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"The Changes" - BBC 1975

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route:oxford

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This (childrens) drama from 1975 popped up as a suggestion on Amazon earlier in the week, and I couldn't help myself.

It's a story of the British people suddenly becoming fearful of any technology and destroying anything they perceive as "evil".

The opening titles ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKT6RR88SkY ) have footage of rail representing technology. What intrigues me though is early in the first episode, as part of the destruction of technology, it briefly shows (library footage?) of sidings of rolling stock burning.

I've seen footage of the Glasgow trams being disposed of through burning, but wondered if this was a method that BR/London underground used in the past to dispose of life-expired stock - or if it happened to be footage of an accidental blaze.
 
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Ash Bridge

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This (childrens) drama from 1975 popped up as a suggestion on Amazon earlier in the week, and I couldn't help myself.

It's a story of the British people suddenly becoming fearful of any technology and destroying anything they perceive as "evil".

The opening titles ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKT6RR88SkY ) have footage of rail representing technology. What intrigues me though is early in the first episode, as part of the destruction of technology, it briefly shows (library footage?) of sidings of rolling stock burning.

I've seen footage of the Glasgow trams being disposed of through burning, but wondered if this was a method that BR/London underground used in the past to dispose of life-expired stock - or if it happened to be footage of an accidental blaze.

There used to be the firing tunnels at Snailwell for dmu's and coaching stock, could it have been there?

Having just noticed you mentioned sidings, then perhaps it's not that one.
 
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Ianigsy

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I've just looked at the footage myself- seems to be three or four Mark 1s (one still in maroon) on an isolated siding.

My guess would be either part of the scrapping process or possibly footage of a fire brigade training exercise from a news item or something similar. Could even be that a film company bought four surplus carriages from BR to set fire to them for a particular film and then recycled the footage- a couple of minutes earlier there are model shots from Hammer's 1968 'Quatermass and the Pit'.

It's always struck me as ironic that in the opening titles, one of the examples of "modern technology" is a Western which was almost certainly on the scrapheap itself within a couple of years of the series going out!
 

Ash Bridge

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It's always struck me as ironic that in the opening titles, one of the examples of "modern technology" is a Western which was almost certainly on the scrapheap itself within a couple of years of the series going out!

Yes they were, but when you think they were just 11/13 years old at that time (similar to what Pendolino is now) they could still be considered modern then, it's just that their technology fell out of favour and they had become a non standard design (sadly)
 
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