#CamFest #Cambridge #Railways #trains #Industrialarchaeology #localhistory
How have Cambridge’s railway lines shaped the modern city?
This immersive documentary, created by volunteers of local-community organisations for 2024 Cambridge Festival | Festival of Film, flies you to changing railway landscapes – old and new – around the city
VIDEO SYNOPSIS
Inspired by historic aerial-photography of Cambridge’s railways, ‘Cambridge’s Changing Railway Landscapes’ combines local archives with contemporary videography and photography.
Rewind over the last 80-90 years by following the railway line from Cambridge South railway station (under construction as of September 2023) through the city’s main railway station and across the River Cam to Cambridge North and onto the Cambridgeshire guided busway.
At Cambridge South railway station (under construction), Hobson’s Conduit, allotments and footpaths criss-cross with bright-red and -yellow construction cranes.
Diggers reveals a new layer of landscape as earth is moved to construct the railway station.
Explore classical sculpture ‘Ariadne Wrapped’ at Cambridge railway station; ‘Hercules Meets Galatea’ at Cambridge North railway station.
Railway-train turntables in the Station Road area have become commercial and residential buildings.
Railway bridges are waypoints to navigate Cambridge: Hills Road | Carter Bridge | Mill Road.
Coldham’s Common: a site of prehistoric remains transformed by the arrival of the railways
Barnwell Junction: where a former railway station is now a private residence.
Cross the River Cam, where the Chisholm Trail pedestrian-and-cycle bridge now ‘twins’ the railway bridge. Discover a WWII-era concrete pill-box!
Chesterton, once home to a railway station, then a siding, now (once again) a passenger station: Cambridge North.
Onto the Cambridgeshire guided busway to see how wartime railway sidings have been transformed into Cambridge Science Park.
At Histon, train sidings for Chivers fruit factory on the Cambridge-St Ives railway line, now converted to the guided busway, which stretches towards the horizon.
ABOUT THE VIDEO
An immersive documentary, edited & produced for the 2024 Cambridge Festival | Festival of Film by Gordon Davies for Cambridge Museum of Technology, with contributions from:
Cambridgeshire Association for Local History
Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group
Cambridge Museum of Technology
Capturing Cambridge
Historic England
Mill Road History Society
Pye History Trust
The Cambridgeshire Collection
Drone videography, flown in compliance with the Civil Aviation Authority Drone Code in co-operation with Cambridge Airport:
– Aaron Greenwood (Fledermaus Media)
– The Willcox Collective
Ambient sound recordings of railway locations and additional video:
Gordon Davies
2024 railway-gazetteer research:
Des Chalk | Gordon Davies | Pam Halls | Tony Kirby
Discover more in Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group’s online gazetteer and railway route: take a hike or get on your bike!
https://www.museumoftechnology.com/ciag
ONLINE RESOURCES:
Britain From Above: https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk
Capturing Cambridge: https://www.capturingcambridge.org
Creating My Cambridge: https://www.creatingmycambridge.com
OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org
@RediscoveringLostRailways ‘The Lost Stations of Cambridge’ (2019): https://youtu.be/JLzY2oROXmI?si=dnzoir2DIUj15Ohm
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
CC BY-NC-ND: Cambridge Museum of Technology
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
ACCESSIBILITY:
Open Captions (English, UK) with ambient soundtrack of railway locations (no voiceover).
Watch more Museum of Technology videos:
https://www.museumoftechnology.com/webinar-watch-again
https://www.cam.ac.uk/festival-of-film
https://www.festival.cam.ac.uk/events/cambridges-changing-railway-landscapes
1 Comment
For me, the biggest change to Cambridge's railway landscape is the final approach to the station from the south, which is now through a grim canyon between blocks of (I presume) student accomodation.