SPECTATOR well remembers Snow Drift at Bleath Gill, one of the five British Transport Films productions shown at a special event at Darlington Railway Centre on Saturday. He discovered it during a special Channel 4 railway season, Going Loco, in 1990.

There were local connections because this short 1955 film showed how Darlington-based railway employees were among those who dutifully went to the rescue of a freight train trapped by blizzards at a remote and inhospitable spot near Bowes on the old Stainmore line, which could then be reached through North Road station.

And Edgar Anstey, for so long the guiding light behind the BTF programme, visited Darlington Mechanics' Institute in 1970 to talk about his distinguished career as a documentary film maker.

The evocative black and white photography in Snow Drift at Bleath Gill was by a young Robert Paynter, who later worked with Michael Winner on feature films as well as on An American Werewolf in London with another director.

His enduring head-on image in that wintry 49-year-old BTF film is of a snowplough charging full tilt into a massive drift, locomotive spouting smoke, dirty white debris scattering in all directions, lineside workers audibly cheering the crew on.

To a cynical modern audience BTF films may appear slavishly uncritical, but they are much missed because at their best they were superb examples of camera reportage.

More than that, before the advent of privatisation they recall the days of a more stable rail industry, when channels of responsibility were clearly delineated. There could be no question of passing the buck.

Night and day

The four Darlington councillors, whose 25 years' service is celebrated at a grand dinner held at the Hallgarth Country Club Hotel tonight, will be anticipating a good do.

The invitations point out that it gets underway at 7pm and the formal proceedings "will end by 10.00am". Spectator had rather hoped the speeches might not last quite that long. Still, Messrs Dixon, Richmond, Robson and Williams have never been short of things to say.

Price to pay

So-called "brown-field" development in towns is the way to create some of the new homes we need to avoid gobbling up green fields outside them.

So Hambleton councillors got it right in approving plans for a three-story flats development at the northern end of Northallerton';s High Street.

This is the price we pay for protecting our countryside.