Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Todmorden to York - full transcript
In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw
and his railway guides inspired
the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop,
he told them where to travel.
What to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
In the days of Sherlock Holmes,
you wouldn't have set out
across the labyrinth of Britain's private railways
without first consulting the timetables
compiled by George Bradshaw.
Now I've embarked on four intriguing
excursions up and down the country
using one of his guide books, 150 years old.
Halfway through this journey, it's lit up for me
the Victorian world and set me to discover
what happened to its industries and artisans
and how the railways
made the British people what we are.
Today, I'll be travelling back in time
in a Victorian railway carriage.
In the age before Health and Safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the windows.“
50, may I have a lean out of the window?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
(Train whistle)
I'll be finding out about
the latest Roman discoveries in York.
Well, this is part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
And I'll be taking to the air
in the Network Rail helicopter.
The Victorians
built it right along the cliff edge.
It's one of the most spectacular
bits of track I've ever seen.
We're looking for anything,
any damage or any debris
or anything that's out of the ordinary
that shouldn't be there.
I'm almost halfway through this week's journey,
travelling from Liverpool, across the country.
Having passed through Bradshaw's hometown
of Manchester,
I'm headed east into Yorkshire,
before continuing
along the Humber estuary, past Hun,
towards my final destination, Scarborough.
Today, I'm leaving Bury
and travelling to Todmorden and Skipton,
ending up at the historic city of York.
And this is my first stop.
Once a cotton milling town, today the people
of Todmorden are on a mission.
They're going back to a way of life
rather similar to Bradshaw's day.
Todmorden.
I'm meeting a lady called Pam.
I've no idea what she looks like.
So, I hope she's come to the station
and not been put off by the wet weather.
- Thank you.
- Enjoy your day.
Oh, yes. Thank you.
Hello.
- Are you Pam?
- I'm Pam.
- Have you got room under that umbrella?
- Come on. Nice to see you.
- Welcome to Todmorden.
- I know. What weather!
Local cafe owner Pam Warhurst
is encouraging her neighbours
to grow vegetables and produce their own food.
Before the railways,
growing your own food wasn't unusual.
But these days, we're more
accustomed to going to the supermarket.
Pam wants to make
Todmorden more staff-sufficient,
so she's even persuading people
to keep chickens in their back gardens.
- Wow.
- Hi, guys.
Lynne has a dozen hens
and sells eggs directly to her neighbours.
- Hi.
- I'm Michael.
- Hi, Michael. Nice to meet you.
- Hello.
What are the chickens? They're bantams.
They're a mixture of White Rock, Black Rock,
Rhode Island Red and one Wyandotte.
Are they good layers?
Yes, although the eggs are smaller
than your average chicken egg.
And how many do you normally get?
We get three or four eggs a day.
Five of those are just chicks at the moment
so they're not laying.
- Any eggs I could see?
- Yes. They haven't laid very many that I found
but there are some around the garden.
We can have a hunt.
- We have to look for them?
- That's what we do.
I suppose you do!
Oh... I found one.
Well done.
A nice mucky one.
We started a campaign, Every Egg Matters,
and we've now got an egg map.
We started off with four people keeping chickens
in their gardens and we've got 30 now.
And the egg map is on our website
and people that live in any vicinity
can look and see who's
the nearest local person keeping chickens.
Phone them up and say, “Can I have
half-a-dozen eggs?" And they say, "Yeah, OK".
Chickens aren't the only thing
in Lynne's garden.
She also has a large vegetable patch.
And her friends are digging up
and planting the rest of Todmorden too.
Anyone can help themselves
to the carrots growing in the car parks
and the herbs sprouting on the railway platform.
In Bradshaw's time,
the railways changed what we ate.
Suddenly, fresh food could move
swiftly up and down the country.
The railways carried milk to the cities,
strawberries from Somerset, fish from the coast.
Food was no longer
locally grown and locally eaten.
Now Todmorden is trying to cut down
on how far food travels.
Michael, let me introduce you to Jean.
- Morning, Jean.
- Good morning.
- Lovely to see you.
- Pleased to meet you.
Are you telling me everything
on that blackboard is local?
Everything on that blackboard is within
a 30-mile radius of Todmorden.
- Lovely.
- And we've even got our own local cheese.
The first Todmorden organic cheese.
Launched a couple of weeks ago. Popular.
Wonderful, but I've sold out.
- Really?
- Yes.
- That's a good sign.
- As fast as it comes, it goes.
Yes, it is a good sign. It's a wonderful cheese.
