southall documentary

[joospeed]

Anyone see this on BBC last night? .. was very moved by some of the stories but the technical content left me frustrated. Why is it that computer generations always seem to involve the "space 1999"model? .. ie look like they been 20 years covered in moon dust so no details can be picked out!! .. a decent animation would have been much better. Also what angles were the converging tracks at? How did the freight train manage to come to a halt .. were the trains travelling in opposite directions with equal momentum? Wha happened to the detached bogey? what happened to the last carriage? why were so few different angles of view used in the reconstruction? why did it take an hour to say something which could be explained in 15 minutes?
This could have been an in-depth technical article but in trying to be all things to all men it failed in almost every way except the heart-wrenching interviews. best part was the designer of the coaches, lovely old engineer explaining the kitchen roll tube design.
I was looking forward to a complete run-through of events and proceedures and technical input but got gaps, glossing-over and dumbing-down ... wish I'd read my murray walker book instead.
bummer

[Mrs Fish]

I watched it last night, I found it quite insightful and yes heart wrenching. The people who were talking about their experience obviously still suffer the consequences 5 years onwards. Not being a technical bloke I found it explained a lot of what happened. If it had gone into it any more technically, like what you wanted to know, it would have lost my attention. I guess as usual with a lot of the documentarys on TV they just cater for the masses. As has been said many times before an hour isn't very long to answer everybody's questions.
It is amazing though that the whole thing lasted only 8 seconds and changed so many peoples lives.