Walking Britain's Lost Railways

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Season 3
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This final episode finds Rob exploring the lost railways of Northern Ireland - and there are many to choose from! Northern Ireland is only a little larger than the counties of Yorkshire, but it once boasted an incredible 1200 kilometres of railway. Two-thirds of that network has now vanished.
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This penultimate episode finds Rob in Kent, following a quiet, rural line that exploded into prominence during two world wars. The Elham Valley Railway once linked Canterbury to Folkestone, via the chalk downs of the 'Garden of England'.
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Rob is in Yorkshire on the trail of a man once known as the 'Railway King'. George Hudson rose from farming origins to become Lord Mayor of York, and the greatest railway builder of all. During the 'railway mania' of the 1840s, Hudson controlled almost a third of the country's rail network.
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Rob delves further back in time than ever before to explore the copper mining that once dominated Cornwall. From north coast, to south coast, he follows Cornwall's first two railways, and discovers how the deep mines they served prompted the invention of the all-important steam engine.
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This episode sees Rob in the heart of England, following a high-speed railway that once tore its way through the towns and cities of the East Midlands. The Great Central Railway was the final great line of the Victorian era - the last main line to be built in Britain until the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, more than a century ...
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Rob's third outing sees him crossing the charming Cotswolds, following the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway. This region is picture postcard rural England - rolling hills, honey-coloured cottages, and plenty of celebrities and the odd prime minister, rushing to their country abodes. But as this lost railway reveals, f...
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Rob follows an epic 70 mile route across the Grampian Mountains - the first railway line to make a direct link between Scotland's Lowlands and its glorious west coast.
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Rob Bell discovers the now-abandoned lines that unlocked the wild coastline of north Devon. He begins by following the dramatic Barnstaple and Ilfracombe Railway, and then crosses to the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway.
Season 2
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This time Rob's lost railway is rather different - because it might just come back. The Waverley Route, as it was known, ran south from Edinburgh for a hundred miles, through the Scottish Borders to Carlisle, connecting with what we now call the West Coast Main Line. When it closed in 1969, there was uproar.
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From King’s Lynn to Great Yarmouth, this episode sees Rob in Norfolk, following a lost railway through some of the quietest parts of England, but also some of the richest country estates of all.
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This episode sees Rob north of the Border in Aberdeenshire, following a railway that brought the eyes of the world, for the first time, to the Scottish Highlands. But it did it with the help of the original global megastar - Queen Victoria.
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Rob Bell travels to the north west corner of Wales to find lost railways that once powered the world’s greatest slate industry, and sealed our modern love of the Snowdonia scenery.
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Rob turns the clock back to the very dawn of the railway age. Our modern railways were ‘born’ in the industrial heartlands of the North-East, where for over 150years, coal was king.
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This episode sees Rob in search of a remarkable railway line - one that cut an outrageous path through the dramatic hills and gorges of the Peak District. This was no branch line either, but an 1860s express route between London and Manchester.
Season 1
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The lost line from Ruabon to Barmouth on the coast represents a sea change in how ordinary Victorian working families were granted affordable access to the strange new landscape and language of the beautiful Welsh heartlands.
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The story of the Somerset and Dorset line is one of investors, certain of the wealth they would generate, overcoming tremendous difficulties to build the line, only to find the landscape too punishing to avoid financial ruin.
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This is the story of a freight line, built to traverse the tricky landscape of the Lake District to transport minerals from the many Cumberland mines, but which later was embraced by tourists eager to explore the spectacular countryside. Rob begins his journey in Penrith Station, where he’s advised that the lost line begin...
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Rob’s journey through Dartmoor from Plymouth to Exeter begins in unlikely surrounds: in the garage of model railway enthusiast Bruce Hunt. Bruce has meticulously recreated the beginning of this line in miniature, including a model of Rob himself, and explains how to trace the now lost line through the dense overgrowth whic...
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Rob starts his journey in the famous steel town of Sheffield, where he’ll be following the old Woodhead Line, through the Pennines, to the industrial powerhouse of Manchester. This film is about human endeavour against all the odds, building, and running a railway through one of the most inhospitable parts of the country.
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This episode takes Rob on a Scottish adventure along the old route from Elgin to Portsoy, a lost line which served the fishing and whisky industries so vital to the local communities. Rob wonders at the formidable Elgin station, which still stands strong before he tracks the line along the coast, sampling the whisky and fi...
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