In Film
The units starred in the 1960 British Transport Film Blue Pullman directed by James Ritchie, which followed its development, preparation and a journey on the train. As with earlier British Transport films, many of the personnel, scientists, engineers, crew and passengers were featured. It won several awards, including the Technical & Industrial Information section of the Festival for Films for Television in 1961. The film is also particularly notable for its score, by Clifton Parker.
The units were also the subject of another British Transport Film, Let's Go To Birmingham, made in 1962. This was of a run from London Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill via Leamington Spa and was largely a speeded-up "cab view" film in the style of London to Brighton in Four Minutes. Sadly, the driver in the film, Ernest Morris, was killed on 15 August 1963 in the Knowle and Dorridge rail crash when his express train collided with a freight train at 20 mph (32 km/h). The train was a Birmingham Pullman hauled by a Class 52 "Western" diesel-hydraulic locomotive, a stand-in for the regular Blue Pullman set.
A WR set appears twice in the 1963 British Transport Film Snow in both a panoramic view and a passing view from an adjacent track at slow speed. There are also a few very short snips of close side on views of the train passing the camera.
A Blue Pullman made brief appearances in the 1965 Norman Wisdom film The Early Bird, destroying Pitkin's milk cart at a level crossing.
Read more about this topic: British Rail Classes 251 And 261
Famous quotes containing the word film:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“A film is a petrified fountain of thought.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)