Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 20 - Exmouth to Newton Abbot - full transcript
In 1840, one man transformed travel
in the British Isles.
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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of these isles
to see what of
Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm now completing my journey
from London to Newton Abbot
and I've arrived alongside
the coastal beauty of what Bradshaw's
would call south Devonshire.
This was the scene of some of
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
greatest railway engineering
successes and worst failures.
And both his triumphs and disasters
proved his genius.
Today I'll take to the sea
with the heroes of the RNLI...
- Couple of big waves coming now.
- There we go. Whoa!
At the moment it feels a bit like, I
imagine, a jockey in the Grand National.
We're going up and down
and over the fences.
...I 'll visit a stormy coastal railway...
When the waves hit this section,
the plumes of water go right over the
top of the footbridge of the station.
And have a close, personal encounter
with a boyhood hero.
This is exciting. is this genuinely
a section of Brunel's pipe?
It is, indeed, yes.
Using my “Bradshaws Guide”,
I'm following the tracks of
Isambard Kingdom Brunei,
master engineer of
the Great Western Railway.
I started at Paddington Station,
a monumental success,
and I'll finish in Newton Abbot
in Devon,
the scene of one of
his biggest disappointments.
The last leg of my journey begins
in Exmouth, detours to Sidmouth,
then crosses the Exe Estuary
to Starcross,
on to Dawlish and,
finally, Newton Abbot.
My Bradshaw's says, "We have
all the romantic allurements of
the watering places of the west,
where we may find
a fund of illimitable enjoyment
in the rich bouquet
that nature has spread before us
on the freshening shores of Devon."
The Victorians could be
pompous and verbose,
but their appreciation of
the beauties of Devon was sincere.
I'm on a line
known locally as The Avocet,
where a locomotive first steamed
the ten miles from Exeter to
my first destination, Exmouth, in 1861.
Once a small fishing village,
Exmouth grew into an important port,
from which Sir Walter Raleigh
launched many of his voyages.
The town became a very popular tourist
destination during the Georgian period
and its two-mile-long promenade
shows that ifs remained so ever since.
♪ Oh, I do love to be
beside the seaside
Already intoxicated by sea air.
Bradshaw's tells me that Exmouth has,
"in its immediate neighbourhood,
a valley sheltered on all sides
from the winds,
and capable of affording
a genial retreat."
"Exmouth is a decidedly healthy place."
But the sea also brings its dangers,
and Exmouth has had a lifeboat station
for more than 200 years.
Over the course of two centuries,
lifeboats have saved the lives of
over 139,000 people
off the coasts of Britain.
They first patrolled the waters
around South Shields in 1790.
Exmouth has had one since 1803,
and hah' a century later
the station joined The Royal
National Lifeboat institution.
Tim Mock is a full-time mechanic
and coxswain.
Tim, you've had a lifeboat at Exmouth
going all the way back to 1803.
Yes, that's correct, yes.
A privately run lifeboat in those days.
And those lifeboats in those days,
how would they have been powered?
Well, that was pulling and sailing
boats, that's rowing and sails only.
What do you think of that?
Very, very hard work. I've had a go
at it in one of the old boats
and just found it impossible.
How they ever managed to row
for hours and hours on end,
I really admire them for that.
Standing on the former slipway
is a reminder that you could be
called out at any time today.
(Tim) That's a possibility.
I mean south-easterly winds here
means the sea is quite rough.
Although it's a nice sunny day, small
boats can get in trouble at any time.
Do people of Exmouth feel
a connection with their lifeboat?
- Definitely, yes.
- Are they supportive?
Very much so. The lifeboads always been
a big pan of the community
and for our side of things, we need
the community to operate the service.
And going back to Victorian times,
the bigger boats
were launched by hand only,
so you'd need 40 or 50 men and women
to pull the boat down here
and out into the water.
I see your present station is 1903,
so you're just post Victorian.
A connection between lifeboats
and railways?
Most definitely. Boats would have been
delivered by the railways.
Spare parts and, in latter years,
tractors and heavier bits of equipment
would all come by rail.
Sir William Hillary founded
The National institution
for the Preservation of Life
from Shipwreck in 1824.
Today, almost 5,000 volunteers
crew lifeboats
and We been invited aboard
the Exmouth all-weather lifeboat
for a scheduled training exercise.
Luckily the Royal National Lifeboat
institution shares my taste
in bright coloured clothes.
Well, I have once before
been out with the RNLI,
but that was in a small inflatable.
This is a completely different kettle of
fish. This is a very substantial boat.
At the helm today is former Royal
Marine, deputy coxswain Scott Ranft.
Well, it's quite surprising
that on a warm and sunny day,
there's quite a swell out here.
We've got a force five wind
heading from an easterly direction,
so it does pick up, especially in
this channel as we come out through,
it picks up because it's quite shallow.
- A couple of big waves coming now.
- There we go. Whoa!
At the moment it feels a bit like, I
imagine, a jockey in the Grand National.
We're going up and down
and over the fences.
That's right.
Roger Jackson, a crewmember for
the last 14 years, has taken the helm.
I've heard he was recently honoured for
leading a particularly hazardous rescue,
manoeuvring the station's inshore
lifeboat to retrieve four young men
from very rough seas.
