1978. It actually was a cunning plan to cheat the Mafia out of $300,000.
You can’t make this shit up, but i’d watch the movie.
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Holy fudge! That puts its scale in to perspective.
Fortunately, nothing like that happened, though my sister could have probably traded her way out of any unpleasantness. In Russia, at the time, plastic bags were a big barter item, and my sister got my mum to post here a stack of Fortum & Mason’s bags.
A bunch of her university classmates got in to trouble when leaving Russia, as they had arrived with several pairs of new jeans and were leaving with a large amount of amber.
That’s cool. It reminds me of this…
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We call ourselves Railfans. Rail crews call us Foamers. 
Waiting hours at trackside for a photo of the only remaining instance of some obscure diesel from the ‘70s with a particular arrangement of dynamic braking fans on the roof… it’s hard to argue with the rail crews.
May you all find something that you love as much as this guy loves the horn of a 1950 E8 diesel twinned with a BL2.
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The traincrew at our depot couldn’t be too high and might about the Neds; as a lot of the traincrew used their licences and Europewide cutprice rail travel to take weekend breaks to run or ride on trains in other countries for free (a real busmans’ holiday). They were supposed to operated under a set of rules governing how long they spent driving trains each week, and they would do their maximum for their employer, and then ride shotgun in different countries.
I was also tickled how they had hardcore porn on constant rotation in the restroom; while the bagged up videos they would pass around among themselves were always nerdy train videos.
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I just watched the video, and that guy is certainly enthusiastic; lovely. I do love some good “cold-start” videos. Some of the clips have a real, “Let the beats… DROP” feel to them.
So much of the UK’s infrastructure was built around the railways; that the clip around the 2 minute mark, while not very spectacular, is very typical of the UK for me. A train in the cut, with terraced houses in the background.
Edit, watching another train video (oh, what a rabbit hole), I was reminded that the trainspotters who had to actually ride behind a loco to count it, were called “Thrashers”.
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Ah yes, cold starts of giant stationary diesels are a genre on YT as well. I have been sucked into those more than once. They often involve multiple pony motors. A small gas engine starts a big diesel pony motor, which then turns over the huge engine long enough to warm it up to convince it to start and run on its own. Diesels, for as powerful and efficient as they are, reeeeally don’t like to start.
The UK’s clattering and thrashing diesels of that era are fairly unique. In North America we went almost immediately to diesel-electrics after steam. Diesels actually driving the wheels directly and making all that charismatic clattering were never much of a thing over here. The diesels here sound like power plants spinning up, since that’s pretty literally what they are- mobile power stations.
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In Chantal Akerman’s travel film From the East, the portion about Moscow’s residents showed many of them carrying plastic (and tote) bags. We wondered about that.
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Re the Thunderbirds, the vid is unavailable… but I do know the episode: SST on the runway and special IR vehicles doing their thing!!!
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That’s the one; so much smoke and squealing rubber 
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That’s my reaction whenever I see a beautifully restored 1956 Bel Air in Turquoise and Ivory. Honk my horn. Give a thumbs up.
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I think that was their best as far as excitement and delivery of practical effects. Lovingly done.
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A friend bartered his way across the USSR in the '80s with a few boxes of latex condoms. Apparently the Soviet condoms had the texture of bicycle inner tubes. And unlike jeans, when he was asked why there was a mismatch between his arrival and departing luggage inventory, he was able to convincingly smile and say he’d had a wonderful holiday.
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That reminded me of this bit from Dr Strangelove.
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