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No little boy ever dreamt of being a railway porter when he grew up.

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After all, where's the glamour

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and excitement in carrying things around for other people?

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But freight trains did carry Britain's things around

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for 100 years or more, and the engines that pulled

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and pushed and shunted, up and down, to and fro, were the real

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strength of the railway system, the ones that got things done.

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You don't actually need engines at all for a railway, of course.

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Horses will do just as well -

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if you only need to pull one full truck or a few empties a short way.

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And in fact they used horses with rails long before engines were

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ever thought of, and were still using them for shunting in the 1940s.

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The 16-ton truck became standard on railways because it was what

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a horse could pull, but for trains with two or more trucks going a long

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way, there's only one kind of horse that can do it - the iron horse.

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I'm afraid there isn't much nostalgia for steam goods trains.

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People didn't even notice them much of the time.

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They just trundled slowly past,

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holding up the express that you wanted to get on.

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And yet, from 1850 onwards,

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freight trains always made more money than passenger trains.

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Railway freight gave us a whole way of life. The pick-up-goods era.

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Railways were the common carrier,

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which meant that they were legally obliged to carry any consignment,

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however small, to any destination, however remote.

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Everything from sheep to strawberries - anywhere in Britain.

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Now the whole trouble with a pick-up-goods train is that

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it's great for the community but it's a big headache for the railway.

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What a railway really likes is a long goods train,

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full of just one thing - coal, or oil, or cars - which goes

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straight from its starting point to its destination, without stopping

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to pick up the farmer's chickens,

33
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and this was the way freight was going more and more, into vast bulk,

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but the vaster and bulkier the trains got,

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the harder they were to pull.

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The quick, cheap and easy solution was to get two

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engines on the front, but this was a false economy,

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because although two trains are twice as expensive,

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they are not twice as efficient,

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and also, apparently there was a temptation for many

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drivers to assume that the other engine was doing most of the work.

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And if they both thought that, well, there were problems.

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No, the most sensible - if expensive - solution,

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was to build much bigger and much stronger engines.

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And this engine behind me, a class 9, is the biggest

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and strongest that British Rail ever built for freight.

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This particular one,

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which has been preserved by the East Somerset railway, actually

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holds the record for pulling the heaviest load ever known on a British

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line, and one of the nice things about working on a film like this

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is that very occasionally, you do get to drive in a cab yourself, so...

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Today, we're pulling, rather ironically, a load of stone -

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the stone used to build roads and help the railway's great rival,

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the motor vehicle.

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British Rail's other great contribution to the steam era,

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of course, was to kill it stone dead,

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and these 9Fs were scrapped in the 1960s with almost indecent haste.

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This was one of only five to be preserved.

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I can see why people thought this was British Rail's finest

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contribution to the steam age.

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The feeling of power and strength is immense.

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And I also can't help thinking that it had taken

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the railways 100 years to find out that the type of loads

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they moved best were the ones they started with -

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the no-nonsense train with just one kind of cargo on board.

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Slate was first carried in bulk by boat and canal.

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But you can't get boats up the quarries of north Wales.

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What you can use is a narrow-gauge railway and a little tank engine.

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Now, if our engines had evolved entirely on mountain sides

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among sharp, narrow curves, they might all

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look like this 0-4-0 tank engine built in 1889, specially for the job.

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But of course, they didn't.

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Just coming up to its 100th birthday,

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this 0-6-0 tender engine was designed

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to haul heavy, frequent loads over the industrial centre of England.

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Before the 0-6-0 could go out earning money for

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the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway shareholders, it had to be fed...

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and watered.

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So much coal was dug out of our mines that in 1900,

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the French put round a malicious rumour that Britain

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was about to become buoyant and float away!

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But it's hard for us to imagine what quantities of coal

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were eaten up in the steam age,

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which should perhaps have been called the coal age.

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Coal fed British industry, from ironworks to Royal Navy destroyers,

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from engines in Penzance, to shipyards in Glasgow.

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The freight of many railway lines was over 50% coal.

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A lot of that coal never left the railways at all.

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It simply went down the line to feed hungry engines.

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Railway engines are the only vehicles I can think of

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which go just as fast backwards as forwards.

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But going backwards is not much fun for the driver and fireman.

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So it's onto the turntable.

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Turntables were originally operated by hand,

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but then they realised that the steam vacuum

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created in the engine could be used to do the job just as well.

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So they plug it in and make it suck itself round through its navel.

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For 100 years, the standard British workhorse looked

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almost exactly like this - three pairs of driving wheels

101
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to spread the axle load, and none of the wheels very big -

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not good for speed, but good for traction -

103
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and a large tender for all that coal and water that they got through.