We had to get them one by one. Climb
and climb, thumping sun' over the top.
Go back round and go in again,
four times.
(Carmichael) What state were they in?
Hypothermic, really cold,
really, really shocked
and extremely pleased to see us.
They were very lucky lads.
And you were given
the bronze medal for gallantry?
That's right, yes, last week
I actually went to London
and the Duke of Gloucester
awarded it to me.
It was a very proud moment for myself
of course,
but also for
Exmouth lifeboat station as well.
I'd love to see it.
(Roger) That's the actual medal.
As you can see, that is Sir William
Hillary, the founder of the RNLI.
- (Carmichael) Wonderful.
- (Roger) Like to have a drive?
I'd love to have a drive,
thank you very much indeed.
- Come through.
- OK.
I've quite often been asked to
take control of a steam engine.
I think I feel more control of this
than I do when it's a locomotive.
(Roger) Hows that, Michael?
Well, it's just a great honour to be
steering this vessel next to a hero.
I don't know about that.
I'm travelling by road
to my next destination.
Sidmouth didn't have a railway
when my guide was written
and the Kine that opened in the 1870s
fell to the Beeching Cuts
of the 1960s.
I'm intrigued to know
why railway-less Sidmouth,
which my “Bradshaws” describes as
“nestled at the bottom of a valley,
between lofty hills 500ft high“,
was deemed important enough for an
entry covering almost a whole page.
This range of cliffs,
according to my guidebook,
has been the theatre of
convulsions or landslips,
one commencing on Christmas Day 1839,
whereby 45 acres
of arable land were lost.
The beach is now fenced off
to the public,
so landslips are not
a thing of the past
and this so-called Jurassic Coast
is of interest to geologists today.
Sidmouth's cliffs
are particularly important,
because they occasionally yield fossils
of rare prehistoric
amphibians and reptiles.
Earth Science Manager Richard Edmonds
is responsible for protecting
this World Heritage site.
- Richard, hello.
- Nice to meet you.
So, for centuries, these cliffs
have been tumbling down?
Well, that's right. They're actually
230 million years old,
but the natural recession rate is
about perhaps five metres a century.
But my Bradshaw's tells me that
on one occasion there was a landslip
where 45 acres of farming land
were lost,
so that has been going on a long time?
Landslides are a different process.
Landslides tend to be enormous,
great son of rending of the earth.
What we're seeing here is
more cliff falls
caused by the sea undercutting
the base of the cliffs.
In the 19th century, did they
take steps to slow down the erosion?
What happened to start with,
Sidmouth was built on
the back of a vast shingle spit.
It was a very healthy beach.
The waves could hit the beach
and be soaked up, the energy,
but in the 1830s they started to,
after big storms,
started to construct sea defences
and those have become
bigger and bigger.
In the 1920s, a great gale
breached the sea wall
and wrought havoc on
much of Sidmouth's esplanade,
so the town built a new higher wall
at the then hefty cost of £100,000.
But in Bradshaws day,
railway builders weren't put off
by high seas and eroding cliffs.
I believe the Victorians tried
to put a railway here?
Yes, that's right.
The plan was to build a harbour
on the western side of Sidmouth
at Chit Rocks and use Salcombe stone,
which comes from a village
just a couple of miles this way.
The plan was apparently to quarry
the stone and then transport it
in a tunnel running parallel
to the back of the cliff.
(Carmichael) What happened?
The railway engine didn't fit in
the tunnel and the company went bust.
- That can't be true, can it?
- It is.
So they got as far as making the tunnel?
That's right, you can still see it
sticking out of the cliff,
but what's happened is
the erosion has come through
and actually eaten away at the tunnel.
The entrance was here
at Pennington Point
and in the last 20 years the cliffs
have receded and it's been lost.
(Michael) So the tunnel added to
the difficulties of the cliff.
Well, it's done its damage, yes.
The cliff has got to the point
where it reached the tunnel
and suddenly there's this increase
in erosion.
That's likely to be one of the reasons
why we've had this very marked
increase in erosion over the last years.
But now the tunnel's gone and the sea is
coming back into the solid geology,
we should see it slow down.
Richard, thank you very much,
I must slip away. Bye-bye.
Back to Exmouth now to take not a train,
but a short boat ride that will deliver
me to the exact spot I'm aiming for.
(announcement) OK, everyone,
welcome on the ferry to Starcross.
I'm on the ferry, crossing the mouth of
the River Exe to Starcross,
a small place, with a big chunk
of railway history.
And I think I can see a relic of it
coming into view now.
The final three destinations
of my journey
all played a pivotal role in
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
greatest railway failure,
his Atmospheric Railway,
where trains were not pulled by steam
locomotive, but forced forward
by atmospheric pressure running through
a pipe on the track.
Starcross is first.
This is a pumping station that was used
on Brunel's Atmospheric Railway.
There's a pub dedicated to
the history of that line
and after a long day I've earned
myself a drink there.
- Good evening.
- Good evening.
- Could I have a half a lager, please?
- You sure can.
I see you're The Atmospheric Railway.
Quite an admirer of Brunei, are you?
I sure am. One of
the greatest engineers we've ever had.
Why are you such an admirer?
