Previously, we looked at British public information film that told people not to play around trains, by having kids play around trains and get injured and killed in fun and interesting ways! (Read that here) Later, we did a post about a Pif telling kids not to play on farms by killing them off in fun and intersting ways! We did this post 4 years after the train post so weee. (Read that Here) Anyway here we are with another British 70's public information film about trains being the #1 enemy to children.
This one is called "Robbie" . "Robbie" came out in 1979 , and it has like 3 different versions, then they did it again in 1986 , where they just switched the host of the film. We're going with a version from 1979 and we aren't that picky, as long as the quality is good.
This is one is hosted by Peter Purves, who was on "Doctor Who". Peter tells us that 18,000 trains use the railway system and that he thinks trains are comfy. That this is story about a boy named Robbie. Ahh the music is happy, what could wrong? He tells us that Robbie got struck in tree once, then got lost in town trying to help a dog, he fell in a pond, he loves football, and trains. (uh oh) He is eight-years-old and they never showed him "The Finishing Line".
The music is still happy and we learn that trains are great, are we sure this is about train safety and not go buy a train? This could be a film about the how deadly soccer can be right? They are really giving us a lot of soccer, but I think they are driving a point. That would be last time he'd ever played soccer. Peter says that like someone telling you the time.
He will never wear those shorts again
Robbie's big brother named Burt says hey there's whole in the fence so they can cross the rail road that way. (uhh logic?) Robbie says you can't do that, and the people who did that were stupid because drunk people wanted to get an easier access to the pub. (The moral of the story is alcohol is bad) His older sister Sally also thinks there's a universal rule of holes cut inside means cross.
It's British law, there's a hole, you are free to go through it.
Thanks to Robbie being convinced by being called a chicken (kids are dumb) and they all cross the tracks. Meanwhile, a train minding its business is minding its business. A kid falls down and Robbie goes back to help him. The music is getting tense I'm scared. Robbie's shoes get stuck and and instead of leaving them he tries harder and the train does something, it cuts a way after we hear Sally's screams.
Murderer! Oh well never hmmm
Next we see the Mom doing mom stuff, minding her business, when the cops and her eldest son show up and tell her that her son has been hurt, he's alive, but not well. The British cops put the tea on for the mom. Robbie's mother finds out he lost both feed and broke some bones. Meanwhile, Sally lost the ability to speak and possibly her sanity. (dang)
She'll never even touch a fence again
The film ends with stuff to tell its viewers about how deadly trains can be and how to be safe. Then a scene of him being placed in a wheel chair.
I'll run for congress instead, wait I'm British, I'll run for British congress, shut up I was run over or electrocuted by a train!
In 1986, they redid the narration switching out Purves with Keith Chegwin, because kids might know him better from Saturday Morning British TV, versus guy from episodes of Doctor Who they probably didn't rerun anymore.
Great, our narrator regenerated
This one was liked more than "The Finishing Line" for school teachers and others who would be showing these things because TFL was either too shocking or maybe was kind of silly. There are more than one version of for different safety measures on the train. I just wrote about version 1, which is about non electrified train lines but you know what? Let's do another version.
Most of this one is the same exact thing happening, minus one change: at the part where they are not wanting to cross the rail lines, Burt throws Robbie's soccer shoes and they land on an electrical line. (do the math , it's shocking!) Burt tells him that it's dangerous, Robbie says only the wires are dangerous not the other stuff. Robbie decides he wants to get his boots, but the others tell him no, but he uses a metal pipe and well... math. 
This film is shocking
So it cuts back to the part where the mother meets the cops and the older brother there. This time Robbie also isn't dead (he's hard to kill) but he was electrocuted. It's actually weird how the police lines and mother's lines are the same , like they had to make these lines abstract to fit the three scenarios, the only part they put some different lines and in are the parts that different scenarios happening.
They also use narration to fill in the gap for what happened. So yes Robbie was electrocuted by the high voltage but some how lived so yay? Sally is still in the hospital for she was shocked a different way. Not sure how they got his soccer boots off this time, though.
Then they reuse the same thing where you should stay safe on the rails ways because trains are fast and might not see you on the rails, they really just changed one part but kept everything else the same it's kind of odd. Robbie is still in a wheel chair and his face being half burned makes more sense now than the first time. (what?)
There is a third version where Robbie gets electrocuted by the rails. I haven't found that one, but I'm sure they repeated themselves besides that one part. The main idea is don't do anything near the train rails or you will never play soccer again. (Insert other stuff you like to do here)
It doesn't have that shock or almost unintentional goofiness that happened with "The Finishing Line" but it does do a service of telling kids to stay away from trains, unless you are riding one. It's just not as fun to write about about because it's not weird and has a low kill count. (what?)
That's it for now, stay tuned next time, when we talk to people about why trains scare them.
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