And it's just from down the valley.
What is the nearest cheese
that you've got to Todmorden?
The nearest I have are the Lancashire ones.
Can I taste a bit of crumbly Lancashire?
It is my favourite. It's wonderful.
- Let me share this with you, Pam.
- Thank you.
- It's my favourite as well.
- You know this well?
This is divine. We serve it
in our cafe with local chutney.
Fantastic. Really popular.
- Fabulous cheese.
- It's heaven.
Jean, that was delicious.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- See you, Jean.
- Bye-bye.
I love it that now
ever more people care passionately
about the quality of what they eat
and where it comes from.
150 years ago, it was a breakthrough
that fresh food could be brought
from the countryside to cities
and I suppose it's not surprising that soon, urban
folk didn't know that eggs came from chickens.
But we've probably reached the situation
where even people living in towns and villages
didn't know that milk came from cows.
And there at Todmorden, they were
doing something to put that right.
The next leg of my journey takes me to Skipton,
on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales,
where PH be taking a step back in time.
I'm old enough to remember
travelling by steam train.
By comparison with nowadays, it was relatively
uncomfortable and, certainly, much smellier.
But now I'd like to discover what railway travel
was like at the time of Bradshaw, 150 years ago.
At the Embsay and Bolton Steam railway,
they have trains dating back to the Victoria era.
- Oh, Stephen.
- Hello, Michael.
A lovely station! Absolutely fantastic.
Thank you.
We're trying to recreate the past here.
- I gather you've come to see some carriages?
- Yes, please.
Stephen Middleton's passion is
restoring these old railway carriages.
Which one will we be travelling in?
We'll be travelling in this
Great North of Scotland coach.
It's a first third and I think
it's everyone's favourite.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Do have a look in.
- It had wood like this originally?
- Quite likely, yes.
We've copied some of the gold detailing there.
The lamps are rather splendid, although
they came from British Home Stores.
(Laughs) But they would have been
similar in design.
Very similar, yes.
Few people can recall how to operate these.
Oh, no, I recall.
You position that there and then it stops it.
You pull the strap and up it goes.
Oh, you pull the strap and up it goes.
I wasn't remembering perfectly then.
That's it. You can control your ventilation.
The only problem was these used to get stolen,
the straps.
I gather the old-fashioned cut-throat razors
could be sharpened on them.
Well, thank you very much.
Lovely.
Fantastic sound,
when you set off on a steam train.
It is. It's not quite the same on an electric train,
is it?
No, it is not.
This carriage is typical of the 18903
and has a luxuriously upholstered interior
for first-class passengers.
But it wasn't always like this.
Take me back to the 18503 when Bradshaw's
guide was written, the one I am following.
I think the 1850s,
the passengers then may have been grateful
to have a shelter over their heads.
Because a lot of them would have experienced
the 18403 riding in open wagons.
Open wagons.
Clearly, the railways thought,
“We get more money transporting coal.
We get more money transporting cattle.“
So, they put as many third-class passengers
into an open wagon as possible.
Parliament stepped in and decreed that they
really ought to have better travelling conditions.
In the age before Health and Safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the window. “
50, may I have a lean out of the window,
please?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
It's a great feeling,
the smoke pouring down the line.
(Train whistle)
Magic.
My next stop is Bolton Abbey.
The station was built here in 1880
to accommodate day-trippers
who flocked here to visit the min,
which commands a vista unspoilt by time.
My Bradshaw says, "It is most charmingly
situated on the banks of the River Wharfe.
Indeed, the picturesque character of this
and surrounding districts
is peculiarly striking and impressive. "
The 30,000-acre estate has been owned
by the Dukes of Devonshire since 1755.
The Devonshire Arms,
a 17th-century coaching inn on the estate,
has been turned into a rather smart hotel.
I think Bradshaw would have approved.
Fit for a Duke.
And warm and dry.
A new day and a new part of my adventure.
But though I'm following the route
from my trusty guide,
I'm about to see it in a way George Bradshaw
could barely have imagined.
George Bradshaw loved progress.
He couldn't see a viaduct or a railway tunnel
without praising the engineering skill involved.
Nowadays, an important part of the maintenance
of the railway infrastructure
is carried out from the air.
I'm sorry George Bradshaw
isn't hereto share that experience
but at least with me today one of his guide books
will go aloft.
Most of us travel by train without a second's
thought for how the line's kept sate.
- Can I get aboard?
- You certainly can.
Thank you.