Well, it just wasn't
one particular item, was it?
I mean he built bridges, tunnels, boats.
He was just an all-round great engineer.
Well, then the toast is
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
After a days travelling, ifs
a night cap and early to bed for me.
As a boy,
I marvelled at the life of Brunei.
Even though the Atmospheric Railway
was ultimately a failure,
I'm keen to find out more about it.
At my next destination, Dawlish,
the line had a station.
I'm on the Exeter to Paignton
branch line this morning.
Before trains
reached the south Devon coast,
Brunel's challenge was to lay track over
very hilly and sharply curving terrain.
The trains are now powered by diesel,
but the route is almost the same
as in Bradshaw's day.
The result is one of the most thrilling
stretches of track in England.
My Bradshaw's is understandably excited
about this part of the journey:
"The magnificent scenery which
opens on each side as we proceed."
"There is scarcely a mile traversed
which does not unfold
some peculiar picturesque charm
or new feature of its own
to make the eye
dazzled and drunk with beauty."
For me, there's the additional interest
that we're travelling on tracks
that were once pan of
Brunel's doomed Atmospheric Railway.
In 1044, King Edward the Confessor
granted the parish of Dawlish
to his chancellor and chaplain Leofric.
Salt making, fishing and agriculture
were the town's mainstay
until the 18th-century penchant
for taking the sea air and bathing
attracted the aristocratic set.
But when the South Devon Railway
arrived in the 1840s,
the town was open to everyone.
Here at Dawlish, the station is built
between the beach and the town,
making this one of the most dramatic
stretches of railway in England
and that's not just because of
the views from the trains.
In 1844, Brunei started building
a sea wall to protect the line
standing just a few yards
from the foaming brine,
but the elements were unkind to
his coastal railway.
Heavy rain would cause rock falls,
breaching its defences,
and even now the salty sea spray
that billows up and over on rough days
can effect the operation of the railway.
John Wilkinson has lived here
all his life.
- John, hello.
- Morning, Michael.
There's a bit of spray
coming over the wall,
but I've been on trains and seen it
far worse. How bad does it get?
It gets very bad.
On a bad day you wouldn't possibly
be able to walk along this wall.
When the waves hit this section,
the plumes of water go high in the air
and get blown over onto Marine Parade.
And just to give you some idea of the
height, the actual plumes of water
go right over the top of the footbridge
of the station.
And what effect does that have on
the functioning of the railway?
It does have effect on
some of the train services
because when the plumes of water
go high in the air,
it actually lands on the top of the
trains and gets into the exhaust
and into the electronic system
on the top.
And, historically, it's interrupted
services from time to time?
It has indeed, but when you consider
the length of time it's been here,
I think the interruptions
are not too serious
and any form of transport
is subject to adverse weather.
It's one of the great rides in England.
I think so, yes.
Got to be in the top ten.
(Carmichael) A green tea, please.
Where would you rank this
amongst English train journeys?
- (server) Number one.
- It's a beautiful piece of coastline.
(server) It is. Gorgeous.
Certainly the most picturesque, most
exciting railway line in the country.
You've got one of the best views
of a railway anywhere in Britain.
- Do you like watching trains go by?
- We do, yeah.
Hello. Have you been here before?
Yes. I used to come down here
when I was a baby.
Did you come on the train?
- No, not on the train.
- That's a pity.
- (woman) We used to wave at the trains.
- So you've brought your kids here now.
- My kids are here now.
- Are they waving at the trains?
(woman) They love seeing trains go past.
(Carmichael) Do you know
who built this line?
I don't know who built
this railway line, actually, no.
- Isambard...
- Kingdom Brunei.
And my son is named Noah Isambard
after Brunei.
Wow, you are admirers of Brunei.
Yes, I'm an engineer.
I think his work was fantastic.
Such a pleasure to talk to you,
thank you. Bye-bye. Enjoy your day.
With its track skirting the shore
and with the sea pounding its platforms
and its footbridge, there's no doubt
that Dawlish is Brunelish.
(blows whistle)
The last nine miles of
my current journey
is an exciting quarter-of-an-hour ride
along the coastal tine that Brunet built
for his hapless Atmospheric Railway.
Because even though
the technology failed,
the route has remained in use
for over 150 years.
In the past, my Bradshaw's Guide has
directed me towards places described as
the Switzerland or the Athens
or the Paris of the British Isles.
Now I'm headed for Newton Abbot,
dubbed "the Swindon of the South West".
In Bradshaws day
the station was called Newton Junction.
What became the Southwests Victorian
rail hub was, in the 17th century,
the small market town of Newton Abbots,
an unlikely spot
to shape the history of Britain.
Felicity Cole is
the town museums curator.
I think we've come across something
mentioned in my Bradshaw's,
regarding the declaration that was made
when William of Orange landed in Britain
in 1688. Tell me about that.
Well, William of Orange
made his declaration or his intent
to become King of England in 1688,
so a very politically charged moment.
There were 30,000 troops
that came through the town that day
and extraordinary scene of things like
Finlanders dressed in bearskins
and Spanish mercenaries
with damascene Armour,
but hundreds of them
processing through the town.
So, presumably, anybody that said,
"We don't want that", would have got
fairly well squashed by the army.
