Bardon Mill to Wigton Great British Railway Journeys


Bardon Mill to Wigton

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In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

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His name was George Bradshaw,

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and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.

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Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,

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what to see and where to stay.

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Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys

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across the length and breath of the country

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to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

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My Bradshaw's is now guiding me across Northern England.

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The castles that I've seen recently remind us

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of the long wars between the Scots and the English.

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And now I'm going to visit the very icon of that enmity.

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For, as even recent history has shown us,

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rulers who want to maintain separation between peoples build walls.

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On today's leg of the journey,

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I'll be getting down and dirty in a Roman barracks.

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-Well, I am your slave. Back to work.

-Back to work. Quite right as well.

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Discovering a small invention that made a big difference to the travelling public.

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-Let me do the dog ticket first. That's easy enough.

-That's it.

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One dog ticket.

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And drinking in spectacular engineering triumphs in the Cumbrian countryside.

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-Thank you for going so slowly over the viaduct.

-You're welcome.

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-Isn't that a beautiful thing?

-Oh, it's beautiful, aye.

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I started this journey in Berwick-upon-Tweed,

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and I'm travelling southwest across the shoulder of England,

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and will end my trip by crossing the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man.

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Today's leg of the journey begins at Bardon Mill,

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on historic Hadrian's Wall,

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and takes me through Cumbria's breathtaking landscape

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to the industrial town of Wigton.

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My Bradshaw's says that Hadrian's Wall is nearly

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700 miles long from sea to sea.

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I'm afraid that's wrong by about a factor of ten.

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It's much shorter than that.

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Bradshaw's goes on to say,

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"It was built by the Roman conquerors of Britain

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"to secure themselves from the troublesome savages beyond."

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Scottish viewers may wish to quarrel with the accuracy of that as well.

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Having studied History at university,

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I've always been drawn to Britain's Roman past.

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So I'm alighting at Bardon Mill,

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on the Hadrian's Wall country line,

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32 miles from Newcastle,

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to see the iconic barrier between

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warring populations which stretches back two millennia.

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If you love history, as I do, you'll adore Hadrian's Wall.

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The Emperor Hadrian was facing rebellions in Libya, in Egypt.

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How history repeats itself!

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And he thought he might at least limit his problems

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by building a wall to keep out the Caledonians.

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It runs from coast to coast.

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It was 11 feet high. It had ditches.

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It had a castle every mile.

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It had fortresses big enough to hold 17,000 troops.

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Four legions built it in eight years.

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It was the most fantastic engineering project.

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You have to be impressed.

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And you have to be depressed

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that so much effort was put into keeping two peoples separate.

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The Victorians, with their new-found freedom to travel on trains,

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loved to visit ancient sites.

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One of their favourite destinations was

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the Roman garrison fort of Vindolanda,

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where they indulged their passion for the new craze of archaeology.

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I've followed in their footsteps

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and I'm meeting site director Patricia Birley.

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I've just come from Hadrian's Wall.

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How does the fort here relate to Hadrian's Wall?

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Well, you're standing a mile south of Hadrian's Wall here, Michael.

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There were forts like Vindolanda

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about every seven to eight miles along the Stanegate Road.

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And it used to protect the road for travellers, trade and so forth.

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And make a frontier, really.

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The aristocracy had habitually undertaken the grand tour of Europe,

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exploring the Renaissance and classical antiquities.

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From the early 1800s, the British started to take an interest

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in their own Roman history.

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Archaeology increased its appeal and the Victorians realised

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that there were treasure-troves to be explored

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within their own country.

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However, their methods of excavation were somewhat basic.

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We have a term for it in the North of England,

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we call it "howking", which is digging a hole to find something.

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But having said that, the antiquarian excavators

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did try to record everything that they were doing,

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and indeed gave papers to the newly-formed

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literary and philosophical and archaeological societies

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that were springing up.

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That was the start of what we would call modern archaeology.

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The first tourist group to visit Vindolanda arrived in 1849.

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Their only access to the site was on a far from luxurious industrial railway.

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This wagonway had been built to carry stone from the quarries.

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Our first pilgrims got in the, I hope, cleaned-out wagons.

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And the wagons stopped just on the hillside beyond us there.

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And the pilgrims got out and they had a good look around,

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and had their, no doubt, little talk,

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and then got back into the wagons, and away they went,

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back down to the newly-opened railway line,

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which must have been very exciting for them.

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It brings a wonderful picture to mind, doesn't it?

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These earnest Victorians in partially cleaned out

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stone wagons arriving to pay tribute to this site.

