The race to be the first producer to commit the latest DVD technology to a Bluebell subject looks to have been won by none other than good old Auntie Beeb.
The Bluebell DVD opens with a 1980 documentary to which those involved at the time would probably now rather forget. Enter a youthful Ian Wright, Tom Dobson and Bob Bamberough - subject of The Getaways and broadcast just a little too early for mass VCR ownership but don't worry, you've been digitised! It featured the above three members at their day jobs and working at the railway and was produced by our now vice chairman Richard Parfitt.
The other two main features are the QED Special, first broadcast in 1987, entitled Murder on the Bluebell Line in which our line served as the backdrop to a dramatised story of the Piltdown Man fraud in which Holmes and Watson set out to exonerate the Crowborough author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The third programme is the episode of Making Tracks (1993) which was hosted on the Bluebell.
But by far the most interesting feature of the DVD is the two actual items of news footage between the aforementioned features. The first is the 1min 32sec item broadcast on 17 March 1958 - the date of the line's second BR closure and the second is the 2min newsreel footage from the day after our re-opening the line, 8 August 1960, featuring the day before's celebrations and members in period dress. These were the two newsreels that recorded standard gauge preservation history and every member should own it!
The other DVD features three Flying Scotsman-based subjects together with
five relevant newsreels - the best being the 40th Anniversary non-stop run
from King's Cross to Edinburgh, originally broadcast in 1968. The DVD set
will later be available on VHS video.
Please Note: This 2-DVD box set is currently unavailable.
Last updated 10 June 2006 by Richard Salmon