Snowdrift at Bleath Gill

Snowploughs are readied to rescue a snowbound train - in one of the most popular of all British Transport Films.

A snow drift manages to trap not just a freight train, but the two snow-plough trains sent to rescue it. Sustained human effort is required to free one of these ploughs so it can be used to help free the engine and it's trucks stuck 1370-ft above sea level in several more feet of thick snow. It takes a team several days of twenty-four hour labour, coughing and spluttering as they work in sub zero temperatures, before they can make enough headway to combine with the freed plough engine to free the freight train - some 4 days after it was first stuck! This short film really does depict just how much effort was required, most of it manual and in the face of a 40-mph winds, to dig out the train and defrost it's working parts (using lighted paraffin rags for the most part). The score gets a bit carried away at times, but this is still quite a well photographed testament to workers prepared to endure all weathers to get the job done!