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TRANSPORT SOME BRITISH HISTORY Rails, Roads & Runways: How Enthusiasts Are Saving Britain's Railways & Locomotives \| Southern Steam \| Full Series 1 PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WP29QVBrb8
How Enthusiasts Are Saving Britain's Railways & Locomotives \| Southern Steam \| Full Series 1 Rails, Roads & Runways Nov 3, 2025 39.3K subscribers ... 10,085 views ... 159 likes ISLE OF MAN The era of steam officially ended overnight, but thanks to a passionate army of volunteers and enthusiasts, it's making a powerful comeback. This film was first broadcast: 17 Sep 1998 Subscribe to Rails, Roads & Runways - https://bit.ly/4jheFUk Watch More Documentaries Up Close - / @upcloseitvs Emergencies Up Close - / @emergenciesupcloseitvs Crime Up Close - / @crimeupcloseitvs Blueprint - / @blueprintitvs Our History - / @ourhistory True Lives - / @truelivesitvs Our World - / @ourworld Our Stories - / @ourstories Taste - / @tasteitvs Rails, Roads and Runways is home to thrilling documentaries about the world of transportation. Follow the engineers, drivers and pilots that keep us moving around the globe! Content distributed by ITV Studios. #steam #railway #history Peter Burgess COMMENTARY This video ... actually a film ... was created several years ago covering the role rail enthusiasts have recovered a good number of steam locomotives and brought them back to life. I collected 'engine numbers' when I was young and knew a lot about British steam locomotives as a young boy. During my childhood, we lived in Surbiton near London until I was five, and then Okehampton Devon until I left home as a young adult. Surbiton and Okehamption were served by the Southern Railway! During my childhood we took vacations with my mother's relatives in Lancashire travelling by LMS (London, Midland and Scottish Railway) and vacations with my father's relatives in Yorkshire served by LNER (London North Eastern Railway). In the summer we vacationed at the shore in Cornwall and Devon which was served by GWR (Great Westerb Railway). By the time I was an adult, I knew a lot about steam powered railway engines and the role that steam power had had in Britain's economic success in modern timers ... that is, during the 19th and 20th centuries! Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 People who travel by fast catamaran from Portsmouth to the island are in for a surprise or two. The tube trains on Ride Pier, a wartime London Underground stock that retired to the seaside. Then there are the Isisle of White Beach huts that look strangely like railway carriages. And that's because a 100 years ago they were. One by one they're being turned back into the kind of coaches Queen Victoria used. Steam has returned in the shape of the Isisle of White Steam Railway. As these four-wheelers were withdrawn from service, uh the bodies were actually sold off. Although the underframes are scrap, the bodies uh were preserved as beach huts, chalets, chicken coups, farm out buildings, whatever you care to think of. 1:07 Volunteers scoured the island for relics and took them to a safe haven. It happens to be called Haven Street. They didn't have much money or backing, but what they did have was a dream. And they were not prepared to rest until they'd conquered a mountain made of rust. [Music] Originally, it's s of because you want to see the things back together and usable. What was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship when it was originally built is now just sort of Derek Chickener. It's nice to sort of see these things back as they were. The little engines that once worked on the Isle of Wight were recovered from various resting places on the mainland and shipped across the Solent. Whole families of islanders rallied 2:04 round to make the railway viable again. People like Ken and Margaret West and their daughter and son-in-law Liz and Chris. I tell you, you won't win. Mr. West was an engine man with British Rail for half a century. The family's practical knowledge of the island has been put to good use. I'm a guard, the only female guard, I'll add. And uh I'm responsible for the train and the train doesn't move unless I say it can. Um so I'm in charge of him and if I can leave him behind occasionally, I do try to, but I've never achieved it yet. And I'm also in charge of the foot plate crew to a certain extent because they can't go without me. So, uh, she's a stickler for timing. Absolutely. Yeah. She always tells me I'm late. Yeah. Martin, please. Some people look at me sometimes and say he's a legend sort of in business. You know, I started on the railway at Newport as a engine cleaner in July 3:06 1944. You know, I done 40 49 and a half year for British Rail and retirement kind of made boredom. I retired in the October. From the October to Christmas was terrible. I did no really bad. So any I got the opportunity to come out here and since then I've never looked back. I'm all in the crack rods. This is done every day. Everything where there's a a bearon or any metal rubbing together, everything's got to be lubricated and oiled once a day out here once a day. Possibly wouldn't be our day. It would have been twice a day. This of water 9 res but you've been stood all night from water accumulated. That's how your your brakes work. That's a pump. That's what works the brakes. Two 4:04 cylinders. Steam air. Pumps air into the reservoir and then when you apply the brakes up there releases the