After being saved from destruction, the UK’s last mobile cinema carriage has been restored and will host a public screening later this month to celebrate Railway 200.

The coach was rescued by volunteers, who worked for six years to restore it. Princess Margaret opened the coach in 1975 as part of a travelling exhibition train celebrating 150 years of the modern railway, similar to Railway 200’s own exhibition train, Inspiration, that is currently on a year-long, 60-stop tour of Britain.

A rebuilt 1970s Bell and Howell will screen British Transport films in the restored cinema coach on Saturday, 13th and Sunday, 14th September at the Swindon & Cricklade Railway. There is no charge to view the films, but visitors must buy entrance tickets to the railway.

The coach seats 25 people and will be static, but in future, films may be shown on the move. One of the films to be shown will be Locomotion, a 15-minute history of rail travel made for the 150th anniversary in 1975.

On September 27, 1825, Locomotion No. 1 hauled the world’s first steam-powered passenger train at the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

Until 1988, the cinema coach was used for screening British Rail staff training films, and in 1991, it was used as a meeting room in a Bristol depot.

Former depot manager Alan Willmott once feared it would be scrapped and its history lost forever, but in 2019, volunteers arranged for it to be moved to the Swindon & Cricklade Railway. That was the start of a six-year project to preserve the coach by Alan’s family friend, Steve Foxon, a curator at the British Film Institute.

The project was funded by Steve and his father, Rob Foxon, using money left to them by Alan after he died in 2014.

Restoration of the coach included repanelling, rewiring, repainting, raking the floor, fitting a speaker system, and installing vintage seats salvaged from a cinema in Deptford, southeast London.

The volunteer restorers were led by Martin Rouse, who commented that the coach could have been returned to passenger use, but so much history would have been lost.

In 2023, the Swindon and Cricklade Railway acquired a second Class 03 0-6-0 diesel shunter, No. 03022, one that had been built at the nearby Swindon Works of British Railways.

“Alan was the closest person I had to a grandfather. When he died, he left all the cinema coach’s paperwork to me. Much of the restoration work was done by volunteers at the Swindon & Cricklade Railway, and it’s just stunning. It looks like it did in the 1980s. Sitting in the carriage absolutely warms my heart and takes me back to my childhood. It’s exactly what Alan would have wanted, and there isn’t a better way to honour his memory. My dad was a close friend of Alan’s, and he’s absolutely over the moon.”

Steve Foxon