St Andrew's to Edinburgh Great British Railway Journeys

For Victorian Britons,

George Bradshaw was a household name.

At a time when railways were new,

Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them

to take to the tracks.

I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide

to understand how trains transformed Britain -

its landscape, its industry,

society and leisure time.

As I crisscross the country,

150 years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

I'm now concluding my Scottish journey.

While Victorian English flocked to Scotland,

the world beyond these shores also felt the Caledonian influence.

Men of fortune left their mark in the New World,

and around the globe sportsmen discovered a Scottish pastime

that suited them to a T.

My journey has taken me across Scotland,

from west to east.

It began at the Clyde estuary,

heading through the Scottish Lowlands to Glasgow.

It continued to Stirling and Perth,

touching the Highlands.

Now I'm travelling east to Fife

to the famous university town of St Andrews,

before heading south to Scotland's capital city.

On today's leg, I start on the bracing east coast,

before heading inland along the Firth of Forth,

and on to the theatrical city of Edinburgh.

And my journey ends in the former mining village of Newcraighall.

I pay homage at the birthplace of golf...

-Great shot, Michael!

-(I can't believe I hit it!)

..discover how a poor Scot gave away a fortune...

He wrote The Gospel Of Wealth, and in that he said,

"He who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

..and tread the boards at the Edinburgh Fringe.

I demand to know where you deposited the handbag that contained that infant.

I left it

in the cloakroom

of one of the larger railway stations in London.

"No-one can say he has seen Scotland,

"who has not paid St Andrews a visit."

Thus declares Bradshaw's. And, with a university founded in 1411,

and my mother's school of St Leonard's in 1552, no wonder.

"One branch of manufacture flourishes - making balls for golf,

"a favourite game played on the links

or flat sands along the sea-shore."

I think I'll swing by!

Leuchars station may not be familiar,

but most people will have heard of the world-famous golf course nearby.

St Andrews Golf Club was founded in 1843 with 11 members

who were mostly tradesmen,

including a dancing master and a butler.

They were soon joined by

Allan Robertson, the foremost golfer of his day,

and MacKenzie Turpie,

who competed in the 1900 Paris Olympics

when golf was included.

I'm going to visit a golf club factory,

where they maintain the special skills needed

to craft traditional hickory-shafted clubs by hand.

I'm meeting Hamish Steedman, its chairman.

Hamish, I'm getting the feeling of a lovely traditional workshop here.

How far back in history does golf go?

The earliest documented evidence of golf was 1452,

when James II banned golf,

in favour of archery practice.

But we know ball-and-stick games

have been played from the earliest days.

The Scots were the first to actually play

towards a hole in the ground to hit a ball in,

and that's really defined the start of golf.

So, for over 600 years it's been played at St Andrews.

What was the game like here in St Andrews?

Well, the history demonstrates

that links courses have been here for centuries.

The links land for example is really the common ground

between the shoreline and the farmland.

It wasn't manicured as it is today

and, in fact, it was nearly lost to rabbits, in the early 1800s,

when the rabbit holes almost took over the golf holes.

It took a handful of rocks to fill in the rabbit holes,

plus pluck and a favourable wind

to see those early golfers

safely through 11 holes out and the same 11 back.

So, Michael, this is one of the long-nosed clubs here

that was used throughout Victorian times and before.

We have the splice shaft here,

the leather face insert,

the ram's horn, to protect the leading edge of the club,

and the most important part...

Each club was weighed with lead-weight poured into the club.

Even now the skill lies in precise measurement of the molten lead.

-Hello, Angus.

-Hello, there.

-What temperature is your lead?

-Hot.

THEY LAUGH

What weight are you trying to achieve now?

The head weight's usually three to four ounces,

and you add lead till it comes up to the eight-ounce mark,

and that's the standard weight that we make the putters.

When the molten lead has cooled a little,

it's hammered and left to set.