But ever since the railways were built,
someone's had to look after
almost 20,000 miles of track.
A few moments ago,
we took off from Leeds Bradford airport,
and now we're flying at fairly high level
towards York.
When we get there, we'll pick up the East Coast
mainline heading up towards Edinburgh
and we're going to
start to survey that bit of track.
In Bradshaw's Victorian Britain,
the linesmen would walk the tracks at night
checking for problems.
This helicopter helps do the job today,
stuffed full of gadgets and gizmos
in which Bradshaw
would surely have taken delight.
The camera on the bottom
of the aircraft is following
the track northwards
and I can see it with the naked eye
but also following here on
the screen inside the aircraft
and as I'm watching,
Howard is zooming in for me, taking me
into remarkable degrees of detail.
One of the most important devices is
an infrared camera used to inspect the points.
The infrared camera checks whether
the heating system on every set of points
is working properly.
A breakdown here could cause chaos.
Bradshaw's having a great day out.
The nose is going to come down to the right.
So, a 12-minute flight has brought us
all the way to the East coast
and we're looking at a little bit of track here
that runs between Redcar and Whitby.
And the Victorians
built it right along the cliff edge.
It's one of the most spectacular
bits of track I've ever seen.
Nowadays, you just need to keep
an eye on it to make sure that
with the coastal erosion, it's not in any danger.
And the helicopter is making a video of this spot
so that that can be
examined by the engineers
who need to know that everything is safe.
It's an absolutely spectacular bit of track.
I'd love to ride the train along there
and see the view.
That's given me an idea
for a future railway journey.
Whether you come to York by air, road or rail,
you discover a beautiful city.
The station itself is well worth a look.
Built in 1877, and designed by architects
Thomas Presser and William Peachey,
it was the largest station in the world.
And with almost 400 trains passing through it
every day, it's now one of the busiest.
Not surprisingly,
York attracts about four million visitors a year.
Some come to search out its Roman roots.
Some come to marvel at its medieval buildings.
And others...
Well, others come for the trains.
Experience tells me that you'll always find
train spotters at the ends of platforms
where they can jot down the numbers of
locomotives or photograph them, or whatever.
- Good evening.
- Good evening.
Pleased to meet you.
Very nice to see you.
Would you by any chance be a train spotter?
No, railway photographer, please.
You've got a camera.
I don't know how to put this to you, but
train spotters do have a certain reputation.
Which reputation are you thinking of?
Well...maybe for being a little bit dull?
I think you become involved to an extent
that you ignore the real world outside.
You come into your own little world
and you have many people who join you in that,
whether they're interested in mechanics,
interested in the actual observations,
interested in the operations.
They all have their own little interest.
But it means that
we're committed to what we enjoy.
A little obsessive, then? You would admit to
a little obsessive, would you?
I think obsessive, possibly, yes.
But certainly not dull.
I wouldn't consider myself an obsessive
about trains, but! do like them.
I wonder whether there isn't
a little bit of train spotter in an of us?
- What do you think of train spotters?
- Well, I think it's a good pastime.
Yeah? Have you ever been
a train spotter yourself?
When I was a little lad
but I'm 74 years of age now.
There we are.
There's an advertisement for train spotting.
- Keeps you young.
- That's right.
In my day, it was very much the thing to do.
My mum used to say to me,
don't you dare go train spotting.
But you know what lads are. It was wonderful.
A wonderful era to see all the steam coming out,
you know.
And the engine drivers
were all black with the coal and...
What an era!
It's all gone now, hasn't it?
You are a poet of your age.
- Am I?
- Yeah.
- Well, that's very kind of you to say so.
- Beautifully said.
Do you have any views on train spotters?
Yeah, leave them to it.
I think they're interesting and fastidious,
probably.
And, yeah, good on them.
Have you ever been one yourself?
I've never had a camera
but I like to see a freight train.
- You like to see a freight train?
- Yeah, I'm fascinated by freight trains.
- Really?
- Interesting trains, yeah...
I don't get it immediately.
What's the fascination with freight trains?
Well, I'll tell you what it is. When I was younger
I was in America for a long time.
The trains there are enormous.
They're half a mile long.
So I think that's what it is.
- Wow, I've struck gold.
- Yeah.
- I mean in meeting you.
- Thank you!
I never expected to find a man
in love with freight trains. Great.
York is a largely medieval city
bum around the Minster.
But it started out in AD71 as a settlement
besides a huge Roman fortress.
And it was those Roman beginnings
that impressed Bradshaw the most.
