A century ago, Britain's rail network was the envy of the world.
You could get a train from almost anywhere...
..to almost anywhere else.
But many of these lines were considered unprofitable,
and in the 1960s,
Dr Beeching was recruited by the government to come up with a
plan that would stop the railways from haemorrhaging money.
He famously brought the axe down on over 4,000 miles of track
and 2,000 stations.
Almost overnight, 30% of the network was closed down.
50 years on, I'm going on a journey to discover just a few of
those lost lines.
I'm in the southwest walking the Somerset and Dorset line from
Burnham-on-Sea to Bath.
Oh, my goodness me!
I did not expect to find anything like this.
It's a journey that'll introduce me to the mystical secrets of Avalon.
I'll learn how to change the points in a real signal box.
And finally, I'll get to experience one of the finest settings
for a railway viaduct I've ever seen,
and I've seen a few.
I'm walking the lost Somerset and Dorset line that runs from
the coast at Burnham-on-Sea to Bath Green Park station.
I'm beginning my journey somewhere I love to be - on the beach.
Here begins a line that was built with feverish enthusiasm by
visionary investors hoping to transform local fortunes.
This is the story of a railway that spiralled out of control and
was almost crushed by the weight of its own ambition.
Believe it or not, this rather strange-looking stilted
structure is actually a lighthouse.
It's not what you expect to find near a railway, but this,
the Bristol Channel, right out at the moment because the tide is out,
was the start of the dream to use the railways to put a small
seaside town on the north coast of Somerset, firmly on the map.
The nearest railway station was only two miles away, but the people
of Burnham-on-Sea recognised the business potential of
attracting tourists right into the heart of town.
This was part of the railway mania that struck this country in
the mid-19th century.
It was the dot-com boom of its time.
All they had to do was build a short line connecting Burnham-on-Sea
here to an existing railway a couple of miles inland,
then sit back and watch the money roll in.
In due course, that line would go all the way to Bath,
some 35 miles away,
but by the time it got there,
the railway company building the line had gone bankrupt.
To see why that happened for myself, I'm retracing the route.
I'm right at the start of the line, hoping to pick up the trail
from where the railway almost dipped its toes into the sea.
Local historian and railway enthusiast John Strickland
recalls how all of this used to look and feel when the railway was here.
I can certainly see why people wanted to come down to
Burnham-on-Sea here, John. What a day. What a beach.
It's glorious, isn't it? It's lovely, lovely.
We've got the right weather for holiday-makers, haven't we?
So, railways would have come where? How close to the jetty?
Cos I know it came to the jetty. Well, I've got a photograph here if you'd like to see.
I knew it came to the jetty.
This is the same jetty. Wow. Look at that.
And the lines went right the way down through to the end.
And they were coming from where? Where was the steamers coming from?
They were coming across from Cardiff and the idea was that people
would come across and then, of course,
they could either spend the day in Burnham or they could then catch
the train and go all the way down to Poole and Bournemouth,
and then if they so wished,
they could go right the way across to Cherbourg and... In France?
In France. Yeah.
And have a holiday in France.
I mean, that was absolutely unheard of in these days.
And was that then part of the plan to open up Burnham-on-Sea, but also
make Burnham-on-Sea more connected to more places around the country?
That's right.
Once the railway came, the town grew then, both in residents and
also for holiday-makers.
The old station is just a few metres inland.
The platform was only ever a grass verge and we can still stand
on it almost as it would have been 52 years ago.
And this would've been raised would it? This would've been raised.
Obviously, there would've been an edge along it for where the rails came in. To step off, yeah.
But people would actually step off here from their coaches.
I used to stand on this platform and watch the trains come in and
to see then, it was like a town coming off of the coaches.
And there were people, you couldn't move, you couldn't walk.
It was like a big crowd of people going forward.
I can remember that.
I'm very fortunate that someone took a photograph, yeah,
and this is me here in the short trousers. Get out!
This 19... And you're having a little chat with the driver?
1954. Yes. That's quite right.
Is that always going to stay with you?