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The popularity of hands-on archaeology

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rose throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,

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leading to improved understanding of Hadrian's Wall,

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military history and Roman Britain.

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I've moved to the site of the modern-day excavations

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at the fort of Vindolanda

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to meet archaeologist Justin Blake.

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-Justin, hello.

-Hello.

-Michael.

-Nice to meet you.

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-It's good to see you.

-Good to see you.

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What is it you're excavating here?

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We're right in the middle of a barrack room.

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And it was built in our early third-century fort at Vindolanda.

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So this is where eight men would have slept overnight,

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cooked meals, socialised together.

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And then, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they moaned

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about life on the northern frontier up to a point as well.

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What do we know, from what you've discovered, about how they were living?

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Well, we know that they'd been using olive oil,

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cos at the back end of last week, we found a beautiful neck

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from an olive oil jar.

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Which is this one here.

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So we've got the handle over there, and part of the spout.

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It's a huge globular bowl.

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Usually, they hold about 50 or 80 litres of olive oil.

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Lovely, thick clay, isn't it? Wow.

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It really is, yeah. It's been imported from the south of Spain.

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So it's travelled

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a long way to get to Vindolanda.

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Best of all, we know that they'd been playing games and socialising

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because just this morning,

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we found a wonderful little black-glass gaming counter.

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You found that this morning?

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Yeah, it came out literally about ten minutes before you arrived to see us.

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'I can't resist a little dig myself,

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'just in case another Roman treasure lurks below the surface.'

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OK.

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Now, I hope that you planted some gem that I can find here...

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to encourage me.

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It's one of the wonderful things about archaeology, I think.

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You just never know what's going to be underneath the soil.

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You've been finding bits and pieces of these people's lives.

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-What impression do you have of them?

-It's very like modern society.

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It's a huge spectrum of all sorts of different people doing all manner of different jobs here.

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So you get very different impressions in each little bit that you dig in, I think.

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-Well, I am your slave. Back to work.

-Back to work. Quite right as well.

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It's back to the tracks,

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though thankfully, not in a horse-drawn mineral wagon,

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as my Victorian forerunners would have done.

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One of the things that the Romans found attractive

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about Northern England was its wealth of minerals,

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and my Bradshaw's refers to,

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"Mineral specimens that may be procured in the caves."

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And also refers to the, "Large lead mines which also produce silver and copper."

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Of course, in the 19th century, these minerals could only be

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exploited successfully using the railways.

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Leaving Hadrian's Wall behind, I'm heading west to Haltwhistle,

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to make the journey to Alston in Cumbria,

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and the South Tynedale Railway.

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This branch line was key to transporting the coal,

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lead and other minerals mined in the area.

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But at the beautifully restored station,

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I'm taking a moment to investigate a clever invention

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that was to change the way we travel on trains.

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One ticket on your lovely railway, please.

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That will be £6, please.

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Thank you very much.

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Now, that is what I call a railway ticket.

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All my young life, that's what a railway ticket looked like.

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It wasn't orange and it wasn't made of paper.

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It was just a lovely bit of card like that.

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What was the history of these tickets?

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Apparently, a revolutionary ticket system was introduced in this area.

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South Tynedale line enthusiast Tom Bell will show me its simple brilliance.

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Why is it called the Edmondson System?

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Well, Thomas Edmondson was appointed station agent at Brampton

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by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway when it opened in 1836.

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Brampton is pretty close to here?

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It's about 20 miles from here,

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and it's also on the main line of the company that built this branch line.

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So what's the great breakthrough about this system?

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Well, first of all, if you look at this ticket,

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you'll see that it has a serial number printed on.

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The first thing he did was design the system

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to serially number all the tickets from one to 9,999.

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And that meant that you could actually print tickets

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-for one station to every destination that people wanted to travel.

-Yeah.

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You had the price, you had the class,

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you had whether it was adult or child, or single or return.

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Prior to this invention, railways issued handwritten tickets,

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as stagecoach operators had done.

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But they'd had only half a dozen passengers.

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With hundreds of people using the booming railways,

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the introduction of the Edmondson numeric ticketing system

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met the modern need.

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It also prevented unscrupulous clerks from lining their pockets,

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as they had to reconcile daily the cash against the unsold serially numbered tickets.

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The system spread rapidly across the country and, amazingly,

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served the UK's railways for over 150 years until the dawn of the computer age.

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Now, if you are going to have numerical sequences,

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it's pretty important to keep your tickets tidy and in order.

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-Yes.

-Did he also invent these racks?

-He invented the racks.