(Michael) Fundamentally,
this was a Protestant rebellion
against a Catholic king,
so that's why it says here,
"William III, Prince of Orange,
the glorious defender
of the Protestant religion."
(Felicity) Indeed.
I've come in pursuit of
the town's railway history.
- May we have a look at that, please?
- Absolutely.
In 1892, the Great Western Railway
built a new engine shed,
workshops, locomotive bays and a factory
fashioned on their Swindon works.
The expansion in Newton Abbot meant
that workers needed to be housed,
and whole streets were built
for the purpose.
(Felicity) Here we are in a street
that is really full of railway houses
and where the railwaymen
would have lived.
And here is David Grylls, one of those
railwaymen that lived in the area.
- Hello, David.
- Pleased to meet you.
- Were these all occupied by railwaymen?
- More or less, yes.
There were at one time, I suppose,
39 railwaymen in this one street.
And that ranged from wheel tappers to
guards, goods guards, passenger guards,
enginemen, boilermen and people
who worked in the factory,
so there was quite an extensive mix
right the way throughout
all these terraces.
Did Newton Abbot deserve the title of
the Swindon of the South West?
It indeed did,
it was little Swindon without a doubt.
I can remember when I first started
as a young lad, there were at least
somewhere in the region of a thousand
plus men employed at Newton Abbot.
We boasted at one time
nine working platforms
and the main platform
was at least a quarter of a mile long.
And during the busy season,
we would entertain something in the
region of 350 trains in one weekend.
What was your job?
I was a passenger coach shunter.
Rather a dirty job, wet, miserable,
and if you notice
on most coaching stock,
all the drain pipes run down
onto the back of the poor shunter,
who's in the middle coupling coaches up.
So I used to get very wet, very dirty,
but the money was good.
- They sound like good old days.
- They were indeed good old days.
I confess to going to work as
a small lad where I wore a peaked hat.
I polished the peak and I also polished
the buttons on the front of my jacket.
I was so proud to be a railman.
GWR. God's Wonderful Railway.
I'm very proud to have met you, David.
Thank you so very much indeed.
All the best. Bye-bye.
It was Brunets Atmospheric Railway
that first ran to Newton Abbot.
Patented in 1839 by Samuel Clegg
and the Samuda Brothers,
the system that ran on
atmospheric pressure
was first employed on a Dublin line
in 1844, where Brunei investigated it
and became convinced that it was viable
and even preferable to steam power.
I'm hoping to find out more
at Felicity's museum.
So, Felicity, can you explain to me
how the Atmospheric Railway worked?
The first question I could ask you is,
what do you notice about this model?
No locomotive and obviously a large pipe
running down the centre of the track.
(Felicity) And we've also got
a pumping house or engine house here.
So what the pumping station is
actually doing is evacuating the air
in front of the carriage in the pipe,
and then pressure is building up
in the pipe behind the carriage,
which pushes the whole thing along.
So, you have a train that doesn't
produce any smoke or any steam.
Not very much noise, I imagine?
It's extraordinary.
The passengers
that travelled on it loved it
and used to comment that it was swift,
silent and smokeless.
So despite all the things
that did go wrong with it,
people were very sad when it went.
The Atmospheric Railway
caused great controversy.
Brunel's rival, Robert Stevenson,
claimed that the atmospheric system
would be expensive and less reliable
compared to the steam locomotive
that he'd helped to invent.
Brunei refused to heed
Stevenson's prophetic warning.
This is exciting. is this genuinely
a section of Brunel's pipe?
(Felicity) It is indeed, yes.
The piston would be travelling along
inside this pipe,
which had been evacuated of air
by the pumping house
and as a leather flap
attached here was raised,
the air would come in
behind the piston,
creating the atmospheric pressure
to push the carriage forward.
Then the problem would be the flap had
to return to its place and make a seal,
ready for the next train.
Although the technology had
advantages, it faced two major problems.
Its air pipes corroded
in the salty sea air
and animal fat had to be
manually applied
to stop the leather seals from cracking.
Local legend has it that rats
ate through the seals
and caused the line's closure.
But it was actually the cost of upkeep,
which, after eight months,
finally did for it.
Undaunted, Brunei went on to engineer
the ship SS Great Eastern,
Paddington Station and the magnificent
Royal Albert Bridge in Cornwall,
before he died at the age of just 53.
Well, his qualities certainly
made him my boyhood hero
and he's the hero of many people today
who remember the fantastic achievements
of Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
Indeed.
My railways journey from
London Paddington to Newton Abbot
has taken me past
some of southern England's
most beautiful buildings
and finest views.
My guidebook has opened my eyes to key
events and sights in our island history.
Where George Bradshaw
has guided my tracks,
Isambard Kingdom Brunei
built the tracks.
Standing here
above his Great Western Railway,
I seriously doubt whether a finer
civil engineer ever existed.
On my next journey, my Bradshaw's
would lead me across the Irish Sea,
tracing 19th-century tracks
from Kerry to Galway,
landscapes shot to fame
by Queen Victoria.
If it's good for the royal family,
it's good for everyone.
I'll visit the Irish National Stud
and find myself bucked...
The horse is going very fast now.
Absolutely exhausted.
And hear Irish history,
preserved in song.
