Transportation During the Victorian Era | How Trains Changed the World | FD Engineering

[Music] in building empires in building Global Commerce in daily life and in war trains have been engines of change to tell the story of trains we look into the past into the great cities of today into the world's most rugged and most beautiful places and into the future fast trains and slow trains Mighty trains and toy trains the story of how in ways we know and ways that will surprise us trains have changed the world [Music] thank you [Music] Railway building accompanied the spread of Empire the British Germans and Italians extended their power and Prestige across Rivers deserts and mountains in Africa in indo-china the french-built railways and the British made the Indian subcontinent move on Rails as it still does from the crowded Express to the toy train in Darjeeling Railways secured the identity of vast Nations by going coast to coast in Canada the United States and Australia we also travel on the most famous of the long distance lines the Trans-Siberian and see how the very latest train technology is bringing the corners of another vast Nation together today in China [Music] in the middle of the 19th century trains drove the Industrial Revolution onto and across every continent and trains were the wonders of the age the first Railways met a very particular demand the people wanted the cheaper form of Transport than the canals to get cotton to Manchester and cotton Goods out Nations around the world rapidly saw what was going on in the United Kingdom and the UK was a major Center for exporting not just the concept but also physical engineering the materials even rails and so on required to create railways Britain gave Railways to the world in the Victorian era written built and massive infrastructure and that infrastructure is still in use today so essentially our Railways are a Victorian masterpieces in the 20th century as the automobile and the aircraft grew in importance railway lines were closed stations shut and the end of the train confidently predicted but in the 21st century the train has come steep or at least speeding back arguably the Chinese are becoming in the 21st century are becoming Railway imperialists in the way that the British and other European powers in the US did in the 19th century in other words they're using Railways as a tool of Empire this is fujing the name means rejuvenation it is the world's fastest operational bullet train linking Beijing and Shanghai a distance of 1300 kilometers in four and a half hours it has a maximum speed of 350 kilometers an hour though a new version currently being trialled lifts that to 400. High-Speed Rail is developing as an alternative to relatively short haul aviation in some countries and I think that's a role that can take on very well the Chinese government is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the world's largest high-speed rail network larger than all of the world's other networks combined the money that they're putting into new high-speed railroads there is quite astonishing there very very big country and they're quite literally linking it all closer together with these massively expensive high-speed lines China plans to spend billions more on its belt and Road initiative to join westernmost Europe to easternmost Asia by a continuous modern Railway president Xi Jinping proudly explained that his country had accelerated the building of Railways in Asia Africa and Europe doing what the Empire Builders of a hundred years ago did using trains to spread power and influence facilitate military control and exploit natural resources all the European countries that have developed colonies built Railways to a greater or lesser degree and because the quarter of the world was part of the British Empire inevitably it was Britain who built by far the largest number of colonial Railways both by number and extent in many overseas countries in the British Empire the railways were connecting ranches and mines and Farms to a port and it was the bulk movement of commodity that was key from the almost futuristic fushing we take our story back into the 19th century this was at the beginning of the golden age of the British Empire and other nations were already looking to what Britain was doing it was never told that the British would start to look at promoting Railways in the colonies and elsewhere abroad in Africa the first Railway Cairo to Alexandria opened in stages from 1854 to 56 originally crossing the Nile by train Ferry Robert Stevenson of that great Railway dynasty was involved in constructing the line and in the 1890s Gustav Eiffel was involved in building the lion South to ashwan where the old cataract Hotel was built in 1896 by Thomas Cook great names always pop up in the story of Africa if you look at Africa as a whole there are exceptions well Africa as a whole compared to say Europe or North America one of the fundamental differences in the railway is it was strictly a colonial exercise as the Scramble for Africa the colonization of the sub-Saharan continent unfolded in the second half of the 19th century Britain's ambition was to have a continuous Red Lion on the map from Cairo to the cape and that of course meant building a Cape to Cairo