The Flying Scotsman: History's Most Famous Train | Full Steam Ahead EP4 | Absolute History

the age of steam shaped how we live today the victorians laid over 20 000 miles of lines in the biggest engineering project the country has ever seen connecting our towns with high-speed links revolutionizing trade and transportation communication and recreation it was the greatest transformation in our history but how did it happen to find out historians ruth goodman alex langland's shoveling coal is something i'm going to get very very familiar with and pete again of bringing the railways back to life as they would have been during the golden age of steam i feel like i'm in a western this is very definitely the best team engine [Music] they will be helped by armies of enthusiasts who keep the age of steam alive on britain's 500 miles of preserved railway this is the way to experience train travel isn't it they'll follow in the footsteps of the world's finest engineers these are the men [Music] [Music] like the impact of the railways this is the story of how the railways created modern britain the steam railways connected towns and cities right across britain revolutionizing the transportation of goods people even information the way we communicate in britain has never been the same since the arrival of the railways and i want to find out firsthand just how they transformed britain's postal service in the second half of the 19th century britain was in the grip of an electrical revolution i'm interested in finding out how practically the railways facilitated this new age in communications [Music] britain was becoming ever more connected the introduction of express trains like the flying scotsman meant people began to see themselves as belonging to one common culture one economy and crucially one nation before the railways most people in britain thought of themselves as being from galloway or monmouthshire or derbyshire they didn't really think of themselves as being british but within a very short time of the railways arriving that had completely changed how did we get to feel so connected in 1800 the quickest way to send a letter was by horse-drawn mail coach but it could take days to arrive as the population became more literate the volume of letters soared so what was needed was a quicker more efficient way of sending mail in 1838 the introduction of mail trains provided a solution letters could now be conveyed in hours rather than days this is all the posts from loughborough [Music] nice little feature a ramp down the stairs for sliding down the bags of posts in this case or indeed any luggage i suspect it's every child's dream but i've seen a sign saying don't use a slide [Music] at the great central railway in loughborough peter is bringing this postal service back to life helped by a team of enthusiasts [Music] peter's helping paul harrison load the mail collected from the local area we'll come in this door here okay we have to call out the destinations and then they're logged in on the train right okay so we've got burton on train train first the post was roughly divided into sacks for the different areas that the mail train was traveling to she was just looking at the labels on top there yeah yeah coalville colgan coleville another cold at a time when the people of victorian london could expect up to 12 postal deliveries to their homes every day and the suburbs around six speed was everything in 1936 the role played by the railways in speeding up the postal system was immortalized in one of the first documentaries about working life nightmail it tells the story of the postal special carrying mail through the night from london to glasgow complete with a wh orden poem this is the nightmail crossing the border bringing the check and the postal order letters for the rich letters for the poor the shop at the corner of the girl next door pulling up beater casted climb the gradients against her but she's on time [Music] to make the service even faster trains didn't just transport the mail they featured a new innovation the tpo otherwise known as the traveling post office now the mail could be sorted on the move too darby lester stafford each sorter has 48 pigeonholes known as phillips representing different towns the mail must be sorted before the train reaches its first destination tpo historian brian hallett is on hand to help it's a race against time so what do we do is just take the bundles take the bundles yeah and with your trusty scissors you i left my trusty scissors at home thank you very much and am i going stance in stamps out does it matter normally you do stamps out in its heyday the tpo workers picked up sorted and delivered 500 million letters a year these men were key to the efficient running of the country ensuring mail got delivered on time i suppose you must go quite fast at this the tpo sorters were among the fastest sorters in royal mail so they were known to sorting up to three thousand letters an hour per person per person three thousand letters an hour what's that that's 300 every six minutes one a second you it i mean three three thousand letters an hour is an immense amount i think i managed to get close to one a minute and um i suspect someone else is gonna have to resort what i've done because i kind of started losing track these were the postal elite they were faster harder working and with the stamina to sort at speed against the clock the people that worked on here if you were doing the northeast tpo and you were based