This film, made by railway enthusiast Frank Dean in 1966, shows the last journey made along the Whitby to Scarborough railway line prior to it being dismantled in the devastating Beeching cuts. The narration is excellent and the music chosen surprisingly evocative and haunting.
The film largely speaks for itself, beginning with a man reading news of the line closures in a copy of the Whitby Gazette (when it was still a broadsheet) on Whitby Station. Frank and his wife Heather spent every weekend filming the Yorkshire lines scheduled to be axed by Dr Beeching's destructive purge.
Tagged onto the 1966 film is a section shot in 1967 in which contractors travel the length of the line stopping at stations along the way to gauge the value of railway property and see what can be sold for profit.
For people who may know the place well, at around 2.50 minutes is a view of the Whitby Gasworks with the gasometers still in place.
The film ends with the sad sight of workmen lifting the tracks of what must have been one of England's most beautiful stratches of railway.
More information on Frank Dean and his films at the Yorkshire Film Archive
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