I love these old British newsreel shorts from the series “Look at Life”, made by the Rank Organisation. And this is one of my favorites, as British coaches of this era were so unique and colorful, and their rear downward-curving shapes quite utterly distinctive. Continental coaches were always more horizontal. This film looks at both, as it covers domestic coaches as well as following a group that flies (on a DC-3) to the continent for a tourist coach trip.
Since the subject is buses, there’s also one below about the immense facility where every London Transport double decker gets completely overhauled every 3-4 years. Amazing operation.
Very cool, I saw a bright red double decker a couple of days ago at the bottom on the Lewis pass far from London or for that matter any towns at all but there it was in all its glory a Leyland Atlantean double deck bus the rear engined variety of the species I was too busy to get a photo
I remember the first time I saw a Maudslay bus. I was a 12-year-old visiting Jamaica with the parents in 1967. I’ve never forgotten the melted-back-end look.
How delightful! Thank you for sending these videos. I got a kick out of the men wearing neck ties on vacation, including t lad in his shorts. Very proper, these British, aren’t they!
Victoria coach station is still there and is the same art deco pile, still pumping out coaches into one of most congested parts of London. But we don’t wear ties on holiday any more!
The only ones who still wear a tie on a holiday trip are the coach drivers.
Speaking of coach drivers, the one doing the Swiss-Italian run was certainly getting a work out at the wheel!
The curved waistline was a distinguishing feature, a hangover from the pre-war 1930s ‘streamline’ era – if the waist was straight it was a bus, if it curved it was a coach. It wasn’t until the late ’60s that British coaches generally adopted straight waistlines by which time they had very tall and wide windows instead.
I think the Overhaul video is my favorite Look at Life video. I’d have loved to work in that metal shop.
The coach in the lead photo looks like a life size Cragstan Japanese made tin toy from the `50s to mid `60s, but that`s OK. I collect them.
Very nice ! .
Thank you for sharing these .
-Nate
“Oh, here I say old bean, can you hear George doing that clipped racy accent, must be doing doing some slumming at Rank…my gord, that zany music, what awful drivel. When DOES the fil-im start? I mean really, who wants to look at stinking coaches for those that aren’t…well, you know, one of us? Oh, George was arrested again, you say? I did tell him to be more discreet. Well, no more RSC for him for a bit. Accounts for this nonsense, what what?”
Always fascinating to me how the class system is ingrained in everything from old Blighty. This patronising (of the audience) stuff, replete with upper-twit BBC- received voice, borders on the hilarious. (“Take your packed coach and get orfff my road, you.”) It’s true that the naivety and colours and the shapes of those buses and the Kodachrome effect has a solid nostalgic pull, but one glance of that unfiltered murk bilging from the exhaust is a good slap in the lungs to say the past is properly the past. Rather like food stamps, rationing of fuel, racism, homophobia, hats, sexism, the list is yours to add to.
Despite all the above, I’ve watched quite a few of these “A Look At Life”, and loved them. They’re a glimpse of the unfilmed ordinary from another time, tantalising, daydream-provoking, and unwanted in any present reality.
Brings it all back…….thanks Paul.
Those were great – had not seen them before. Those vintage European coaches are works of art. Jim.
The horn sound at 5:04! Is that how bus horns still sound in the UK? I’ve never heard anything like it.
It sure looks like the driver could barely keep up with the twists and turns on that mountain road, despite the narrator’s confidence in him.
Newsreels always feel quaint to me, being too young to remember when new ones were still produced. The British newsreels don’t sound much different in tone than American ones did.
That Italian bridge is quite amazing too. Are those residences along the bridge? Retail? Offices?
The Ponte Vecchio in Florence is more amazing than it looks. Shops at grade level, then above a long corridor – the Vasari – that allowed the Medici to move from palaces on opposite sides of the river without having to mix with the riff-raff. http://www.uffizi.org/the-vasari-corridor/
I rode on a generic London bus through the outer suburbs this afternoon. There are now multiple different vehicle types, run by multiple different operators, and the single type standard (the RT in this film ,and later the Routemaster) is long gone. Today’s buses use less fuel, are less polluting, are more accessible for less able passengers, but are also less distinctive, less comfortable (no more lovely cushioned squabs) and have interiors largely made of plastic panels. But they’re all still red.
We had nothing comparable coach-wise in the states. I enjoyed this film so much that I got my Dinky Duple Roadmaster Leyland Royal Tiger (Phew!) out and joined the “coach conga line”!
Loved these videos! They date back to way before my time in the UK (I was there in the late 70s/early 80s), but it brought back memories of my many school field trips to the seaside in coaches. The second one was equally fascinating. I didn’t know London Transport had such a stringent maintenance schedule (I wonder if the many operators now in London do the same) and we have truly come a long way in terms of health and safety standards in the workplace when I notice all those men working without face masks and adequate eye protection.
Nice videos. I found “overhaul” very fascinating.
I´m glad that I had the chance to ride on those old Routemasters as they´re not in service anymore as Phillip pointed out. Love them
There is one traditional Routemaster bus service left in London, route 15H
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Buses_route_15_(Heritage)
Aldenham was a good idea for re-use of what had become a redundant building (it was originally going to be the works for the Northern Line Underground extension that was never built). LT had over four and half thousand RT buses (and over two thousand of the closely related Leyland engined RTL and RTW) so maintenance could be arranged on a mass production basis. Similarly later they had over two and half thousand RMs.