in newcastle you'd travel down the first night on the passenger train and work back to newcastle sorting that night yeah the following night you would work from newcastle to london sleep over in digs during the day then you work the next night back to newcastle it must have been quite a tight-knit bunch of guys very much so can you imagine working with a bunch of people in the same coach for five nights of the week you've got to get on yeah if you didn't get on you you didn't survive on the traveling post office yeah yeah despite working at speed on a constantly moving train there was no room for error the sorters were responsible for making sure their affiliates were empty when they finished sorting and the cleaners would actually go through after the shift if they found any letters they'd get a bonus and that bonus would come out of the sorter's salary so you want to make sure they're yeah fully clear otherwise the cleaner has taken out more money yeah once sorted the letters for the first mail drop are tied into bundles tying up the letters pull the string all the way down you pull the string down and cut off the leg you need yeah yeah so these now go in here so now we need to tie that up ready to go into the pouch to drop off so if you want to tie that on there okay two or three times around with the string and these labels this is the same as the bags we're loading on at the start so that just tells you where it's going that's right that's got his label on so that's ready to go down into the pouch ready to be dropped off i'm going off quite soon isn't it okay all right that's a lot take it away the tpo didn't just deliver and collect from stations it also picked up and dropped off posted small towns and villages along the way without the train even stopping [Music] the first use of this system was on the london birmingham railway in 1838 within 70 years there were 245 in operation so the first thing to do is get these flaps over so you get a very neat package where nothing can come apart and you don't lose any of the mailboards final one [Music] imagine doing this all night long on a journey from edinburgh to london okay so this is this is a quite constant process i'm just getting worn out doing this one so there you have one male pouch ready for dispatch next the male pouch is attached to an arm on the outside of the train just pull strong some workers were so terrified of doing this they paid a colleague to hang the bags out for them it feels quite weird so you bring the bag to the edge back to the edge that flap just closes to stop it falling off you do find that they will come off so we put a piece of string around it just as an extra safety so we don't drop the bag before we should do it because that would just be a nightmare i suppose if the bag falls off before the drop zone you've got to oh how do you find it well the people who are on the ground have to walk back up the track yeah and find all the letters so this piece of string is actually quite an essential but it is yes further down the line ruth is getting ready for the tpo's mail to arrive oh i see and that's it locked in place to collect the bags so they're supposed to shoot in like there because the train passes through i certainly wouldn't like to be down that end when the bags came off the tree the real thing is stand well clear integer right as well as male pouches being dropped off from the train they could also be picked up with help from tpo expert phil payne she's preparing the mail ready for the train to collect i don't like these bags i tell you what really i find interesting is how much they look like saddlebags you know they still got that form from the old stagecoach days haven't they it's leather made you know by a saddler you know there's a lot of work goes into these it's all hand-stitched yeah yes at least there'd be no other way to do it would there be six layers in that so many of these at older crafts you know carry on a life in the automated railways for donkey's years you couldn't find anything else to replace that kind of um quality of leather uh to do the job that it's about to do i mean like trying to hit in that it's gonna need to take some punishment so they stuck with leather on the tpo there's three minutes to go before the mail pickup you push the top lever down yeah and then push the whole thing down in one smooth operation until it clicks in place at the bottom yeah you only do that once you've called board then after you've done the exchange the mailbags will come in and we'll call net and that's when you release it to bring the net back in okay and i can't practice this now can i there's no way you can practice it now you've only got one chance right that hasn't really already you have to do because we can only put the net out in safe locations so how many letters would be in one parcel like this i should imagine anything up to about a thousand girls in weight bags will come about 60 pounds 50 pounds of post so the train hits it at full speed they're doing around about 70 80 miles an hour okay if it ever went wrong you'd be picking up letters down the track for weeks so that's that one done look at those up there yep quite a white so as you can see yep good there we go the leather pouches are attached to a stand by a spring clip it's not really a one-man job is it definitely not there after word is received that the tpo is approaching from the nearby signalmun the bags are swung out ready for collection yeah right ready [Music] on the mail