Police Box Footage from Public Info Film

[Mark]

Luckily the police box floors were slightly raised o they could be swilled out.

That said, the old red phone boxes did/do smell awful!

[tony farrell]

As a native Brit, Tony... I would imagine you're familiar with how terribly the old red phone boxes smelled... 9 times out of 10....

Ha ha - quite so!

Didn't Douglas Adams write about a race of people who were wiped out by the germs on telephone receivers after they sacked all their cleaners? Perhaps he was thinking along the same lines...

and, I did once see someone using the side of the Earl's Court Police Box very inappropriately!

Tony

[Rassilons Rod]

It was the Golgafrinchans. They kicked out all their "middle class", who did all these jobs and sent them on to find another planet to live on (pretending they were the advanced party). And so all the telephone sanitizers were on that ship and the rest were wiped out by some germs on a telephone handset XD

[Dalekoracle]

Old thread I know (but hey, its all new to me!)...
The Look Signal Manoeuvre vid is on Youtube (as the links below are no longer working)
http://youtu.be/aLAVx19vOZw
The box appears around 1.15 in, on the left of shot.

Mark D.

Revisiting this PIF (Public Information Film) and wondering where the briefly glimpsed box might be.
The terraces houses, post war prefab bungalows, power station of the location would point to East London but I can't get any of the locations to match.
Theres a few road signs throughout but the only one I can make out is Wyld Way - and thats at the very end of the film. But thats north west London, near Wembley, and I can't get a location match for that either.
Banzai or Pete, any thoughts?
Mark

[petewilson]

Hi Mark,

I'm sure this one was answered a while back by banzai (But I can't find it on here anywhere!)  so maybe I dreamt it
I can remember the shops being Rayners Lane and the box being on the Great West Road (A4) so T41?

Pete

[hb88banzai]

No, I don't remember the discussion off hand - just the clip.

Haven't found this one yet. I've been looking as I go, but there are whole swaths of northwest London that have yet to be found and inputted. Parts of S, T, X and Y, and much of W and Z Divisions in the south still remain.

Here's a link to the film at the beginning of the relevant scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLAVx19vOZw&feature=player_detailpage#t=69s

Here's the original screen capture of the Box --



Here's T41's Site --



T41 doesn't seem to fit due to where it was (Box would have been where the wall is and the motorcyclist's house would have been on the Great West Road itself). Layout of the buildings still there don't seem to match, and per the Met List (though always possible it's wrong) T41 didn't have an A.R.W. Siren. Note that in the above view this corner is in the same position per Google Earth 1945, though the Great West Road was straighter from this point (not the little curve visible here) and it's unclear if the Box was on the corner itself or on what appears to have been a concrete separation strip between the main road and a small parallel road fronting the buildings that were here. The original sidewalk for the corner was closer to the wall, with part of that divider strip now joined to the old curb line to form this wider sidewalk.

URL to look around for yourselves: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=London,+Windmill+Road,+Brentford,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=51.490055,-0.309012&spn=0.002051,0.010965&sll=51.501173,-0.232826&sspn=0.002271,0.005482&oq=Windmill+Road,+Bre+London,+United+Kingdom&hnear=Windmill+Rd,+London+W5+4DL,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=51.490058,-0.309009&panoid=TbTkIbMvm-qYSuNRI2n3Iw&cbp=12,283.72,,0,1.67

[petewilson]

I knew I read something somewhere on the youtube comments below the clip!

"The shops where Tom went to buy a newspaper was either Rayners Lane or Eastcote, but the closing shot with Tom and girlfriend on a motor scooter is Wyld Way in Wembley, turning into Harrow Road towards Monks Park/ North Circular Road. Finally they end up on the Westway heading towards Paddington"

So the Police box is opposite an Industrial Estate

[Dalekoracle]

In the background (as the camera pans down the street where the house (and box) is) you can see a power station. Must be at least half a mile away.
Now theres no power stations in West London of they type now, but that would provide a starting point if we could identify where it once stood.
Identify the location of that power station and then look at the boxes between half and one mile radius, with a clear line of sight to it.

Mark

[petewilson]

I'm sure that is the twin stacks of Mars, Slough (doesn't look like Battersea or Fulham Power stations)
If that was Slough that could be looking from Langley (or even Colnbrook) and I'm still sure that is the A4
But of course they didn't have boxes that far out of london! 

Pete

[Dalekoracle]

There used to be cooling towers (three of them) at the Acton Power Station, located where Volt Avenue now is. Alternatively, the old powerstation at Taylors Lane Brentford (now Gas Turbine) might be a possible?


I've looked at the locations and i can't find any with those small red brick terraces. The houses in West London are generally much larger. (Though so much of its been radically redeveloped!)

Its funny, when I first saw the footage, i did wonder if the streets might have been the East London post war terraces...So many of them still exist.  Would also tie in with the single story prefabs and raised railway lines. Plus there were a couple of East London power stations with cooling towers too.

The news that its more than likely West London was a surprise, and knocked my East London theory on the head.

Its a conundrum!

Mark

[hb88banzai]

It's X12 --

  X12    Box    A.R.W. Siren    North Circular Road, south side 4 yards west of Woodheyes Road    Neasden    Harlesden

Houses are all still there, though the industrial bits across the North Circular aren't. An approximate wide POV shot showing the houses across the street from our "hero" as well (I think even the street name sign on the right is in the same place) --



URL: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Woodheyes+Road,+Neasden,+London,+UK&hl=en&ll=51.552099,-0.256934&spn=0.008432,0.042186&sll=51.534541,-0.259941&sspn=0.00117,0.002637&hnear=Woodheyes+Rd,+London+NW10+9DE,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=51.552113,-0.256928&panoid=QsfNe_J2Di8mFlCwDDLUYw&cbp=12,324.85,,0,0.48

The row houses are still there as well, but a park at the road division is now obscuring all the views --

[petewilson]

Well done banzai......That must be the best bit of "Police Box" detective work you've ever done!!
Now let's move on to the other 40 or so unknowns.....

Pete

[Dalekoracle]

I am really impressed! Thats brilliant. Well done Banzai!

[hb88banzai]

The footage from the PI Film "The Highway Code: Pedestrian Crossings" posted here http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=693.msg17806#msg17806 has now been identified as F3 --

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=4433.msg51270#msg51270

[hb88banzai]

Tiny glimpse of one here:
http://youtu.be/Ho4QGBUAABA
28/29 seconds in, to the right of the centre of the frame. A frosty snow covered box.
(You'll need eagle eyes to spot it!)
Mark D

Found this one - it's X46, the South Ruislip Box.



Look just to the left of the top of the Letter Box, complete with A.R.W. Siren.

A comparable street view --



URL:  https://maps.google.com/maps?q=West+End+Road,+South+Ruislip,+London,+UK&hl=en&ll=51.554127,-0.403619&spn=0.000053,0.029354&sll=51.554114,-0.404928&sspn=0.007632,0.016994&hnear=W+End+Rd,+United+Kingdom&t=m&layer=c&cbll=51.554086,-0.403759&panoid=DFT6cISVIsMvHvKrt1Mwxw&cbp=12,200.3,,0,3.11&z=15