The Way Trains Changed Victorian Fortunes | Full Steam Ahead | Absolute History

the age of steam shaped how we live today [Music] 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 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 i've ever been on hello guys 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 a way to experience train travel isn't it it is they'll follow in the footsteps of the world's finest engineers these are the men that built different problems those who ran it and those for who life would never be the same again internet pack it had nothing like the impact of the railways this is the story of how the railways created modern britain by the 1860s mainlines had linked britain's major cities enabling goods and people to move freely between them but leading off the main lines thousands of smaller branch lines were built connecting rural towns and villages to the rest of the country today we tend to look upon the branch lines as being this quaint part of this old rural idle but i'm really interested in the branch lines because i want to find out how they managed to connect very local trades with this emerging global economy of the victorian period the branch lines brought profound changes to villages it makes it much more possible to be very very specialist to focus in on one thing and sell it nationally so how was it that these locals sometimes very ancient little businesses could grow and become national even global phenomena branch lines changed the way goods moved around britain they were essential to the railway network and i want to find out what it was like working on a branch line branch lines were primarily built to transport goods in the welsh valleys they turned wool production from a cottage industry into a world-renowned business in the scottish highlands they transformed the local tipple into internationally famous scotch whiskey and in the west country branch lines turned devon into britain's most popular producer of milk before the railways milk couldn't be transported long distances because it would go sour before reaching its destination so it was produced and consumed locally victorian london had some 25 000 dairy cows in cellars and backyards but when the railways reached devon in 1849 it created a high-speed link between the dairy farms of the west country and london this i think is the most beautiful view with cow i've ever seen and they look like they belong here they're a particular breed yes they're the seth devons sandra fry of burnford farm dartmoor comes from a long line of dairy farmers as a child she helped her father milk their herd of south devon cattle and if i went back to an age before the railways would i be still seeing this breed in this landscape definitely yes yeah they were very much a beef breed and a milking breed just producing for the local area yeah for the milk and the bee branch lines gave farms access to new markets further afield milk could travel hundreds of miles and still be fresh when it reached people's homes and when your branch line arrives which was where it was it was ran along the bottom here right away yes right up i mean there's the moors yes right up into the middle yeah and that allowed you to be sending milk away yes yeah i suppose my dad had about four churns and that was it 10 12 gallons in a churn so that would have been done every time yes so it's thanks to the railways really that the whole milk industry um in this area just got bigger and better it went from being a little local quality product to being not just the quality but this huge quantity yes your life's revolved around the railways really come on girls it wasn't just milk the railways were transporting away from farms jim jeffrey can also remember south devon cattle being moved by rail the biggest sale at tavisto america was always to have a stock goosey fare and um it was nothing for them to train away several hundred cattle from that market right into the trains um to cornwall and of course the north of england as well it was just a month come friday next bill camper down and me us drove across oh darty more the goosey fare to see us made ourselves quite very as graced and combs her air an office goes in our sunday clothes biano bill's grey bear a smelt the sage and onions as a straw of cross we're church down and didn't this ever blow out when it's put up in the town and they're a seat night and effort chance deer and nicki square it seemed the way all them must be the tavistock goosey fair and is what be doing of year and were be going to there put on your prong and step along the tavistock goosey fair [Music] the south devon railway once transported not just cattle and milk out of devon but also fruit and vegetables from market gardens to find out how the line operated alex and peter are taking jobs on the line cases yeah i'm going to check the timetable the line was part of the great western railway which had a strict code of conduct for its employees it's rulebook stating the chief concern of staff should be the safety of the public so before they're allowed near the railway line director alan taylor is assessing their suitability hi alan oh yeah hello nice to meet you so as budding young railway drivers and signalmen what's the first thing we need to learn to do well the first thing we need to do is make sure that you're actually capable of