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Small racks for little used destinations.

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And the big racks for frequently used destinations.

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And the tickets were put in with the lowest number at the bottom.

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And each station had a ticket assembly like that.

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And, like a cardsharp, you dealt from the bottom.

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Mmm... Very nice.

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How can I help you today?

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Can we have a family ticket, please?

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-I can't help noticing you've got a dog.

-Yes.

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-Would you like a dog ticket as well?

-Yes, please.

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-Let me do the dog ticket first. That's easy enough.

-That's it.

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One dog ticket.

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-Here we are.

-Thank you!

-Thank you.

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From its opening in 1852,

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this railway was important not just for the ticketing system.

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The lure of lead in the wild hills

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brought the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway to Alston.

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And with the South Tyne Valley also producing large quantities of coal,

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the arrival of the railway was the catalyst for major growth in mining.

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Today, happily, the line is still open,

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as a heritage narrow gauge railway.

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It's lovely to be on the South Tynedale Railway.

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Historically though, this is the railway

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that used to bring the lead from the mines, isn't it?

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It was built to take the lead out of the North Pennines orefield.

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Now, my Bradshaw's also mentions silver coming from those mines.

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Any record of silver?

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Yes. Although most of the ore was lead and zinc,

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there was a small amount of silver brought out as well.

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In the Victorian age, lead had become a very important commodity

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for the production of piping, roofing and paint.

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The lead mines brought jobs and prosperity to the area.

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And the railway began to transport both the ore

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and the population drawn to the valley.

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It used to take a fair number of passengers

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and it also was very early in the tourist industry,

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because the North Eastern Railway ran special trains

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after Easter up to Alston for people to rent cottages for the summer.

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We are running through some beautiful countryside.

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It's known as England's last wilderness.

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But if you look around, the landscape is entirely manmade.

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It's been manmade since the Roman times.

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Mainly by the lead miners since the 17th century.

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It's time to retire for the evening.

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So I'm headed for the small village of Gilsland

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on the edge of the Northumberland National Park,

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situated hard upon Hadrian's Wall.

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As the Victorians began to travel by train, they needed places to stay.

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And Bradshaw's contains recommendations for the weary tourist.

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Where to stand, such a pretty evening?

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Bradshaw's has the answer.

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"Gilsland Spa.

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"A good sulphur spring which issues from a cliff in the glen

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"at the back of Shaws excellent hotel."

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Well, the hotel has changed shape and name,

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but I bet the spring is still there.

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To compete against their rivals, Victorian hotels liked to offer

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health experiences and the sulphur springs fitted the bill perfectly.

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My guide is local historian Will Higgs.

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This is the fountain to which the sulphur water has now been piped.

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Although that was quite a long time ago and, unfortunately,

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the pipe seems to be getting blocked and it's pretty well dried up.

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But you can certainly smell the stuff.

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Whoa! That's terrible! Rotten eggs!

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-Oh, it's delicious.

-Ha-ha!

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And that's not the only attraction of the hotel.

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Deep in the dreamy glens,

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a rather suggestive-shaped boulder called the Popping Stone

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enticed the straight-laced Victorian tourists

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to cast aside their inhibitions.

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Well, here it is, the famous Popping Stone.

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Legend has it that this is the spot where Walter Scott

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proposed to his wife, Charlotte Carpenter.

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It seems to have had associations with courtship,

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and possibly even fertility.

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-And what did the Victorians make of that?

-They had plenty of fun.

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And certainly, the holiday-makers who came here on the train

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frequently made a beeline for the Popping Stone.

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And many of them had their photographs taken on it.

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I've got a picture postcard here from 1910

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showing a very smart chap with a lady sitting on the stone, much as it is today.

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But there's more to that photograph.

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I think it gives us a little hint of what's at the heart

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of the hotel's allure.

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If you look at the inscription on the back.

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Ah...yes.

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Mr Bonar and Mrs Wilson.

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What's Mr Bonar doing with Mrs Wilson on the Popping Stone?

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And they seem to look rather shifty as well. If you look at them...

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Oh... It's a place for dirty weekends.

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I hope they came by train.

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You may have gathered that I love Victorian railway architecture.

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And it's a beautiful summer's morning.

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What better time to see a viaduct?

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I'm rejoining the line at Haltwhistle Station in Northumberland,

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travelling past the fabulous Roman mile castle of Poltross Burn,

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on my way west towards Carlisle.

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This countryside is simply stunning.

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So beautiful.

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Oh, to be in England now that summer is here,

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and to be on a train.