air out of the brake cylinder. Brake valve in the coil. releasing air of the cylinder through the triple valve into the brake cylinder and flows and brakes. Rination is all done underneath first and then when that should run all day with no problems whatsoever. I haven't seen or been on a a steam loy for 25 years. I come here in the morning. I lift her up when it far in the wind. I hadn't gone 100 100 yards up that bank and everything come back to everything from the movement, the atmosphere, the noise in 25 years is a long time. Of course, I was worried all the time I wouldn't be wouldn't going to make the grade again. But especially with me aging that honestly 5:05 it just comes to you and that's it. Now I thought I got kid of 20 now. I'm really 70. The railway is only a few miles away from the south coast's biggest cities, but it's in a different world, tucked away in a fold in the hills. Mainlanders don't seem to know it's there. We have one big problem here, and that is that because we're on an island, uh, a lot of people don't realize how easy it is to get here from uh, anywhere along the south coast, indeed from London for a day via the um, uh, train services to Portsmouth Harbor. the catamaran across to ride and the few minutes journey from Ride Pierhead on the electric railway to Smallbrook. You're here. Somehow this offshore island off the south coast of England has retained two railways, not one but two. The electric railway between Ride and Shankton using vintage rolling stock and us between Smallbrook and Woodton 6:04 running even older rolling stock. This engine was built 120 years ago at Brighton for Victorian commuters and became famous as the Hailing Billy. It was laid to rest on a plinth outside a pub. But now it's back on the rails with a brand new boiler and probably hasn't been in better condition for a century. [Music] 7:00 What must be Britain's most elegant park and ride scheme delivers an eighth of a million people to the seaside minus their cars in style. A once disused railway has found a new purpose. [Music] The railway runs from Swanage to uh Nordon which is a distance of approximately 6 milesi and it goes through the historic village of K Castle which I think is the sixth most visited National Trust monument the the old ruins there. It's quite a dramatic location and in the in the jargon it's the Swanage Railway is now a somewhere to somewhere railway from a Pleasant Seaside Resort to the the National Trust Monument Corf. And then uh just beyond KF on the wear side is uh the Nordon Park and Ride interchange and and people coming into Perbeck can park their cars 8:04 there and then get on the train to go to court and Swanage. There are benefits all around. Less pressure on the roads and less impact on nature. The wildlife seems at peace with the idea of a little railway and the livestock takes no notice of the passing trains. It is very important for the future around here uh to keep the greenery and to minimize the effect of of traffic. It's good for the economy too. We do create jobs and we bring a lot more people into Swanage in particular in a environmentally friendly way. The key to this brand new old-fashioned transport system is the lack of a big wage bill. Most people work on the railway for the fun of it. Volunteers are the lifeblood of the preserved railways in this part of the country and everywhere. actually driving and firing the locomotives is not the 9:03 difficult bit because that's something everyone wants to do. It's signaling staff that that uh we need. It's ticket inspectors and collectors and sellers that we need. It's um guards that we need. It's people who look after the permanent way, that's the track itself, and keep the line side clear that we need. It's the less glamorous tasks that uh there's always an acute shortage of volunteers to undertake. [Music] Pride of the fleet is an engine that really did once pull the golden arrow. Railway men still remember the day when steam died. Steam 10:02 disappeared overnight. Overnight. Um it's a thing that we didn't didn't really believe. We didn't think that steam could finish like that. We thought we know they must. But no it on that day that was it. Every engine was the fire was thrown out when it went to shed and we never saw them anymore. Not not to work on them until they were towed away. The last thing Stan expected was that he'd spent his retirement driving steam engines from Swanage again in his favorite hat. St. [Applause] Right. Yeah. I thought you going to give me a hand like that. I'm open the regulator now, allowing steam into the cylinders. I keep a a careful watch on the the amount of steam I'm allowing into the cylinders so as not to allow the engine to slip. 11:04 [Applause] The essential part about starting a train is the fear with the West Country or Merchant Navy that the engine might slip. So you've got to be prepared for that and you've got to go away gently any well you got to start any train very gently. There is a bond of friendship that that can extend the whole of your railway career. you you get with drivers and you're working together that is it's a team. I mean neither of you can do your work without the other. 