doing the job so that you can actually see for one thing particularly for anybody that works on the footplate driver fireman or signalman they need to be able to see both colour and actually see at a distance was it possible for a driver to wear glasses not in the victorian era no it wasn't in fact in those days the only type of glasses you could have would be those with glass lenses and if they broke which there was a high risk because of the risks of the profession you could easily break a you know hit something or something a stone could hit you it would break the lens and that would of course go in your eye okay so the eye test is going to determine who gets to uh drive the train then well it could well be the case yes it was vital that drivers had good eyesight so they could spot signals when traveling at speed so in 1868 railway companies began testing the site of their employees the idea is that you've got to tell it 15 feet exactly how many dots you can see right how many dots can you see four five six seven eight nine ten twelve twelve indeed more done peter memorized the child how many dots nine thank you precisely correct well done you've passed the test this is me right your turn sir has been thrown yeah yeah how many dots sir um 15. i'm sorry to say you failed the test sir oh 16. looks like i'm working in a buffet car it was essential employees could differentiate between red and green signals so they were also tested for color blindness tell me what color i'm showing you green thank you you've passed the chest is that it is my eyesight that bad alan if that would have been a genuine test i think it's fair to say that you would not have been employed by the railway company other than in an office or some sort of backroom job these tests effectively bring in a benchmark as standard across all railways well that was the point i think and then that that started improved safety from that point onwards for those who passed the medical training began the road to becoming a driver was a long one often taking 10 years but it was well paid in the 1870s drivers were earning over three times that of farm workers that's the remnants of the previous yesterday's fire yeah on his journey to becoming a driver peter's starting at the bottom right he's been given the job of cleaning the firebox a laborious process in three stages first the ash is removed by brushing it down through the fire grate something like this was i suppose a daily occurrence yes it had to be emptied out before the next run an engine of this size would be about at least three and a half hours you need to leave yourself it's a prep and to help with the job the firebox is illuminated using a burning paraffin-soaked rag now you can shovel out and tip it into the wheelbarrow [Music] it makes it easier to see the remaining lumps of unburned coal which must be removed [Music] the ash collects underneath the loco in its ash pan and we're going under the load we're going under the locomotive the final stage is to wash it out under the supervision of shedmaster barbara turner there's the handle for the hose to turn it on and you soak all the ash really soak it very very well okay in there hose going on okay washing rather than brushing out the ash ensures it doesn't get into the locos important moving parts there we go okay barbara ash pan soaked it's not the only thing okay now you can shove the ash right the way through the pan onto the ground working for the railway had its dangers but if you were injured at work the company would do its best to find you an alternative job once you're in the railway it doesn't matter where you work you'll stay in the railway in the 1870s devon was producing over a quarter of a billion pints of milk each year from over 75 000 dairy cows all milked by hand back then south devon cattle were the region's most popular milking breed today almost all the dairy herds have been replaced by black and white friesians imported from the netherlands friesians produce much larger quantity of milk lower butter fat but larger quantity and commercially quickly push the south devons out of business as a milking breed so what we're seeing today is a site from the past really today south devons are reared only for beef i'd love to go i haven't milked for years i'm rusty i am rusty aren't i [Music] wait wait wait wait wait go oh i've never got my boots on girl look at that oh feminine creamy lovely these are the cattle that were producing the milk that supplied the whole of london this is the railway milk industry at its source that scene must have been repeated up and down the country everywhere wasn't there the milk is put into 10 gallon churns ready to be transported by rail [Music] the milk is warm when it leaves the cow so we'll quickly sound to extend its shelf life to rail transportation it's cooled straight away so how exactly does this cooling work so this goes into the churn and the water goes round these pipes cooling the milk on the inside of the churn and then we turn the tap on so then cools the milk churn on the outside oh that's really clever cooling milk slows down the growth of bacteria keeping it fresh for days this is a familiar sight you see them all over the country don't you yeah that's right so the milk churn was put up here um ready for the milk cart to come and collect it so it was at this sort of height so then