Great British Railway Journeys
Great British Railway Journeys is a TV show on SBS ONE. The program has been available since 2023. A total of 26 episodes have been broadcast, most recently in August 2024.
Last episode
28:59
28:59Great 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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29:00Michael 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.
28:27Michael 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.
29:01Michael 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...
29:01Michael Portillo twists and shouts through post-war Liverpool proclaiming, 'Long Live Socialism' and swooning at the mention of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
29:02Michael'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.
29:01At 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.
29:02At Pollok Country Park in Glasgow, Michael joins a women's running club, the Bellahouston Harriers, for a warm-up session. He learns that during the 1960s women were not allowed to compete in marathons until one Scottish woman refused to play by the rules.
28:49At the home of Scottish football, Glasgow's Hampden Park stadium, Michael Portillo admires the oldest football trophy in the world and hears how the passing game was born there. Young footballers training at the Jimmy Johnstone Academy invite Michael to join them on a big day for one teenage player.
28:53Michael Portillo boards the West Highland Line to begin a new railway journey across Scotland’s central belt from the Arrochar Alps to the Loch of the Lowes. At the head of Loch Long he meets a legendary octogenarian munro-bagger to find out what makes a Scottish peak a munro and what motivates completers to scale all 282 ...
28:59Michael begins the final leg of his journey at the Transport Research Laboratory, in Wokingham, where they have been keeping Britain’s roads safe for 90 years. Out on the road in a 1967 MGB Michael learns how practical research into road safety led to innovations such as seatbelts, zebra crossings, and mini roundabouts.
28:59Michael Portillo reaches Havant, a town that rapidly expanded after the Second World War and attracted new manufacturing, including a factory making a new and exciting toy: Scalextric, an electric racetrack with model racing cars.
28:56Michael Portillo reaches England's south coast to continue his exploration of post-war Britain. He begins in Dorset on the Swanage Railway, riding a glorious 1940s steam locomotive. He is on the trail of one of Britain's most popular children's authors, Enid Blyton.
29:01Michael Portillo joins Navy Wings pilots for a spectacular close formation flight in the skies over Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton. It's the experience of a lifetime as his 1954 Harvard single-engine aircraft is flanked by two more vintage aircraft, a de Havilland Chipmunk and a Supermarine Seafire.
28:54Beginning at London Marylebone, the last great Victorian railway terminus to be built in the capital, Michael Portillo embarks on a post-war exploration of Britain's southern counties.
Season 14
28:59
28:59 Expired
Michael Portillo is on the last leg of his journey from the train-building in Derby to the aircraft manufacturing base of Filton. From Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, he heads to the fairy tale castle of Eastnor. 29:11 Expired
On this leg of his railway journey from the industrial West Midlands to the rural counties of the southwest, Michael stops in Wolverhampton. Where the ever-increasing demand for workers during the post war boom years saw immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia arrive in Britain. 29:02 Expired
Michael railway journey through the Midlands and West Country reaches the heart of the Warwickshire countryside, where the on-going construction of Britain's biggest railway project takes place. 28:55 Expired
Beginning this time in Coventry, Michael recalls the destruction by the German Luftwaffe of the city's gothic cathedral in November 1940. He hears how architect Basil Spence won a competition to build it anew and tours the breathtakingly modernist concrete structure built alongside the medieval ruin. 28:48 Expired
Michael begins in the city of Derby at its famous 19th century railway works, he hears how the Victorian sheds now house some of the latest assembly lines in Britain for building electric trains.