Great British Railway Journeys

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Great British Railway Journeys

Michael Portillo produces a fine heritage cheese and discovers a monster cracker, which is key to making plastic, before ending his post-war journey from Merseyside to Teesside.

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Season 15
Michael Portillo's post-war exploration of Merseyside to Teesside finds him in York, a paradise for rail enthusiasts. In the company of some of the most famous locomotives ever built, he recalls the controversy surrounding their relocation from London to a freight depot in York.
Michael Portillo's post-war journey from Merseyside to Teesside resumes at Brayford Pool in Lincoln, where England’s oldest canal, the Fossdyke, meets the city of Lincoln.
Michael Portillo reaches the jet age in the Derby suburb of Peartree, where he tours the engineering colossus, Rolls-Royce. He hears how the company built piston engines for some of the most famous aeroplanes of the Second World War including the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Lancaster Bomber, before developing jet engin...
Michael Portillo twists and shouts through post-war Liverpool proclaiming, 'Long Live Socialism' and swooning at the mention of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
Michael's rail journey through post-war Scotland takes him over the River Tay to Dundee, Scotland’s fourth largest city. He is on the trail of Joseph McKenzie, the father of modern Scottish photography.
At the former Midlothian mining village of Newtongrange, Michael meets the son of a miner whose name loomed large in the disputes of the 1970s and 1980s: vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers, 'Red' Mick McGahey.
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