it was easy for him just to just to move it across move it across the churns were taken from the farm to the local railway station from there the branch line would transport them to the mainline this was done after dark [Music] and this evening peter will help drive the night train okay so if you just place the wood in now on top of the coal that you've just put in with the firebox cleaned the fire can be re-lit pop it in the middle and then we'll just let that catch just close the doors that's it yeah keep the heat in railways cut a suede through the british countryside crossing paths farm tracks and roads to maintain rights of way on main lines bridges were built but they were expensive so on branch lines thousands of cheaper level crossings were used alex is joining crossing keeper john broadrib to find out how the system worked most crossing remote areas are away from a station so the crossing keeper had to have a cottage provided for him this sounds like my kind of gig this really does in the early days level crossings were dangerous places [Music] in 1861 71 people died crossing railways so gates were introduced to make them safer you need to pull that one out yep that's it now over it goes beautifully balanced gate that is isn't it now you've got to reach through and pull that other bolt yeah that's it you got it got it there yeah make sure you're right side of the gate i'm gonna shut myself out the ground once the road traffic has been stopped the crossing keeper operates the signal we're now basically favoring rail traffic indeed we are over road traffic the gates are locked the train can approach [Music] the crossing keeper had to stay alert the laps in concentration could result in a collision between the road and rail traffic there we go but it wasn't as physically demanding as most other jobs on the victorian railway [Music] and very often those crossing keepers were people who had perhaps been injured in railway service right uh still needed to be looked after yeah and the railway was actually a very good employer in that way right so if you found yourself falling foul of the railway system and losing a limb you could you could still find yourself a nice little number like this oh that's true very good example is john james who lost a leg right oh okay and uh to keep him in the employment the railway gave him the job of crossing keeper at stafford mill crossing or napa's crossing yeah uh he was provided with a bungalow uh as part of the job because again it was remote from anywhere else um and so he was employed there for nearly 30 years actually as crossing keeper that really is the perfect sort of job uh with which to take a railwaymen who'd suffered an injury indeed and keep them in employment indeed the railways not only found jobs for those injured dr mike esbester has found evidence that the great western railway workshops did more than just repair locomotives the companies tried to provide for injured employees sometimes through prosthetic limbs replacements these are quite basic aren't they they are but it's an effort to try and improve the lives of the employees and provide for their rehabilitation so return sometimes to useful work they're a strange mix of beautiful craftsmanship i mean making an articulated hand out of wood is no easy feat to have several dedicated workshops dotted up and down the country making artificial limbs i mean that really punches home just how many accidents there were absolutely working on victorian railways was dangerous in 1900 alone over 500 employees died and more than 16 000 were injured something had to be done the rail companies provided training but stopped short of taking full responsibility in 1905 the great western railway made it clear that the employees were accountable for their own health and safety the only rules that really relate to safety in the rule books up to the second world war tend to be those like rule 24a the servants of the company must not expose themselves to danger if you expose yourself to danger you might be injured but you've also broken a rule the companies are very very clear it's very much the workers responsibility but that doesn't really acknowledge that they haven't given them enough time to actually do the job or enough people to do the job people to do the job of the right tools to do the job looked into other ways of working that would mean that the workers aren't exposed to danger trainee driver peter has been preparing the loco for the past three hours under the watch of fireman alistair this is where you live for your uh for your shift everything you do is up here is this the kitchen as well yeah it has to be so we better get some bacon cooking heat the shovel a bit first get it hot get the pan now it's up to steam the foot plate will be their home for the next 12 hours dinner is another man's breakfast you know this is approaching the night shift but that's the start of our day it is it's looking good two vacant signings all we need now is cup of tea cup of tea when on duty the crew couldn't leave the foot plate for more than a few minutes at a time so this became their home complete with oven and grill very good right well i think it's time that we better be off now so uh let's get you you look in the park railways took their image very seriously and the employees were the face of the company so the great