UK's last cinema carriage hosts first screening in 37 years

Despite fears that it would be scrapped after going out of service a mobile cinema has been lovingly restored and is back on the rails as a unique facility

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THE UK’s last remaining cinema carriage has been lovingly restored and will host its first screenings in 37 years.

The mobile cinema was saved from extinction by passionate volunteers and the friends of the British Transport Films employee who managed it.

Its projectors rolled again this month in the South West for a special Railway 200 celebration.

Opened in 1975 by Princess Margaret, the carriage was part of a travelling exhibition train celebrating 150 years of the modern railway.

Railway 200’s own exhibition train, Inspiration, is currently on a yearlong, 60-stop tour of Britain.

The cinema coach went on to screen British Rail staff training films until 1988, before being consigned to use as a meeting room in a Bristol depot in 1991.

In his final years, its former manager Alan Willmott feared it would be scrapped, and its history lost forever.