Nowadays golf clubs and their shafts are made from steel and titanium,

but hickory clubs smack of history and craftsmanship.

Hickory is obviously the shaft of the golf club.

It's not indigenous to this country,

but it was used in tooling -

your pickaxes, shovels, broom handles -

and the wood is indigenous to North America.

So it was imported.

So you are still making Victorian golf clubs...

There must be a market for them?

Yes, there is.

We export, primarily, around the world.

We're involved with the World Hickory Open Championship

that's played here every year.

Last year we had 14 different countries playing in it.

So it is a growing interest in the hickory game.

And it's exciting to see.

In Victorian times, the game was regarded as a great leveller

between ranks and classes.

When matched in skill,

king and commoner played on equal terms.

Lacking skill, I'd hoped at least to look the part.

Hamish, I can't say that I feel completely sensible in this gear.

What's the origin of it?

Well, the plus-fours were typical of country wear.

Ideal for golf, ideal for hunting and shooting,

because you don't get the bottom of your trousers dirty.

And, of course, the greens, the golf courses in those days,

weren't manicured like they are today.

And, certainly, Scottish rough isn't very pleasant at the best of times, anyway.

Lovely weather. Beautiful views.

Although that flag looks a rather long way.

Nice slowly back,

nice easy forward.

That's you.

And follow through, straight to the hole.

Oh!

I personally blame that one on the stiffening sea breeze!

Michael, with the hickory clubs, you trust the club.

So it's a nice and easy swing back

and swinging through, trusting the club, and hitting towards the hole.

Great shot, Michael.

(I can't believe I hit it.)

Let's hope I haven't peaked already!

Oh, stop-stop-stop-STOP!

Ran on.

I hope no-one was looking down from the famous St Andrews clubhouse,

which has occupied this splendid Victorian mansion since 1933.

-I'll get the flag for you, Michael.

-Oh, thank you.

Not sure that it will be needed.

-Oh...

-Close.

I'm feeling a bit below par today.

Not before time, I must resume my journey south from Leuchars station.

My next stop will be Dunfermline.

Bradshaw's tells me it's

"a large burgh town in the county of Fife,

"whose inhabitants are engaged in the manufacture

"of diaper, damask and table linen."

I'm here to find out about the son of a linen worker

who moved from below the salt to the top of the table.

The ancient town of Dunfermline dates back to Neolithic times.

Perched on a rocky hilltop, it's crowned by a magnificent abbey -

the resting place of Scottish kings.

The Victorian visitor armed with Bradshaw's guide

came to see a Scotland swathed in romance.

On my own travels abroad, I have been impressed

by the philanthropic works of Andrew Carnegie,

but I knew little of his poor beginnings here in Dunfermline.

To discover more about this remarkable man,

I'm meeting Lorna Owers from the Carnegie Birthplace Museum.

I believe that this beautiful park might not be open to the public

if it weren't for the generosity of Mr Andrew Carnegie.

That's true. When Andrew Carnegie was a child,

he wasn't allowed to go into the park,

it was owned by Colonel Hunt,

and it was a private estate,

and the locals were allowed in one day a year,

on a public holiday,

but because Andrew's uncle was a Chartist

and very anti-establishment -

which didn't go down too well with Colonel Hunt - he and his family

were banned from the park, including Andrew.

Chartism was one of the most important popular reform movements

of the 19th century.

Working-class men hadn't gained the vote

in the great parliamentary reforms of 1832.

Radicals drew up a People's Charter -

so becoming known as Chartists -

which included the demand for universal male suffrage.

Riots broke out, and Colonel Hunt

may have feared disorder in his park.

Carnegie vowed that one day he would hold a public meeting there,

and in the end, of course, he bought the park

and gave it to the people to enjoy.

A lot of people think that he only started his philanthropy

when he retired, but actually

he wrote a memo to himself when he was 33,

and he'd decided at that point to retire when he was 35,

before he discovered the steel industry,

and he was going to give his money away for good causes,

he was going to get a proper education -

because he'd only had four years at school -

and he was going to buy a newspaper.