train there's less than a minute to go before the pickup peter is preparing to drop the net are we in quite a dangerous area here we're in a very dangerous area because this is the location where the couches will come flying in once and hit the net so the faster the train's going the harder they come in yes at 85 miles an hour they couldn't land anywhere from hitting the ceiling and onto benches the male was picked up and dropped off simultaneously on the postal special from london to glasgow these exchanges took place 34 times a night so the crew had to know the route intimately if the net is put out too early it could hit a signal or a bridge so the team looks for a trackside board indicating the exchange apparatus is approaching do you want to get to the net so this is a lever yeah and you're going to say well one of my colleagues are going to shout board now no no you want two bridges and 45 [Music] it's it okay net net well done okay it's all right we still got a net yes whoa quite substantial isn't it oh it's remarkably physical something as light as a letter oh my goodness that that was a flash wasn't it yeah all done very quickly it's almost like magic suddenly you know these two parcels have miraculously appeared and yeah it's it's the mail ready to be sorted i suppose be already yeah we can't just stand around get home get it out there and get it back out to the next stop we need to get the lads working yeah for over 130 years tpo's worked across the country picking up and dropping off mail but as trains got faster the exchanges became more dangerous so in 1971 the service was scrapped on a modern train you can't even open the window now these days it gets car checks aren't you do many people fall out um they didn't have many uh accidents with the tpo crew it was more the driver and the fireman looking out when they shouldn't have done well to watch them getting that getting hit by the bags standing up on the standard and there's quite a few stories about the firemen losing the head literally so it's quite a dangerous occupation once the mail was collected the process of sorting started all over again it was a never-ending cycle even tea breaks were taken on the goal [Music] another one crew ran from you know say nine at night until six in the morning they had to eat and so they provided them with basic and they are basic cooking facilities to be careful because it's hot because they didn't actually have a meal break while they were working they'd carry on working have their tea pie and carry on sorting do you fancy a pie thank you very much [Music] before the railways few people traveled beyond their local towns or villages so felt little connection with other parts of the country but the railways forced the change that was to finally get the nation working in sync the traditional way of telling time back in the medieval period was to use the position of the sun and a sundial and it would have been watched by one of the church members who would have come out and he would have checked that sundial and when the time was right he would have gone in and rung the bell and everyone in this community would have heard that bell they would have known what time it was what time to say masses and what time to say prayers as the sun rises earlier in the east than it does in the west cities across britain could vary in time by up to 30 minutes in an age when the horse was the fastest mode of transport the odd minute difference here and there didn't matter but once high-speed trains began connecting britain's towns and cities this became a problem [Music] london was four minutes ahead of reading 11 minutes ahead of bristol 18 minutes ahead of exeter [Music] resulting in some very confusing timetables something had to be done alex has come to bristol corn exchange to meet railway historian david turner so what's going on up there well actually we have two minute hands on this clock okay the red one is london time the darker one is actually bristol time right okay so that that darker hand is 10 minutes essentially behind the other red hand which is reflecting the two different time zones yeah so when the railways came this brought with it greenwich meantime because the railways needed everything standardized they needed trains to be meeting at the right places and for you know everybody along the line all the staff to have the same time standardizing time across britain coordinated the railway network allowing it to run more efficiently and making towns and cities more connected but some areas were resistant to change how are people over here in the west of england reacting to that they they kind of feel the railways invading them the area there is a nickname for london time and it's called cockney time it's a sort of kind of derogatory term for that time from over there yeah and the people are quite resistant so apparently in the commercial halls in bristol this gentleman stands up with his grandfather's pocket watch yeah and he argues if one hand was good enough for my grandfather it's good enough for me this is an invasion the other time is coming in invading the area and changing people's rhythms their way of life that have been in existence for well centuries this was a time of change in britain while steam was revolutionizing how we traveled and communicated a new source of power was being developed alongside it one that would change the world electricity the first use of electricity was a revolutionary communication system the telegraph