Yes, and I think that sums up my childhood in Burnham.
From the grass platform,
it's easy to trace the path of this lost railway,
and for John, it's one often travelled and always treasured.
And I can remember, I must have been in my teens,
watching the very last train going out,
and seeing the last coach disappear with a little red light glimmering,
and I have to say, I had a tear in my eye because
it was the end of an era.
I would never ever see that again.
The very last train?
The very last train.
This was when then? This is 19... 1966.
And just to see, it was almost like the last coach was actually
going into a frame of hedge as it disappeared out towards Highbridge.
And then it was gone. Gone.
And that was it. And that was it, finished.
Gone completely.
You know, chatting with John has really left me thinking a bit
more about the lost railways that aren't here any more.
The railways gathered a community around it and you can see the
excitement John still has in his eyes when he talks about it.
In a generation's time, that'll be lost, but for now, I will walk
along this pretty nondescript pavement alongside a busy road,
but because John can tell me about that
and remind me of the lost railway,
it's not just a footpath - this is the old railway line.
It's only a couple of miles to the point where the dream to
connect Burnham-on-Sea to the existing line,
and thus the rest of Britain, became a reality.
All I need to do is figure out exactly where that was.
This must be... Oh, yeah.
Here we go. Ha, ha, ha.
That's what I was looking for.
Now, having come a couple of miles inland from Burnham,
I've arrived here at Highbridge.
And I know because this is where I'm crossing this railway.
Now, Highbridge was a really important junction point for
the line.
So, let's have a look here. I can almost line this up perfectly
with the north-south Exeter and Bristol line here with the track.
Now, Somerset and Dorset line would have come in from Burnham here,
it would have crossed right about where that red brick building is,
and then under my feet, under the bridge here and heading inland.
But the construction of this line would prove more challenging
than anyone had anticipated.
I'll be discovering why the Somerset landscape caused engineers
and investors such enormous headaches.
And you can see just what it was like.
It was this thick, boggy marshland,
and it's quite hard to be in.
I'm walking the old Somerset and Dorset line from
Burnham-on-Sea to Bath.
I've made it almost four miles inland so far,
and I'm passing through the lush Somerset levels.
I've had to come slightly south of where the line exactly ran
here because it's now just in open fields.
But what I'm trying to find and locate is where the station
was at Edington Burtle, and I'm pretty sure it must be here.
So, there's the pub there, which...
Here we go.
Says it all here now.
This house is called Station House.
The line came in from there and then ran right along the waterway.
The station hotel was built in 1856,
a couple of years after the railway came.
It was built right next to the station to house the
travellers and the workers that were coming through on the railway.
And I know that in 1966, when the railway shut down,
the pub here took over the old station hotel buildings
and it was renamed the Tom Mogg.
Tom Mogg was a signalman who worked at the station here
for years and years.
This is now called The Duck.
But it is the same building. Look at that.
You see that profile there? There's the chimney.
I'm in the right place.
I'm just having a little hunt around to see if my suspicions are founded.
This has to have once been the Tom Mogg Inn.
Here we go. Come look at this.
There we are. Tom Mogg.
There it is.
In the bar, I get talking to Percy Parsons,
a 93-year-old veteran of the Somerset and Dorset line.
Oh, Percy, you worked on the railways here for a long time
and knew a lot of people who also worked on the railway.
So tell me, who was Tom Mogg?
On the 24th May, 1937, when I started on the railway, aged 14,
I was a junior porter, I took over and I worked with Tom.
Tom Mogg was a signalman at the time at Edington Junction signal box.
Nice old chap he was.
Yeah, he was.
Now, you've got an interesting item with you here, Percy.
What would a signalman have used his lamp for?
We take it apart.
Oh, here we go. Got green and red in there.
Green and red. OK.
Natural enough, the green and the red would be "OK" or "stop".
OK. With this hand lamp,
up and down, "go ahead".
Up like this,
signalman alter the points.
These were the moves?
Yeah. The moves.
From what you remember,
what were the railways like going through here?
