Timeshift

Don Packham - Keeper, Bristol Zoo, 1948-1998:
Really, the keeper was very glad at the end of the day when the animals hadn't, sort of, consumed any of the visitors.

Rachel Hewitt:
The Ordnance Survey is absolutely a great British success story, and it forms a model for many national mapping agencies around the world. Certainly the Ordnance Survey makes Britain pretty much the leading country in the world in terms of possessing accurate geographical information about itself.

Mike Parker:
In some ways, the Ordnance Survey is a perfect mirror of Britain, at its best and its worst. At its best - entrepreneurial, go-getting, quietly ambitious for the country, beautiful fusion of art and science. And then it is, as an organisation, and always has been, rather stuffy, rather pompous, rather self-important. Britain in a nutshell.

Nicholas Crane:
I cannot possibly imagine this country functioning without Ordnance Survey maps.

John Cleese:
I've always found it *astonishing* that people could have wiped these shows. I remember hearing years ago that Alan Bennett's series, which was set in NW1 in London, had been wiped *by the BBC*. I was outraged. Didn't they realise that this was special and that people would want to see it in ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty years? How could they be so *stupid*?

Tony Calladine - Original Rocker:
Mods were into looking good going slow, we were into going fast - two different philosophies, really.

Lord Denning:
After a decision has been given by judge and jury, the media must *not* go round trying to get what they call "fresh evidence" so as to show, if they can, that the decision was wrong. That is undermining our system of justice altogether.

Interviewer:
Are you saying that the system and the integrity of the system and the public conception of the integrity of the system is more important than the fate of one or two individuals?

Lord Denning:
Certainly. The integrity of our system of justice and upholding it is one of the foundations of society.

Narrator:
The idea that organisations improve by admitting their failings is a modern one. For a judiciary rooted firmly in the past, which didn't even have press officers until the 1980s, any form of media intrusion was unwelcome. And it wasn't just the legal establishment that preferred television to keep its nose out. The police, too, had much to hide.

Peter Neyroud - Former Chief Constable, Thames Valley Police:
I joined in 1980 and very early on as a temporary detective I was very, very strongly told "confinement brings confession". In 1980, we pre-prepared confessions - we wrote them out before we actually sat down with the people, and we got them to sign. They weren't *their* words. There was no doubt about the kind of conspiracy between judges, magistrates and cops, and the sort of the nods and the winks that went on in the court.

[Mark tries several times to start a huge petrol engine using a starting handle, but it refuses to fire]

Mark Evans - Presenter:
[ironically] I guess this is what you get when you try starting up a petrol engine in a documentary about the diesel.

Museum Curator:
[off-camera] Not enough effort! More effort needed!

Mark Evans - Presenter:
[to a curator] When did they invent the starter motor?

[talking about a massive cargo ship powered by an 18000 litre, 75000 horsepower diesel engine]

Mark Evans - Presenter:
These vessels are so large they look as if they'd be painfully slow. But not true. Today, the largest diesel-powered cargo ships rock along at a staggering 50 km/hour, and that's with the greatest fuel efficiency of any engine in the world. 50 km/hour is fast enough to water-ski behind!

Mark Evans - Presenter:
The incredible power and efficiency of diesel-powered ships means that it's cheaper to ship something from Shanghai to Felixstowe than it is to deliver it from your local shop to your house.

[talking about her family's first trip on an HST 125 train]

Michelle Sandell:
The family story, which we never let my cousin forget, cos he was younger than us, is when he came running back down the train shouting out to my mum "Aunty Marion, I've done a poo at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour". And we said "Yeah, you didn't really want to shout that out!".

[talking about the repeated failures of the tilting Advanced Passenger Train when it was first brought into service, which led to its withdrawal after a few years]

Prof Alan Wickens:
It was put into service too quickly. If it had been allowed to be developed by the engineers, over a reasonable timescale, it would have been more reliable.

[in "Round Trip to Glasgow", Peter Purves, the film's presenter, counters some of the bad press that the Advanced Passenger Train received]

Peter Purves:
It's smooth, it's quiet and an altogether delightful experience. Everything that the developers and designers have told me that the train should do, it does appear to do - and exceptionally well. I'll be in Euston a little over four hours after leaving Glasgow Central, and that's got to make this a train very much worth taking.

[talking about why the Advanced Passenger Train project was abandoned and the trains scrapped]

Peter Swift:
So much of the equipment was totally new, and my view would be that there were too many new ideas in one train.

Alan Marshall:
The Advanced Passenger Train never had a chance because it never got the support it really deserved, particularly from the civil servants and politicians, maybe because none of them had any real long-term belief in the future of the railways.

Kyle Bosworth:
I think in the last ten years of British Railways, they'd got everything right and they were ripe for privatisation. And I think they should be given the credit for that.

Alan Marshall:
I think probably British Rail's biggest success was in preventing any more of the railway network being closed than many people wanted to achieve.

[talking about the HST 125]

Peter Swift:
If someone had told me in 1975 that this train that you're working on will still be in front-line service in 40 years' time, I'd have said "Pull the other one". But it is!