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Discussing this beautiful landscape,

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Bradshaw's refers to the stunning views and to the ravines.

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This was not easy territory for early Victorian railway builders.

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But nothing was going to slow them in their progress.

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I'm headed to the viaduct at Wetheral,

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a place that Bradshaw's says is,

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"pleasantly situated on the Eden."

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And having seen Stephenson's Viaduct on the River Tweed,

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the remarkable thing about Wetheral is that it's much older.

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Surprisingly, for such a small rural community, the village of Wetheral

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entered the railway age very early, in the 1830s.

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The Newcastle to Carlisle line,

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linking the east and west coast of Britain,

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needed a spectacular piece of pre-Victorian engineering

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to straddle the daunting 100-foot gorge over the River Eden.

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And that indeed is what they got.

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And now we cross the fantastic viaduct.

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The driver's slowed right down to give us a view.

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We are so high up above the river.

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Isn't that spectacular?

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-Driver!

-How are you doing?

-I just wanted to thank you for going so slowly over the viaduct.

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-You're welcome.

-Isn't that a beautiful thing?

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-Oh, it's beautiful, aye. Did you get a good view?

-Oh, I got a wonderful view.

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It's such a beautiful piece of architecture, isn't it?

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-It is beautiful, aye. You haven't got a spare book, have you?

-Ha-ha-ha!

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There we are, there's Bradshaw. You can touch it.

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Bye, driver. Thank you.

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-Take care.

-Thank you. Bye!

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Completed in 1834, the Eden or Wetheral Viaduct

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was one of the first railway viaducts to be built in Britain.

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It's a notable early architectural triumph,

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built four years before Victoria came to the throne.

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It linked not only the burgeoning cities of Newcastle and Carlisle,

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but also the villages on opposite sides of the river,

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Wetheral and Great Corby.

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And I'm hoping that no lesser personage than the Mayor of Carlisle,

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Barry Earp, can tell me more.

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-Barry, well met.

-Welcome to Wetheral. Lovely to have you with us.

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Ordinary Victorians must have thought it spectacular.

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I mean, it's a great engineering achievement. And a thing of beauty.

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It was a thing of beauty.

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People used to come from Carlisle for day trips out.

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They enjoyed the river trip across to Great Corby,

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and then walked across the viaduct back into Wetheral.

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Locals, meanwhile, were sidestepping the cost of a ferry

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to travel between the two villages, and risking life and limb

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to walk across the viaduct.

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So in 1851, the railway was forced to build a walkway at the side of the track,

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which is still in use today.

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But there was a catch.

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The walkway over the viaduct

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cost the people a halfpenny

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in the old L, S and D coinage.

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And it was a halfpenny there and a halfpenny back.

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And this started in 1851 and continued until 1956,

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by which time, the cost had gone up to a penny each way.

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The toll was finally scrapped in the late 1950s.

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But Wetheral Station has another claim to fame.

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Despite being closed in the Beeching Cuts of 1967,

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Barry and the Parish Council succeeded in having it reopened in 1981.

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I also have to comment that your station is delightful, Wetheral station.

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Not least this fantastic bridge on which we are standing.

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I'm so pleased to see it open.

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Wetheral was a growing village and it had more and more people actually living here.

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And, of course, it is only a very short distance into Carlisle,

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so it was a lot easier and cheaper in actual fact to use the train.

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It's always extremely cheering to hear about the reopening

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of a station once consigned to history.

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And all credit to Barry and his colleagues for campaigning hard.

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Now I'm on the last leg of today's journey.

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To Carlisle, to catch the Cumbrian coastline to the market town of Wigton.

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-Bye-bye!

-Bye!

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Well, after all that beautiful open countryside, Carlisle feels like a big place.

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It's where I'm changing train.

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Well, this is an extraordinarily crowded train,

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so I'll have to stand here and tell you that I'm headed for Wigton,

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which my Bradshaw's guide tells me,

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"has print and dye works."

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Now, I have a feeling that those works are no longer there.

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But I'm interested to see what happens in Wigton today.

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TANNOY: We are now approaching Wigton.

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-Why is the train so crowded?

-It's the first train from Carlisle.

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There's only...there's only one in three hours.

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This is the first train from Carlisle this morning, you see. So that's why it's overcrowded.

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-The first...

-It's not usually as bad as this.

-Ah... OK.

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It isn't usually... Usually, you can go up and down the train.

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-It's been a very intimate experience.

-Ha-ha-ha!

-Ha-ha-ha!

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-I can only apologise.

-Ha-ha!

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-Thank you.

-Not a problem. I do apologise.

