The Survivors The Train Now Departing

BBC Four Collections -

archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this Collection, Gary Boyd-Hope

has selected programmes celebrating Britain's steam railway legacy.

More programmes on this theme

and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

These people have travelled here overnight

from all parts of the country.

They've booked their special 75 shilling tickets weeks in advance.

Some haven't been able to sleep for the excitement of this 12-hour,

460-mile return journey from Paddington to Birkenhead,

because on Western Region, this has been billed as the last day of steam

and there'll now be no excuse

for forgetting the glory that was once the GWR.

No retired prima donna ever took a curtain call like this.

That particular prima donna was being seen off in the 1960s

and commentators at the time were somewhat sneery

about the train buffs, the railway enthusiasts,

the spotters who wished to witness and mourn the passing of an age.

Don't you like to do anything else but the railways?

Yeah, there is girls and...

horses and, yeah, there's other things, but steam engines are nice.

You feel you have to have a steam engine, you know.

You've got to have one every now and again.

All these chaps say the same - they've got to have a steam engine.

You might be able to go a fortnight without a steam engine

and then you've got to go and find one somewhere.

But why can't you do all this with a diesel engine?

Why couldn't you clean a diesel?

Well, there's no... I mean, there's no noises.

That thing's got a voice up the front, there.

It's making a noise, it's speaking. It's a terrific noise it makes.

It just makes lovely noises.

When it's raising steam, 90 tons of it, raising steam,

it sings like a kettle and it's terrific, a lovely thing.

The end of the age of steam? Well, not quite.

In June 1965, Clun Castle was the last steam engine

to haul a passenger train out of Paddington.

In November, Clun Castle was back again

to haul another last train out of Paddington.

Last weekend, she hauled two more last trains and now,

the railway enthusiasts are preparing for the next last train.

But now, British Rail's patience has been exhausted.

From next year, they say there'll be no more steam trains anywhere.

Then, it seems, we'll be in for a train drain.

The villain, with that familiar and reminiscent moustache,

was, of course, Dr Beeching,

who got rid of a third of the network and hastened the end of steam.

So far as he and British Rail were concerned,

the last, last, LAST steam train

ran August 11th 1968 with tickets at 15 guineas apiece.

In the ten years up to 1968,

a total of 16,000 steam locomotives were withdrawn from active service -

with almost all of them ending at the knacker's

like any other kind of scrap.

A very few went to museums or enthusiasts,

but it was a great time for scrap.

In 1963 alone, 500 locomotives, 4,000 coaches, 130,000 wagons

and 250,000 tons of rail were smashed, broken

and cut up into little pieces, ready for making into something else...

..such as diesels and electrics.

They were cleaner, easier, cheaper, simpler, but somewhat boring.

Like certain caterpillars and worms,

both ends even looked very much the same.

And most of us began to forget the snags of steam,

such as getting red hot cinders in your eye,

and started to think wistfully of old days when coal and steam were king.

But the old days still lived, after a fashion.

One scrap merchant at Barry in South Wales

had kept over 200 engines in case his men ever grew short of work.

Wagons were easier to break up

and the locos could bide their time and rust.

From Dai Woodham's point of view,

it was good to be at the receiving end of scrap from British Rail.

The government announced that there was to be a £250 million programme

to modernise British Rail.

I thought, "Well, that's a gravy train.

"I'm going to get on it one way or another."

Anyway, I was accepted as a man who's allowed to tender

and we've never stopped since as far as railway works are concerned -

rolling stock, engines, railway lines, so forth.

And we have been breaking up British Railways now for nearly 35 years.

It took really 140 years to build British Railways

and we'll have literally scrapped it in 30, 30 to 40 years.

Word got around about Dai Woodham's scrap yard

and his 200 engines became a place of pilgrimage.

Not so much for youngsters, who see everywhere as a potential playground,

but for adults, who in the end bought every single one,

whatever its condition.