And he didn't get a proper education,

because he discovered steel and kept working until he was 65.

But he did start giving his money away - actually, when he was 43 -

and he left a huge legacy.

There are now 22 institutions worldwide

which are still going strong,

which are spending something like 150 every minute of every day.

So it's quite an impressive legacy.

And here in the town, of course, Dunfermline

has benefitted from the library,

and the swimming baths, and the music institute

and, of course, our Carnegie Hall,

which was built after the original American, New York, Carnegie Hall.

And give me some sort of indication of what kind of a man he was?

He wrote The Gospel Of Wealth, and in it he said,

"He who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

In other words, you should give your money away.

You can't take it with you.

-And he was really as good as his own motto.

-He was, indeed.

He gave away 350 million dollars in his lifetime,

and that's probably the equivalent of over 100 billion nowadays.

A truly inspirational example from a man of humble beginnings.

Lorna is taking me to his birthplace.

Carnegie was born at this cottage in Moody Street in 1835,

where his father worked as a hand-loom weaver.

Competition from the linen factories

hit these artisans hard

and the family emigrated to America,

where Carnegie began to work on the railroads

before making his fortune in steel.

Despite acquiring great wealth,

he retained an affinity with Dunfermline

and his wife bought him this cottage for his 60th birthday.

Today it survives as a museum celebrating his life.

Andrew Carnegie was given a record number of freedoms of cities.

We have 56 in the museum,

and this was his very first,

which he was presented with in 1877

from Dunfermline,

and it's the one he was most proud of.

Of course - his native city, to which he was so generous.

That's right.

It was mainly thanks for the library and the swimming baths.

We also have the original manuscript

of Triumphant Democracy, one of the many books he wrote.

This is unusual, because it's in his own handwriting.

"The United States have already reached the foremost rank

"among civilised nations.

"The old nations of the Earth creep on at a snail's pace,

"America thunders past with the rush of the express train."

I love a man who uses a railway analogy.

It's back to the tracks for me to travel further south,

for a night at Fife's most southerly village.

Bradshaw's tells me that "in the neighbourhood of Queensferry,

"by the southern approximation of opposite promontories,

"the River Forth is forced into a narrow strait."

That enabled the building, after my Bradshaw's,

of the famous Forth Rail Bridge.

Before that people relied on the ferry.

And the northern point was marked by a light.

North Queensferry lies between two huge bridges -

the Forth Road Bridge and the red Forth Rail Bridge.

I'm meeting Queensferry Trust chairman James Lawson

in this stunning setting

to find out more about the light.

This just has to be the greatest view of the bridge, doesn't it?

You only get the sense of scale when you are down here.

'And absolutely dwarfed by the bridge is the light.'

Now, James, I don't want to be rude,

but I was expecting something a little larger.

Well, it is what it is.

Designed and put up by Robert Stevenson,

perhaps the grandfather of all Scottish lighthouses.

And how does it work now, James?

Well, there's a single wick,

and there is an oil reservoir,

and you just light it with a match.

It originally burned whale oil,

commonly in use until about 1850,

when the much cheaper paraffin became available.

The light would have guided sailors towards the safety of the pier.

The tower's not much more than 20 feet tall.

What you see here is the oil reservoir.

The oil comes out through this S-bend tube

to the bottom of the wick.

You light the wick here,

and then put on the glass funnel.

You lift the whole mechanism up,

with this unit here.

Very, very clever.

Well, it is certainly getting towards dark...

Shall we give it a go?

Why not?

It's hard to imagine now how dependent traffic would have been

for navigation on this little light.

In the 1840s, ferry boats traversing the Forth

would have picked their way between trading ships from the continents.

It's interesting to reflect that this little light burned on

until the opening of the road bridge in 1964.

After a night's rest, it's back to the station

for the penultimate leg of my journey across Scotland.