it allowed messages to be sent long distance down a wire instantaneously but to connect towns and cities cables would need to be laid between them and with ready laid corridors through the countryside the railways provided the perfect routes the railways themselves took advantage of this new system to ensure that a safe distance was maintained between trains [Music] signal boxes communicated the position of a train along its route using the electric telegraph and this is all using telegraph technology that's how you're communicating with the other signal box yes for a series of bells relayed for telegraph that's right at milton keynes museum bill griffiths is showing alex how to use the first commercial electric telegraph to send peter a message developed by cook and wheatstone in the 1830s it took some getting used to peter's going to be sat at the other end of the line waiting for a message um can you show me how this thing works well you as you can see you've got a range of lessons there and you actually have to point to the letters and you do that by moving these handles in opposite directions so you have to spell out every every letter alex's telegraph machine is connected to peters by wires and moving switches on one moves the needles on the other the anticipation right okay so i'm going to send uh peter a message answer m so if i then go why my my friend there's no space bar is there here okay just watching these arrows so they both point to f that makes an f in an age before telephones being able to send instant messages known as telegrams was revolutionary but there were limitations there's no u and there's no c either we're missing letters here there are and i used to worry about that i thought well how on earth do you send messages when you've got some lectures missing c is quite important i use quite important we actually do it all the time don't we we send messages without certain lectures and we get used to it so if you left it in most occasions if you left a letter out of a word or misspelt it yeah and they had this problem they did and people would understand by the whole message ah we're receiving we obviously had a couple of drinks are you receiving me i think that is okay so let's see what comes through oh i b e by before i before always came to pick me up on my mistakes peter isn't he soon railways became the hub of communication with telegraph offices to send and receive telegrams for the public for businesses and even the police while criminals could make their getaway on a train the fastest mode of transport at the time the long arm of the law could now get there even faster it was the well-known murderer john tahoe who was caught and he thought he got away with it got on the train got away and they were able to signal from uh that slow to paddington they couldn't telegraph his name that wouldn't mean anything to him but of course they were able to telegraph a description of what he looked like and they recognized his cello or they thought they did getting off the train so you've got all the bobbies at the other end knowing what this guy looks like that's right and that's how they got him an unprecedented i mean something we take for granted nowadays because it's unprecedented back in that day yeah well i think it was the beginning of making our whole lives much quicker and that's a road that we've traveled on from then until now so everything's got speedier to start off with it was just use a sort of emergency service uh i don't think it'd be used every day but then of course business found out how useful that would be to get the information really quickly yeah so that took off and then of course the news and then spread to be used in more and more different ways every time i send an email i should be thinking about this machine because this is basically where it all began telegrams meant breaking news stories could be sent to newspaper companies in london's fleet street within minutes the victorian age saw a boom in newspaper sales thanks to the railway network that distributed them printer patrick rowe is showing peter how a newspaper proof would have been quickly assembled once news came through the telegraph system so you're you're putting it in upside down yes it's just easier to read from left to right the way you you normally would right the letters are all back to front so that when you ink them up and print them they're the right way around it wasn't just the railways that boosted circulation in the 19th century homes were increasingly being fitted with gas or even electric lighting providing more time for reading is that rubber or metal it's zinc and the tones are produced by these dots and the smaller the dot the the lighter the tone and the larger the dots the the darker the tone yeah it's like you're doing this with bits of meccano sorry what are these so these are coins these are the very old-fashioned type called temple coins where you can see what's going on the two wedges yeah and as you turn the key make makes the wedges take up more space yeah so it compresses so it locks everything the type and locks it all up nice and right nice and firm so we put the type in so i'll have to ink it up and uh proof it before the railways newspapers had been a luxury item the times cost five pence a third of the daily wage of a station porter but when the daily telegraph dropped its price to a penny in 1856 other papers soon followed suit that's better oh that's good that's so crisp isn't it basically they are the