Railway Cecil Rhodes had this kind of vision that you could basically impose British will on the whole of Africa by building a line that went from Cairo in the north down to the bottom of the cape Cecil Rhodes the Peerless British imperialist did not envisage people traveling the long journey from Cairo to the cape Rhodes wanted to build the north south through Africa why did he want to do that because it could bring vast riches to the Empire as it was in because they wanted to kind of colonize and all the minerals and all the wealth that was there the Cape to Cairo Railway was never built but in 1928 it became possible to accomplish the whole journey by public transport train boat and bus without leaving British territory other African Railways were built all the major towns in Zimbabwe grew up alongside the railways Railway is the backbone of agricultural and Industrial Development in Zambia [Music] Railways what is now Zambia Zimbabwe and Tanzania and they also ran the railways in Botswana so those Railway developments were there to exploit the coal the Chrome the gold and the other resources and which those countries had in large quantities and which of course were there to support the Imperial Body in the Imperial country Great Britain Nairobi started Life as a railway Town construction of the line from Mombasa commenced at the port in 1896 and reached Nairobi in 1903 when extension of the line from Nairobi to Kampala began in 1898. it was said to be going from nowhere through nowhere to nowhere and was dubbed The Lunatic line when they started to build the Uganda Railway which became the Kenya Uganda railway from Mombasa to Nairobi they used Indian labor they brought over Indian labor who had worked on the construction of the Railway in India and had the expertise to build the railway in East Africa and people settled there the trials of building the line were recorded in the man-eaters of Savo by Colonel j h Peterson published in 1908 two and a half thousand workers died during construction of the lunatic Railway including 28 hapless victims of maineless lions their demise at Christmas 1898 prompted a not unreasonable strike which ended when the man-eaters had been shot many of the workforce 32 000 in fact were brought from India more than six thousand chose to stay on after the railway was completed and it was their descendants that the Mad Idi Amin expelled from Uganda in the 1970s one peculiar claim to fame of the lunatic Railway was that it stopped at the coldest station in the British Empire peculiar because that station was on the equator but at a height of more than 2 600 meters to the north of the lunatic Express another later example of Imperial ambition illustrates the fact that Empire Builders made decisions in their Imperial capitals that created difficulties and often incongruity on the ground the railways that were built in the Empire outside of the Imperial country were often very different in structure to the ones in the Imperial economy itself the Italians put their Eritrean Railway 118 kilometers and climbing to almost two and a half thousand meters from the Red Sea port of massawa to Amara the capital of their Eritrean colony they laid out the national capital to Asmara seven thousand feet up in the mountains there and they needed a good way of linking it into the Red Sea portal massage which was the sort of point of entry for their colony and so they built a Narrow Gauge Railway the line opened in 1911 and the Italians kept building reaching Bishop in 1932. the investment was part of Mussolini's reason for expanding his Empire with the invasion of abyssinia now Ethiopia in 1935 it played a vital role when Mussolini was invading abyssinia it was a very good example about how even though you had a single track Railway you could carry a huge amount of goods and passengers on it but times have been volatile in the Horn of Africa ever since and the railway now carries only the occasional special train for tourists who want to gaze at the astonishing African scenery and the inappropriate but strangely romantic Italian Art Deco structures other Imperial Powers lay tracks across Africa the British Empire was to some extent closed by tariffs to countries outside the Empire so that the Germans had their empire the belgians the French they had their empire in German Southwest Africa today's Namibia a 350 kilometer Narrow Gauge Railway opened in 1897. joining swakobmund and windhoek it chugged in such sedate fashion that the journey could take 10 days today the luxurious Desert Express will transport you between those points in less than 24 hours these Colonial Railways were not built for comfort to understand the point and importance of Imperial Railway building we must cross the Indian Ocean from Africa to the subcontinent it was perhaps on the Indian subcontinent India Pakistan and Bangladesh today that Railway building and Empire Building achieved their most Monumental feats the Romans built roads the British built Railways the British were particularly strong on using the railways as a tool of Empire imposing Empire many Roman roads remain so do many of Britain's Imperial railways Lord Dalhousie India's governor general from 1848 to 1856 the title Viceroy was not introduced until 1858 wrote that