Bradshaw really knew his Roman history
of York.
“Having been an imperial city all the time
the Romans kept possession of Britain,
there are of course many vestiges of antiquities.
Here died Constantius Chlorus,
the father of Constantine,
the first Roman Christian Emperor.“
But I wonder whether Bradshaw is still
a good guide to Roman archaeology in York?
Fortunately, I'm meeting a man who knows.
Andrew Jones,
from the York Archaeological Trust.
- Andrew.
- Hello and welcome to York.
Lovely to see.
Thank you so much for your time.
You're going to tell me something
about Bradshaw's Roman history?
Yes. Bradshaw did a lot to promote
Roman York but it was actually known
as an important place for at least 200 years
before he wrote his book.
First on the tour is what's left of
the original Roman settlement.
This is part of the Roman fortress wall,
and if you look carefully at the wall,
you can see how eroded the stones are.
They're quite rounded and that's because of
1,700 years of rain and pollution and so forth.
One of the things I'd like you to do
is to squint along the wall
and just appreciate how straight
and how vertical this is.
Remember, this was built by Yorkshire lads
1,700 years ago.
- It's absolutely true, isn't it?
- It's a fantastic piece of masonry.
York was an important military base for the
Romans with 6,000 soldiers based at the fort.
For a short time, the whole Roman Empire
was ruled from York
when the Emperor Severus lived here in 209.
The red line here that interrupts the wall,
what's that?
These are tiles.
This is a characteristic
of Roman military architecture.
A lot of forts have these tile courses
deliberately built into them.
They're there for two reasons.
One is they're a signature saying
this piece of masonry is Roman.
“We are here claiming the landscape,
beware all you native people."
And it's also there as a practical thing
to allow people to get a level surface
and start building again straight up.
You've told me that this has been
weathered for 1,700 years,
so, clearly,
Bradshaw must have known all about this?
He did but what he didn't know is about the
things we've discovered inside since his time.
So let's go and see that next.
This is the place here
that I'd like to show you now, Michael.
And this demonstrates what, then?
This is a part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
- This?
- Yes.
This was formerly covered
completely in a mound of earth,
so this has not been exposed to 1,700 years
of weathering
and you can see the stones are beautifully cut
and you can even see
little bits of tooling marks on them.
Looking further along, you can see
the tile courses are actually projecting.
So these were not just a practical thing.
They were there to cast a shadow,
to make a line, to be an architectural feature.
A bit like a string course in today's buildings.
It's a small detail but to me it brings
Roman achievement to another level.
Given, then, that this was covered up during
Bradshaw's time, it turns out, in your view,
that the Romans
were even more brilliant engineers
than archaeologists of Bradshaw's era
could have known.
That's absolutely right.
What's more, when
the new railway station was built in the 18703,
even more fascinating Roman discoveries
were made
and I'd like to show you those as a final bit.
Lead on.
These are some of the stone sarcophagi
that were found
when they rebuilt the railway station
in the 18703.
In the old railway station, then?
No, the first railway station was inside the city
walls but the railways grew and expanded
and the present-day railway station,
built in the 18703,
was built on the site of a Roman cemetery.
And these are some of the sarcophagi
discovered there
and brought here for safe-keeping.
Very substantial bits of stone.
Massive pieces of stone.
Weighing five or six tons, at least.
And brought a long way,
carved out for, obviously,
people who were very highly regarded.
And very substantial members of the community.
I think Bradshaw would have been
doubly pleased.
York was getting a new
and bigger railway station
and new Roman discoveries
came about as well.
That's absolutely right. And we keep
making new discoveries to this day.
Seeing Roman York
through the eyes of the Victorian Bradshaw
makes me aware of some striking parallels.
When the Romans invaded Britain,
bringing with them fine architecture
and fast roads,
they made us part of the most advanced
civilisation that the world had ever seen.
The Victorians with their factories
and steam engines were the new Romans.
It's symbolic that when the railways
reached York,
the tracks punched their way through the ancient
walls to reach the historic centre of the city.
With our love today of steam engines
and the obsession of train spotters,
it's clear that the railways
still have us in a powerful grip.
On my next journey, PH be discovering
how the railways made Hull one of the biggest
white fish ports in the world.
The railways make fish an article
of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally.
I'll be searching for liquorice in Pontefract.
- I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
- This is a liquorice plant.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It cam from Spain, originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
And I'll be finding out
why cod might soon be off the menu.
We're starting to see a lot more
warm-water species
that we normally associate
with the Mediterranean.