proof the proof and i would be taking this to somebody would need to check it before it goes together with the lines of type to make put the whole pages together so flying scotsman breaks world speed record so we just need to check the picture oh my goodness i can see the driver although headlines were still handset the body of text was set using state-of-the-art machinery then the proof finalized the newspaper was then ready for printing as newspapers became more affordable circulation soared driving a need for better printing methods by the 1860s rotary printing presses fed by rolls of paper five miles long were able to print up to twelve thousand pages per hour newspapers could now be printed through the night [Music] and delivered to the railway station in the early hours of the morning [Music] this is news today and it's chip paper tomorrow and that was only possible because of the railways [Music] newspapers could be on sale in towns and cities all over britain before breakfast for the first time it was possible to wake up to national news hot off the press inside the newspapers readers were bombarded with adverts for goods and services from health pills and skin creams to job vacancies even babies in victorian britain having an illegitimate child carried a huge stigma but amongst the classifieds were adverts purporting to solve an unmarried mother's problem at a time before adoption and fostering laws it was perfectly legal to hand your child over to whoever you wanted even a complete stranger social historian dr meg arno has spent years researching these adverts tell me why on earth are these very lovely sounding adverts such a problem okay we have an advertisement here wanted a child to adopt by a respectable married couple who have no children of their own premium required 30 pounds it could actually be a genuine couple who have no children and they want to adopt but there is some code there that suggests to me that it might actually be something different they're saying they want a really quite significant premium of money to be handed over with the child that is they want 30 pounds they will take a child if you pay them 30 quid yes we could well be talking about uh baby farmer a form of human trafficking the term baby farmer was coined in the 19th century to describe people who profited from taking on infants for a fee often with the intention of selling them on deliberately neglecting them or even to dispose of them all together the railways made it possible for unmarried mothers to travel far away from the people they knew and hand over their child on a station platform all the while remaining entirely anonymous the very last baby farmer to hang in britain was rhoda willis who died in wales in august 1907. so rhoda willis advertised for a child to adopt and someone very quickly answered her ad with a newborn baby which she picked up at a railway station along with eight pounds and then she caught the train back to her lodgings in cardiff and and then her landlady found the body in her room and she also confessed to actually killing the child on the train gosh before she even got home before she even got home and i have come across other cases where there are allegations that these infants were killed on trains so another you know the darkest element at the worst end of it's an utterly cynical murdering trade what was most important to a new a woman with an illegitimate child who she was trying to get rid of was that it was kept secret because her reputation was shredded by having an illegitimate child and the railways provided that secret somewhere environment nefarious activities almost any sort really a new place rather paradoxically a new place is no different is it from the internet the internet is an amazing thing and this new flow of information and communication across the world but part of the information that flows is criminal is criminal [Music] as the 19th century progressed new railway lines funded by entrepreneurs began to spread to every corner of britain initially there was little coordination in building these new routes but gradually they began to be linked up making long-distance rail travel possible linking scotland and england were two competing routes the west coast line and the most celebrated the east coast line the most famous locomotive to work this route has just undergone 10 years of restoration costing four and a half million pounds the flying scotsman the most iconic steam engine of all time i mean look at the size of those wheels phenomenal aren't they railway companies on the west coast and east coast lines were competing to provide the quickest service to do this they needed ever more powerful locomotives so in 1923 one of the greatest engineers of the age sir nigel grizzly gave us the flying scotsman the first locomotive to officially reach 100 miles an hour the journey from london to edinburgh had taken 10 and a half hours now behind the flying scotsman it took just eight rail operations manager noel hartley is prepping it to go back out on the main line hi noel great to meet you yeah right well the flying scotsman service traveled between edinburgh and london but this locomotive enabled a non-stop service up right that's right it had it had a few features um to enable it to do that so it had um enough coal to get from london to edinburgh or vice versa which was nine tons the loco also needed a huge amount of water it could carry 5000 gallons but that just wasn't enough to prevent it having to