Movies

Video content created in association with Shildon Railway Institute.

Since 2019 we've been looking at how we can help contribute to the preservation of Shildon's  railway heritage and culture, and one of the ways of doing this has been to team up with the Shildon Heritage Alliance CIC to make a number of films connected to the Institute, its members and the railway line that caused us to be brought into being.  Through these we hope to convey something of the unique spirit, reslilience and nature of the people of this community in the past and also the present. We present on this page our work so far.

The Full Works (2019)

The Full Works is a first hand account of life and work at Shildon's BREL Railway Engineering Works from the perspective of a handful of the men that worked there, through interviews, images and aerial footage we explore what made this band of workers such a close knit family and why even today, three anda half decades after its closure, the men of the works still look back on their time their with a rare fondness and lost sense of belonging.

The Story of the Brusselton Incline (2020)

In this historical retrospective we explore the story behind the Brusselton Incline, one of two Georgian engineering feats that made possible  conquering the hills between the South Durham Coalfield and the geographic plain that enabled coal to be taken to the sea by steam locomotive.  Without the success of the Brusselton Incline the steam passenger rail story and the first public railway may well have happened somewhere other than Shildon, and our Railway Institute may never have been founded.,