the complete permeation of these climbs of the Sun by a magnificent system of Railway communication would present a series of public monuments vastly surpassing the aqueducts of Rome the pyramids of Egypt the Great Wall of China in the two handwritten minutes one in 1853 extending to more than 200 pages laid out the plans for a rail network in India that can still be discerned in the lines in use today he hoped that Railways in India would lead to some similar progress in Social Improvement that has marked the introduction of improved communication in various kingdoms of the western world India's first train chugged and bang less than 35 kilometers from Mumbai then Bombay to Thane it was 1853 four years before the Rebellion that the British knew as the Indian Mutiny shook the subcontinent [Applause] it took less than an hour to make the trip despite having to stop for water and to avoid people who spilled onto the tracks as they still do with 10 a day being killed in Mumbai area alone within a decade of Railway buildings starting in India three million tons of Railway material had been shipped out of Britain aboard 3751 ships the fact is that when we exported Railways it changed those countries the same as it did here the Enterprise had to be financed and the ships had to be insured the city of London boomed Britain became the workshop to the world exporting railed and you quite often and British steel embossed on on the edges of the rail the locomotive building industry and Leeds and the Bayer Garrett Factory in Manchester were major exporters one estimate is that at the height of construction a quarter of a million workers whole families from age 10 upwards were building more than 1500 kilometers of Railway throughout India with 500 British Engineers organizing and supervising their work there were a lot of Railway Engineers looking for jobs overseas so the people were there to take the skills to other economies so I think that in a way Railways then became a part of the Imperial dream by 1870 half the amount invested in Indian railways had been spent in Britain not India there were 1 000 locomotives at work in India none of which had been made there the Imperial power was interested in boosting its own economy not Indian industry looking after a country which is the continent in itself there are many reasons for constructing Railways and Military purposes was only one of the reasons in India the other reasons was to carry crops to carry raw materials convey people and so on and to make possible the expansion of the Cities but the British did leave behind them something of enduring value the Indian Colonial Railway building program forms the basis of what is today the fourth largest railway Network an eighth largest employer in the world the stations are always crowded there's no such thing as an empty train in India National Railways carries more than 22 million passengers every day and enjoys being known as the lifeline of the nation to this day the railways in India are fascinating because they still carry such huge numbers of people of course when one gets into the into the mountainous regions on a railway like The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway one could argue that from a utility point of view the railway is not that important anymore it is a Lifeline of great variety from the crowded Intercity trains and crammed commuter Journeys to the onboard luxury of the maharaja's express and the extraordinary character of the small trains that climb to Hill stations India has got three Hill Railways which are designated by unesco's world heritage science The Darjeeling was the first one to be designated that toy train meanders through Village streets and the middle of bazaars the easiest path for Builders to follow to reach Darjeeling that's gone through years of problems upsets landslides Monsoon rains destroying the track political unrest is still survived it was to the festinian railway in North Wales that Empire Builders turned when they wanted to lay tracks to cool summer Retreats and tea plantations in the Raj like so many lines of the seemingly nowhere to Nowhere variety the festinio had very practical origins in the form of slate quarries the Festival of Railway was the first example of a Narrow Gauge Railway of any engineering distinction overseas one person in particular could see the potential for transferring the idea of the festiniog to India the man who really kicked it off was an agent for the East Bengal Railway and he went up to Darjeeling in 1878 and he came up with the idea of building a railway they started building it in 1879 within two years the railway had opened up to Darjeeling but why build a line to Darjeeling the sometime provincial Governor sir Olaf Carro explained I don't think there is anything in life Caro said which is such a relief and such a physical Delight as going from the heat of the Plains up into the mountains it really opened people's eyes to how natural resources on crops and Agriculture and everything else could be very quickly and easily developed rather than going to the expense of a big full-size Railway you could drive one of these Narrow Gauge ones up into places which would hitherto had seen inaccessible The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway