Railway enthusiasts - there's some good stuff on TV at the moment!

[Globalti]

You've never had it so good; last night while idly wasting time I came across Michael Portaloo on a train trip in Ireland then Portaloo on a train trip in England THEN the delicious Julia Bradbury walking the Speyside Railway with some whisky tasting thrown in - bonus! And a few days ago I stumbled across a fascinating programme on the colliery railways in South Wales with some great colour footage.... when will it end?

I'm not a big railway enthusiast but I enjoy history especially where it involves the Victorians and the Industrial revolution. The common feature in the railway programmes is a sense of sadness at the loss of some magnificent lines at the hands of Dr Beeching. But thank God the Settle-Carlisle was saved, thanks partly to Portaloo himself.

Edit: that Speyside railway looks like a great idea for a family cycling trip this summer; I wonder how long you would need to do it from end to end?

 

[Black Sheep]

Beeching gets blamed for every single line closure that happened. Many actually were closed or were being considered for closure before beeching even got to his desk.

I'll have to look for the colliery railways - I've tended to avoid programs on railways for a little while as it annoys the wife when I'm complaining about the accuracy and blatant mistakes that are made in the commentary etc.

 

[GlasgowGaryH]

There is also a program called Locomotion with Dan Snow on at the moment. Anyone else notice the poor man has had his blue t shirt on for the whole series so far?

 

[vernon]

Beeching gets blamed for every single line closure that happened. Many actually were closed or were being considered for closure before beeching even got to his desk.

I'll have to look for the colliery railways - I've tended to avoid programs on railways for a little while as it annoys the wife when I'm complaining about the accuracy and blatant mistakes that are made in the commentary etc.

Some of Beeching's closures were vetoed by MPs with influence and some closures were irrational and operationally damaging. I witnessed first hand the effects that line closures had in South West Durham - they made visiting relatives in the coal fields a lot more difficult and the closure of the Tebay line was a tad shortsighted but hey ho hindsight has 20-20 vision.

I too tut tut at mistakes made in programmes but one has to remember that the errors are probably made by researchers whose skills are aligned with generic researching and not with researching railway history.

 

[vernon]

THEN the delicious Julia Bradbury walking the Speyside Railway with some whisky tasing thrown in - bonus!

Julia Bradbury - a good walk ruined.

 

[Globalti]

I can't remember which of the programmes it was but there were early narrow-gauge quarry railways, which were already closing for economic reasons before the great mainline railway boom of the mid 1800s. Might have been Julia in Cornwall, now I think about it.

 

[ASC1951]

Most of the railway documentaries on the telly are PuffPuff Porn i.e. concentrated on steam trains. There isn't a lot of interest in hardware after the 1960s and Beeching is a convenient villain because he realised that carrying your fuel with you was a dead technology, even though BR had clung onto it twenty or thirty years too long.

 

[Globalti]

That's the first time I've heard actual railway vehicles mentioned in the Beeching context. My understanding is that he was concerned mostly with redundant routes duplicated by competing investors.

 

[green1]

There isn't a lot of interest in hardware after the 1960s and Beeching is a convenient villain because he realised that carrying your fuel with you was a dead technology, even though BR had clung onto it twenty or thirty years too long.

Is it? Because I've travelled on far more diesel trains then I have electric. Steam could be just as efficient as diesel (hence why it's still used in power stations), the killer was maintenance and infrastructure required for steam that isn't for diesel/electric.

 

[MontyVeda]

personally, i can't get enough if old railway programmes or the old cine footage that comes with them.

yes they have inaccuracies, but so do plenty of other documentaries. The more one watches on a specific subject the more the inaccuracies become apparant... and it's exactly the same in books. blah blah blah.

a few weeks back was one called The Joy of Sets... train sets. All about the history of the model train... fascinating.

Thank god for the model train! Otherwise they wouldn't have had the idea for the big one.


as for the Beeching angle... the government also get a lot of blame for being unable to run the nationalised railways from 1948, but as i understand it, the private rail networks were loosing money hand over fist in the 1930's, and their contribution to the war effort didn't help.

 

[sheddy]

Prob already mentioned but a series of 6 episodes from 1988 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p011v8dj/The_Train_Now_Departing_The_Long_Drag/

 

[ASC1951]

Is it? Because I've travelled on far more diesel trains then I have electric. Steam could be just as efficient as diesel (hence why it's still used in power stations), the killer was maintenance and infrastructure required for steam that isn't for diesel/electric.

Yes, I should have said 'carrying solid fuel with you was a dead technology'. Steam in power stations is a completely different application - it's constant action with a static unit. Even if you applied 21st century techniques like steam turbines and fancy combustion, steam still wouldn't be competitive in a locomotive; that's why it was abandoned on the road even earlier than on fixed tracks.

 

[Minotier]

I have to record such delights and watch them on my off days when the wife is at work!
Always loved the Loco's.
Has there ever (in my humble opinion) been a series to top the BBC's Great Railway Journeys of the World from 1980?
Or a better book than The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux?

 

[sheddy]

http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/vktmr/the-flying-scotsman-a-rail-romance

 

[subaqua]

http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/vktmr/the-flying-scotsman-a-rail-romance

watched most of it- i fell asleep 10 mins before end according to wifey