♪ There's a land far away
Well done, Michael.
in the British Isles.
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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of these isles
to see what of
Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm now completing my journey
from London to Newton Abbot
and I've arrived alongside
the coastal beauty of what Bradshaw's
would call south Devonshire.
This was the scene of some of
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
greatest railway engineering
successes and worst failures.
And both his triumphs and disasters
proved his genius.
Today I'll take to the sea
with the heroes of the RNLI...
- Couple of big waves coming now.
- There we go. Whoa!
At the moment it feels a bit like, I
imagine, a jockey in the Grand National.
We're going up and down
and over the fences.
...I 'll visit a stormy coastal railway...
When the waves hit this section,
the plumes of water go right over the
top of the footbridge of the station.
And have a close, personal encounter
with a boyhood hero.
This is exciting. is this genuinely
a section of Brunel's pipe?
It is, indeed, yes.
Using my “Bradshaws Guide”,
I'm following the tracks of
Isambard Kingdom Brunei,
master engineer of
the Great Western Railway.
I started at Paddington Station,
a monumental success,
and I'll finish in Newton Abbot
in Devon,
the scene of one of
his biggest disappointments.
The last leg of my journey begins
in Exmouth, detours to Sidmouth,
then crosses the Exe Estuary
to Starcross,
on to Dawlish and,
finally, Newton Abbot.
My Bradshaw's says, "We have
all the romantic allurements of
the watering places of the west,
where we may find
a fund of illimitable enjoyment
in the rich bouquet
that nature has spread before us
on the freshening shores of Devon."
The Victorians could be
pompous and verbose,
but their appreciation of
the beauties of Devon was sincere.
I'm on a line
known locally as The Avocet,
where a locomotive first steamed
the ten miles from Exeter to
my first destination, Exmouth, in 1861.
Once a small fishing village,
Exmouth grew into an important port,
from which Sir Walter Raleigh
launched many of his voyages.
The town became a very popular tourist
destination during the Georgian period
and its two-mile-long promenade
shows that ifs remained so ever since.
♪ Oh, I do love to be
beside the seaside
Already intoxicated by sea air.
Bradshaw's tells me that Exmouth has,
"in its immediate neighbourhood,
a valley sheltered on all sides
from the winds,
and capable of affording
a genial retreat."
"Exmouth is a decidedly healthy place."
But the sea also brings its dangers,
and Exmouth has had a lifeboat station
for more than 200 years.
Over the course of two centuries,
lifeboats have saved the lives of
over 139,000 people
off the coasts of Britain.
They first patrolled the waters
around South Shields in 1790.
Exmouth has had one since 1803,
and hah' a century later
the station joined The Royal
National Lifeboat institution.
Tim Mock is a full-time mechanic
and coxswain.
Tim, you've had a lifeboat at Exmouth
going all the way back to 1803.
Yes, that's correct, yes.
A privately run lifeboat in those days.
And those lifeboats in those days,
how would they have been powered?
Well, that was pulling and sailing
boats, that's rowing and sails only.
What do you think of that?
Very, very hard work. I've had a go
at it in one of the old boats
and just found it impossible.
How they ever managed to row
for hours and hours on end,
I really admire them for that.
Standing on the former slipway
is a reminder that you could be
called out at any time today.
(Tim) That's a possibility.
I mean south-easterly winds here
means the sea is quite rough.
Although it's a nice sunny day, small
boats can get in trouble at any time.
Do people of Exmouth feel
a connection with their lifeboat?
- Definitely, yes.
- Are they supportive?
Very much so. The lifeboads always been
a big pan of the community
and for our side of things, we need
the community to operate the service.
And going back to Victorian times,
the bigger boats
were launched by hand only,
so you'd need 40 or 50 men and women
to pull the boat down here
and out into the water.
I see your present station is 1903,
so you're just post Victorian.
A connection between lifeboats
and railways?
Most definitely. Boats would have been
delivered by the railways.
Spare parts and, in latter years,
tractors and heavier bits of equipment
would all come by rail.
Sir William Hillary founded
The National institution
for the Preservation of Life
from Shipwreck in 1824.
Today, almost 5,000 volunteers
crew lifeboats
and We been invited aboard
the Exmouth all-weather lifeboat
for a scheduled training exercise.
Luckily the Royal National Lifeboat
institution shares my taste
in bright coloured clothes.
Well, I have once before
been out with the RNLI,
but that was in a small inflatable.
This is a completely different kettle of
fish. This is a very substantial boat.
At the helm today is former Royal
Marine, deputy coxswain Scott Ranft.
Well, it's quite surprising
that on a warm and sunny day,
there's quite a swell out here.
We've got a force five wind
heading from an easterly direction,
so it does pick up, especially in
this channel as we come out through,
it picks up because it's quite shallow.
- A couple of big waves coming now.
- There we go. Whoa!
At the moment it feels a bit like, I
imagine, a jockey in the Grand National.
We're going up and down
and over the fences.
That's right.
Roger Jackson, a crewmember for
the last 14 years, has taken the helm.
I've heard he was recently honoured for
leading a particularly hazardous rescue,
manoeuvring the station's inshore
lifeboat to retrieve four young men
from very rough seas.