the DHR was opened officially in 1881. lieutenant governor of Bengal sir Ashley Eden did the honors the journey lasts less than a day but it is according to the American author Mark Twain so wild and interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week one of the most unusual carcos on The Darjeeling Railway at the top end of the line was the night's soil and it went a couple of miles out of town and deposited it in a siding well in 1910 the local Authority came up with rather more agreeable the sanitary Arrangements there and the stink Express stopped running but it said that for years and years afterwards the people who lived near the siding boasted at the size of their cauliflowers and cabbages with the size of elephants heads for importance the small line to Darjeeling cannot compare to another Hill Journey there was a time when one-fifth of the world's population was governed from a small Railway town named similar [Music] by 1864 similar now Shimla had become the summer capital of the British Raj and headquarters of the British Army in India the railway stops at kalka where male and passengers transfer to the hill train that has since 1903 completed the final 96 kilometers in a four and a half hour Journey including viaducts there are 869 Bridges and 107 tunnels and a climb of 750 meters numbers which say everything about the topographic challenges of building such a line Rudyard Kipling wrote of the journey to Shimla that it began in heat and discomfort and ended in the cool evening with a wood fire in one's bedroom Kipling wrote a lot about the railways in India he described how the Station filled with clamor and shoutings cries of water and sweet meat vendors shouts of native policemen and the shrill yells of women Gathering up their baskets their families and their husbands that was more than a hundred years ago but he could have been describing a scene in India today foreign there's no windows there's just grills instead of instead of Windows because you know the windows are would be permanently open and the colorful throng of the masses and the way that the trains go through the countryside you can open the doors which of course health and safety would prevent you in most countries you open the door you sit on the step and the train doesn't nearly go more than 50 or 60 miles an hour and you watch India going by in 1851 the British began to build their way North from Karachi that is they began to construct a railroad towards the most difficult the most dangerous the most legendary of their Frontiers my travels in Pakistan and what used to be the Northwestern province of India the limes that go up towards the border with Afghanistan that were built with military objectives in mind the perceived threat of the invasion of India with the Russian Bear threatening the Jewel and the crown of Empire and so these Railways were constructed to provide a means of getting man and materials up to the frontier in time of War the names of the horses the kyber pass the Bowland pass give an idea of the kind of terrain through which they had to pass by the time the Raj ended less than a century later Pakistan had 8 000 kilometers of track and the line from Karachi to peshwar had been extended in 1925 to landi Qatar at 1065 meters the high point of the Khyber Pass the man who built the railway up there was a man named Bailey and he knew that if he had the opposition of the tribesmen there would be no Prospect of getting the line built so he held a meeting that the tribe swivel and they said well we've been plundering Caravans going through the Khyber Pass for centuries and he said to them well why can't you planted the train and with that they accepted and even helped build the uh the railway these then were the trains that joined the cities to each other the ports to the hinterland that took out the raw materials and brought in the manufactured goods they were deprecated by nationalists notably Gandhi as Imperial impositions which they were but they transformed India they changed the world as we move further across the globe we will see the hand of other imperialists let's Grand in scale perhaps but influential nonetheless the region then known as Indochina Lao Cambodia and Vietnam today the French also had a summer capital in Vietnam their solution to escaping the heat was the dalat kremely airline a cremeier railway is a rack and pinion mechanism designed for Steep mountains trackling began in 1903 the terrain necessitated boring many tunnels through hard rock and it took 30 years to complete the line that linked the main north-south Railway to the hill station which became accessible and fashionable the lats railway has suffered through Vietnam's recent history but a short stretch has been restored taking Travelers on a 90-minute ride to a pagoda of much greater significance is the main north-south line and its restoration the reunification Express is the name given to any train that makes the 1726 kilometer Journey between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City formerly Saigon the line was opened by the French in 1936 closed by the Geneva Accord of 1954 and reopened in 1977. two years after the end of the war remarkable considering the toll that years of conflict had