If you look at some of the engines which have left Barry in the past

and are now in full steam, it's a fantastic performance.

This particular example, which is pretty rough,

but I forecast that

when the preservationists have finished with it,

she'll be like the day she was built.

Magic. Pure magic.

In 1966, sold for scrap to Dai Woodham and waiting for the end

was the express engine Port Line, of the Merchant Navy class.

Instead, and 16 years later, the rusting machinery

was brought by a group intent upon recreating this piece of the past.

Such enthusiasm was plainly abnormal

and promptly earned stern questioning from a visiting journalist.

Why do you think people are prepared to put in time,

effort and spend money to restore an old hulk like this?

It's a funny thing.

I suppose you could say it's a peculiar British disease,

steam railway enthusiasm.

It attracts an awful lot of people and we've put a lot of time in,

and we've got an awful lot of time to put in

over the next five or seven years,

depending on the sort of support we can get.

But she'll run again and she'll run very fast.

Initially, and with a police escort, £6,500 worth of engine,

weighing some 90 tons, ran very slowly.

But number 35027 was on its way.

And where to, but a field close by the old railway workshops at Swindon.

This place used to employ 14,000 people

and was the largest such establishment anywhere in Europe.

In the old days it could and did

make and repair engines in a most routine fashion

but, following the railway closures,

most of the workshops went as well, including the famous A shed,

where all the Great Western engines had been made.

Once again, it was a great time to be in scrap.

But a few people were determined to keep a part of Swindon works alive.

The new owners, Tarmac Ltd,

agreed to the creation of a steam repair centre here.

Its first visitor was Port Line and by early 1988,

like any phoenix in the midst of all this carnage,

number 35027 was in steam again, five years after restoration had begun

and after £100,000 had been spent.

The amount of work had been prodigious

but when Port Line stood again,

more or less complete, it was a great occasion.

On every side was destruction and disrepair

but the thought of a piece of resurrection among so much havoc

was great joy to all concerned -

notably for Bill Trite, founder of the restoration team.

Well, I think our secret was that we had the right mixture of people.

It was partly by chance and partly by design.

But it's been necessary to get a group together

who are competent mechanically and in engineering terms.

Also financially, administratively

and for matters of promotion

and I think it's fair to say, there's been a dash of vision

and unremitting determination to succeed

and all these various diverse factors have come together

and this is the result.

Britain IS a curious country, its paid workers so frequently complain,

but volunteers like Willie Bath will work in all weathers,

whatever the job.

He was in charge of the restoration.

From organising various different components to go on it,

you read through the drawings, you ask people,

you look at photographs to see what's missing.

It comes as a great shock sometimes when you look round it

and think, "God, I didn't know it had one of those!"

You've got to go out and suddenly get a picture or a drawing of it.

That won't suffice, of course, if you're not machined up.

If it needs to be cast, you've got to make a pattern for it.

You think maybe you can find if somebody else has one,

if it's already been dealt with - that's all very rewarding,

but at the same time, it can be very, very dismal.

We've been out in snow drifts, we've been out in the pouring rain,

we've been covered from head to foot in filth

trying to brighten the thing up.

We've worked for five years without any mains electricity

and without any mains water.

We've recently, thanks to the good offices of Tarmac,

got a cover over our head.

Until then, I mean it's been purgatory.

I mean, if you want to boil a cup of tea,

you've got to switch all the electric tools off to get the kettle going.

It's not all honey and pie.

There are days when you just really wish that

you could go and do something else.

You can't wait for the pub to open some nights, it's that bad.

The engine does have to be inspected thoroughly at every degree.

The boiler inspector,

he has to check that the gauges that you have are correct.

So, he has a master gauge which he will put on to check that

your gauge is not reading wildly inaccurately

to give some dangerous problem

because the truth is, we are all just but enthusiastic amateurs.