12:06 Well, we're now approaching Charing Cross station which is on the upgrade. So, I'm allowing her to coast into the platform. I'll now gently apply the brake. It's all so gentle. Clearly the man of the controls has done this before. As the Swanage Railway goes from strength to strength, transport planners are beginning to wonder if history has come full circle. Swanage um and KF Castle, I think, would be subject to even worse depradations of 13:01 the motorc car if the railway were not there. It's it's a pity that this hasn't happened in other parts of the country. But it is very important for the future around here to keep the greenery and to minimize the effect of traffic. Unlike Corf Castle, some ruins can be rebuilt. As if by magic, a mechanical miracle moves under its own steam for the first time since the 60s. The men who rebuilt it are at the controls. It's becoming commonplace to see bornagain steam locos emerging from workshops like this one at Ditkut. It's sort of like bringing something back from the grave really. It's uh you know you think uh well when I left the 14:04 railway many years ago off the foot plate he thought you'd never ever get the chance of doing this again but he did. Peter Granston was helped by an engineering undergraduate called Ed Freeman. Nobody had done anything on it for 20 years and it was one of the last ones that we had here to restore from a scrapyard condition. And I found this huge heap of parts that had filled up nearly the entire shed with parts. And I decided that uh we had all the bits. I decided why not put some of them back on there. And we started and got carried away. Getting carried away with railways is something Frank Dumbleton knows all about. He was just a school boy when the great western engines that ran through Reading and Newbury were being scrapped. The teenagers couldn't bear to see the back of the tank engines that ran on 15:00 their local line. One was saved by their pocket money and public subscription. Suddenly, the school kids owned an engine. It was delivered to Totteness in April 1964 in steam and the railway crew just walked away from it and and left us to it. And and a few days later, four of us went down from London to see the engine. Uh we were going to clean it. And then we said, 'Well, why don't we light it up and play with it?' And so we got a few bits of paper and wood and put them in the firebox. And somebody said, 'Who's got the matches?' And nobody had any matches. So we had to go off to a shop and buy matches. And then we lit it up and uh got steam up and pulled the whistle. And suddenly people came from running from all over the place when they heard the whistle. So that was that was how it started in those days. 16:02 Since then, the great Western society has gone on to bigger things. An express engine of the castle class is prepared for a test run after an 8-year rebuild. Its emergence from the workshop leaves room for yet another basket case. This rust bucket may look like mission impossible, but they'll make it good as new. Have to wait for the right away from the garden. Right away, right away got full vacuum. Another two on the whistle and off we go. The rebuilt castle sets off for a caner at Ditkut Steam Center and gives an insight into the working lives of enginemen. Imagine hurtling through the darkness at 100 m an hour on a winter's night. 17:03 It was withdrawn from traffic 1 of January 1990. Since when it's undergone a fairly extensive and expensive overhaul and today as you see it is the end product and it's on its first public open day back in traffic. A castle on a regular working would achieve 100 mph quite happily. that um they were more suited to the 70s and 80s and that but along the the great rest of main lines which is through here at Dick and that that's dead flat and they can easily race along there. For the moment the engine is a cage tiger fenced off from the main line gently touching the brakes into the platform. There we are. Back again. Back again. Engine number 5051 joins 18:07 scores of other locomotives herded together in the steam zoos around the country, including express heavyweights like King Edward I. The one thing their keepers want is to help them escape onto the main line. And sometimes they do escape. The king went on a royal progress up north. [Music] [Music] It's Thomas the Tank Engine week at the Midhance Railway and Thomas has decided 19:02 to race the bigger engines out of the station. First it was Henry. Then he tried to beat the two-faced diesel past the engine shed. And he was also lying in weight when Douglas the black engine appeared. The fat controller knows exactly what's going on. Thomas thinks he can beat him up past the yard then. He normally does, but he's only got a few trucks. We let him do it cuz it keeps Thomas happy because he's a really useful engine. It's neck and neck with the diesel shunter through the station. There's no doubt whose side the children are on. They don't like Thomas disappearing into the distance, though. They want him back. [Music] Come back, Thomas. And Dael, come back, Thomas. Thomas is so popular that two events like this generate nearly half the railway's entire annual income. 