[at Paddington, waiting for the Cornish Riviera to depart]

Andrew Martin:
Today there is the normal scrimmage around the departure boards because no-one yet knows from which platform the train will leave. I'm one step ahead, however. The guidebook, produced in 1924 for people travelling to the Cornish Riviera, begins "No need to ask which platform for the Cornish Riviera Express - it's Number 1, every time". Platform 1 was always the pre-eminent platform for this station, reserved for the important trains.

[later]

Station Announcer:
[on Tannoy] Platform 8 for the Cornish Riviera Express.

Andrew Martin:
[wryly] Platform 8? That's a demotion. Serves me right for having a guidebook that's ninety years old.

Andrew Martin:
I'm carrying my own bag. In Edwardian times I would have been assisted by one of the half-million porters who worked on the railways. And other details have changed: in the days of steam the name would have been announced by a roof board on the top of the carriage, but here today we must make do with a window label.

[he points to label in window, which says "The Cornish Riviera"]

Andrew Martin:
Well, most of the name - the word "Express" is not fashionable these days.

Andrew Martin:
As a VIP service, the Riviera would have been seen off every day by the stationmaster. Today there *is* no stationmaster, but a station manager. And he's too busy, probably monitoring sales environments, to come and see *me* off.

Andrew Martin:
We're about to go through Taunton. Here, in the old days, the train would have slipped a carriage. That is, a carriage - the end one, obviously - would have been uncoupled from the moving train. But in 1960 along came those two gents Mr Health and Mr Safety, and slipping stopped.

Andrew Martin:
I'm at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, known to older guests as the North British, after the railway company that built it. The same company built Edinburgh Waverley station... which looks rather like a garden centre from up here. I'm in town to catch the Flying Scotsman, the pride of the East Coast Main Line, the flagship of the London and North Eastern Railway. And look - still here on the timetable today: "FS". You don't need much bigging-up when you're the most famous train in the world.

[archive footage is shown of the Flying Scotsman, a plane and a speedboat travelling side by side]

Andrew Martin:
The Flying Scotsman was the star performer. The LNER made sure everyone knew their flagship named train was fast by staging dramatic events. For instance, in 1931, the Scotsman supposed raced a Dart speedboat and a de Havilland Puss Moth, a plane with a top speed of 124 miles per hour. It had all the drama and all the integrity of a Top Gear stunt.

[excerpts of the film Get Carter are shown]

Andrew Martin:
In the brilliant and brutal crime film of 1971, Get Carter, Michael Caine leaves London for Newcastle, probably travelling on the Flying Scotsman - well, it would be just like him to catch a named train rather than an anonymous one. He's behaving in a very civilised manner, reading Farewell My Lovely. We see him going to the Dining Car - they still existed in 1971. I think the director, Mike Hodges, is saying "Here is a man who does things correctly." He eats his soup in the approved manner, moving the spoon away from himself. But pretty soon he'll be throwing people off the multi-storey car-park at Gateshead.

[Andrew Martin finds that the modern-day substitute for the Brighton Belle is a most underwhelming experience]

Andrew Martin:
As we approach Brighton, I approach the loo. I don't like electric doors - they take all the fun out of going to the toilet. I have read about the WCs on the Belle. The walls were coloured eau-de-Nil, with black beading. Sinks were black porcelain. There were iridescent glass soap dispensers. The floor was marbled mosaic, flecked with mother-of-pearl. It's not like that any more.

[talking about the Brighton Belle, whose withdrawal had just been announced by British Rail]

Sir John Clements:
It's the most civilised short journey in England.

Joseph Wallace King:
I think it's very quaint and it's one of the last remaining trains that has this personality and character. It's very pertinent to a nation, it's become a landmark. They sold London Bridge, it's nothing like the Tower Bridge, but still it was one landmark gone, and here goes another one. I think it's kind of sad.

[summing up his experience of travelling on the modern-day equivalents of three named trains]

Andrew Martin:
I've ridden on the modern equivalents of three of the most famous named trains. And it is a bit difficult to avoid concluding that, for all the efficiency of those trains - and they were all on-time - and the undoubted skill and amiability of the staff, the present falls some way short of the past. Let's face it - modern railway travel is rather lacking in style and character. Can't we have back some of the features that made the named trains so enjoyable? Who wouldn't rather have compartments than close-together airline seating - that is, seats with very high backs? Why must trains try and emulate airlines? I knew somebody who was on a train to the West Country, and the guard announced "We are now commencing our approach to Bristol Temple Meads". And who wouldn't rather have dining cars than the at-seat trolley service which is just like being served a meal in a hospital? Railway style need not be a lost cause. There is some re-kindling of lost train romance. The Brighton Belle is being restored to run on Sundays. Virgin say that the northbound leg of the Scotsman is to be resumed. And I'm very glad that dining has been brought back to the Cornish Riviera Express. I like to think that we can read the names of these historic titled trains, not as we might the inscriptions in a graveyard, but as a pointer to a railway future that is more confident and more fun. But then I always was an optimist.