Indian summer’ of steam traction, the Modernisation Plan of 1955 and its introduction of the diesel rail-car, the ‘reshaping’ or pruning of the network masterminded by Dr Richard Beeching, British Rail’s progress into the 1960s with the Inter-City and Freightliner concepts, and the approach to the new age of the High Speed Train.

The DVD contains classics of their time like Wash and Brush Up, Service for Southend, Forward to First Principles, Plumb-Loco, Overture One-Two-Five and the famous Let’s Go To Birmingham. Also included are rarities such as A Place in the Team, Freight and a City and Second Nature, which have never previously been available to watch at home.

Ocean Terminal

Off the Beaten Track takes a look on this occasion at the films that were not (with one exception) directly about railways. The BTF unit was created to serve the Transport Commission as a whole and many of the fifteen films featured here promote the pleasure of both the natural world and the built environment around us. It didn’t matter whether you travelled by train, tube, bus, coach or by sea – nationalised transport could take you there and home again afterwards. As with all BTF’s promotional films, the indirect message was that transport could serve as a means to an end. The end might be a medieval city or town, a slice of peaceful, picturesque countryside, the Highlands of Scotland or an endless coastline of undisturbed beaches and rock pools. If a change of scene was on the cards, then British transport could deal with it.

Films included on this release earned BTF some of its highest accolades, including an Oscar for Wild Wings (Best short live action subject in 1966) and Oscar nominations for Journey into Spring (1957) and Between the Tides (1958). Among the rare gems here are The Scene from Melbury House and An Artist Looks At Churches

North to the Dales

North Eastern Goes Forward

'The Age of the Train' focuses on the later films made by the BTF unit. This, the ‘corporate blue’ era of British Rail, brought about some of the greatest advancements in rail travel that the world had ever seen.

Once 100mph running was standard, travelling inter-city was the new word in getting about and BR was determined to modernise further. Inter-City 125 is the story of the building of a new generation of high-speed trains. Two shorter films included on this release are Centenary Express; a gastronomic journey from Yorkshire to London on a special train made up of vintage restaurant cars to celebrate a hundred years of train catering, and Sir Peter Parker Talks to Jimmy Savile – two film inserts which would have been used as projected ‘participants’ in a live internal staff conference.

British Transport Films also produced staff information and public service films, and safety was a major theme of these during the unit’s latter years. Included here is The Finishing Line, a film to discourage young children from straying or playing on railway lines. The film was shockingly effective and as such was shown with strict controls. Also featured and with a similar theme is Robbie, aimed at eight to eleven year olds.

Other gems on Volume Seven include The Stone Carriers, thought to be BTF’s last production as a fully functioning unit, Discover Britain by Train which was aimed at American audiences and Old Sam the Signalman, a film made for schoolchildren in which old Sam reminisces over the railways and how they have changed.

Single Line Working

Berth 24

This impressive 18-disc box set collects all nine volumes of the BFI's celebrated British
Transport Films DVD series and fully illustrates the wide range of subjects the BTF
Unit covered for over three decades. Released in a beautifully illustrated box containing
slimlime cases and a fully illustrated booklet, with extensive notes and credits to each film,
this remarkable collection serves much more than the transport enthusiast. It provides a
unique insight into the changing social history of Britain from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Over a whopping 38 hours and 125 films, The British Transport Films Collection covers it all.
From the very first BTF film Berth 24, to rare gems such as E for Experimental, The Travolators
and Old Sam the Signalman, to traveloguesrevealing a changing Britain like This Year London and
Letter for Wales to much-loved classics like Blue Pullman, Elizabethan Express, Terminus and
John Betjeman Goes by Train, there's truly something here for everyone.

Throughout the films on this volume, the professional craftsmanship and artistry of the BTF Unit
are on constant display. Their imaginative and innovative approaches to presentingan exhausting
array ofsubjects remain an inspiration to filmmakers and fans alike.As always, the films on this
collection have been digitally re-mastered from the best available film elements preserved at the
BFI National Archive.

All That Mighty Heart

British Transport Films Volume 10, London on the Move, marks a most welcome return for the BFI’s celebrated and best-selling DVD series, and marks a shift in focus onto travel in the nation’s capital.

Bringing together a number of fascinating and informative films themed around London Transport, this extensive 2-DVD set explores travel on the trams, buses and tube trains which have carried millions of visitors and residents alike around London every year.

Experiment Under London

Victoria Line Report No.4 - Equip and Complete

Victoria Line Report No.1 - Over and Under

Victoria Line Report No.5 - London's Victoria Line

Victoria Line Report No.2 - Down and Along

A Hundred Years Underground

Victoria Line Report No.3 - Problems and Progress

The Queen Opening the Victoria Line (mute rushes)

A 2-DVD set gathering together rare archive films about the construction of the Victoria Line

Bridge of Song

Freight Flow

Joe Brown at Clapham

The Future Works

Diesel Power On British Railways

Going Places Fast

Belief In The Future

Volume twelve in this series of double-DVD sets presents a selection of previously unreleased films that look at the improvements, developments and new services offered by British Transport in the post-war period. Highlights include Future Works (1969), an enthralling tour of the Swindon railway workshops, and Partners in Prosperity (1982), which outlines plans for a truly modern integrated road and rail transport structure in Scotland.

We're in Business Too!

What's Tops?

British Rail is Travelling

Rubbish By Rail

Careful Charlie!

The Stage is Yours

A New Approach to Hong Kong

BTF on DVD makes its triumphant return on this 2-disc set featuring 14 films, 13 of which are available for the first time and have been newly scanned in 2K. The 13th volume in this long running series includes Track 125, Rubbish By Rail and Careful Charlie!.
Includes illustrated booklet with new writing on the films by BFI curators Steve Foxon, Patrick Russell and Jez Stewart and post-war transport historian Stephen Edwards.