It was a low damp country.
Your fog would lift up at night especially.
In August 1949,
very, very foggy morning it was,
and a vehicle stalls right on the railway.
The train driver and fireman couldn't see him, it was so foggy,
and they hit this thing and the engine has gone in the canal.
Oh!
This is a treacherously foggy landscape and has its own set
of unique problems.
The line from here to Glastonbury progresses through some of
the flattest countryside in England.
And at just six metres above sea level,
the threat of flooding is constant.
The main reason the Somerset and Dorset line cost so much to
construct was because of where it was being constructed -
the Somerset Levels.
A marshy wetland area covering around 17,000 acres.
So, when you're building a railway line through here,
you couldn't just lay the tracks at ground level,
you needed vast, sufficient railway embankments.
And I'm a good couple of metres higher than the land on the
other side of the drain here.
But think about the technology they had available
to build these embankments.
It was picks and shovels.
Moving that amount of earth at that time
would've been unprecedented,
and that's why it cost so much to build this line.
Three miles from Edington Burtle along the south drain is
Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve.
When you start to consider just how difficult it was to build the
Somerset and Dorset railway line through the Somerset Levels,
you start to think a bit about how people could have lived here
thousands of years ago before any of the efforts were made to drain
the land of all this moisture, and you can see just what it was like.
It was this thick, boggy marshland,
and it's quite hard to be in.
You can see I'm stumbling around here.
A discovery from the 1970s a little further into the bog land here
gives us an idea of how they lived and how they got around back then.
Wading through this dense, reedy swampland would be a nigh on
impossible task if it wasn't for this narrow walkway.
This is a replica of something called The Sweet Track,
a raised wooden platform that runs through the swamps here.
Now, it's been dated back to over 5,500 years ago
to Neolithic times.
It is a remarkable discovery.
What I love about it so much is that it draws such a strong
parallel with construction millennia later, where great big bundles
of sticks were laid out on top of the bog to give a more firm
foundation on which to build the Somerset and Dorset railway line.
This is Neolithic civil engineering.
I'm following the old line just before it circumnavigates the
town of Glastonbury.
In fact, for the first time, I can see Glastonbury Tor,
with St Michael's Church perched on top.
Glastonbury is often heralded as the ancient Isle of Avalon,
once surrounded by water and central to the legend of King Arthur.
In the heart of the historic medieval town,
the Abbey stands in ruins.
12th century monks claimed this was the resting place of the
mythical king and his wife, Guinevere.
But some say this was simply a story told to attract pilgrims to
fund rebuilding the Abbey after a devastating fire in 1184.
Without any tangible evidence in hand,
never mind a magical sword, at the turn of the 20th century,
it was once again claimed that King Arthur's burial place had
been found, this time using the practice of psychic archaeology.
Pilgrims and spiritual tourism took hold once again as it
had 700 years earlier, and with the railway connecting the town
like never before, business boomed.
Whether King Arthur ever existed at all remains a mystery,
but some say his spirit can certainly be felt.
And who wouldn't want to be swept up by fantastic tales of kings
and wizards and the heroic knights of the round table?
I'm meeting up with the aptly named Tor Webster.
He's going to be taking me on a tour of Glastonbury Tor with his dog, Nettle.
Well, what is it about Glastonbury Tor that has held such an
interest with so many people for hundreds of years?
Well, I personally call it the little town with a big story
because it's got stories of, you know, saints and kings and
queens and you've got stories of, you know, Joseph of Arimathea,
the Great Uncle of Christ coming here with Mary Magdalene.
You've got stories of King Arthur and Guinevere buried here in
Glastonbury Abbey.
Now as I understand it, Tor, it was around the time of the
arrival of the railways coming to Glastonbury, but after a bit
of a hiatus, more and more visitors started coming back again.
Is that right? Yeah, that's right.
After the dissolution of the abbeys and the monasteries in England,
Glastonbury was pretty much deserted for 300 years
and the railway brought a new kind of, you know,
a new possibility of visitors and tourists to the land.