20:03 The little blue engine, brilliantly revived by Brit Orcraftoft, is in turn helping to save real engines for future generations. [Music] [Music] What the crowds don't see is the behindthe-scenes juggling act that keeps the whole operation on the rails. An army of volunteers is on duty. They're free. The coal isn't. We estimate that on the Midamps, uh, a locomotive cost £300 a day to run. Our coal bill for the week will be something in the order of£10,000. To put an engine back into steam for the first time uh after it's been rescued from a scrapard, you're probably talking in the order of anything up to a4 21:00 million pounds. It's that expensive. As if to emphasize the point, James the red engine is feeling poorly. It's no joke. His boilers had it and this will be his last rung, possibly for years. The Fat Controller wonders where James has got to as he limps back to the engine shed where the repair bill is assessed at £60,000. All the crowds see is a cloud of steam in the distance. The railway people put a brave face on it and skillfully juggle the timet so that their young passengers aren't disappointed. The next train to depart from platform number one will be the olden service. This service will call for mark bed and quart. This will be the 1213 service to Malton from platform number one. 22:01 There you are. You wait there. Come on then. Well done. There you are. Well done. There you are. Look at that. Getting helped up with the fat control. How about that? People have come from all over the world. Well, we've just come back from Hong Kong. I've been away for 20 years, so it's my I've just come back. I've only been back a week in England. So, it's absolutely fabulous for us. And we've seen uh Thomas on on the television in Hong Kong and and in Thailand and various other places. So, it's been great to see it. Who do you like best out of Thomas and the Diesel? Um James. James. Yeah. There's an underlying sense of comedy which isn't lost on the parents. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to make a quick apology on behalf of the railway. Due to the wrong kind of cloud this afternoon, the sun isn't shining. It's a laugh a minute when Thomas the Tank Engine tries to master those troublesome trucks. His kindly bearded driver doesn't appear to notice that two of them have escaped. 23:06 The children soon warn him, and Thomas is off in hot pursuit of the ill-mannered rolling stock. [Music] The men in the cab don't look too concerned really, and the trucks are soon rescued. But then Thomas the tank engine has rescued more than a few wagons on the water crest line. You could say that he helped to rescue the entire railway. To most railways that run Thomas the Tank Engine events, it is the major source of income uh in any one operating year. Here on the mid ants, we run two and uh those two events providing the weather is kind of course uh would pull in something like 40 to 45,000 people, mom, dads, children, grandparents. 24:01 uh and the gross take for the two events uh equating to something like 40 to 50% of the railways income for the year. So, it's literally true that little children who bring their moms and dads to see Thomas are helping to save a chapter of transport history for the nation. Now, there's one more engine waiting for a helping hand, and railway staff aren't sure when James will be back. It'll be Thomas who helps pay for that new boiler, which makes him a very useful little engine indeed. Though there are some even smaller engines whose pulling power is out of all proportion to their size. [Music] 25:20 Everybody loves a railway. Of course they do. Even people who say, 'Oh, I don't like railways. I don't want to go there. It's just because they don't want to be seen to be going there. Everybody likes a railway. I don't really know anybody that doesn't. Not really. The Moors Valley Railway near Ringwood is a tidler. The gap between the tracks is an eighth the size of a normal railway, but it's got a big heart and it's run by a very fit controller. I realized that really what I would really like to do is have a railway of my own that I could control things and 26:02 make things happen the way I perceive that I thought they should happen. It's all very well a railway being run by a committee, but you end up with committee decisions. Jim Hlock was longing to build a real railway that looked like child's play, but was actually a masterpiece of engineering and showmanship. His granddad's home backed onto the Romney High than Dim Church Railway in Kent. Jim got the chance to build his even narrower narrow gauge railway in partnership with the council and it just kept growing and growing. [Music] [Music] 27:03 And if you think there's enough locomotives here, there are a lot more to follow. Another three miniature masterpieces are under construction in Jim's workshop. If you can make, which is really the only area we can work on, make it easy to maintain. So, we've put silver life ball races with seals on and everything. The driver's not constantly getting out, oiling it, fiddling with it, adjusting with it. He all he has to do is concentrate on boiler management which is the important thing all day long and looking at the road ahead and checking behind signaling everything so that you know you're running a safe operation and you know that the mechanical part is going to be reliable. The respplendant Blue Engine Pioneer has been chosen to haul the midday limited, 28:02 which is the most important train of the week. A full two laps of the Moors Valley Country Park non-stop. We actually built a railway at a place called Tatonia first and we we learned an awful lot of things what not to do there and then when the opportunity presented itself by what was District Council which is now East Dorset District Council, the the the it gave us the opportunity to really do a railway that looked like a railway, felt like a railway way and was how people expected a a railway to look when they came to it. So in that case you want all the structures you actually need the fencing although the fencing is there to keep people out. It needs to be there because it's it it contains the railway. 