CARRYING THE LOAD [Main Title]

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  • Title: CARRYING THE LOAD [Main Title]
  • Film Number: BTF 603
  • Other titles:
  • Summary: A film celebrating contribution made by Britain's railways to Allied victory in the Second World War.
  • Description: START The commentary begins by claiming -"'British railways carried the load. They met to the full the exacting demands made upon them by the United Nations at war" - and proceeds to illustrate some of the technological and engineering progress made by Britain's railways in the 1930s (the Flying Scotman, the Mallard high-speed locomotives, new improved ways of manufacturung steam locomotives, unloading coal straight from goods waggons and organising railway goods yards and the electrification of urban commuter lines - the fruit of £450 million of investment in the railways in the years before the Second World War) that enabled them to cope with the strains imposed by total war. From September 1939, railwaymen learn about anti-gas precautions, how to use air raid shelters and introduce black-out measures on the railways. Trains especially designed to carry battle casualties are put into service. British soldiers recover from their injuries at Gleneagles Hotel, taken over by the army as a military hospital. Armed army sentries guard key points on the railway network; after the summer of 1940 they are replaced by volunteers of the Home Guard, many of whom are railway workers. Three times during the war , in the autumn of 1939 and the summers of 1940 and 1944, the railways handle the mass evacuation of children from London to escape enemy aerial bombardment. The railways also cope with the 333,000 British and French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk in May-June 1940 and ensure their safe and speedy dispersal from Dover and other ports along the Channel to the rest of the United Kingdom. In peacetime, the railways employed just 26,000 women. With the call-up of all abled-bodied men of military age, women take over jobs on the railway hitherto reserved for men Railway workers manage to keep the trains running and the lines open, despite the harsh winter of 1939-1940 and the Blitz from August 1940 to May 1941 (illustrated with captured German footage showing the Luftwaffe in action in Poland in September 1939) in which valuable rolling stock was lost to enemy action and the railway network in London and other big cities severly disrupted. Soldiers and civilians work tirelessly to repair the damage. Throughout the war, the railways carried millions of British and Allied soldiers (over shots showing French Alpine or Polish troops bound for Norway April 1940). At a major railway station, a YMCA canteen supplies hot drinks and snacks for troops in transit and a Railway Transport Officer (RTO) liaises with the civilian staff to maintain a smooth flow of human traffic. Stubborn mules have to be forced by their army handlers into railway boxcars. British troops embark for active service overseas on ships that pre-war belonged to the railway companies. One of them, the hospital ship Maid of Kent, was sunk by the Germans at Dieppe in May 1940. The railways were the principal means of transporting men and their equipment to ports of embarkation, moving raw materials like coal and iron ore and coal to iron and steel plants, guns, shells, tanks and despatching stores like barbed wire, spades and pick axe heads to where they were needed. Pre-war, the railways carried holiday-makers, but with women in the factories and the men in uniform they are now completely at the disposal of the Allied war effort. Over a montage of images showing infantry in action in North Africa, a formation of obsolete Fairey Battles in flight and pre-war battleships on gunnery exercises at sea, the film sums up - '.... these the men who used them - the soldiers, the sailors and the airmen, wherever the fight took them, in the hot arid desert, in the high altitudes of the upper air and in every part of the seven seas, knowing that behind them was the organisation of supply that played such a vital part in paving the way to victory'. END
  • Alternative Title:
  • Colour: B&W
  • Digitised:
  • Object_Number: BTF 603
  • Sound: Sound
  • Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM (BTF 603)
  • Featured Period: 1939-1945
  • Production Date: 1945
  • Production Country: GB
  • Production Details: British Railways (Production sponsor) Commercial and Educational Films (Production company) Topical Press Agency Ltd (Production company) Phillips, Frank19011980 (Production individual)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations:
  • Keywords:
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Sound Soundtrack language: English Title language: English Subtitle language: None
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 3 Footage: 2238 ft; Running time: 24 mins 52 secs
  • HD Media:
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    BTF 603

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