You know, there was resurgence in the interest, in the legends and
the myths of Glastonbury and with the trains,
people could come here,
and many, many mystics came here and started a new tourism.
You know, it's a great place,
a melting pot of wonderful colourful things.
It is. And you mentioned colourful and we're getting up higher and
higher here towards the top of the Tor.
On the green and pleasant land of New Jerusalem.
LAUGHTER
It's a little misty up here today, but you can see where the
railway line came in.
It came through the trees, through all the peat bog fields out there,
and then it passed along this side of Glastonbury and then east.
Get your stick.
Here we are then, Tor, we've made it.
We have, yeah.
Well done.
Now, some believe this is the entrance into Avalon?
Well, you can see it like that. Yeah.
A lot of people come in here and do ceremony and connect and kind
of pray, you know, it's the height of the ancient Isle of Avalon.
But look around you, what a wonderful view, you know.
You can happily sit here and look at the world around.
You can see Wales on a good day.
You know, it's a great place of reflection.
When you put it to me like that, Tor, you know,
you can understand the spiritualism at a place like this.
On the top of the world, yeah. You are, yeah.
Well, let's go and have a look.
So, this is where King Arthur exists still today?
In spirit, yeah.
Maybe lying in the landscape somewhere, you never know.
Yeah, this was a church that came out here and even before
there was a church up here many thousands of years ago, this would
have been, because it's the height of the island, if you can imagine
the water around here, coming on a barge through the mists of Avalon,
you know, seeing the hill, you know, similar coming on the train.
The train could have been the modern barge through the mists.
The modern barge.
Into the very common mists through the Somerset Levels along there.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Listen, Tor, thank you very much.
I will leave you. I'm going to continue my journey.
I come across something quite extraordinary in the most
unexpected of places.
Oh, my goodness me.
Talk about lost railways, this is more like lost worlds.
That is absolutely beautiful.
I'm walking the old Somerset and Dorset line from
Burnham-on-Sea to Bath, a route that almost bankrupted its investors.
It's easy to see the direction of the old line with a bird's-eye view,
but from ground level,
figuring out where I'm going next isn't always easy.
I've come a couple of stops down the line from Glastonbury and you
can see where the line would have come in along this straight line
of trees here.
And where am I? Here we go.
So, the point I'm looking for is here, Evercreech Junction.
Now initially, the Somerset and Dorset line only continued on
south down towards the coast to Poole, but in the late 1860s,
the company finances weren't in the best of shape.
They just simply hadn't returned the money they'd expected it
would have, especially given the amount they had to invest
getting through all the Somerset Levels.
So, to try and rectify that, they decided to branch the line
towards Bath to try and tap into the busy railways of the Midlands.
So, I'm trying to find this point here now where that branch line
comes off of the line that I've been following from the coast
inland and heads north to Bath.
And there aren't that many clues here at the moment to tell me
where that is.
So, I've taken a straight line from the bunch of trees where I was.
It's this hedgerow here that's drawn my attention.
You come round this past this bit of old farming machinery.
Yeah. Ha, ha, ha.
That's what I was looking for.
That's it exactly.
That is the branch line.
Look, you can see the curve that's on the map there.
The curve of the hedgerow and then it disappears away into what
looks like it might be a cutting through where all those trees are.
I reckon this is it.
That is a very big personal satisfaction for me.
I don't care how geeky that is.
I've found the line heading north towards Bath.
Ha, ha.
Have a look. Check this out.
As if the geography of this curve wasn't enough...
..this confirms it.
Yeah. This looks to me like it would be a railway cutting down to allow
the line to pass through here.
So, this branch line opened in 1874 with the railway hoping it
would turn their fortunes around,
but they were challenged once again by the Somerset landscape,
only this time it wasn't the boggy flats of the Somerset Levels,
it was the unforgiving rocky hills of the Mendips.
I'm about five miles along the line now from Evercreech Junction,
just outside the town of Shepton Mallet.
I'm walking along where the line came through.