104
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Meanwhile, there's the job of putting the train together.

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It's beneath the dignity of a big engine to do work like this.

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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WHISTLE BLOWS

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Mile for mile, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway once earned

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more money from freight than any other line in Britain.

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WHISTLING

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I wonder if they ever worked out what proportion of freight running time

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was spent going up and down goods yards.

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I bet they were too scared to find out

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how long they took getting nowhere.

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40 years later, and we're on, yes,

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the same old standard British workhorse.

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This one was built for the London, Midland, Scottish Railway.

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It's still an 0-6-0.

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The boiler's bigger, but technically the engine isn't much different.

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A steam buff might say it didn't need to be much different.

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But really it was a case of technological inertia.

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The rest of the world were building much bigger engines

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and even experimenting with diesels.

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But we British steamed on blithely as before.

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Our mixed goods trains never moved at much more than

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a leisurely 20 or 30mph, for safety reasons.

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They didn't have enough stopping power to go any faster

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because only the engine and the guard's van

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were equipped with brakes.

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What the railways wanted was for all the trucks to have brakes as well,

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linked to the engine.

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Technically they could've done it,

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but half the trucks on the average train belonged to private owners,

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everyone from coal companies to Colman's Mustard,

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and they simply didn't want to invest the money in conversion.

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When you see a steam train rolling through a green chunk of England,

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it looks like a poem by John Betjeman.

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But it wasn't always so poetic for the crew.

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Tunnels were their worst enemy.

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Imagine the smoke and sparks being blown down into the cab

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for ten minutes at a go.

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One thing that amazes me about freight trains in Britain

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is that we've never built up the folklore about them

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that they had in America, for instance.

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No Casey Jones, no Rock Island Line,

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no Chattanooga Choo Choo or Honky Tonk Train Blues.

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The only hobos we ever had on British trains were tramps

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looking for a good night's sleep at a freight truck and getting

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moved overnight to somewhere they had no desire to get to.

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Yet there is something evocative about the old freight train.

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Where have all those trucks come from?

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What strange cargoes do they all carry?

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And who was waiting for it all at the other end for

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the impossible job of sorting it all out?

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The freight handlers at Bristol Temple Meads Depot, perhaps.

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PRESENTER: 'Temple Meads is like some gigantic sideboard,

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'a sideboard almost as big as Wembley, with 5,000 feet of platform

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'served by 15 railroads, 35 auto trucks and four mobile cranes...

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'..accommodation for 400 wagons and 1,000 tons of goods all at one time,

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'goods assembled from the fields,

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'fresh packed from the assembly line,

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'green gathered from the factory.

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'Here, they're sorted and served out to the city,

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'the surrounding country, and on to the sideboards of smaller depots.'

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Wrestling with a loose-coupled train as it wended its way

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between England's "sideboards" was the province of the guard.

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I met Roger Hobson.

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I think it's about one of the least glamorous jobs on the railway,

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actually, to be fair. It's very little heard of

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compared with the driver and fireman.

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- People always get the impression you just sit here

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- not doing much. What do you actually do?

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Well, it's a matter of controlling the train.

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You see, the guard's in charge of the train,

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and on a loose-coupled freight train, the guard controls the train

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by means of using the handbrake, purely and simply.

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- All the time? - All the time, yes.

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The idea is to keep the couplings taut on the train

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by use of the handbrake.

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- And what would happen if you didn't?

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Well, the train could break in half,

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because if you get a snatch from the engine

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and the couplings aren't tied, the train will literally break in half,

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- which is obviously dangerous. - Has it ever happened?

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Oh, yes, certainly, many times.

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It hasn't actually happened on this railway, but in the old days,

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on the original railways, it happened fairly frequently.

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The Severn Valley Railway operates passenger trains

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as a tourist attraction.

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But they also occasionally move pick-up goods trains.

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Now, the passenger trains go faster than you do,

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so you have to waste time stopping and getting out of their way,

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and even after you've politely got into a siding

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and let them through,

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you sometimes find they've created further problems for you.

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I should watch it. You're about to set fire to yourself, mate.

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- Oh, that's nice.

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When railways were first invented, land owners worried

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that trains would frighten livestock, run over animals

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and set fire to the countryside.

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And they were dead right.

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For the driver and crew, it's just another headache.

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But for the signalman, it's a question of, "What kept you so long?"

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I remember, as a young boy, my father once persuading

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an engine driver he knew to take me out for the day.

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We went five miles, shunted a few trucks around and came back again.

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It took all day.

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It still does.