29:02 We've got twists turns. It's ducking, diving, weaving. There are tunnels, cutings, things happening all the time because at the end of the day, everybody gets bored with sitting just looking at the same thing. So, we're going underneath a foot bridge. There's level crossing gates. We're coming towards a tunnel. There are things one after the other. It's like giveaways all the time. Here it is. Here it is. More and more and more. And people feel more and more excited. Hear all the screams when at times you think I must be riding on a white knuckle ride. [Applause] 30:12 [Music] In reality, it's just a fun way of moving people a few hundred yards through a country park. And the little railway takes them to lakes and picnic areas and adventure playgrounds that they could easily walk to, but it wouldn't be such fun. The man who runs the railway is delighted when people really enjoy their day out, but he rather doubts if they're having as much fun as he is with his little steam trains. I don't mind them not knowing that I actually own the railway. I think that's wonderful because you can mix in with them, listen to what they're saying, and 31:00 they don't know who you are. Makes it so much nicer because they then become more natural, more relaxed. They've got no idea. And I'm having more fun than they're having. Actually, [Music] this is one steam railway whose scale comes as a shock to many visitors. I think a lot of people tend to think that it's just going to be another railway and then they come in and they find that it's not. It's a lot smaller, but it does exactly the same job as a full-size railway. They can't quite get around the idea that children go to school and go home on it. Uh they can't quite get the idea that we have shareholders and others who actually catch the train to go shopping in Hy um instead of getting on the bus. The Romney Hive and Dim Church was a child of the 1920s, that age of rich man's bentleys and 32:02 biplanes. It was a millionaire's toy really. That was the the thing about it. Captain Howe, the uh the man with all the money, he inherited two part-built locomotives after a friend of his died, had them completed, then asked Henry Greenley, who designed the engines, to find somewhere to run them. How's only request was that it should be sort of fairly flat so that he could run the engines at some speed. They're powerful engines. They go quite nicely. And and there are stories of Howie and Seagrave, another great racing driver, racing trains side by side through the marsh. No passengers, of course. Well, so we're told. But nowadays, there's no shortage of passengers or of volunteers to drive the little trains like the vicar from Crobra who says the cab of a steam engine is a great place to think about the Sunday sermon. Like many enthusiasts, his interest goes back to childhood, to family holidays at the seaside in Kent when the beach was 33:02 the last place he wanted to go. I've always been a great fan of railways anyway. Um, and in my own particular case, as a small boy, my mom and dad used to bring me on holiday to Dim Church and I was absolutely besotted with the railway and I never ever wanted to go on the beach. I was quite happy to stand by the level crossing and watch the trains all day. Um, so this particular railway is obviously very very special because I remember standing um by that level crossing at at Dim Church on St. Mary's Road and saying to my dad, I'm going to be an engine driver one day. Children still wait at the railway for their first sight of a passing express. Even a little steam engine at speed is unforgettable. 34:04 [Music] I sometimes refer to it as the longest fairground ride on the South Coast. It's a bit like the go-kart effect. You know, you get your backside closer to the ground. When you're doing 25 mph, you seem like you're doing 75. It's one of the great eccentricities really. tiny train that takes people and does it does exactly the same job as the large one. It's a quarter scale in terms of the rail width, although the locomotives are actually one/ird scale. They're definitely not toys. They'll handle a 17 or 18 coach train, which is something in the order of 36 to 40 tons, with no problem. And if you add their own weight, which is another 8 12 tons, they're certainly not toys. 35:02 It varies from running behind houses to running over lush pasture land to running out onto the the vast shingle wastess at Dungeoness. And out at Dungeoness, the the track is on shingle and shingle moves. So there's a lot of other stuff mixed in with a shingle to stop too much movement. It's surviving. That's the main thing. It's survived now for what over 70 years. So I think um Greenley and the original team obviously had some good ideas. [Music] At the end of the day, the engines are cleaned the same way they always have been. But this is one railway that never closed, even during the war. And like the thorbreds they are, each is covered with a blanket for the night. And the reverend reverses reverently 36:02 into the engine shed where even song is the soft contented sigh of escaping steam. [Music] Not all steam engines have lived in luxury. Across in Sussex are some workingclass characters that have had it rough. A 100 years ago, the muscle of the industrial revolution was steam, often in the shape of narrow gauge tank engines that wobbled around on temporary tracks