western railway insisted that staff must always wear uniforms stay in the life of a branchline driver it's hard work and we haven't even left the engine shed yet i'm back just hit the lever with my leg that's not good although the victorian branch lines revolutionized village trades they still had to get goods to and from the station and for that they relied on good old-fashioned horsepower migrated to the city ian cryer is an expert on working horses so were there more or less horses once you've got railways well there were there were in fact far more and which increased and increased until the turn of the century and that's just because there's so much extra work there's so much extra trade moving of goods around the place yeah the number of working horses increased fourfold with the advent of the railways by the 1890s there were nearly 28 000 horses owned by railway companies alone the railways were still using horses until the mid 50s and the last horse retired in 1967. good gracious what are you doing hiding in there i'm waiting for my milk churns my nut hey mish hey move it move move oh dude should we get this on its way okay walk on by the 1920s such was the volume of milk being transported by rail churns were replaced by glass-lined tank wagons at that express stories this company were set up to move milk and and sell it on a big scale and they chose that name because they were moving it by railway by express now tankers seemed like a really good idea hugely more efficient than the old churns but they came with a problem you see if you get one sick cow and you're putting that milk into a churn of milk then all of the milk in that churn becomes infected but if those churns had been all put together in a tanker one cow could affect the whole 300 churns worth between 1912 and 1937 65 000 people died from bovine tuberculosis contracted from contaminated milk only when pasteurization was introduced in the 1940s did milk become safe [Music] peter's coupling up the milk wagons to the loco to form the night train once the train is prepared it heads out onto the branch line [Music] in some respects driving on a branch line is more complicated than driving on a main line main lines have a separate track for each direction whereas on branch lines all trains travel up and down on the same track [Music] there are short lengths of double track where trains can pass but on the single track sections a system was invented to prevent collisions the driver could only enter the section if he's been given a token by signalman like alan johnson these are the little key tokens yep and there's another machine exactly the same at the other end of the line right now wide together with a big length of cable between the two yeah um and you can only get one token out at a time okay so this is a sort of fail-safe device then yes single beat and he should reply by repetition that's right he replies back in order to prevent collisions the machine would only allow one token for each section to be issued at a time entering a section without a token was a suckable offence the token okay so this is the key okay and of course this all begs the question how do we get this key from here up to the other signal box with that we have a token catcher so we place the token in there like that yep and a little pin comes through just to secure it and then we hand that over to the crew on the locomotive right so all i have to do is quite simply just wrap that around peter's head as he comes through peter's night train is on its way and needs a token from alex to enter the next section of single track usually we go that way on yep then one arm up and then ready to catch the other token with your other arm well i've got to catch one as well yes right peter also has a token from the previous section which he must hand back to alex he's catching that and i'm catching that yes right good luck cheers i'm actually quite anxious about this not least because it's peter on the other end holding that like that so it just gets taken out the hand and that way hold it that way i'll take your fingers and this hand like a snake to go through and collect the other tokens that's quite nerve-wracking this watching out for alex i've got a crouch really low because he's on the ground i'm obviously on the footplate here we go here we go [Music] it worked we did it that's the main one that was relatively easy well there we go and that now means a train can only pass from this signal box in that direction with this key [Music] milk was transported at night to keep it cool so it remained fresh for longer but driving a steam engine after sunset has challenges all of its own i can see signals big vague tree line there but that's about it yeah yeah that's it yeah you can't see much at all can you no you just really got to know the roof and where you're going right and is that that's dave's job i suppose that's dave's job yeah he's been here for nearly 50 years he knows what he's doing driver dave noling started on the railways in 1954 the age of just 14. wow think about going in the night a lot of the railway traffic went in the night [Music] [Applause] it was as busy in the night the railways is in the daytime yeah and in season you're had the property trains went up in the night the chorus properly taken over the markets all over the country enough but throughout britain as