Great Rail Tales

Historian Dr Alexander Medcalf reflects on the inter-war years, a period when expectations of what travel by train could provide rose in line with the sleek marketing and glossy poster campaigns which served up beautiful, luxurious images of travel.  We might reflect on the era as the golden era of train travel in the UK but behind the glossy images Alexander Medcalf reveals the moans and complaints which passengers levelled at the...

Leabrooks Central is a unique, homebuilt replica railway station in Richard’s back garden.

The idea came after Richard bought his partner Katherine a model of a 3F Jinty steam train she used to ride on during her childhood. This led to building a track for it roll on and a station for it to halt in. The build grew and grew.

Their creation, which they have named "Leabrooks Central" has been adorned with model locomotives, a ticket d...

Bill shares the history and stories of the unique role of the British Transport Police.  Created in  September 1825 as a means to maintain law and order among some of the wilder elements of the navvies who built the railway, the transport police have enjoyed a colourful and important history, intricately interwoven with the evolution of the railways and the people who journey on them.  In the first world war while officers joined u...

In the early morning of 22nd May 1915 a troop train carrying the 7th Battalion of The Royal Scots left Larbet for Liverpool.  At Quintinshill, just north of Gretna, a local passenger train had been left on the mainline to allow a following express train to overtake it. It would normally have been held in a loop. The troop train barrelled into it and derailed onto the northbound line. Where a minute later the Glasgow bound express a...

Mark Gardner from mental health charity Darlington Mind talks about how they’ve been inspired by Railway 200 to come up with a creative project where their clients and local art groups paint iconic local locomotives.  Taking inspiration from the likes of Locomotion No. 1, The Mallard brick train sculpture and The Derwent, among others, the project has seen the paintings spread out across the town, communicating messages about both ...

As a young boy Rufus found happiness travelling by rail. He watched and learnt from his mother who was studying for a MA about how the development of the railway started to impact the development of society. It led to the mass migration of people, the redesign of housing layout as places like Liverpool Street station enabled a much more mobile population.

As a rail industry leader today, he reflects on the wider impact of the devel...

Louise was a single mum trying to work out how to put her girls through higher education when she applied to join the railway as a guard. She landed in a very male dominated world and faced prejudices form the outset.

Despite this, her career blossomed, and she started to drive for change for women in rail, changing places, polices and people along the way. Her career in rail has taken her from Hull around the world and supported h...

Steve Melia describes the joy and sense of discovery he finds when he uses the railway as part of his walks. Starting from one station his walks aren’t defined by looping back to the beginning to find the car, but instead but exploring which stations can be linked up and finding new routes that interconnect around the network. Both urban and rural railwalks open up the environment around us in a completely different way by rail and...

From making souffles at over 70 mph to collecting fresh langoustines from the pier at Mallaig, Chef Neil Forbes launched his career (and found love) in the galley of The Royal Scotsman.

Fine dining on the rails creates a unique set of challenges for any chef, from sourcing their ingredients from producers and fishermen along the line to having an in-depth knowledge of where all the station bins are. Neil’s Great Rail Tale is full o...

The first railway chemical laboratory was opened in 1864 by the London & North Western Railway at Crewe, and the last ones lost their direct link to the rail industry when it was privatised in 1996. Whatever their expertise, every railway chemist or ‘stink’ has been asked the same question: “What do you actually do”?

In this episode, stinkers David Smith, Ian McEwean, John Sheldon and Ian Cotter recount some the invaluable work...

Songwriter, record producer and publisher, Pete Waterman is also an avid train enthusiast, sharing an interest in model railways with Jools Holland and Rod Stewart. Before a career in music Pete worked for BR, but it was watching the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral following the war that sparked his love of model railway building.

Today he holds the world record for the biggest mobile model railway display, 999.90 metres of track ...

The railway isn’t just in Phil Hibberd’s blood; it’s in his DNA. The son of a railway engineer and a railway wages clerk who met at the local Railway Social Club, his ancestry in the railway industry can be traced back to the mid 19th Century.

It was in retirement that his father, Derek Hibberd, started to trace the family heritage. Finding links to the railway in Bombay and across the UK, one of the most sentimental links was to b...