in places like this timber yard. The crane that loaded them would have been steam driven as well, probably fueled by bits of wood scavenged from around the yard. These were the wheels of industry, a dancing mess of gears and pulley, the 37:00 high-tech gizmos from an age that put the great in Britain, but is now largely forgotten. There were thousands of these ugly duckling steam engines in quaries and mines and sewage farms. The driver was lucky to get a roof over his head. Engines like this can't earn their keep hauling logs nowadays. But there is one cargo that still pays its way. People. The chalk pits at Ambley are now a working museum. These visitors have come to see Britain's best collection of narrow gauge industrial locomotives. Peter the tank engine is on passenger duty. Outlandish diesels and electrics struck their stuff alongside the steamers. [Music] They were essential for moving anything 38:03 heavy that you wanted moving. Nowadays, you would use a conveyor belt, you would use dump trucks, you would use large lorries, but they didn't exist at the time, and the roads to run them on didn't exist. So you had narrow gauge railways and you either set them down on a permanent basis to take uh slate away from a quarry for instance down to a harbor or you had them in as a temporary basis where you just threw the track down on the ground when you were building a roadway or something like that built finished the contract and then just ripped the track up again and took it somewhere else. The steam engines were the first to go, much too labor inensive, however well-built they were, to be replaced by a generation of ugly bugs and boxes. Green things on wheels that would start at the touch of a button. But they're the laughingstock of locomotion, particularly among the children who come to the museum. 39:01 We've got the biggest collection of narrow gauge items in one place in the country. It's the steam engines they really want to see. For steam is loved by both young and old. Look at it. It isn't it charming? You you you've got to love that thing, haven't you? It's got a life of its own. It doesn't need a funny face painted on the front. It's got it itself. I mean, that's every surely it's everybody's idea of a little steam locomotive. The long chimney, the dome, the cab. I mean, that that's got everything that locomotive. Well, not quite everything. Steam couldn't compete with road transport. Trains can't take you to the street where you live, and trains can't deliver goods to your door. And you can't buy a train of your very own for £125. And so we ended up with public transport that looked like this Trammo car. And 40:04 off we went in search of progress, leaving all those little steam engines behind. [Music] [Music] [Music] 41:01 [Music] This tank engine on the Kent and East Sussex Railway will soon be able to travel 4 miles further west to Bodium, thanks in part to a million pound lottery grant In a region of choked roads, steam is reestablishing a role as part of the transport network, reversing 50 years of decline. It'll be possible to get to Bodium Castle by rail. The castle will have its own station and visitors will be 42:00 delivered on delightful little trains thanks to the foresight of a bunch of school kids. enthusiasts led by a group of grammar school boys from from Maidstone fought long and hard to to reopen the line and the first section reopened in 1974 and since then in stages we've reopened seven miles of the original line. Now we we run to to Norium. We've got plans to to reopen to Bodium in the year 2000. [Music] Meanwhile, the vioaduct on the outskirts of East Ginstead appears derelictked. But unseen on top of it, a gang of volunteers are hard at work. For 10 years, they've been driving the Blue Bell line north. And now, their goal is in sight, East Ginstead, where they will be reconnected with the rail network. 43:04 Once they've restored the vioaduct, the blue bell faces a final hurdle. Rubbish. East Ginstead's waste was emptied into a railway cutting. The old cars, washing machines, and lawnmowers all ended up here. But which job is most daunting? The truth is really the tip. The tip there's about 135,000 tons of rubbish in there. All of which has to be dug out before the railway can come through. We're planning to move it out by train and that's likely to take about 12 to 18 months. About 200 trains in all will be used. Um it's it's the major works on the line and it's going to cost in the order of £4 million. The Blue Bell Railway have taken on big projects before like reopening this halfmile long tunnel to traffic. 44:11 [Music] For years now, the Blue Bell has had a onetrack mind and that one track leads to East Ginstead. Yes. Um, without a shadow of a doubt, that that is our one sole focused aim is to reach connection with with with the main system. Um years ago we had a railway which ran from nowhere to nowhere and I I think if you look that uh motoring was cheap but now fuel fuel costs are rising. County councils are interested in increasing their their uh public transport infrastructure and if we can play a part in that then you know so much the better it will be for us. And there's no shortage of motive power. This freight engine was almost new when thrown on the scrap heap. It's one of more than 30 engines on the Blue Bell line. 45:03 [Music] One locomotive like this could do the work of 40 lries. No wonder transport planners are beginning to study freight traffic all over again. We're