Diesel Train Driver: 2. Driving the Train

Through the Continent by Ferry Train

Railway Electrification at Industrial Frequency

Carriage Cleaning

Contact with the Heart of England

Great Britain: A Travel Guide

Speedlink: The Quiet Revolution

This 2-disc collection includes 14 films never before released on DVD including Contact with the Heart of England, Railbus for the 80's, Five in Millions and Speedlink: The Quiet Revolutio.
Also included on this release is a new score for Safe on the Track? by composer Mordecai Smyth. Includes a fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the films by BFI curator and BTF expert Steven Foxon and post-war transport historian and enthusiast Stephen Edwards..

Diesel Train Driver: 2. Driving the Train

Through the Continent by Ferry Train

Railway Electrification at Industrial Frequency

Carriage Cleaning

Contact with the Heart of England

Great Britain: A Travel Guide

Speedlink: The Quiet Revolution

Presenting the Best of British Transport Films (BTF) – newly remastered in stunning High Definition for the very first time to celebrate the 70th anniversary. This new 2-disc Blu-ray compilation gathers together 21 films representing the cream of the celebrated BTF collection. Classics including John Schlesinger’s Terminus (1961) have all been newly digitally remastered to 2K from original film materials by the BFI, whilst Geoffrey Jones’ legendary homage to progress, Rail (1967) has been restored in 4K by the BFI National Archive.

Since the 1950s, Geoffrey R Llewellyn Jones has been making multi-award-winning short films that look, sound and feel like nothing else. With his extraordinary marriage of images, music and rhythm, he ranks alongside such luminaries as Norman McLaren and Len Lye, and remains one of Britain’s true film artists.

Born in London in 1931, of Welsh parents, Geoffrey Jones trained at Central School of Art in interior design, graphic design and photography. Mesmerised by cinema since he was a child and later inspired by Dziga Vertov and Luciano Emmer, his first film project, a satire on the commuter society, envisaged images cut to very rhythmic music, a technique that became his hallmark. Although the film was never actually made, the drawings led to work, when he was just 24, as a one-man band – The Experimental Film and TV Department of advertising agency Crawford International, where early work included an acclaimed commercial for Martini. He went on to make films for global companies like Shell and BP, and innovative animated shorts.

Geoffrey Jones is best known as the director of three seminal films for British Transport Films; Snow (1963), which was nominated for an Oscar, Rail (1967) and Locomotion (1975), all shown at festivals around the world. In films such as Snow, where trains and railway workers battle against severe weather conditions, Rail, a commemoration of the steam age and celebration of the electric age, and the travelogue Trinidad & Tobago (1964), images react, combine and dance together to create a living, pulsing journey. In Locomotion, the entire history of the British railways is illustrated through a captivating and accelerating rhythm.

The Rhythm of Film brings a selection of Geoffrey Jones’ films together in one collection for the first time to show what makes his work so special. Most of his work was in the sometimes precarious area of industrial shorts, but his unique vision is also revealed in his more personal works such as the Seasons Project and the two Chair-a-plane films.

Night Mail

Night Mail (1936) remains one of the most popular and instantly recognised films in British film history, and was one of the most critically acclaimed films to be produced with the British documentary film movement. Night Mail is an account of the operation of the Royal mail train delivery service, and shows the various stages and procedures of that operation.

The film begins with a voiceover commentary describing how the mail is collected for transit. Then, as the train proceeds along the course of its journey, we are shown the various regional railway stations at which it collects and deposits mail. Inside the train the process of sorting takes place. As the train nears its destination there is a sequence - the best known in the film - in which Auden's spoken verse and Britten's music are combined over montage images of racing train wheels. Night Mail has been re-mastered and digitally restored, and beautifully packaged in a clamshell box.

Music by Benjamin Britten. Poetry by WH Auden.

Extras * Two films unseen and re-mastered, Spotlight on the Night Mail (UK 1948) and Thirty Million Letters (UK 1963) * Night Mail 2 (UK 1986) and Way to the Sea (Holmes 1936). * A fully illustrated booklet with essays by author Blake Morrison, composer Miguel Mera and more.

Starting in 2006, de Agostini produced British Steam Railways - a 97 part magazine series with an accompanying VHS or DVD called which was published every two weeks and contained a wealth of archive material on the VHS or DVD. Several BTF and pre-Nationalisation films were included (some were just extracts) but the series was notable for including 2 BTF films not available anywhere else, namely Safe Transit and What's In Store.

Please click here for a full contents listing of all VHS / DVDs

There Go The Boats

The acclaimed John Schlesinger classic Terminus was released by DD Video in 2005 but the DVD also includes the COI produced British Locomotives which uses BTF footage, First of the Thirteen and the BBC classic London to Brighton in Four Minutes.

DD Video's website tells us "This brand new collection features three major films about Britain's railways, locos and rolling stock. Terminus, made by celebrated Hollywood director John Schlesinger for British Transport in 1961, is widely regarded as one of the very best railway films of all time and celebrates a day in the life of Waterloo Station. London-Brighton in Four Minutes was produced by the BBC in 1966. It takes you on board the 'Brighton Belle' at Victoria Station and propels you along the line at the speed of sound, arriving in Brighton in just four minutes, thanks to the magic of trick speed camerawork! 1959's British Locomotives features rare colour film of British-made locos and rolling stock on overseas railways. The DVD features a bonus film from 1970, First of the Thirteen, which provides a fascinating colour record of the modernisation of the British rail signal network. 1 hr 59 mins."