Welsh Narrow Gauge on 8mm
Captured in the 1960/70 period of the last century, this film portrays five of the narrow gauge railways of Wales, with archive footage of that time digitally re-mastered to video.
Description
DVD – Colour – 42 minutes
Captured in the 1960/70 period of the last century, this film portrays five of the narrow gauge railways of Wales, with archive footage of that time digitally re-mastered to video.
Victor Thompson begins our nostalgic journey with images of Festiniog, Talyllyn and Snowdon Mountain Railways, adding his unique style of narration as befitting his many years of service to the British Film Institute as a lecturer. He sees with 8mm cine camera what others fail to recognise and in almost poetic style of narration makes the trains almost human, betraying his intense love for some of the most beautiful railways in the Welsh Highlands.
We then move onto images captured by Norman Taylor, Roger Lilley and Walter Harris as we explore more of the Festiniog, Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway, The Vale of Rheidol Light Railway, The Snowdon Mountain Railway and of course, the Talyllyn.
Roger Lilley narrates the rest of the documentary with research from the early days of each working line, giving historical information to show how and why these lines came into existence.
All footage is unique to the library of Aarchive Film Productions who wish, in particular, to pay tribute to Victor Thompson for his fine work in this field.
An Aarchive Film Production
Specifications
All the DVDs are produced, packed and sent directly from Aarchvie Films.
The original documentaries were made on S-VHS, in a 4:3 ratio, so on a standard TV/computer screen, will show black bars on both sides.
There is some very brief areas of ‘dropout’ when they were converted from S-VHS video to digital. We have done the best we can to reduce this, but it is still there.
All of the documentaries were produced by Roger Lilley of Aarchive Films, who passed away 20 years ago. Some of the ‘modern’ footage is from between 1995 – 2000, so some of the newer footage may look different now. Also, when Roger would would use the term ‘today’, this was written back in before 2001.
Digital Remasters
Some of the video have been digitally remastered, into a 16:9 widescreen format, with updated maps, sound, colour grading and more.
The new remastered versions are online only from our Patreon Page. The DVDs are still the original format above.
