• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

In the British Rail era, did any trains have CCTV on board?

Status
Not open for further replies.

175mph

On Moderation
Joined
25 Jan 2016
Messages
661
And what year did the first trains get on board CCTV?
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Polarbear

Established Member
Joined
24 May 2008
Messages
1,705
Location
Birkenhead
I can't immediately think of any CCTV being installed during BR days. If anything, technology would have been a major issue until the mid to late 1980's.
 

scotraildriver

Established Member
Joined
15 Jun 2009
Messages
1,627
A few Scotrail 156's had a big camera looking down the coach connected to a huge VHS recorder under the seats. Some still have the camera housing in situ.
 

ChiefPlanner

Established Member
Joined
6 Sep 2011
Messages
7,768
Location
Herts
A handull of class 313's on North London Lines in my time had a very rudimentary CCTV system on board , and they were prioritized for Friday - Sat - Sunday on the North Woolwich line - other sets had dummy cameras. This being 1996. Just before the franchise came in. To be fair the DC and NLL had good station coverage, observed by excellent reactive and proactive staff.
 

Taunton

Established Member
Joined
1 Aug 2013
Messages
10,018
I'm just being pedantic here, but the first CCTV on a BR train was in the late 1960s ...

It was a departmental vehicle marshalled behind electric locomotives, which had a roof-mounted (black & white) camera pointed at the pantograph to record the detail of its motion. There was a great big video recorder of the era, and it required its own technical operator. It was featured in magazines of the time.
 

lincolnshire

Member
Joined
12 Jun 2011
Messages
884
I can remember back in the days of Cravens built DMU,s era that a large metal box was installed in some coaches with a camera mounted in them which took photos at intervals on film before CCTV was thought about.
 

ilkestonian

Member
Joined
6 Dec 2009
Messages
382
Location
The Potteries
Not directly related, but perhaps relevant in that it is CCTV on public transport.
In the seventies and eighties I worked for a city council's transport department and they started installing on board CCTV on their bus fleet in the mid eighties. There were (IIRC) a couple of quite large cameras in protective housings with glass fronts on each bus, one monitoring the door area and another upstairs. They recorded onto normal VHS video tapes and the recording equipment was in a housing under the stairs, I believe.

The cost of the kit was quite high and only a small proportion of the fleet were fitted with live cameras. The rest had dummy cameras with, of course, no recording equipment.

The ones with live kit were predominantly allocated to the more troublesome routes.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top