Benjamin Britten’s music and W.H. Auden’s verse feature as constituent elements in Basil Wright and Harry Watt’s Night Mail , created for the G.P.O. Film Unit in 1936. The film’s opening section explores the complex workings of the system, as postmen attach letters to a hanging track-side net, scooped into a northward-speeding mail train. At Crewe, the snaking paths of chain-linked trolleys, piled with mail sacks, signal tightly-timed turnaround of cargo and personnel, as English and Scottish rail crews hand over with a laconic ‘Morning Jock’. A camera travels the length of the sorting vans, and a neophyte is introduced to the complexity of leather fastenings and gauging methods - ‘..two bridges and forty-five beats..’ - before sorted mail is tied to a protruding swing arm, and swooped into a stationary track-side net. W.H. Auden’s familiar, deadpan, rhythmic monotone appears as the film nears its end, journeying through the Scottish lowlands in a rapid montage of sky, steam and piston-action. Footage of industrial chimneys heralds arrival in Glasgow, as Auden’s voice-over characterises Scottish cities from ‘working Glasgow’ to ‘granite Aberdeen’. An image of railway workers, cleaning larger-than-human-height engine wheels, brings the piece to a close.