stop to refill there was an ingenious solution water troughs were placed between the rails along the route by luring a scoop into the trough the flying scotsman could collect an extra 12 000 gallons of water without stopping [Music] another issue was crew fatigue normally a driver would do you know um four five six hours on a shift but because it was going to be an eight hour nine hour journey they needed to change the crew halfway so they invented a corridor tender mainline steam engines pulled a tender where the coal and water was stored but this meant the driver and firemen were cut off from the rest of the train gresley's inclusion of a corridor through the tender meant the crew could now pass from the footplate to the carriages behind tight squeeze there peter right there i've been laying off the donuts alex look my goodness look at the this of a corridor enabled the flying scotsman to make the first ever non-stop service between london and edinburgh in 1928. mr nigel grisley designed these engines he just emphasizes the genius of the man and he really pushed the engines to push the boundaries of speed he did by using the simple innovation of the corridor swapping crews halfway meant the job of looking out for more than 700 signals and shoveling nine tons of coal could now be shared so we're getting to see parts of the flying scotsman that other enthusiasts can't reach well there's one other innovation that made the flying scotsman once the world's fastest locomotive but to get to it you have to go under the engine and what you need to do is find something to hold on to and pull yourself up between the frames don't break anything i'll try not to including yourself steam engines conventionally had two cylinders but grizzly's flying scotsman had three cylinders enabling it to run more smoothly with greater power there we go raining oil and then you basically pull it open oh whoa it's quite a bit isn't it this is obviously one of the dirtiest jobs that you have to do on a steam engine playing out the smoke there's a dirty job that needs doing no yeah me as your man although once the pinnacle of engineering the flying scotsman is at its heart a steam locomotive still requiring long and complicated procedures to get it up and running it obviously isn't the case of just turning an ignition key and starting this thing up there's actually quite a warm-up phase isn't there there is a warm-up phase you've got around a 24-hour period of warmth gently warming the engine through before you even light the fire you've got to check inside the firebox to make sure that nothing's leaking so can we have a look in the firebox yep you can uh just obviously lower yourself down and um and slide in there get reminded of winnie the pooh doing this oh my goodness you can just feel the residual heat here when was it when was when was the loco three days ago so it's still reasonably warm yeah wow it's amazing the heat coming off of this yeah three days later goodness this this is what i imagine hell's like before you light the fires yeah once the firebox has been checked it must be loaded up with coal you're going to do it in one in one swing so start from there and then round them straight in momentum otherwise [Music] without breaking the shovel idea it's a small hole it is a small one well i've made she got through that ah this right peter we won't go out the station put it near the firehole door until it gets burning properly what we need to do is throw it on top of that coal at the front what there we go all right the fire is in the fire box we have fire okay so the fire is going quite well now it's time to put a little bit more coal on top my go well no the pressure's on now [Music] revenge of the dish best served cold okay so is it all right if i put some on there just so it goes in the right place yeah you go on then that's great [Music] what's the master at work yeah you can see why in order to graduate into a mainline loco you had to work your way up you had to work your way through the shunting the branch lines clearing the whole shebang well all of the oiling as well you know knowing all the component parts so that you're prepared and trained to take on a piece of technology which is effectively the concord of its age keeping passengers goods and mail services running across the rail network created a whole new array of the railways employed a workforce of half a million from engine drivers and firemen engineering crews boilermakers through to guards [Music] signalmen and porters but none of the trains could run if it wasn't for this one job [Music] the wheel tapper there is a ring there isn't there okay it was the job of the wheel tapper to check the wheels before each journey in the case of the flying scotsman and its carriages it would mean tapping over 120 wheels [Music] a cracked wheel like a cracked bell does not sound the same as one in good working order they do not ring true that one rings quite nicely nice isn't it that's ringing like a bell really you can hear it echoing down the rail that's right this one doesn't ring quite like the other one but you i don't think you would see the crack well unless it was really obvious right so so it might be just a hairline crack somewhere so that is the point of the tapping then it's defining things that you couldn't see with a naked eye yeah but the old wheel tappers would they'd be tuned to that they'd know exactly if you didn't if that's what you're doing because i mean that was an entire job wasn't it