His name was George Bradshaw
and his railway guides inspired
the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop,
he told them where to travel.
What to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
In the days of Sherlock Holmes,
you wouldn't have set out
across the labyrinth of Britain's private railways
without first consulting the timetables
compiled by George Bradshaw.
Now I've embarked on four intriguing
excursions up and down the country
using one of his guide books, 150 years old.
Halfway through this journey, it's lit up for me
the Victorian world and set me to discover
what happened to its industries and artisans
and how the railways
made the British people what we are.
Today, I'll be travelling back in time
in a Victorian railway carriage.
In the age before Health and Safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the windows.“
50, may I have a lean out of the window?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
(Train whistle)
I'll be finding out about
the latest Roman discoveries in York.
Well, this is part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
And I'll be taking to the air
in the Network Rail helicopter.
The Victorians
built it right along the cliff edge.
It's one of the most spectacular
bits of track I've ever seen.
We're looking for anything,
any damage or any debris
or anything that's out of the ordinary
that shouldn't be there.
I'm almost halfway through this week's journey,
travelling from Liverpool, across the country.
Having passed through Bradshaw's hometown
of Manchester,
I'm headed east into Yorkshire,
before continuing
along the Humber estuary, past Hun,
towards my final destination, Scarborough.
Today, I'm leaving Bury
and travelling to Todmorden and Skipton,
ending up at the historic city of York.
And this is my first stop.
Once a cotton milling town, today the people
of Todmorden are on a mission.
They're going back to a way of life
rather similar to Bradshaw's day.
Todmorden.
I'm meeting a lady called Pam.
I've no idea what she looks like.
So, I hope she's come to the station
and not been put off by the wet weather.
- Thank you.
- Enjoy your day.
Oh, yes. Thank you.
Hello.
- Are you Pam?
- I'm Pam.
- Have you got room under that umbrella?
- Come on. Nice to see you.
- Welcome to Todmorden.
- I know. What weather!
Local cafe owner Pam Warhurst
is encouraging her neighbours
to grow vegetables and produce their own food.
Before the railways,
growing your own food wasn't unusual.
But these days, we're more
accustomed to going to the supermarket.
Pam wants to make
Todmorden more staff-sufficient,
so she's even persuading people
to keep chickens in their back gardens.
- Wow.
- Hi, guys.
Lynne has a dozen hens
and sells eggs directly to her neighbours.
- Hi.
- I'm Michael.
- Hi, Michael. Nice to meet you.
- Hello.
What are the chickens? They're bantams.
They're a mixture of White Rock, Black Rock,
Rhode Island Red and one Wyandotte.
Are they good layers?
Yes, although the eggs are smaller
than your average chicken egg.
And how many do you normally get?
We get three or four eggs a day.
Five of those are just chicks at the moment
so they're not laying.
- Any eggs I could see?
- Yes. They haven't laid very many that I found
but there are some around the garden.
We can have a hunt.
- We have to look for them?
- That's what we do.
I suppose you do!
Oh... I found one.
Well done.
A nice mucky one.
We started a campaign, Every Egg Matters,
and we've now got an egg map.
We started off with four people keeping chickens
in their gardens and we've got 30 now.
And the egg map is on our website
and people that live in any vicinity
can look and see who's
the nearest local person keeping chickens.
Phone them up and say, “Can I have
half-a-dozen eggs?" And they say, "Yeah, OK".
Chickens aren't the only thing
in Lynne's garden.
She also has a large vegetable patch.
And her friends are digging up
and planting the rest of Todmorden too.
Anyone can help themselves
to the carrots growing in the car parks
and the herbs sprouting on the railway platform.
In Bradshaw's time,
the railways changed what we ate.
Suddenly, fresh food could move
swiftly up and down the country.
The railways carried milk to the cities,
strawberries from Somerset, fish from the coast.
Food was no longer
locally grown and locally eaten.
Now Todmorden is trying to cut down
on how far food travels.
Michael, let me introduce you to Jean.
- Morning, Jean.
- Good morning.
- Lovely to see you.
- Pleased to meet you.
Are you telling me everything
on that blackboard is local?
Everything on that blackboard is within
a 30-mile radius of Todmorden.
- Lovely.
- And we've even got our own local cheese.
The first Todmorden organic cheese.
Launched a couple of weeks ago. Popular.
Wonderful, but I've sold out.
- Really?
- Yes.
- That's a good sign.
- As fast as it comes, it goes.
Yes, it is a good sign. It's a wonderful cheese.