Now today, it might look like that's been turned into a bit of a
walled roadway, that's not the case, this is no ordinary roadway.
Where I'm walking now is Charlton Viaduct.
This is a piece of infrastructure built specifically for the railway.
But the thing about viaducts is,
you can only really appreciate them from down below.
I feel like an ant down here underneath all of this.
Now, this viaduct is about 290 metres long and it's got
27 of these arches.
It's actually built along a curve and that has a structural and
an architectural implication.
Every third pier, so you have these buttresses that stick out,
those buttresses are there to support the viaduct
because of that curve.
As the train comes round, forces would be pushed out towards
the outside of the curve, which means that you'd need more
structural support on this side.
It's just a beautiful part of this design.
You can see the two very distinct different materials in these piers.
It's almost a viaduct of two halves.
You've got this half here made of stone,
and you see this half is made out of brick.
Now, this is because about 20 years or so after the branch line
up to Bath opened, the line went from single track to double track.
The labour intensity involved in constructing this,
along with the cash it would cost, would've been phenomenal and this
is only the first of a number of viaducts on the line up to Bath.
The viaduct was built around Kilver Court,
which included a pub, and then a small brewery.
But when Shepton Mallet station was built nearby in 1874,
business flourished from the increase in trade the railways brought.
Today, it's one of the world's biggest producers of
Somerset's most famous tipple - cider.
And production has now been
moved into a massive facility on the other side of the road.
The business is worth millions and it's thanks largely to the
legacy of the railways.
I'm at the 28-mile mark now on the old Somerset and Dorset line,
and the huge expense of the route is becoming clearer by the minute.
I'm passing under another disused viaduct just up the road as I
head into the Mendip Hills.
Now occasionally, when you're trying to walk Britain's lost railways,
you can't always stick to the exact route that the old lines took.
Some stretches of where the line went is now private property
and you can't just go traipsing through there,
not without permission anyway.
And I'm in a place called Ham Woods,
just west of where the old line went,
so I've got faith I'm going to continue through here
and try find something to bring me back to the line that way somewhere.
It's like the jungle through here.
Ha, ha. That's fooled me slightly there.
I thought that was a massive tree trunk.
I think that's more man-made.
Yeah! Found it! I'm back!
This is just stunning.
I did not expect to find anything like this.
It's amazing to see what happens when we neglect our creations
and how little time it takes for them to almost disappear from sight.
Oh, my goodness me!
Talk about lost railways, this is more like lost worlds.
That is absolutely beautiful.
Look how it's all been taken over by nature.
You've got vines running up the piers, all these trees up
alongside and all this happened in what, 50 years, 50-60 years.
I feel like I'm in some Jurassic Park type movie or something.
Continuing on through what feels like the fallen kingdom of
the Somerset and Dorset line, I've stumbled upon another victim
of Beeching's brutal cuts to the network.
This is Masbury Halt station.
And it looks like some work's being done on this forgotten
relic of the line.
Luckily for me, Joe Bourne, the owner, is on hand to show me around.
You've mowed your platform? I have, yeah.
It was gravel and the grass has come up through it so I...
Oh, it's much nicer. ..just try and keep it tidyish.
This is brilliant, Joe!
This was the station building, was it? The old stationmasters house.
That end building was the ticket office in one end, then you
had the waiting rooms, separate waiting rooms, male and female.
I thought that was a bit strange but... Male and female waiting rooms? Yeah.
Didn't like sitting together, I don't know. OK. Fair enough.
And this is building you said it's...
This building here, this is the old signal box. OK.
Which is half built. So, you're doing it yourself? So... Yeah.
You know, there was no use for having it as a signal box,
but I wanted to keep it looking exactly how it used to.
Oh, it's a lovely project, Joe.
It's absolutely lovely.
No, I think, you know,
when I've finished it or if I finish it, it'll be stunning.
Good luck with the rest of the project. Yeah. Cheerio.
Thanks a lot. See ya.
It's heartening to see that Joe is dedicating time and money to
restore these old buildings to their former glory.
This railway may seem like it's lost,
but it certainly isn't forgotten.