oh that's all they did [Music] is showing ruth how defects were recorded on a form and clipped onto the wagon if it was a serious fault they put a red card in it which means it's it's totally out of um [Music] if a faulty wheel caused the train to break down or derail the network could come to a standstill delaying goods passengers and mail so damaged wheels had to be sent to the workshop for repair wheels such as those on the flying scotsman are composed of a wheel pan and a separate steel tire it meant that if the tire cracked or wore out the whole wheel wouldn't need replacing at the south devon railway workshop ruth is helping engineer richard elliot fit a new tire to a train wheel first the tyre is heated to make it expand this is the tyre itself that's the steel band that's the tyre itself that's the sorry and this is just a fire all the way around it yeah a gas fire in this place you've got about the same as your pyrrole grill oh my goodness yeah yeah just a series of flames so all you're doing is warming it to about 220 degrees right gas mark 8 for you for about 25 minutes how do you know when it's cooked enough well basically she'll go a nice golden color all over and the modern technology gives us things called temple sticks which are basically waxes that melt at specific temperatures the other way that are doing it more victorian for you um was basically the spit on it so when i do any harm if i try this bit yeah give it a go see if you can see how hot it is i missed got my fit in his rubbish we've been getting you a glass of water hopeless have you gone oh you're much better oh look at that bubble jump see the bubble jumps yep all right so we're after a little bit hotter today we're not quite although some modern elements have been introduced the method is exactly as it would have been in the age of steam so obviously our crayon is saying we're we're hot enough right and if we can spit on it it's rather dry because so it just hits and and forms into a ball and skids around on it so we're we're probably about hot enough hey connect so let's go for it let's switch her off and put her in once the tire is expanded the wheel pan is inserted the tire must fit within a thousandth of an inch of the wheel diameter that's also accurate the tire is pressed and as it cools it shrinks onto the wheel pan excellent it's hot it's all spun down hold on that was really exciting thank you i know you made it look so calm professional but i i found that pretty exciting actually that's good right cup of tea in the days of steam the bigger the driving wheels the faster the local could go on small locomotives the wheels are around three feet in diameter but the flying scotsman's wheels are more than double this size it was a locomotive built for speed a racehorse of the locomotive world with the loco now in full steam it's ready to recreate the legendary route connecting london and edinburgh don't make them like they used to do they no look at this amethyst that's actually named travelling in style isn't it are we here in here good stuff with rival railway companies competing to attract passengers the range and quality of services they offered was of paramount importance head steward kieran flynn is training alex in the exacting standards expected by first-class passengers back in the 1930s do we know when this started then serving food on track the first the first meal served on the train was 1878 right and the papers at the time reported that um the food was all lovely and that even though the train was traveling at 60 miles an hour and the brakes were applied nothing was spilled nothing was broken right they were quite impressed by that in the time so i've got quite a lot to live up to today i i got a i got a feeling that's not going to be the situation for me today kieran is showing alex how to lay a table for a five-course dinner our main plate here that's right our salad plate goes on top here yep okay and our side plate there that's correct to the left okay now cutlery so right hand side with the knife so you have your starter knife on the outside right the main knife on the inside working in towards the main course and then these um great scissors great scissors yeah right this really is fine dining isn't it so if you had a bunch of grapes and you needed to get through the stem yep that's what that's yeah right that's it just now kieran providing service in style in a regular restaurant is hard enough but how hard is it doing it on a train that's doing 60 miles an hour it can be quite tricky the main thing is just to not fight it is if you try and uh fight against it then you'll you'll slam into the walls a bit harder is to be prepared for it and just kind of try and bounce up whatever you land on right and walk with your legs slightly wider apart right okay okay so a bit of a gate yeah sort of sea legs in some ways isn't it having good having good sea legs in the 1920s and 30s the flying scotsman was the pride of the nation first-class passengers were expected to dress smartly [Music] even peters made an effort peter oh oh my goodness white yeah on a railway powered by steam how am i stealing how long are you going to stay right long enough because it's only for dining i'm not intending to go up there and shovel it not particularly happy ruth word on the grapevine we've got a trainee waiter i've got my sea legs my gate watching where i'm going to serve food on a swaying train without spilling it waiters were blindfolded and trained to walk along