now over the points on the single line to give it a bit more regulator, a bit more steam, and reduce the cutff, which is like the gearbox on a car. Did British railways throw steam away too hastily? Um, they just seem to be hellbent on on ridding the entire system of steam. Uh what is even more frightening was the fact there were locomotives out there who may not have even worked 5 years who were in virtually as new condition when withdrawn and you know they are a national asset which were just chucked away on the scrap heap. 46:07 We get going a bit faster. I alter the cut off a bit more. [Music] Be clear on the crossing. We started with two engines and two coaches. Over the years, our collection has been enhanced and we've now something 30 33 locomotives we've currently got on the books. We've got something like 45 coaches. We've got a variety of rolling stock, wagons, etc. 47:10 [Music] If there were weren't preservationists around, I mean, we wouldn't be seeing the amount of rolling stock, locomotives, wagons, etc. preserved and run as they are being done now in the condition they are today. And certainly in in uh in future years, the generations would look in their exercise books and say, 'Oh, that was a train. It's a pity we haven't got any left. As it is, there are hundreds left in Britain in various states of repair. But then our love affair with the steam engine was bound to be special. It was invented here. It's only when you see how big steam 48:01 locomotives are that you realize the tremendous labor of love it's been for volunteers. This 100 tunner is a mere middleweight. It should have rusted away 30 years ago, but it's as good as new. [Music] And then there are the carriages. This is how a Metropolitan Railway carriage should look. And this is how they do look when the Blue Bell get hold of them. Sometimes there's very little left. Pole stations have been frozen in time. the adverts for things like the Daily Sketch, the luggage from the Almeida Star, the chappie from HMS Excellent, the warweary push bikes, the dear departed. [Music] The real heroes are people who do the 49:04 humrum jobs for years on end to support something they believe in, like sitting on a digger, for instance. inching your way north towards East Ginstead for 10 years. It's very important. It brings half the line back to uh its original location. We need the traffic from from East Ginstead and we need the rail connection. It's going to bring a lot of public in through public transport as opposed to using the roads which we're very keen to promote. It's for the love of it, isn't it? It's it's just for the sheer love that the end of it standing back. I used to go home from here covered in dirt at the end of a busy Sunday. And yet I'll be really happy because I'd go away with the sense of satisfaction of having achieved something on that particular day. [Music] 50:01 The Kent Sussex railway was built at the turn of the century as the world's first light railway. Tentidan was quite a sizable town but had been missed in the railway mania of the 1840s and the farmers in particular wanted a way of getting their their crops and hops and milk to market. So uh they fought very pififerously for a railway. [Music] It never really made very much money at all. It it paid a dividend once and and started losing money in 1926. And so it struggled on until 1954 when it when it was closed. They did a survey just before the closure and uh they had 90 trains a week and between them they carried 118 passengers. So there wasn't really much of an argument against it going in 1954. When the the line was built, it was built very very cheaply and the and the cheapest way of building the line was just to follow the contours of the land. So if there was a hill, you went up it whereas the mainline railways used to uh carve cutings and embankments to to make 51:04 it as flat as possible. So it was cheap to build, but it makes it quite difficult to operate. And that's part of the charm. The little engines are working very hard. They really are earning their keep here. Whereas some of the the preserved railways, the the big mainline engines with with tiny trains are a little bit like cage tigers. [Music] We actually met uh it's 13 years ago now. Cla wanted to pass in front of the train and that's how we met. She asked 52:03 whether she could actually pass in front of the engine and I think I gave some derogatory comment but I married him anyway. It's the first time in 8 years that I've managed to come down. They've got two children and they've been one's gone to her grandma's one to be lever camp. So, I've managed to escape at last and come back. My railway career started through the involvement with this railway. Actually, I was a a young lad picking ops uh come down from London and um at Bodium Station, the driver let me get in the cab of an engine and blow the whistle and it seemed to spark something off and I've been working on locos ever since. With a steam engine, you're creating the power. the fireman's creating the power as you're going along. Whereas with a modern electric or diesel loco, the power's on tap as much as you want. So when you're creating the power yourself, you're very conscious of being economical with it. And a good driver can uh get a good effort out of an engine without using too much fuel. 53:08 [Music] [Applause] [Music] You have to balance what power you've got against the load work you've got and and balance that against the conditions of the rail. If you apply too much power, the wheels slip and you don't get anywhere and it's sometimes very difficult to start. We've got a level crossing halfway up the bank and sometimes we get stopped here if there's no one to operate the gates. To restart again can be very awkward sometimes. It takes a little bit of twoing or throwing sometimes to get moving, but we always get there. 