taken on the line's 1334 Bridges and 27 tunnels and a tribute to the efforts of the 70 000 people who did the work unification the bringing together of peoples is often seen as a byproduct of the railways as a tangible way in which Railways have changed the world unification not only of Empires but of single countries whose vastness is so great that until the age of rail journeys of many weeks were required to travel from one extremity to the other the railway from the extreme west of Australia to the east coast was built in this case expressly in order to to link the two seaboards and to help develop a sense of nationhood I mean there was no real economic justification for that Railway but it had to be built in order to persuade all the parts of the Federation to to come together named for the two oceans that it links joins the East and West coasts of Australia the figures distance 4 352 kilometers longest straight stretch of Railway track in the world 478 kilometers across the nullarbor or no tree plane the sparsity of population all are breathtaking the Train's stories of the back-breaking laying of the Rails to its short career as a Lifeline that joined remote communities they dragooned people who were unemployed from the cities so Bank workers watchmakers Bakers ended up building a railway into this unbelievably remote Terrain what they must have thought they had got themselves into I I can't imagine the technology of rail travel as much as anything else has meant making those small train stops obsolete and they now stand abandoned though cook still has a population of three or sometimes four and some vastness particularly as you're crossing the nullar ball play in 189 miles of dead Street Track and I think the experience of getting out at Cook completely Unforgettable the idea of living in that remote spot in the middle of that vast plane with nothing but camels and other Wildlife around you it's as I say something nobody could ever forget it's a journey now enjoyed by Travelers mainly tourists who can spare the 70 plus hours to travel in style and one of the world's few truly transcontinental trains the service has only been running since 1970. although rails just of different gauges did stretch from coast to coast before that as part of the deal to encourage the state of Western Australia to join the other states when they Federated in 1901. such nation building but in this case to create the largest land Empire is also the story of the next place we go where one of the world's most famous trains Waits [Music] Joseph Stalin said the existence and development of our state would be Unthinkable without a regular functioning Railway connecting the huge provinces into a unified Hall the railway of which he spoke the Trans-Siberian Railway was an imperial project there's an imperial contest that develops in Northeast Asia in that the Russian Empire is expanding to the east into Siberia and eventually to the Pacific coast and in order to knit together that huge Russian Empire the Russians in the early 20th century begin to build a strategic Railway through the Trans-Siberian Railway which reaches blood of ostock in the extreme east of Russia in the early years of the 20th century the Epic story of its construction and what Remains The Epic nature of its journey across vast empty lands befit its significance as the artery that clicks Russia and Europe to Russia in Asia the Russians have they basically unified their extended Empire and got people into those outlying places right you know whether it be what we now call Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan or all across Siberia was populated through this Railway Moscow to Vladivostok the Trans-Siberian Railway is to many the definition of transcontinental train travel remote vast Siberia is mineral rich but that was not understood until a Geological Survey was conducted after the railway had been pushed through its construction was driven by concern for the growing strength and ambition of Japan bordering Russia in the East it was built at a time when Russell was relatively poor in the in the 1890s it was a peasant Society it was a farming Society there was not very much industry and yet they built this amazing Railway why did they build this Railway well they built it because the Russians wanted to establish themselves over Siberia which at that point had only really been home to a few Nomads and a few prisoners but also because they wanted to pull Russia together motivation equally came from the idea of uniting the country and perhaps from the opportunity to dispatch malcontents and dissidents into the gulag along a line about whose length statements can never quite agree about nine and a half thousand kilometers through eight time zones across the largest country in the world the Trans-Siberian is undoubtedly if you like the spinal cord of Russia at East-West line is the longest journey that you can do I train right across to vladivoster and its importance is reflected in the fact that they've had to duplicate other sections parallel lines to provide greater capacity a journey initiated in 1903 incomparable and still of practical real importance to those who live along its route to this day it carries 30 of Russia's exports and though there are