Inspired by the British Rail TV ad of 1984 - where the benefits of going by train rather than car are shown (no punctures, no police speed traps, no need to head for a loo stop), the Austrian Federal Railways ( Österreichische Bundesbahnen - OBB) did their own shorter versions. It is not known whether they had permission from BR or the creative agency, JWT, but it is very likely!
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 these ads also now resides with the National Railway Museum archive in York.