The Somerset and Dorset line extension to Bath was
about 26 miles from Evercreech Junction.
And along the way, they had to build four tunnels and
seven viaducts and it was an incredible workforce of
around 3,000 navvies who took just two years to complete that at
a cost of around £400,000, which in today's money is about £35 million.
That's more than £one million per mile of track.
Now talking of track, for the last three quarters of a mile or so,
I've had the unique opportunity to walk on actual track bed.
I've got all the lines and rails all around me here,
and the reason I can do that is because I'm just coming up to
Midsomer Norton Station right here, which today is run as the
heart of the Somerset and Dorset Heritage Railway.
It's almost like a step back in time to the 1950s.
And what's special about this particular heritage line is
that along with the restoration of the usual trains and buildings,
the signalling and points are in full working order too.
I'm meeting a man who can show me how this engineering wonder works.
Please come in. Hello.
Welcome to Norton South signal box.
Thank you very much. It's Will, is it? Absolutely.
This has all been restored?
Completely rebuilt from scratch,
and it's very clever Victorian engineering.
Well, absolutely. It's a mechanical Victorian computer.
Can I have a go and see how hard it is to move some points? Go on, then.
Right. Always use a cloth. Yes. Why's that?
It stops sweaty hands making the handles rusty.
Take it off and it'll go back to there. OK.
Assume the position and shove.
OK. Go on. Lovely. All yours. The look you're giving me there.
Now you've got the cloth, you're in charge. Let's have a look.
Take it off first. OK. That's nice.
Now push. Now do I go? Push.
Go on! Go on! Go on! Go! You can do it!
Yay! You need a bit of welly at that last bit, don't you?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But by doing that, I have just shifted the points. Yeah.
So actually, that force I'm feeling is the resistance all the way
along the line through those bars... Yeah.
..and the distance and the weight of shifting,
moving big heavy chunks of track.
Yeah.
Does the signal work?
Yeah. And if the point wasn't in the right direction, you couldn't work
the signal cos it all interlocks.
Would I be able to pop down onto the track and see the point that
you're moving from up close?
Yeah. Give me a wave when you're ready.
All right, Will.
Take it away.
That's brilliant.
So, there's cables moving,
there's pulleys turning and eventually, I get my points moved.
Oh, Will, can you take it back again?
Yes! Look at that.
That's lovely.
Thank you. Cheers. I'll see you again. Safe journey. Cheerio.
I'm going to learn that when it comes to building tunnels,
cost-cutting costs lives.
What, it killed people?
I'm three-quarters of the way through my journey along the
lost Somerset and Dorset railway line.
Walking this route makes me realise how much opportunity the
railways gave the people that lived alongside them.
So I wonder how those communities felt when the railways were
taken away in Beeching's sweeping cuts.
SINGING
Here in Midsomer Norton, the local church choir are rehearsing a song
by writing duo Flanders and Swann, written at the time of the closures.
I'm hoping it might give me a bit of insight.
# No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
# On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road
# No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
# At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
# We won't be meeting again
# On the Slow Train
# Shhhhhhhhh. #
I love the rhythm of that.
It is the chuff-chuff, chuff-chuff, chuff of the train, isn't it?
I think it's one of our favourites, wouldn't you say? Yeah.
Does the song and lyrics capture the public feeling about this then?
Well, all these are stations that shut, and I think it's one of the
more genuinely sad songs, in a way. It is, yeah.
If you tried driving into Bath in the morning,
you'd really wish that there were trains cos it's not good.
Well, that's the soundtrack for the rest of my walk sorted.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye.
That was in harmony, that bye.
LAUGHTER
That was a lovely little side track for me and I'm very grateful
to have been invited along to hear that.
I guess the point is with that song, The Slow Train,
it was written by a comedy duo and it went out very shortly
after Beeching published his report announcing that all these
lines were to be closed, and when popular culture picks up on
an issue like that, I think it just really goes to show what the
public feeling was about the railways being closed down.
It's quite sad.
