Subscribe today using voucher code SUMMER22 for an extended free trial

This film is part of Free

LNER Manufacture of Switches and Crossings

Despite the thousands of railway films, there must be few that show the detailed construction of sections of railway track inside a workshop just after the last war, as seen here.

Non-Fiction 1946 6 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

This is a film of a railway workshop of the London and North Eastern Railway where a rail crossover is being constructed, possibly made just prior to railway nationalisation in 1948.

It isn’t known who made this film, or where, or exactly what year it is. The London and North Eastern Railway was the second largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921, but the workshop is most probably in Yorkshire or the North East. The section of track being constructed is marked with β€œLow Fell”, which is near to Gateshead and part of the East Coast Main Line. There was a large maintenance backlog as a result of the war.