a white line on the carriage floor as the trains speeded along this is quite rocky rolly are you alright in 15 minutes i need to have these customers head chef tony keane is challenged with cooking high quality restaurant food in a tiny kitchen at over 80 miles an hour how many meals are you looking at preparing then on a train like this um on average we're doing around 250 diners across the different classes 250 diners yeah we cook a lot of the meals to order there's 250 people that will do 1500 plates of food today individual plates of food which all have to be washed by hand by my guys down there both inside the wall with hot water with space limited early victorian dining cars had an open-air veranda at the kitchen end which was used for jobs like peeling potatoes inside the food was cooked on an open fire you're cooking on gas though i mean imagine what it would have been like cooking on on coke i can't imagine the the the salt the mess respect goes out to those guys um we we have we have operational issues along those lines but not as hardcore as it would have been done in the past it would have been a proper workhouse in those days in 1925 passengers on british trains consumed over seven and a half million meals on long distance journeys they were up to three sittings tables could be reserved by telegram wow the first pullman dining cars designed by american engineer george pullman were made in detroit workshops and shipped to britain but the flying scotsman didn't just cater for diners they also tempted passengers with other luxury services from a cinema to a hairdressing salon passengers could also listen to music on headphones for the business traveler there was even a dictaphone service we've both dressed up for this experience do you think that most of the people who were doing this for real were also you know the well-heeled the well-dressed well london and edinburgh were the two largest cities in the british empire certainly in terms of finance so it's such an important connection that not being able to communicate easily and quickly between business people must have been absolutely a godsend and you can just imagine the whole train can't you buzzing with really important conversations as well as with people off on their holes to to the highlands of scotland the flying scotsman is crossing the royal border bridge the gateway to scotland but in the restaurant car there's a crisis the kitchen is running low on salmon modern trains have the ability to call ahead to the next station to stock up on supplies but not in the age of steam we're down to our last couple of salmon and there was no way of communicating from the flying scotsman or indeed any train in the period so if you wanted to get some more salmon and potatoes or indeed if something had gone wrong on the train and you need to get a message out you had to write it down rip off the note and then if you had your handy potato you can make an incision in the side fold it up slip it in and as you pass a signal box throw it out that potato has gone to signal box that signal box will telegraph forward and when we reach our next stop our supplies will be waiting for us [Music] gooseberry jelly [Music] i'm just going to get some cream [Music] for the first time in nearly two decades the flying scotsman is arriving in edinburgh that was great wasn't it absolutely the flying scotsman enabling communication between edinburgh journey of a lifetime [Music] wow we have just gone from london to edinburgh on the flying scotsman there's linking up of britain at such speed i know you start to sort of really get that sense don't you for being one country it's the sort of galvanizing of a nation that the railways afford us isn't it not just through the ability to travel at great speed but also through things like the telegraph as well as technological developments if you don't have the telegraph you don't have instantaneous messaging therefore you don't have news so to speak yeah yeah and then you get the transportation of all that news out from the big publishers to every corner of the country and then you can write to people about the news you've read yeah and that goes on the mail yeah it's quite amazing we think in our own lifetime profound changes that we've seen because of the digital revolution you know there's this internet revolution we can back project those and we can see all those same elements i think so we can really understand what it must have been like for people to move from that sort of pre-railway age and everything in your life is very localized to this sudden slum of connecting up very global once you've got it you forget how you lived without it yeah that's very true that's very true you see people's lives change utterly it's still a remarkable achievement though getting from london to edinburgh in the speed we did today and in the style that we did today yeah we'll speak for yourself next time we see how branch lines revolutionize trade turning welsh wool into a world-renowned business putting scotch whiskey on the map this is a bit like being on a pogo stick and making devon britain's biggest producer of milk this is the railway milk industry

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 299,579

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, absolute history, flying scotsman, full steam ahead, ruth goodman, bbc, british railways, history of railways

Id: GeMkOruNht8

Length: 58min 11sec (3491 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020