And it's just from down the valley.
What is the nearest cheese
that you've got to Todmorden?
The nearest I have are the Lancashire ones.
Can I taste a bit of crumbly Lancashire?
It is my favourite. It's wonderful.
- Let me share this with you, Pam.
- Thank you.
- It's my favourite as well.
- You know this well?
This is divine. We serve it
in our cafe with local chutney.
Fantastic. Really popular.
- Fabulous cheese.
- It's heaven.
Jean, that was delicious.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- See you, Jean.
- Bye-bye.
I love it that now
ever more people care passionately
about the quality of what they eat
and where it comes from.
150 years ago, it was a breakthrough
that fresh food could be brought
from the countryside to cities
and I suppose it's not surprising that soon, urban
folk didn't know that eggs came from chickens.
But we've probably reached the situation
where even people living in towns and villages
didn't know that milk came from cows.
And there at Todmorden, they were
doing something to put that right.
The next leg of my journey takes me to Skipton,
on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales,
where PH be taking a step back in time.
I'm old enough to remember
travelling by steam train.
By comparison with nowadays, it was relatively
uncomfortable and, certainly, much smellier.
But now I'd like to discover what railway travel
was like at the time of Bradshaw, 150 years ago.
At the Embsay and Bolton Steam railway,
they have trains dating back to the Victoria era.
- Oh, Stephen.
- Hello, Michael.
A lovely station! Absolutely fantastic.
Thank you.
We're trying to recreate the past here.
- I gather you've come to see some carriages?
- Yes, please.
Stephen Middleton's passion is
restoring these old railway carriages.
Which one will we be travelling in?
We'll be travelling in this
Great North of Scotland coach.
It's a first third and I think
it's everyone's favourite.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Do have a look in.
- It had wood like this originally?
- Quite likely, yes.
We've copied some of the gold detailing there.
The lamps are rather splendid, although
they came from British Home Stores.
(Laughs) But they would have been
similar in design.
Very similar, yes.
Few people can recall how to operate these.
Oh, no, I recall.
You position that there and then it stops it.
You pull the strap and up it goes.
Oh, you pull the strap and up it goes.
I wasn't remembering perfectly then.
That's it. You can control your ventilation.
The only problem was these used to get stolen,
the straps.
I gather the old-fashioned cut-throat razors
could be sharpened on them.
Well, thank you very much.
Lovely.
Fantastic sound,
when you set off on a steam train.
It is. It's not quite the same on an electric train,
is it?
No, it is not.
This carriage is typical of the 18903
and has a luxuriously upholstered interior
for first-class passengers.
But it wasn't always like this.
Take me back to the 18503 when Bradshaw's
guide was written, the one I am following.
I think the 1850s,
the passengers then may have been grateful
to have a shelter over their heads.
Because a lot of them would have experienced
the 18403 riding in open wagons.
Open wagons.
Clearly, the railways thought,
“We get more money transporting coal.
We get more money transporting cattle.“
So, they put as many third-class passengers
into an open wagon as possible.
Parliament stepped in and decreed that they
really ought to have better travelling conditions.
In the age before Health and Safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the window. “
50, may I have a lean out of the window,
please?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
It's a great feeling,
the smoke pouring down the line.
(Train whistle)
Magic.
My next stop is Bolton Abbey.
The station was built here in 1880
to accommodate day-trippers
who flocked here to visit the min,
which commands a vista unspoilt by time.
My Bradshaw says, "It is most charmingly
situated on the banks of the River Wharfe.
Indeed, the picturesque character of this
and surrounding districts
is peculiarly striking and impressive. "
The 30,000-acre estate has been owned
by the Dukes of Devonshire since 1755.
The Devonshire Arms,
a 17th-century coaching inn on the estate,
has been turned into a rather smart hotel.
I think Bradshaw would have approved.
Fit for a Duke.
And warm and dry.
A new day and a new part of my adventure.
But though I'm following the route
from my trusty guide,
I'm about to see it in a way George Bradshaw
could barely have imagined.
George Bradshaw loved progress.
He couldn't see a viaduct or a railway tunnel
without praising the engineering skill involved.
Nowadays, an important part of the maintenance
of the railway infrastructure
is carried out from the air.
I'm sorry George Bradshaw
isn't hereto share that experience
but at least with me today one of his guide books
will go aloft.
Most of us travel by train without a second's
thought for how the line's kept sate.
- Can I get aboard?
- You certainly can.
Thank you.