We had to get them one by one. Climb
and climb, thumping sun' over the top.
Go back round and go in again,
four times.
(Carmichael) What state were they in?
Hypothermic, really cold,
really, really shocked
and extremely pleased to see us.
They were very lucky lads.
And you were given
the bronze medal for gallantry?
That's right, yes, last week
I actually went to London
and the Duke of Gloucester
awarded it to me.
It was a very proud moment for myself
of course,
but also for
Exmouth lifeboat station as well.
I'd love to see it.
(Roger) That's the actual medal.
As you can see, that is Sir William
Hillary, the founder of the RNLI.
- (Carmichael) Wonderful.
- (Roger) Like to have a drive?
I'd love to have a drive,
thank you very much indeed.
- Come through.
- OK.
I've quite often been asked to
take control of a steam engine.
I think I feel more control of this
than I do when it's a locomotive.
(Roger) Hows that, Michael?
Well, it's just a great honour to be
steering this vessel next to a hero.
I don't know about that.
I'm travelling by road
to my next destination.
Sidmouth didn't have a railway
when my guide was written
and the Kine that opened in the 1870s
fell to the Beeching Cuts
of the 1960s.
I'm intrigued to know
why railway-less Sidmouth,
which my “Bradshaws” describes as
“nestled at the bottom of a valley,
between lofty hills 500ft high“,
was deemed important enough for an
entry covering almost a whole page.
This range of cliffs,
according to my guidebook,
has been the theatre of
convulsions or landslips,
one commencing on Christmas Day 1839,
whereby 45 acres
of arable land were lost.
The beach is now fenced off
to the public,
so landslips are not
a thing of the past
and this so-called Jurassic Coast
is of interest to geologists today.
Sidmouth's cliffs
are particularly important,
because they occasionally yield fossils
of rare prehistoric
amphibians and reptiles.
Earth Science Manager Richard Edmonds
is responsible for protecting
this World Heritage site.
- Richard, hello.
- Nice to meet you.
So, for centuries, these cliffs
have been tumbling down?
Well, that's right. They're actually
230 million years old,
but the natural recession rate is
about perhaps five metres a century.
But my Bradshaw's tells me that
on one occasion there was a landslip
where 45 acres of farming land
were lost,
so that has been going on a long time?
Landslides are a different process.
Landslides tend to be enormous,
great son of rending of the earth.
What we're seeing here is
more cliff falls
caused by the sea undercutting
the base of the cliffs.
In the 19th century, did they
take steps to slow down the erosion?
What happened to start with,
Sidmouth was built on
the back of a vast shingle spit.
It was a very healthy beach.
The waves could hit the beach
and be soaked up, the energy,
but in the 1830s they started to,
after big storms,
started to construct sea defences
and those have become
bigger and bigger.
In the 1920s, a great gale
breached the sea wall
and wrought havoc on
much of Sidmouth's esplanade,
so the town built a new higher wall
at the then hefty cost of £100,000.
But in Bradshaws day,
railway builders weren't put off
by high seas and eroding cliffs.
I believe the Victorians tried
to put a railway here?
Yes, that's right.
The plan was to build a harbour
on the western side of Sidmouth
at Chit Rocks and use Salcombe stone,
which comes from a village
just a couple of miles this way.
The plan was apparently to quarry
the stone and then transport it
in a tunnel running parallel
to the back of the cliff.
(Carmichael) What happened?
The railway engine didn't fit in
the tunnel and the company went bust.
- That can't be true, can it?
- It is.
So they got as far as making the tunnel?
That's right, you can still see it
sticking out of the cliff,
but what's happened is
the erosion has come through
and actually eaten away at the tunnel.
The entrance was here
at Pennington Point
and in the last 20 years the cliffs
have receded and it's been lost.
(Michael) So the tunnel added to
the difficulties of the cliff.
Well, it's done its damage, yes.
The cliff has got to the point
where it reached the tunnel
and suddenly there's this increase
in erosion.
That's likely to be one of the reasons
why we've had this very marked
increase in erosion over the last years.
But now the tunnel's gone and the sea is
coming back into the solid geology,
we should see it slow down.
Richard, thank you very much,
I must slip away. Bye-bye.
Back to Exmouth now to take not a train,
but a short boat ride that will deliver
me to the exact spot I'm aiming for.
(announcement) OK, everyone,
welcome on the ferry to Starcross.
I'm on the ferry, crossing the mouth of
the River Exe to Starcross,
a small place, with a big chunk
of railway history.
And I think I can see a relic of it
coming into view now.
The final three destinations
of my journey
all played a pivotal role in
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
greatest railway failure,
his Atmospheric Railway,
where trains were not pulled by steam
locomotive, but forced forward
by atmospheric pressure running through
a pipe on the track.
Starcross is first.
This is a pumping station that was used
on Brunel's Atmospheric Railway.
There's a pub dedicated to
the history of that line
and after a long day I've earned
myself a drink there.
- Good evening.
- Good evening.
- Could I have a half a lager, please?
- You sure can.
I see you're The Atmospheric Railway.
Quite an admirer of Brunei, are you?
I sure am. One of
the greatest engineers we've ever had.
Why are you such an admirer?
Well, it just wasn't
one particular item, was it?
