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Guard Story No.9 - - This is Yorkton. A black and white documentary style story which follows the work of the men and women of the City and Country Railway (C&C) at Yorkton station.
***Please note that I am using a standard thumbnail image for all the full size pictures on this page. This is purely being done to save myself sometime.***
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If I had organised this series in a chronological order (but where's the fun in that), I might have started with this documentary style story. It sets the scene, by introducing the City and Country Railway (C&C), and also some of the characters that appear in the series. Notably, porters Eustace Gruffy and Frank. Whilst Albert Copperwaite appears in several frames as himself.
The idea behind this story came from a twenty minute British Railways Board film This is York filmed in 1953. It shows the day in the life of York station through the eyes of the Station Master and others. This and other railway films in the series also show a world now long swept away. Although the general views of the City of York remain unchanged as does the York station building. This film and others in the series have all become timeless classics. All the films are available to buy on DVD's.
Despite there being a large number of sets used in this story, it was a fairly easy one to put together. The biggest problem I had was 'converting' colour shots to black and white and positioning the picture inside a film frame. This was done to give the story a documentary feel. Which I think worked rather well. I found though that some of the pictures when 'converted' to black and white came out rather dark. So when I next do a documentary style story, I'll have to make sure that there is better lighting and try and use lighter Lego bricks. Overall, very pleased with the result. Several sets were built for this story and very happy with the signal-box.
Background notes about the film.
From the DVD British Transport Films Collection notes, 'Following the nationalisation of [Britain's] transport in 1948, the British Transport Commission set up its own in-house film production unit. Launched on 1st May, 1949 and led for twenty-five years by Edgar Anstey OBE [Order of the British Empire] - a founding father of the British documentary movement - it became one of the largest industrial film units in Britain.'
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