But ever since the railways were built,
someone's had to look after
almost 20,000 miles of track.
A few moments ago,
we took off from Leeds Bradford airport,
and now we're flying at fairly high level
towards York.
When we get there, we'll pick up the East Coast
mainline heading up towards Edinburgh
and we're going to
start to survey that bit of track.
In Bradshaw's Victorian Britain,
the linesmen would walk the tracks at night
checking for problems.
This helicopter helps do the job today,
stuffed full of gadgets and gizmos
in which Bradshaw
would surely have taken delight.
The camera on the bottom
of the aircraft is following
the track northwards
and I can see it with the naked eye
but also following here on
the screen inside the aircraft
and as I'm watching,
Howard is zooming in for me, taking me
into remarkable degrees of detail.
One of the most important devices is
an infrared camera used to inspect the points.
The infrared camera checks whether
the heating system on every set of points
is working properly.
A breakdown here could cause chaos.
Bradshaw's having a great day out.
The nose is going to come down to the right.
So, a 12-minute flight has brought us
all the way to the East coast
and we're looking at a little bit of track here
that runs between Redcar and Whitby.
And the Victorians
built it right along the cliff edge.
It's one of the most spectacular
bits of track I've ever seen.
Nowadays, you just need to keep
an eye on it to make sure that
with the coastal erosion, it's not in any danger.
And the helicopter is making a video of this spot
so that that can be
examined by the engineers
who need to know that everything is safe.
It's an absolutely spectacular bit of track.
I'd love to ride the train along there
and see the view.
That's given me an idea
for a future railway journey.
Whether you come to York by air, road or rail,
you discover a beautiful city.
The station itself is well worth a look.
Built in 1877, and designed by architects
Thomas Presser and William Peachey,
it was the largest station in the world.
And with almost 400 trains passing through it
every day, it's now one of the busiest.
Not surprisingly,
York attracts about four million visitors a year.
Some come to search out its Roman roots.
Some come to marvel at its medieval buildings.
And others...
Well, others come for the trains.
Experience tells me that you'll always find
train spotters at the ends of platforms
where they can jot down the numbers of
locomotives or photograph them, or whatever.
- Good evening.
- Good evening.
Pleased to meet you.
Very nice to see you.
Would you by any chance be a train spotter?
No, railway photographer, please.
You've got a camera.
I don't know how to put this to you, but
train spotters do have a certain reputation.
Which reputation are you thinking of?
Well...maybe for being a little bit dull?
I think you become involved to an extent
that you ignore the real world outside.
You come into your own little world
and you have many people who join you in that,
whether they're interested in mechanics,
interested in the actual observations,
interested in the operations.
They all have their own little interest.
But it means that
we're committed to what we enjoy.
A little obsessive, then? You would admit to
a little obsessive, would you?
I think obsessive, possibly, yes.
But certainly not dull.
I wouldn't consider myself an obsessive
about trains, but! do like them.
I wonder whether there isn't
a little bit of train spotter in an of us?
- What do you think of train spotters?
- Well, I think it's a good pastime.
Yeah? Have you ever been
a train spotter yourself?
When I was a little lad
but I'm 74 years of age now.
There we are.
There's an advertisement for train spotting.
- Keeps you young.
- That's right.
In my day, it was very much the thing to do.
My mum used to say to me,
don't you dare go train spotting.
But you know what lads are. It was wonderful.
A wonderful era to see all the steam coming out,
you know.
And the engine drivers
were all black with the coal and...
What an era!
It's all gone now, hasn't it?
You are a poet of your age.
- Am I?
- Yeah.
- Well, that's very kind of you to say so.
- Beautifully said.
Do you have any views on train spotters?
Yeah, leave them to it.
I think they're interesting and fastidious,
probably.
And, yeah, good on them.
Have you ever been one yourself?
I've never had a camera
but I like to see a freight train.
- You like to see a freight train?
- Yeah, I'm fascinated by freight trains.
- Really?
- Interesting trains, yeah...
I don't get it immediately.
What's the fascination with freight trains?
Well, I'll tell you what it is. When I was younger
I was in America for a long time.
The trains there are enormous.
They're half a mile long.
So I think that's what it is.
- Wow, I've struck gold.
- Yeah.
- I mean in meeting you.
- Thank you!
I never expected to find a man
in love with freight trains. Great.
York is a largely medieval city
bum around the Minster.
But it started out in AD71 as a settlement
besides a huge Roman fortress.
And it was those Roman beginnings
that impressed Bradshaw the most.