tourists the bulk of passengers are ordinary Russians going about their business construction of the Trans-Siberian at its peak employed 89 000 workers Bart had a surprisingly low death rate of 2 percent which compares favorably with major projects elsewhere the classic Trans-Siberian links Moscow and Vladivostok in seven days and six nights days and nights of being served and bossed around by the private nista that rather Legendary Class of usually female Carriage attendants who maintain order and the upkeep of the samova the Trans-Siberian Railway is undoubtedly that the the greatest experience it's not the most beautiful Railway in the world when you get to uh Vladivostok you know nearly 6 000 miles away from Moscow and it's taken you six and a half days you really do feel that you know you have reached almost the edge of the world there are now Branch lines deep into the journey that take the traveler to Beijing through Mongolia But whichever epic journey is undertaken it is one compared to which in the view of travel writer Eric Newby all others are peanuts surely one of the world's greatest engineering achievements construction began in 1891 and when trains started to run more than 10 years later the journey was broken by a ferry Crossing of Lake Baikal except in the winter when rails were laid over the Lake's Frozen expanse it was along the line and deep into Siberia that Admiral Kolchak White Russian leader flared aboard special trains it was the end of 1919 and he reputedly took with him more than 9 000 kilograms of the imperial gold reserve and other treasure it has never been officially recovered one story claims it fell into Lake Baikal the bikel ferry on which Kolchak would have sailed SS Baikal had been built in England in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1897 and transported by ship train and finally horse-drawn sledges and cars in over 7 000 crates to be assembled by the lake when the route around the lake with its 38 tunnels was completed the Rail Link was complete I'm quite sure that for many Russians the the Trans-Siberian is the artery that they think of in terms of the lifeline that binds the country together on board a train as a skirted the lake in 1938 a baby was born he would go on to startle the World of Dance his name was Rudolf nureye the reality of the Trans-Siberian is short of rolling Vistas and those tempted by the Grandeur of Dr Zhivago should know that crossing the urals in David lean's Epic movie was filmed in Canada [Music] it is now possible to take the journey in rather greater Comfort a luxury variant now spoils well-hill tourists along the Route the golden eagle [Music] luxury has always been part of the story of train travel in the next place whose history has been changed by transcontinental railways North America [Music] in North America the great trunk routes across the continent decisively opened up the land sped the growth of the Nations and made fortunes for the entrepreneurs with the vision to go west somebody said the railway is one of the few sinews left that bind us to the country this is the story of the Canadian and the extraordinary Feats of engineering and endurance that drove the railway across frigid Plains and over and through the Rocky Mountains it is the story of the Iron Horse that opened up the USA took settlers West drove Native Americans onto reservations and then evolved into a network of long-distance Journeys which movie stars and hobos traveled in songs and stories of intrigue romance and hard times [Music] in Canada the rocky Mountaineer runs today across a line that got off to a rocky start the ceremonial driving home of the last Spike was mangled but which at 955 kilometers completed the last link in the Canadian Pacific Railway and United a nation on November 7 1885. I think it's not going too far to say that the creation of Canada as a nation-state depended upon the building of the East-West Railway the speech made when East and West met to link Canada by rail must hold some sort of record for brevity all I can say said the man in charge is that the work has been well done in every way and that is all he did say but the achievement was worth more British Columbia is three four thousand miles away from the eastern states in Canada would that have held together if there hadn't been a railway that could go all the way from Halifax through to Vancouver when Canada's first transcontinental train arrived in Vancouver from Montreal on May 23 1887. it had completed what was then the world's longest train journey and Edward wimper conqueror of the Matterhorn when he traveled the line declared the Canadian Rockies to be 50 switzerlands in one [Music] the lovely thing about the Canadian as with many tourist trains is the sense of camaraderie that gradually develops as you meet people in the dining car for lunch and dinner and breakfast and you meet people from all over the world and you share stories in the United States the first sod was turned on the first American Mainline the Baltimore and Ohio in 1828 and the sod Turner typically equipped with a silver Spade was 90 year old Charles Carroll last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence I consider this among the most important acts of my life