You know you've done everything right - you've asked enough people,

they've told you exactly what to do and they've been doing it for years,

and you've done it and you've done it

and they've looked at it and they've checked it -

and then it moves and you think, "Oh, well, we knew it would."

So, Port Line moves and had been inspected.

Moving up and down a short length of track,

however exciting at the time, can suddenly seem most unsatisfactory.

So where is a longer length of track,

and where better than the Bluebell Railway in Sussex?

Its five miles of isolated line

form the first length of standard gauge to be saved.

Not only were the rails preserved,

but everything possible to give visitors a flavour of the old days.

And the place has also been a boon for filmmakers

whenever the script calls for a steam train to be part of the action.

Steam trains are no longer part of normal experience

and young engine drivers of today can wonder where all the soot comes from,

even if they don't care how they get rid of it.

But the latest attraction is Port Line, in steam once more

with the experts assessing the chances of a trouble-free run

and the restorers also anxious.

It has kept me awake a lot at nights,

to make sure that the thing's ready and that it's done right.

I mean, it's a huge great big thing.

I mean, it's a really powerful machine.

You've got to make sure it's right

and we've brought it to the Bluebell here

for them to check over with us as well and make sure that it is right.

I spent about 70 hours a week on her

in January, February, March and April, seven days a week almost

and I don't know - I mean, there was such an intensity in that.

It was, in fact, good fun -

very tired, straight to bed, straight up, straight to work.

It just went on and on and on.

It's been such a transformation from its original state,

that you look forward to being able to do another one,

because you've been through it all, you know how to get round the jobs,

you know the problems you're going to encounter.

You know the people to talk to about it,

you know the places to get the equipment.

The second one has always got to be the easier one, really,

and I look forward to getting on with it.

ENGINE WHISTLES

Be all that as it may, it must be more fun with the finished product

and marvelling yet again at the power and glory of steam.

And remembering that this huge machine

had just been rusting away as scrap.

But for Willie Bath,

the engine is far more than fire and water and steel.

It's a time machine.

It recaptures the only time in your life where you are, I think,

old enough to perceive what's going on around you

but you haven't got to worry about it.

You don't know whether your parents can pay their mortgage or rates

because they don't bother to tell you

because you're not old enough to understand.

All you know is your beans and toast are on the table at six o'clock.

I mean, you just sit there, haven't got a care in the world.

13 years old, what do you know? What do you know is going to happen?

It's wonderful, those days.

Bringing back an express engine is one undoubted achievement,

but the enthusiasm of the restorers doesn't stop there.

Why not bring back an entire railway, as in Derbyshire?

Buxton, in the Peak District, is still a part of British Rail

but it's also the starting point of a scheme to reconstruct

miles of scrapped mainline with track, signal boxes, trains, the lot.

And one of its creators is Martin Ashworth.

It's a tremendous challenge.

I think it's part of the British character, really,

that the bigger the challenge, more people like to rise to it.

A lot of preserved railways have taken over redundant lines

where the track's already been there,

the buildings were there. This is even worse than that.

We've everything to start from, absolutely everything, rock bottom

apart from the actual track bed, which is still there.

It's a tremendous challenge, really,

and as you overcome each stage it's very, very satisfying.

It's taken us 12 years just

to persuade the planners that we're serious

But we refuse to go away, we've come back fighting each time

and now, they accept that we are serious.

They've looked at what we've done here, we can run trains,

we can restore carriages and wagons, locomotives to full working order,

we can operate, we can lay track and do building work and, you know,

I'm sure we've now convinced the authorities that we are serious.

So even that, overcoming sort of, not a prejudice, if you like,

but official sort of scepticism of a group of amateurs

taking on something of this size,

overcoming even that problem is rewarding in itself.

But then to go on and overcome all the practical problems,

getting an engine out of a scrap yard,

restoring it to full working order,

restoring an old carriage, vintage carriage or whatever

to working order for the public, laying the track,

seeing an old track bed reinstated as a proper working railway again,

reinstating an old signal box -

this one here behind us, we had to remove from Wirksworth in pieces,

bring it up here, and rebuild it.