Bradshaw really knew his Roman history
of York.
“Having been an imperial city all the time
the Romans kept possession of Britain,
there are of course many vestiges of antiquities.
Here died Constantius Chlorus,
the father of Constantine,
the first Roman Christian Emperor.“
But I wonder whether Bradshaw is still
a good guide to Roman archaeology in York?
Fortunately, I'm meeting a man who knows.
Andrew Jones,
from the York Archaeological Trust.
- Andrew.
- Hello and welcome to York.
Lovely to see.
Thank you so much for your time.
You're going to tell me something
about Bradshaw's Roman history?
Yes. Bradshaw did a lot to promote
Roman York but it was actually known
as an important place for at least 200 years
before he wrote his book.
First on the tour is what's left of
the original Roman settlement.
This is part of the Roman fortress wall,
and if you look carefully at the wall,
you can see how eroded the stones are.
They're quite rounded and that's because of
1,700 years of rain and pollution and so forth.
One of the things I'd like you to do
is to squint along the wall
and just appreciate how straight
and how vertical this is.
Remember, this was built by Yorkshire lads
1,700 years ago.
- It's absolutely true, isn't it?
- It's a fantastic piece of masonry.
York was an important military base for the
Romans with 6,000 soldiers based at the fort.
For a short time, the whole Roman Empire
was ruled from York
when the Emperor Severus lived here in 209.
The red line here that interrupts the wall,
what's that?
These are tiles.
This is a characteristic
of Roman military architecture.
A lot of forts have these tile courses
deliberately built into them.
They're there for two reasons.
One is they're a signature saying
this piece of masonry is Roman.
“We are here claiming the landscape,
beware all you native people."
And it's also there as a practical thing
to allow people to get a level surface
and start building again straight up.
You've told me that this has been
weathered for 1,700 years,
so, clearly,
Bradshaw must have known all about this?
He did but what he didn't know is about the
things we've discovered inside since his time.
So let's go and see that next.
This is the place here
that I'd like to show you now, Michael.
And this demonstrates what, then?
This is a part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
- This?
- Yes.
This was formerly covered
completely in a mound of earth,
so this has not been exposed to 1,700 years
of weathering
and you can see the stones are beautifully cut
and you can even see
little bits of tooling marks on them.
Looking further along, you can see
the tile courses are actually projecting.
So these were not just a practical thing.
They were there to cast a shadow,
to make a line, to be an architectural feature.
A bit like a string course in today's buildings.
It's a small detail but to me it brings
Roman achievement to another level.
Given, then, that this was covered up during
Bradshaw's time, it turns out, in your view,
that the Romans
were even more brilliant engineers
than archaeologists of Bradshaw's era
could have known.
That's absolutely right.
What's more, when
the new railway station was built in the 18703,
even more fascinating Roman discoveries
were made
and I'd like to show you those as a final bit.
Lead on.
These are some of the stone sarcophagi
that were found
when they rebuilt the railway station
in the 18703.
In the old railway station, then?
No, the first railway station was inside the city
walls but the railways grew and expanded
and the present-day railway station,
built in the 18703,
was built on the site of a Roman cemetery.
And these are some of the sarcophagi
discovered there
and brought here for safe-keeping.
Very substantial bits of stone.
Massive pieces of stone.
Weighing five or six tons, at least.
And brought a long way,
carved out for, obviously,
people who were very highly regarded.
And very substantial members of the community.
I think Bradshaw would have been
doubly pleased.
York was getting a new
and bigger railway station
and new Roman discoveries
came about as well.
That's absolutely right. And we keep
making new discoveries to this day.
Seeing Roman York
through the eyes of the Victorian Bradshaw
makes me aware of some striking parallels.
When the Romans invaded Britain,
bringing with them fine architecture
and fast roads,
they made us part of the most advanced
civilisation that the world had ever seen.
The Victorians with their factories
and steam engines were the new Romans.
It's symbolic that when the railways
reached York,
the tracks punched their way through the ancient
walls to reach the historic centre of the city.
With our love today of steam engines
and the obsession of train spotters,
it's clear that the railways
still have us in a powerful grip.
On my next journey, PH be discovering
how the railways made Hull one of the biggest
white fish ports in the world.
The railways make fish an article
of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally.
I'll be searching for liquorice in Pontefract.
- I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
- This is a liquorice plant.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It cam from Spain, originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
And I'll be finding out
why cod might soon be off the menu.
We're starting to see a lot more
warm-water species
that we normally associate
with the Mediterranean.