I mean he built bridges, tunnels, boats.
He was just an all-round great engineer.
Well, then the toast is
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
After a days travelling, ifs
a night cap and early to bed for me.
As a boy,
I marvelled at the life of Brunei.
Even though the Atmospheric Railway
was ultimately a failure,
I'm keen to find out more about it.
At my next destination, Dawlish,
the line had a station.
I'm on the Exeter to Paignton
branch line this morning.
Before trains
reached the south Devon coast,
Brunel's challenge was to lay track over
very hilly and sharply curving terrain.
The trains are now powered by diesel,
but the route is almost the same
as in Bradshaw's day.
The result is one of the most thrilling
stretches of track in England.
My Bradshaw's is understandably excited
about this part of the journey:
"The magnificent scenery which
opens on each side as we proceed."
"There is scarcely a mile traversed
which does not unfold
some peculiar picturesque charm
or new feature of its own
to make the eye
dazzled and drunk with beauty."
For me, there's the additional interest
that we're travelling on tracks
that were once pan of
Brunel's doomed Atmospheric Railway.
In 1044, King Edward the Confessor
granted the parish of Dawlish
to his chancellor and chaplain Leofric.
Salt making, fishing and agriculture
were the town's mainstay
until the 18th-century penchant
for taking the sea air and bathing
attracted the aristocratic set.
But when the South Devon Railway
arrived in the 1840s,
the town was open to everyone.
Here at Dawlish, the station is built
between the beach and the town,
making this one of the most dramatic
stretches of railway in England
and that's not just because of
the views from the trains.
In 1844, Brunei started building
a sea wall to protect the line
standing just a few yards
from the foaming brine,
but the elements were unkind to
his coastal railway.
Heavy rain would cause rock falls,
breaching its defences,
and even now the salty sea spray
that billows up and over on rough days
can effect the operation of the railway.
John Wilkinson has lived here
all his life.
- John, hello.
- Morning, Michael.
There's a bit of spray
coming over the wall,
but I've been on trains and seen it
far worse. How bad does it get?
It gets very bad.
On a bad day you wouldn't possibly
be able to walk along this wall.
When the waves hit this section,
the plumes of water go high in the air
and get blown over onto Marine Parade.
And just to give you some idea of the
height, the actual plumes of water
go right over the top of the footbridge
of the station.
And what effect does that have on
the functioning of the railway?
It does have effect on
some of the train services
because when the plumes of water
go high in the air,
it actually lands on the top of the
trains and gets into the exhaust
and into the electronic system
on the top.
And, historically, it's interrupted
services from time to time?
It has indeed, but when you consider
the length of time it's been here,
I think the interruptions
are not too serious
and any form of transport
is subject to adverse weather.
It's one of the great rides in England.
I think so, yes.
Got to be in the top ten.
(Carmichael) A green tea, please.
Where would you rank this
amongst English train journeys?
- (server) Number one.
- It's a beautiful piece of coastline.
(server) It is. Gorgeous.
Certainly the most picturesque, most
exciting railway line in the country.
You've got one of the best views
of a railway anywhere in Britain.
- Do you like watching trains go by?
- We do, yeah.
Hello. Have you been here before?
Yes. I used to come down here
when I was a baby.
Did you come on the train?
- No, not on the train.
- That's a pity.
- (woman) We used to wave at the trains.
- So you've brought your kids here now.
- My kids are here now.
- Are they waving at the trains?
(woman) They love seeing trains go past.
(Carmichael) Do you know
who built this line?
I don't know who built
this railway line, actually, no.
- Isambard...
- Kingdom Brunei.
And my son is named Noah Isambard
after Brunei.
Wow, you are admirers of Brunei.
Yes, I'm an engineer.
I think his work was fantastic.
Such a pleasure to talk to you,
thank you. Bye-bye. Enjoy your day.
With its track skirting the shore
and with the sea pounding its platforms
and its footbridge, there's no doubt
that Dawlish is Brunelish.
(blows whistle)
The last nine miles of
my current journey
is an exciting quarter-of-an-hour ride
along the coastal tine that Brunet built
for his hapless Atmospheric Railway.
Because even though
the technology failed,
the route has remained in use
for over 150 years.
In the past, my Bradshaw's Guide has
directed me towards places described as
the Switzerland or the Athens
or the Paris of the British Isles.
Now I'm headed for Newton Abbot,
dubbed "the Swindon of the South West".
In Bradshaws day
the station was called Newton Junction.
What became the Southwests Victorian
rail hub was, in the 17th century,
the small market town of Newton Abbots,
an unlikely spot
to shape the history of Britain.
Felicity Cole is
the town museums curator.
I think we've come across something
mentioned in my Bradshaw's,
regarding the declaration that was made
when William of Orange landed in Britain
in 1688. Tell me about that.
Well, William of Orange
made his declaration or his intent
to become King of England in 1688,
so a very politically charged moment.
There were 30,000 troops
that came through the town that day
and extraordinary scene of things like
Finlanders dressed in bearskins
and Spanish mercenaries
with damascene Armour,
but hundreds of them
processing through the town.
So, presumably, anybody that said,
"We don't want that", would have got
fairly well squashed by the army.