We found the frame materials at another site, we've rebuilt those.

So, bringing all the pieces together and recreating days gone by, really,

so it's very satisfying.

The engine number, 1823,

and the year it was born. 1924 is the year that this engine was built.

In a sense, the derided steam buffs have come into their own

for they're now educational, promoting our heritage,

assisting tourism, creating jobs,

benefiting all down the line - their line.

One more.

'Well, really, I think showing children round is probably

'one of the most satisfying of all the jobs we do up here

'because a lot of them haven't seen or been on a train.

'It's surprising, really -

'even a diesel haul train, let alone a steam haul train.

'It's a completely new experience for them.

'They get a great thrill out of it.

'In turn, their enthusiasm for it, for something so new as this,

'comes over to yourself.'

And on its way through, it warms the water,

boils the water to make steam.

'I think recently it has to be said

'that with Thomas The Tank Engine being revitalised on the television,

'this has brought steam engines

'to the attention of a whole new generation of children.

'You need only put a little face on the front of one of the steam engines

'and immediately it becomes Thomas.

'But you never tire of it, really,

'because of course, this is our hobby, it's our enthusiasm.

'We like to put over to other people

'and hope that it sort of rubs off on then,

'that perhaps some of them will join us and become future volunteers. '

ENGINE WHISTLES

This site is more or less complete now.

There's a couple of years' work, but it's more or less complete.

It is at least functioning as a steam centre,

we're at least able to give rides.

But what we'd very much like to do now is get out,

down the track bed, and get some serious track laying done.

What the conservers wish to do

is to make use of British Rail's first five miles out of Buxton

and then lay 16 miles of line on an old track bed

and finally meet up with British Rail again at Matlock.

Currently, those five miles out of Buxton are used for quarry traffic.

The quarry traffic will continue

and the conservers may find it necessary

to lay their own length of track alongside the existing line.

Working south from Buxton, the line goes parallel to the A6 road,

in what is basically a gorge.

The railway moves from one side of the gorge to the other.

It crosses the river several times.

It's on an embankment one minute, through a tunnel the next.

It's very, very inspiring scenery down there.

The British Railway line turns off up through Great Rocks Dale.

Our line diverges there and goes down through Miller's Dale,

again a lovely part of the world.

It's a very deep river valley there,

the viaducts there are very, very tall, very impressive structures.

The remaining part of the track bed, 16 miles or so, is derelict now.

The track's all gone. But luckily, it's not overgrown.

A lot of it has been retained as a bridle path,

a walkway for hikers for the summer months.

So the track bed is still clear

and we feel we can reinstate the line down there quite easily.

My own favourite spot, I think, is the Millers Dale area, really.

I like the stretch in particular

between Blackwell Mill and Millers Dale.

There's about two miles there

and it's very, very nice there with the deep limestone gorge, very nice.

Then on down through Monsal Dale,

there's quite a nice famous view of Monsal Dale -

probably the classic view, really, of the Peak Line, I would have said.

Then on down through Bakewell, Longstone, Hassop

and then eventually, of course, on to Matlock.

At Matlock, the restored line will meet up again with British Rail.

And it's near Matlock, with pick and shovel as in the old days,

that the restorers are making a start in creating the old line once again.

The navvies of the 1980s are learning what it was like

to make a railway when human muscles did virtually all the work -

and nothing has got any lighter!

OK, a touch more, Andy.

There's an old saying on the railways that the lightest thing

was the pay packet and it's a fact that everything you touch

on a standard-gauge railway scheme is heavy.

Laying track, each 60 foot length of track weighs a ton.

So it needs quite a lot of you to get round

using rail tongs to actually put the piece of rail in position.

It's all heavy work, there's no two ways about it,

so we certainly can understand how the old navvies used to be.