Edinburgh, says Bradshaw's,

is "one of the most ancient cities in the country

"and the capital of Scotland.

"It is not inaptly termed the modern Athens."

Now you may think that a little bit of an exaggeration,

but think of this - the ancient Greeks brought theatre to the masses,

and if one city has done as much as Athens to popularise theatre,

it could claim to be Edinburgh.

Edinburgh's origins are as a defensive stronghold

on this imposing rocky ridge.

From the seventh to the ninth centuries,

it was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria,

and, after that, a royal residence of the Scottish kings.

-STATION PA:

-'We are now approaching Edinburgh Waverley.'

I'm alighting at Edinburgh Waverley.

Developed in 1854, the station sits in the valley

between the medieval old town

and the 18th-century new town.

Today it's Britain's busiest

mainline station outside London,

with around 60,000 people passing through each day.

When Britain built its railways,

that changed everything for good or ill.

For example, when Queen Victoria came to the throne,

Edinburgh had the sort of theatre scene

that you'd associate with a capital city.

But in 1859, the Theatre Royal Edinburgh closed its doors,

claiming that there had been an exodus of talent -

of writers and actors - attracted by the bright lights

of the West End of London, and now able to travel easily by train.

Well, if that was so,

the process was reversed after the Second World War,

when talent came from all over Britain to the Scottish capital,

attracted by the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Edinburgh Fringe is the world's largest arts festival.

This wonderful craziness began in 1947

when a group of uninvited theatre companies gate-crashed

the launch of the city's International Cultural Festival.

Today the Fringe fills 25 days with more than 3,000 shows.

The result is a joyful anarchy combining household names

and hopeful amateurs.

Merci, monsieur.

-Do you come to the Fringe often?

-No, it's my first time.

In fact, it's my first time in Edinburgh.

Oh, my goodness. How on earth do you decide what to go to?

Easily, I've let a friend of mine choose.

How are you enjoying the Fringe?

Yeah, I am actually performing.

What are you performing?

I'm a choreographer, presenting my work at Dance Space.

What do you hope to get out of being at the Fringe?

Uh, I guess visibility and lots of fun, to be honest.

I mean, it's great to be in a place where you can see so many things.

-What's the best thing you've seen?

-You!

THEY ALL LAUGH

-I feel sorry for you, then.

-Oh, do you?

Well, we're not so sure about that.

-Do you come every year?

-Yeah, we try to come every year, yeah.

And what makes you come back every year?

-Just the atmosphere!

-Atmosphere!

-Atmosphere. Yeah.

-It's brilliant.

-A 20-minute journey on a train.

See if I can squeeze in there.

Anyone else, come in. Let's take a selfie.

-Let's do the world's biggest selfie.

-World's biggest selfie.

'I mustn't let this adulation go to my head.

'I've secured tickets for an alternative take

'on Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest,

'where women play men and vice versa.'

Hello...to our wonderful audience.

Right, can everyone stand up.

Everyone.

Everyone, please. Thank you kindly to you.

'Ah-ha... It seems this production is short of a cast member.'

Some victims left?

You, sir. What was your name, sir?

Michael.

'No surprises. I've drawn the short straw.'

APPLAUSE

'Great names have trodden these boards before me -

'John Cleese and Emma Thompson, to name but two geniuses of comedy.

'My wig should get a laugh,

'and beneath it I'm playing Miss Prism,

'the forgetful governess who mislays the baby in her charge.'

Prism,

where is that baby?

-HIGH VOICE:

-Lady Bracknell...

LAUGHTER

I-I-I admit with some shame that I do not know.

I only wish that I did!

I had with me a somewhat old but capacious handbag

in which I'd intended to place the manuscript of a work of fiction

that I've written in my few unoccupied hours.

In a moment of mental...obstruction

for which I can NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF,

I deposited the manuscript in the bassinet

and placed the baby in the handbag.

I demand to know where you deposited the handbag containing that infant.