second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence if even it to be second to that [Music] so he knew unless and until an iron Road held them together there was no guarantee that the states would ever be United there is no real reason why on such a vast land area the distant part should join and the Rocky Mountains seem more than a barrier to some they seem like a frontier an awful lot of America exists because literally because of the Railway if there had been no Railway technology it's unlikely that the United States as the continental United States could have existed as a cohesive Nation it would have fragmented and could very likely have been you know smaller independent nation states the politics and the financing and the roles of industry and government all of this was complicated but somehow the job got done it took six months to cross from sea to shining sea and once the ceremonial Golden Spike was hammered home linking the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10 1869 a one-word message went around the world [Music] [Applause] done and so it was the first Railways across North America in Canada and USA linking the East and West for the first time via the Rocky Mountains led to an amazing transformation unified for the first time the railways turned months of travel into days the country was linked and the journey was an incomparably Superior way of getting from coast to coast though it was neither comfortable nor enjoyable Robert Louis Stevenson who made the trip in 1879 complained that the train toiled like a snail we traveled all day through deserts of alkali and sand horrible to man and bear-sage country that seemed little kindlier but Stevenson on another occasion had written I travel not to go anywhere but to go I travel for travel's sake the great Affair is to move and America was on the Move Railway companies competed with each other to offer the best way of enjoying the great affair the age of great trains with great names James J hill was a railroad entrepreneur whose name should be placed alongside any of the great Railway builders Hill railroads opened up the Northwest and his signature train the Oriental limited ran one of North America's great Journeys from Chicago to Seattle 3575 kilometers and initiated in 1901 if you sit in the train for a couple of days between as I did between you know Chicago and Seattle again you realize just what an amazing achievement this was and you know how important this must have been because the railways existed a good 78 years before car travel was routine it was the only way to get around so on American transcontinental for example all the film actors and film actresses and directors they used to get on the train at Chicago and and get off at Los Angeles two days later the Coast's Starlight following a 2200 kilometer route opened in 1894 continuing the journey south from Seattle to Los Angeles Amtrak the Train's present operator dubs it a land Cruise along the Pacific coast it terminates at Los Angeles Union Terminal the last of the great terminal stations completed in 1939 in a quite appropriate blend of Spanish Moorish and art deco foreign 218 kilometers the California Zephyr crosses the continent from Chicago to Oakland A Route 1 Railway writer described as defined by the scenic Splendor it passes through not one highlight rather a continual succession of great Vistas I like the California Zephyr although honestly about the first Thousand Miles the California's effort is pretty boring but certainly once you get into the mountains it's incredible they cross the Front Range in Colorado and then they cross the Nevada and Utah deserts and then you go over the Sierra Nevada although the Zephyr has only been running since 1949 much of the route it follows was established much earlier and not for the purpose of enjoying the scenery which may explain why its Passage through the Rockies entails 27 tunnels [Music] and there was the height of Railway luxury the 20th century Limited 42 well-heeled supplement paying passengers spoiled rotten on the 20-hour 1500 kilometer Journey from New York City to Chicago Starting In 1902 no wonder Ginger Rogers remarked that somehow stepping onto a plane and zooming across the United States in a matter of hours doesn't hold a candle to the dear old-fashioned train at both ends of the 20th century limited's Journey carpet woven with the railroad company Crest was rolled out on the platforms to cushion the heels and soles of the well-heeled the idea self-evidently has caught on because the carpet happened to be red and the idea of walking the red carpet was born thanks to a train the ways in which trains have changed the world are many and marvelous [Music] the Industrial Revolution was the result Above All Else of harnessing steam power by 1830 in Manchester alone there were 30 000 steam engines at work but none of them was pulling the train as soon as someone worked out how to power wheels on Rails trains began their work and because it was a time of great Empires trains were used to carry the flag and change the world [Music] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary - Engineering

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Length: 50min 0sec (3000 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022