the majority of people slept in their beds branchline trains would have been thundering down the tracks carrying all sorts of all sorts of mail and early in the morning the newspapers for delivery at the shops it must have revolutionized because oh yeah you'd be lucky to do that now well yeah dave how do you know where we are now actually we're stopped right on the bridge over the river dark now but you can't even see the river but if we were going along and passing over it would be a hollow sound right a kind of a hollow tinny sound yeah it's the bridge over the door i know that by ear you do more by ear than eyesight in the night you know a hollow sound there's little cuttings it's a different size entirely about them i think it's time to put a bit of cola right give it good flick that's it drop some underneath the doors it's so dark outside you can't see anything at all can you the brightness of the fire it really is blinding as soon as you look at that fire you'll lose any night vision that you may have yeah that is quite hot isn't it it's such a bright light it is it really is very hot so uh when you're firing it's always really important to either cover one eye or close an eye yeah to keep night vision in one eye or try to at least hurtling through the night just gives you a sense of what it was like in the steam age delivering goods to a nation here we are approaching the station it's time to unload the milk and then maybe get some breakfast [Music] in the 1860s there was a shortage of milk in london it was caused by a disease rinderpest which wiped out most of the city's cattle to meet demand milk was instead brought in by rail from devon it wasn't long before so much was being taken to london it became scarce in devon itself [Music] in the 1840s the rail network in both england and scotland grew rapidly but it took until 1850 before the two nations were linked together by the royal border bridge at beric upon tweed alex and peter are leaving devon and heading north to see the impact the railways had on scottish rural industries although most branch line traffic would have been for trade many trains would have included a passenger carriage providing an opportunity for people to travel the length and breadth of the country [Music] by the 1860s there were over 500 miles of railway in scotland but there was one line in particular that created one of scotland's biggest and most lucrative exports this is the strass bay railway and it was instrumental in establishing a world famous whiskey industry it was the railway that allowed barley to be brought to distilleries and allowed the end product this wonderful drink to be transported all over the world but why were the distilleries here what was the key ingredient it was the wonderful water from the river spay although distilling whiskey in the highlands goes back at least 500 years scotch wasn't drunk much outside scotland until the arrival of the strathspay railway in 1863 [Music] it meant a journey to the highlands that would have taken days now took hours [Music] tourism boomed as the wealthy came to hunt and shoot and got a taste for scotch in the process distilleries such as grant stewards and johnny walker all expanded to meet demand alex and peter have come to the balan dalek distillery to see the impact railways had on whiskey production they're met by brian robinson welcome to ballen dalek distillery all right come on in thank you very much we're tucked away in the far northeast of scotland here and this remains to this day the epicentre of scotch whiskey production and transport links were sketchy at best so when the railways came in you then had infrastructure it was the turning point that made the industry the the huge success that it became in the late 1880s 1890s and that we enjoy today i guess the estate would also be investing in the station as well to create platforms and holding yards and indeed it wasn't simply a question of the railways coming to the area in many instances they would come to the distillery specifically they would have their own arrangement with the railways to get stock in and out private branch lines off the strathspay railway brought malted barley to the door of the distilleries and took whiskey to the national network access to bigger markets meant distilleries began to produce scotch on an industrial scale this is grist it's barley that's been ground down into it's sort of sort of gritty actually texture isn't it it's basically a coarse whole meal flower right the grist is mixed with water from the river spay then yeast is added we're going to be agitating the liquid so that when we add the yeast we don't get a solid ball and a clump at the bottom and what is this yeast going to do so the yeast is going to effectively feed on the sugar that we've extracted from the grist right and over the course of three or five days it'll give us around eight percent alcohol at the end the strong flat barley beer without any hops effectively this is a bit like being on a pogo stick in a sauna within 24 hours the yeast has reacted with the sugars in the barley next the fermented brew is distilled this still is just effectively a great big kettle we boil the liquid with alcohol of course boiling at a lower temperature than water yeah we're able to create a vapor turn the vapor back to liquid so you're sort of condensing that out exactly