I've covered just over 30 miles of the line and I'm approaching
the final stretch which takes me into Bath.
Back in the 1870s, having already laid track over the boggy
Somerset Levels,
and built the seven viaducts needed to cross the
unforgiving Mendip Hills,
money was fast running out for the investors of the line,
and at the worst possible time too,
because up ahead, it would get even tougher.
I'm picking up the pace somewhat for the last five and a half
miles of my journey into Bath on this dedicated cycle route.
It's operated by an organisation called Sustrans.
It was established in 1977 to encourage more people to take
up sustainable forms of transport, like the bike.
They have a network of paths like this running right across the
country and many of those run on disused railway lines,
including this one.
Until 1966, this was the Somerset and Dorset railway.
So 150 years ago, it wasn't peddle power moving people along here.
It was steam.
I've been joined by Mark Annand for this leg of my journey.
He led a team who lovingly restored the most expensive and
challenging part of this lost line, the Combe Down tunnel.
Oh, this was quite an engineering feat when it was first built, was it, this tunnel? Yeah.
It's a mile 69 yards long and it's only straight in the middle,
it's got a curve at each end and it also rises at a gradient,
so there's a lot of math to do.
So, they tunnelled in from each end?
They just dug it in from each end, yes.
It was a time of financial panic to get it to Bath basically by the
cheapest route.
No ventilation shafts in days of steam locomotives, that was a
problem because the tunnel would get very, very full of smoke.
This was intensively used by heavy trains and things got smoky.
That's the guys in the cab, drivers...
That would've been horrendous if it was all smoky?
Yes. Yes.
It actually killed people on a couple of occasions.
What, it killed people? What drivers? Yes.
Literally.
The loco crew of one particular train in the 1920s lost
consciousness in the tunnel and the loco and train just then ran away
down the hill into Bath and came to grief in Bath Station Yard,
and, sadly, people died and were injured as a result
of that accident.
Oh, my word.
It's a terrible tragedy after the many obstacles that had
already been overcome, that cutting corners because of budgetary
concerns ended up costing lives.
After the great expense of completing the Combe Down tunnel,
the Somerset and Dorset railway finally rolled into
the ancient city of Bath.
Far from following a direct route,
the railway was forced to snake north-west through the city
in order to join the existing line into the station.
On the 20th July, 1874, the Somerset and Dorset railway,
described 90 years later as "an act of financial suicide",
was finally opened.
Here we are then, I've arrived at the end of my journey.
I'm in Bath at Green Park Station.
Now, the station buildings and the huge canopy out the back were
actually built by the London Midland railway.
It was a great opportunity to tap into the already busy
railway network.
Today, this is still a vibrant venue with loads of activities going on.
Here in this grand old station building,
the legacy of the railway era is crystal clear.
It may have bankrupted the investors who built it,
but the lost railway has provided this amazing public space,
which hosted the very first modern farmer's market.
Fantastic.
It's all happening in here today.
Look at this, all under the massive canopy out here.
And I couldn't leave Somerset without picking up some of the
locally-produced cider.
I'll have two please. Lovely.
Thank you very much indeed.
Nice to meet you. Thank you. Cheerio.
The fact that a huge amount of infrastructure still remains here
at Green Park Station, for me, is a worthy testament to the ambitions
and aspirations of those behind the Somerset and Dorset railway.
Ultimately, though, as a company it failed,
perhaps falling victim to the almost blind faith in the
money-making capability of the railways at that time.
But despite its financial failures,
it ran trains for a good 100 years or more,
taking holiday-makers to the coast
and connecting not just local communities,
but huge areas of the southwest with the rest of the country.
And let's not forget,
its vital role in moving gallons of delicious cider.
Next time, I'll see how horizons were broadened for ordinary
Victorian families...
Suddenly, travel became available to the working classes.
I'll retrace their journeys through the new frontier of Wales...
That's 126 feet down.
It's nicknamed, "The stream in the sky".
And I'll see the beauty of the country they could now explore.
It was the railways coming here that opened up all of this to all people.
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