(Michael) Fundamentally,
this was a Protestant rebellion
against a Catholic king,
so that's why it says here,
"William III, Prince of Orange,
the glorious defender
of the Protestant religion."
(Felicity) Indeed.
I've come in pursuit of
the town's railway history.
- May we have a look at that, please?
- Absolutely.
In 1892, the Great Western Railway
built a new engine shed,
workshops, locomotive bays and a factory
fashioned on their Swindon works.
The expansion in Newton Abbot meant
that workers needed to be housed,
and whole streets were built
for the purpose.
(Felicity) Here we are in a street
that is really full of railway houses
and where the railwaymen
would have lived.
And here is David Grylls, one of those
railwaymen that lived in the area.
- Hello, David.
- Pleased to meet you.
- Were these all occupied by railwaymen?
- More or less, yes.
There were at one time, I suppose,
39 railwaymen in this one street.
And that ranged from wheel tappers to
guards, goods guards, passenger guards,
enginemen, boilermen and people
who worked in the factory,
so there was quite an extensive mix
right the way throughout
all these terraces.
Did Newton Abbot deserve the title of
the Swindon of the South West?
It indeed did,
it was little Swindon without a doubt.
I can remember when I first started
as a young lad, there were at least
somewhere in the region of a thousand
plus men employed at Newton Abbot.
We boasted at one time
nine working platforms
and the main platform
was at least a quarter of a mile long.
And during the busy season,
we would entertain something in the
region of 350 trains in one weekend.
What was your job?
I was a passenger coach shunter.
Rather a dirty job, wet, miserable,
and if you notice
on most coaching stock,
all the drain pipes run down
onto the back of the poor shunter,
who's in the middle coupling coaches up.
So I used to get very wet, very dirty,
but the money was good.
- They sound like good old days.
- They were indeed good old days.
I confess to going to work as
a small lad where I wore a peaked hat.
I polished the peak and I also polished
the buttons on the front of my jacket.
I was so proud to be a railman.
GWR. God's Wonderful Railway.
I'm very proud to have met you, David.
Thank you so very much indeed.
All the best. Bye-bye.
It was Brunets Atmospheric Railway
that first ran to Newton Abbot.
Patented in 1839 by Samuel Clegg
and the Samuda Brothers,
the system that ran on
atmospheric pressure
was first employed on a Dublin line
in 1844, where Brunei investigated it
and became convinced that it was viable
and even preferable to steam power.
I'm hoping to find out more
at Felicity's museum.
So, Felicity, can you explain to me
how the Atmospheric Railway worked?
The first question I could ask you is,
what do you notice about this model?
No locomotive and obviously a large pipe
running down the centre of the track.
(Felicity) And we've also got
a pumping house or engine house here.
So what the pumping station is
actually doing is evacuating the air
in front of the carriage in the pipe,
and then pressure is building up
in the pipe behind the carriage,
which pushes the whole thing along.
So, you have a train that doesn't
produce any smoke or any steam.
Not very much noise, I imagine?
It's extraordinary.
The passengers
that travelled on it loved it
and used to comment that it was swift,
silent and smokeless.
So despite all the things
that did go wrong with it,
people were very sad when it went.
The Atmospheric Railway
caused great controversy.
Brunel's rival, Robert Stevenson,
claimed that the atmospheric system
would be expensive and less reliable
compared to the steam locomotive
that he'd helped to invent.
Brunei refused to heed
Stevenson's prophetic warning.
This is exciting. is this genuinely
a section of Brunel's pipe?
(Felicity) It is indeed, yes.
The piston would be travelling along
inside this pipe,
which had been evacuated of air
by the pumping house
and as a leather flap
attached here was raised,
the air would come in
behind the piston,
creating the atmospheric pressure
to push the carriage forward.
Then the problem would be the flap had
to return to its place and make a seal,
ready for the next train.
Although the technology had
advantages, it faced two major problems.
Its air pipes corroded
in the salty sea air
and animal fat had to be
manually applied
to stop the leather seals from cracking.
Local legend has it that rats
ate through the seals
and caused the line's closure.
But it was actually the cost of upkeep,
which, after eight months,
finally did for it.
Undaunted, Brunei went on to engineer
the ship SS Great Eastern,
Paddington Station and the magnificent
Royal Albert Bridge in Cornwall,
before he died at the age of just 53.
Well, his qualities certainly
made him my boyhood hero
and he's the hero of many people today
who remember the fantastic achievements
of Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
Indeed.
My railways journey from
London Paddington to Newton Abbot
has taken me past
some of southern England's
most beautiful buildings
and finest views.
My guidebook has opened my eyes to key
events and sights in our island history.
Where George Bradshaw
has guided my tracks,
Isambard Kingdom Brunei
built the tracks.
Standing here
above his Great Western Railway,
I seriously doubt whether a finer
civil engineer ever existed.
On my next journey, my Bradshaw's
would lead me across the Irish Sea,
tracing 19th-century tracks
from Kerry to Galway,
landscapes shot to fame
by Queen Victoria.
If it's good for the royal family,
it's good for everyone.
I'll visit the Irish National Stud
and find myself bucked...
The horse is going very fast now.
Absolutely exhausted.
And hear Irish history,
preserved in song.
♪ There's a land far away
Well done, Michael.