what we're doing and then it will run through the spirit safely and then it's leaving here at what percentage we will harvest it between 73 and 62 alcohol by volume giving us an average of 69 at this stage the distilled alcohol is colorless and bears no resemblance to whiskey to give it color and flavor it must be stored for at least three years in an oak cask only then can it be called scotch whiskey [Music] the boom in whiskey production created by the railways also saw a resurgence of the ancient craft of cask making known as coopering the popular narrative with the crafts industries are that essentially when britain industrialized there was less room for the crafts the crafts were put out of business but actually in this case the very opposite happened roadline's connected scotland up to markets not only in britain but also across the world enabling them to sell whiskey to a global market this increase in demand meant that there was an increase in demand for the craft of the cooper the space side cooperage specializes in preparing casks for the distilleries darren morrison is showing alex and peter the process i don't think i've ever seen quite so many barrels in one location quite the corn pound over 120 000 in the park just now they come in from different parts of the world bourbon casks from america cherry casks from spain and brandy casks from france are shipped in and reused to store scotch each giving a different flavor and color to the whiskey they've got a long life spawn they could go to the distillery for the 20 years come back we'll fix them up again and go out for another 20. right yeah i suppose this here right now is is a testament to the impact that the railways had on the the whiskey industry because this is this is amazing just cast you as far as you can see how do you think he's doing oh he's out there first darren looks for damaged panels known as staves we're going to go around the castle that's a problem matt and that'll have to come out it has to come out okay iron hoops hold the staves together it's making it look easy no glue or nails are used made of oak they are shaped and fitted in a precise pattern that makes the finished cask watertight this is the one with the cracking that needs replacing the damaged stave is replaced with one recycled from another cask and the hoops are put back on the replaced stave is then trimmed to match the that and others lies the craft of the cooper isn't it the ability to use hand tools to finish off this there's one final process to char the inside of the cask this idea of charring the barrel with it's really what gives the whiskey that extra bit of flavor but it also helps to give whiskey its color as well so it's very much down to the blender the whiskey maker as to how dark they want that finish and therefore how much charcoal they want in the barrel that you can smell the difference right yeah it's not that bitter yeah that's [Music] moving casks by rail meant they had to be robust and leak free so the end panels known as heads were sealed using an ancient dance is technique packing in the water and it's just forming a very very tight seal between the stage and the lid oh to watch a master at work back at the distillery brian and peter are checking on the progress of an earlier batch what we do want to do is make sure that the spirit we've created is working well with the casks we've selected wow so there you can see in just a little over 18 months we've gone from a clear spirit to something which is starting to really get the colour and the characteristic of the cask this is essentially the room in which whiskey takes on its colour and taste absolutely the whiskey from each distillery is known as a single malt but they proved too strong a flavor for many drinkers outside scotland [Music] so in the 1860s the process of blending single malts to create a more palatable flavor was developed so keith where are these barrels destined then well this this is a typical trip work in picking the barrels up yep they would go to a yard whether they formed into a larger train right for onward to glasgow to the blending and bolding plant so you get whiskeys from all over scotland means blended together okay so that single malt that comes from each individual distillery is actually being brought together to create the more popular blend at the time the uh the yeah the blended whisk is rather than the single malt it was the railway's ability to move barrels from distilleries to blending plants that made it possible today ninety percent of all scotch whiskey sold is blended [Music] [Applause] the branch lines enabled small cottage industries like fry's chocolate coleman's mustard heartless jam and birds custard to grow rapidly and become household names they also revolutionized how products were sold welsh entrepreneur price price jones spotted a retail opportunity this is the age of the mail order catalog in 1861 price jones set up the world's first major mail order company and he went from rags to riches his main selling point was that people could order by post and the goods would be delivered by railways it allowed people a new freedom a new access to things and he'd been selling all sorts of woolen goods from boys jerseys ladies knitted woolen cardigans vests jackets railway rugs and the eucalycia rug which was a sort of forerunner almost at the sleeping