-No, no. Not at all.

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We enjoyed it, actually. It was fun! Bye!

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The Victorian era saw some of the most important innovations of the last two centuries.

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From the light bulb to effective anaesthesia, and plastic.

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Invented by Englishman Alexander Parkes in 1856,

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the first synthetic plastic, Parkesine,

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was demonstrated at the World Fair in London.

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It was derived from cellulose,

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and began an industry that would

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radically change the way we live.

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Wigton, just east of Carlisle, was struggling at the end of the 19th century,

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as its traditional industries declined.

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But another unique invention from the use of cellulose came to its rescue,

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as engineering specialist Roy Crosthwaite is going to explain.

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What was the industrial history of Wigton?

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Well, the industry was based around tanneries, and dye works for cotton,

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which was one of the principal products produced in Wigton at the time.

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You now produce something completely different here.

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We do, indeed.

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We actually manufacture cellophane and polypropylene films on this site.

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Cellophane's been produced since 1933.

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What's the raw materials for that?

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Wood pulp is the principal raw material,

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which is brought in by steam trains down these very lines.

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During the 19th and early 20th century,

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synthetics were in their infancy.

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It was a period of experimentation.

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Inkwells, cutlery handles, and the very earliest gramophone records

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all pushed the boundaries of synthetic production.

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With the records, rather revoltingly,

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being made from mixed beetle excretions and powdered minerals.

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Whilst these innovations were useful enough,

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plastics and what would become cellophane

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didn't really take off until the 20th century.

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'You'll put on your plastic raincoat.

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'Put up your plastic hood.

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'Oh, wait a bit, it's stopped now.

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'So you can open your plastic bag to see if that plastic hood has messed up your hairdo.'

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Roy's company specialises in food and product wrapping,

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and is the largest employer in Wigton.

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This company and town have boomed on the back of invention.

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But it was the ease of movement offered by the railway,

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including a set of sidings running into the heart of the factory,

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that allowed an isolated Cumbrian town to compete globally.

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And it's because of the railway, in fact, that we actually had the factory.

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We brought in raw materials, our product was exported or shipped out by train.

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So it was quite significant.

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And without this, there's no doubt, there'd be no factory.

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One of the company's key products is cellophane,

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which was invented in 1908 and is now used worldwide in packaging.

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It's made from cellulose viscose,

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which, to my surprise,

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is derived from wood pulp.

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So here is the most interesting part of the process.

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We've manufactured the viscose.

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It's then pumped in through the slop dye into a bath of sulphuric acid.

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When hey presto, it hits the acid and forms the film.

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And this film will then be drawn off and fed down the casting machine,

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where the sulphur is washed out, and it forms into cellulose.

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It's as simple as that.

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Ha-ha! As simple as that.

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I mean, I see this product every day of my life.

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-And, of course, it has never occurred to me to think about how it is made.

-Absolutely right.

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The cellophane made here would be found on everyday consumer products,

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from chocolates to perfume, cheese to teabags.

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I saw the wood pulp at the beginning, a lovely natural resource.

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But then, of course, food wrappings come out at the other end,

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and very often, they are part of litter in our society.

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What can we do about that?

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Well, we have developed a product recently which is biodegradable,

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and it will actually degrade in six weeks.

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You put it in the family compost heap and in six weeks' time, it's back to nature.

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I have to tell you, I was a little bit disappointed

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when I came here that your railway lines were no longer in use.

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-You don't use the railways any more?

-Not really, no.

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Although we do pay Network Rail a retainer,

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so we have the option to use the siding some time in the future.

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The company stopped using the railway for transport

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in the late 1960s, once the M6 motorway reached Carlisle.

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And road haulage sadly proved cheaper than rail.

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But given that the infrastructure still exists on the site,

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I hold a hope that maybe for this company at least,

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the railways might rise again.

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I've rarely seen such unspoiled country as on this journey.

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But this terrain has always been made to work for man.

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The Romans quarried its stone,

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the Victorians mined its lead.

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And now it produces manufactured goods,

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including some new products

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that aim to be as green as this landscape.

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When I continue my railway adventure,

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I'll be taking a train from coast to mountain top.

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Every now and again, a little smut hits the eye

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to remind you of the joys of steam travel.

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Gaining rare access to an industry that divides opinion worldwide -

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nuclear power.

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And it is absolutely massive.

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Well, the golf ball itself is probably about 60 metres high.

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And being present at the unveiling of an extremely rare Cumberland treasure.

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This is, I must say, a rather emotional moment, isn't it?

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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E-mail [email protected]

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