I left it

in the cloakroom

of one of the larger

railway stations in London.

What railway station?

-TINY VOICE:

-Victoria.

LAUGHTER

'Entrusted to the railways...!'

I'm now travelling on a line that once joined England and Scotland.

Bradshaw's tells me that the Waverley route

"passes through country that assumes a highly picturesque character

"and becomes rich in its historical association,

"being immortalised by the pen of Sir Walter Scott."

The Old Waverley line that ran

from Carlisle through the Borders to Edinburgh,

like so many lines in my Bradshaw's Guide

passed into history, remembered only by grandparents.

But now a section of it from Edinburgh

to Galasheils and Tweedbank will reopen.

This part of the Waverley Line was built

by the North British Railway Company in 1849.

At the time, Newcraighall was a mining village,

built around a pit that's since closed.

I've come to meet project director Hugh Wark.

The Waverley railway is a very well-known railway,

at least in Scotland. How does it feel to be rebuilding it?

When I started my career

we were still ripping up some of the old railways

that had been closed.

So, it's great at this stage to be

actually working to reopen one again.

The line, like so many, was a victim of the Beeching cuts.

The announcement of its closure in 1967

provoked fierce local protest,

even sabotage attacks.

So it's quite emotional

to be driving along what will be the route of this new line.

With 50km of track,

this is the longest domestic passenger line to be reopened

in the United Kingdom for 100 years.

The buffer in front of us here is the end of the existing railway.

It is actually a folding buffer

to allow our new engineering trains

to come onto the line,

but it's also the start of the new line

and this three and a half kilometres

of brand-new railway - not on the original Waverley route, at all.

The reasons we've diverted the railways

to take it through this area called Shawfair

is because it's a major development area,

and some of the bridges in this area, and the station

just along the line,

is all part of bringing economic development into this area.

All the communities down the line

see the benefits the railways are going to bring,

and they're all really looking forward to having stations

in the local communities, that'll give them good transport access

to Edinburgh and down into the Borders.

And in honour of the line's remarkable reversal of fortune,

Hugh invites me to leave a mark on the beautiful Lothian bridge viaduct

during its restoration.

-Michael, how are you? My name's Willy.

-Good to see you.

I see you've got some quite big cracks here.

Does all that have to come out?

In the worst case scenario, yes.

But in this case, we were lucky.

Sounds like you are doing this

with a great deal of respect for the original structure.

Amazing respect. Amazing respect for the masons,

and the engineers that built it, as well.

I'm really in awe of these guys.

We're so lucky that it's lasted.

That it's not been demolished.

The very fact it has lasted shows you how skilful they were.

It certainly does.

Invited to position even one brick, I gain a new sense of respect

for the hundreds who toiled to build this viaduct.

Put your trowel up to it,

and just push it in along the bed.

-Like that?

-Yep. That's perfect.

Pushing that along the bed there.

Make sure you've got all of it, right to the back.

Oop... I see why it's a skilled job.

You've done a great job, Michael. Thank you very much.

One small brick

in one arch of 23 arches

of this enormous Victorian structure,

because those people had big ideas.

Victorian railways bound England and Scotland together as never before.

Despite that, the Scottish retained a distinctive national culture,

expressed not least in the sports

and the ware that I've sampled in recent days.

One of the advantages of Scotland is that people like me,

associated with it only through ancestry,

swell with pride at what the Scots have done for the world.

That's certainly what I've been feeling

as I've travelled with my Bradshaw's.

Next time I'll scoop a cool treat in suburban London.

-Sludging, yes?

-Sludging.

-Keep going.

Not sure I want to be known for making sludgy ice cream.

Learn how the Railway Age was also a boom time for cemeteries...

Some wag had written, "New graves warmed by steam!"

..and visit an exotic 19th-century attraction

that still draws a crowd today.

It's a great way for people to get close to animals...

A bit too close possibly!

THEY LAUGH