I suppose we have one up on them

in the sense that they have provided the railway line itself for us.

All we are doing now is putting the track back,

we're replacing walls, ballasting, this sort of thing,

which is quite small beer

compared to what they had to put up with 100-odd years ago.

They had to hew the whole railway out of solid rock.

If somebody works in an office during the week,

they might like to get out on the track laying gang at the weekends,

which gives them a release from their normal day-to-day work.

And vice versa, somebody who's doing a manual job

may care to take on some of the commercial work, this sort of thing.

We provide a vast variety of tasks and interests

within the railway itself.

It will undoubtedly be a formidable labour

but up at Bo'ness, by the Firth of Forth, they have already done it.

The Scottish Railway Preservation Society

moved in on a piece of wasteland and turned it into a railway system,

a living museum, a showpiece of the days of steam -

entirely to the liking of a volunteer driver such as John Burnley,

one of the new-style museum attendants.

ENGINE WHISTLES

Whether an express train or a goods engine,

the appeal of steam is much the same.

It's a very basic kind of machine.

There's nothing subtle about a steam engine.

You take these basic elemental forces like fire and a bit of water

and make it into steam.

There's nothing like the feeling of power you get.

I remember the first time I stood in a steam engine

and the driver opened the throttle and it moved,

and there's nothing like it. It's magnificent.

In the early '60s,

when the modernisation programme was happening very quickly

and steam was being eclipsed very quickly all over Britain,

not just Scotland,

there were growing lines of scrap or to-be-scrapped steam engines

standing in sidings up and down the country.

I would loved to have had my own steam engine.

And in fact, you could buy one in those days.

£500 would have bought you a steam engine.

So it's all my father's fault, because he wouldn't spend the money!

It wasn't just fathers who wouldn't spend the money.

If anything was to be kept,

it usually went ever so cheaply into an ordinary museum.

But a few escaped this net and went on running.

I remember there were four of them

which were restored by BR in 1958 and '59

and which were used in enthusiasts' specials all over Scottish Region

and I remember all of these engines at one time or another,

either by travelling behind them or by watching them.

It was a splendid sight.

Nothing quite equalled these things in the original company colours.

The colours shine more brightly in a museum,

but a silent Glen Douglas somehow isn't right.

I remember the Glen especially,

because that was one that I managed to get a footplate ride on.

We'd been to St Andrew's and we came back to Perth

and I talked to the footplate inspector at Perth.

I was still very young - I must have been 14 something like it -

and he let me travel in the engine after Perth,

sat up on the high seat on the fireman's side of the Glen

and kept out of the way.

It was a splendid experience, something you can't forget.

There were two tunnels up there

and they were no more straight than the rest of that railway

and we went battering up through there,

steam and smoke billowing through the cabin

and the fire's glow reflecting off it, and there's nothing like it.

You can't forget. I wouldn't have been any place else on earth.

It's difficult to recognise it as the same engine.

Sitting in the museum, it's accessible, people can see it,

it's well looked after.

You can't criticise what's happened to it

but at the same time, it lacks something.

It's not quite a live steam engine.

Such as number 673, Maude,

pulling and puffing and belching with its vintage train.

Wasteland has become a vintage railway line

and what used to be is living now so that this is history today.

Bo'ness railway station looks 100% Victorian

and IS 100% Victorian in that every part of it was made then,

even if the different parts

are to be brought to this one site from all over Scotland

to make one complete piece of Victoriana.

So what is it that we are doing with all this preservation?

Do we love half living in different ages than our own?

Are we becoming a nation of museum keepers,

hating to throw anything away?

And if we have thrown it away, we seem to love bringing it back again.

Steam can be called noisy, smoky, dirty,

back breaking, difficult, costly, archaic

but for lots of people, it has a sort of magic.

And currently, those who favour the magic are preserving,

conserving, restoring as hard as they can go.

It's full steam ahead, just as it used to be.

ENGINE WHISTLES