Night Mail: British Rail’s 1988 television advert

Inspired by W H Auden's poem, this was the last commercial promoting Britain’s railways as a network - rather than specific features or services - before privatisation.

Voiceover: Sir Tom Courtenay Music: Vangelis Director: Hugh Hudson
Agency: Lowe and Howard Spink

Some years ago, a BR employee named Frank Dumbleton rescued some VHS tapes literally from a British Rail skip in York. These included many TV and Cinema ads from the 70s and 80s. He digitised them and has given permission for them to be reproduced, here.

British Rail started to advertise on television after it had established the Inter-City revolution in the 1960s. Most of the commercials were aimed at enticing people out of their cars, or dissuading them from choosing internal air travel.

Whilst we can look back at these ads with joy, we shouldn’t have rosy spectacles on. A nationalised rail/operator system was far from perfect: reality was not as these ads portray. They are adverts, not documentaries. Now, British railways carry twice the passengers as they did back then, and are in a far better state.

A copy of this ad also now resides with the National Railway Museum archive in York.