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- Morning! - Cheers, mate.

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The pick-up goods train would amble through Highley

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once or twice a day.

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It dropped off trucks full of things ordered locally

213
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and picked up any truck full of things going elsewhere -

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farm produce, bits of machinery, milk,

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racing pigeons to be released by a station master...

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Anything.

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WHISTLES

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GPV, by the way, stands for gunpowder van.

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And, for obvious reasons, this never went next to the engine.

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People always have a vague look of worry on the railways.

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The signalman worries about the next passenger train coming through.

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The cows worry that this screeching monster has come to take them

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on a last trip to the abattoir.

224
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One way of speeding up the snail's pace of goods trains

225
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around Britain was fly shunting.

226
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You put in your shunting pole while the train was still moving,

227
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uncoupled the desired van...

228
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And then ran after it to slam on the handbrake before you had a pile up.

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No wonder that 50 shunters a year were killed

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at the turn of the century, and hundreds maimed.

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Unfortunately for us, time has run out.

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All goods traffic will have to clear off the main line

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because an express passenger train is arriving on it any minute.

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RINGING

235
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Today, the main cargo of the line is people.

236
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But in British Rail days,

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the main cargo was something you couldn't escape from...

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even here.

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Mr Richardson, you were stationmaster here in the 1950s

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for five years.

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But although today it's the Severn Valley line,

242
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it's full of birds and trees,

243
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in those days it was mostly coal, wasn't it?

244
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Yes, we carried a terrific amount of coal up and down

245
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the line from Alveley Colliery.

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About 1,000 tons per day used to come out through there.

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So you actually dealt with more coal than passengers?

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Well, revenue-wise, yes.

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We used to deal with quite a lot of passengers,

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but they were all, most of them were short journeys, you know,

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workmen going to Kidderminster, the carpet factories,

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to the military base at Hartlebury,

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one or two to Bridgnorth and one to two Worcester.

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Stourport used to take a few.

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In its heyday, the railway system employed an incredible

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three quarters of a million people,

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and even a small station like this had a full complement of staff -

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stationmaster and signalman, booking clerks and freight clerks,

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porters, shunters, an agent,

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not to mention the train crews themselves.

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Today they have to double up on jobs.

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The shunter has to act as farmhand if necessary.

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MOOING

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I can't imagine anything much nicer than living at

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a flowery station like this, so I'm fiercely jealous of Mrs Oliver,

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who now occupies a stationmaster's house.

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It's hard for us now to believe the range of services that she knew.

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Will you give these to Fred Jones at Highley Station, please?

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Of course I will, certainly. Thank you very much indeed.

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'Every little detail taken care of.'

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WHISTLES

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The railways offered a comprehensive service.

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The GWR would collect from your own farm.

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The LMS hired out grain sacks to farming customers,

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though they discontinued this when so few of the sacks came back.

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And the LNER offered a complete house moving operation.

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"If desired," they said,

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"arrangements can be made for the laying of carpets

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"and linoleum, hanging of pictures, placing of articles in cupboards

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"and shelves, etc, to complete a really trouble-free removal."

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It must have been a wonderful service to the locality. But was it economic?

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I mean...

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Well, it was in its day, because of course you must remember

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that the trains were in their heyday before there were motor vehicles,

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and so they were virtually the lifeline

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for the countryside communities.

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Nowadays, if you want to do anything like that, you go to, well,

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you send it by post.

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Well, nowadays, of course, a lot of stuff doesn't go by rail.

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Rail is only interested in bulk loads these days.

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Oil, coal?

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Freightliner trains... Yes, oil, coal, certainly to power stations,

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but no smalls at all now.

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That's the thing I keep forgetting, actually,

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that motor traffic is a very recent thing, isn't it?

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Oh, yes, comparatively,

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I mean, motor transport has really only come into its own since the war.

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Before then, you went to the station.

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At every station, they used to have a what they call,

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I forget what they called them now, but it was a sort of manager

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who touted for business around the country areas.

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- Really? - Oh, yes, absolutely.

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I grew up next door to the Great Western Railway,

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and I can still remember the clanking of goods trains

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through the night - the lonely whistle, the echoing of empty wagons.

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It never occurred to me

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till now that night time was the right time for goods trains.

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With nothing else around, no passengers,

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they could get down to business.

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By night they flourished unseen,

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and, unseen, the mixed-goods train died and vanished from British life.

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WHISTLES

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Although I didn't know it at the time,

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shunting engines were a doomed species.

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When other competition arose,

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they would survive only in steam zoos and railway safari parks.

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Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

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If the goods train can't take you,

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the lorry must.