54:02 [Music] [Applause] [Music] It takes about 40 people to run the railway on a on a day like today. And you know, they're all here because they enjoy doing it and want to keep steam alive for future generations to enjoy. comes to life in the you know the morning you you open up unlock put all the the the luggage out to to give it a bit of atmosphere and such like and then the passengers start to come along and every every day is different. You never know quite what you're what you're going to get but you know the engines are here and it really does come come to life once the engines arrive and the trains start running in and out. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Satic Railway Light Railway Gala. The train now approaching the platform will form our 225 service 55:04 calling at Wington and Nordium only. Please stand clear of the platform edit the platform and allow passengers to arrive before boarding. Thank you. Even uh amongst generations that have that have been born since the demise of steam 30 years ago, there's still that interest. you know, you put a fire in the belly and and they they come to life and they've almost got a personality of their own. Um, so yeah, we we get lots of of very young children here and and youngsters who who thoroughly enthralled by steam. We've taken some some big steps forward in the last few years to make sure that it is financially viable well into the future. The extra money that that we we generate from Bodium once that's open 56:04 will actually help secure the line into the next century. Railways like the Kent and East Sussex and the Blue Bell have now got a very powerful ally, a man who agrees it's time to get reconnected. Ed Birkhart is an American, but he runs Britain's rail freight franchise as well as railways in America and New Zealand. I think it's a great plus in this nation that many of the lines that were closed were saved. Uh, I'm going to make some predictions. Phone's going to ring and they're going to be asked to haul freight on the network or passengers on the network. From a freight standpoint, we hope to have every line in Britain with a regular service hauling uh a wagon here and a wagon there to or from customers that are rail connected. Certainly Ed Burkhart's thinking, if you if you read his thoughts, uh they're 57:04 certainly very positive. He's brought a complete new realism um to um attitudes. He he's taken on board the fact that we're all in the same business. Ed Birkhart has brought railways back to profit on three continents. He's regarded as a business genius. So when Ed says little freight trains are coming back, people listen. Early one morning in the spring before the sun had driven away the dawn mist a few people were up with the rooks to make railway history. A through passenger working by steam from the water crest line onto the rail network had never happened. Today a green train was going to change all that. 58:03 Its operators, the Midhans Railway, were confident their engine was up to the task of taking 400 people on a tour of southern England. It's a very, very powerful and capable engine. It will do any work that um the bigger engines would do up to expect 75 m an hour. And then after that, the big engines would obviously like the Bullies and the A4s would obviously leave it standing. But we're only allowed to run up to 75 miles an hour today anyway. So it will keep pace with anything else that's out on the main line. But first, the traditional engine man's breakfast cooked on the shovel in the most powerful oven in Hampshire. We've got the guard signal, so I've put it into gear. So we put it into full forward gear. 59:03 So the start from here is directly onto a 1 in60 gradient, which is a very awkward start because it's on a curve. Just to warn anybody that may be in the vicinity, shut the drain release the actual steam brake, and open the regulator very very gently. We bring the reverser back a bit once we start moving. [Music] 1:00:00 and reverse her back a bit more so we can come into second valve and let the reverser out slightly. Accelerate away. [Music] It's a dream to drive. It's a driver's engine and it's it's very easy to drive and it's very responsive and it will do whatever you want it to do. Basically it was um a middle range mixed traffic engine and it would when it's in its BR day it would have covered for the failure of the west countries back to Britain's and merchant navies actually on the Bournemouth and Exeter expresses and on the Kent lines in particular pre61 they worked most of the expresses in that area anyway [Music] 1:01:26 Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] The green train had escaped from its cage to revisit many of its old haunts in southern England. 1:02:04 It's an ironic twist of fate. British Rail tried to ax engines like this and the lines they ran on, but it was British rail that was axed instead. [Music] Who would have guessed that a machine born in the 19th century and killed in the 20th would be back in good time for the 21st? Best.

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