bag for persons constantly traveling they are a unique and invaluable boon and when not in use are indistinguishable from the ordinary rug i'll be honest i quite fancy ordering one of those people could now order goods from the comfort of their homes and thanks to the railways these products would be delivered straight to their local station for collection [Music] price jones's business relied on welsh wool for over a thousand years fleeces from local sheep had been spun and woven to make cloth but it was nothing more than a cottage industry making blankets and rugs for local people [Music] south wales is still a sheep-reading area and gareth richards has been farming in abigail all his life your sheep look fabulous on that hill they look like they're meant to be there don't they well they've been there for quite a while they're especially on a day like today is it's very windy and blowy they're a good solid hardy breed that's the type that the jacob is the world they produces is a strong quality fiber wool i mean one thing that the welsh wool has always been really good at is resisting the wet yes as we get we get plenty of that you've got plenty of that to all the backs of the sheep and it's the same in the things made out of welsh wool isn't it you know welcome blankets welsh horse coats they're very water resistant sheep bred in these rugged conditions produced a coarse durable waterproof wool look at the depth of the wool oh goodness i can feel the thickness of the fibers too the fleece of any sheep is sort of made up of two sorts of hairs a kemp or or sort of the hair that sheds the water and then the under hair which is the wool the one that's all warm and fluffy and soft yeah and and in a highland shape you'd expect that the longer harsher kemp fibers you're going to get a few more of them to help the water run off and they make it difficult to wear next to the skin but they make it very hard wearing so for a blanket it's perfect whereas you wouldn't want it for underwear passing through the wool producing areas of south wales was the guiley railway built in 1860 this branch line connected to the great western railway created a link to the rest of britain this is the last of them jeremy like the whiskey industry of scotland and milk industry of devon it gave welsh wool a route to market [Music] jeremy john helps run the railway today must have had a huge impact on people's lives here perhaps more than it would in and around a city oh yes and of course they could see that it would bring prosperity because even if you were selling to local markets then you could of course well prosper the amount of mills that opened up um were quite incredible really you can see the line goes in and then all these little mills suddenly come into existence well the growth was incredible you know and so fast yes yes very very fast and i suppose you know in wales we've got a lot of sheep you know so it's an asset there was a reservoir of available resource which wasn't really being fully used until yes great in comes the railway and everybody can everybody and everything can be exported and undertaken everywhere you know coarse welsh wool was ideal for blankets but to produce clothing they needed a softer yarn mark lucas curator of the national wall museum and carmarthen show is showing ruth how it was created mark this is the the raw material the fleeces i mean are these always very local it started as being very local but then when they become more specialized they they were always importing what was called colonial wall as well so the railways would have brought that to the mills but they would have blended that then with the local fleece as well to make it a bit so they can mix it then to make a better quality so right from the start the railways are changing the product yeah by bringing you in completely different raw materials yes thanks to the railways a new type of wool had been created clothes made from this new blend proved popular and demand for them boomed now the problem was how to boost production untangling the raw fleece by hand known as carding was a slow and laborious process this is the hand cast this is hand carving yes then you've got a whole series of little pins pins sticking up and you're combing it out rather like you're brushing hair it's very slow isn't it i mean after i've spent 10 15 minutes on it i get one yeah gradually the welsh wool mills mechanized so this is the start of the process the raw fleeces go in that end yeah this is called the the willow wall and just keeps tearing into it you sometimes call it the devil as well this machine actually uh took a man's arm off and we know they have killed children in the past as well like this is is replacing something that was yeah you would have done by hand you would have had hand carves before that it's just all constantly disentangling it as it goes all the way through coal-powered carving engines brought into the valley by the railways not only increased production but they improved the quality of the wall next the detangled fleece is turned into rovings so when you get to this bit the machine is starting to separate it out into bands and then this is shaking back and forth and what that's doing then is quietly jiggling it to make it into a long thin sausage which we call a roving the rovings were spun into a yarn ready to be woven using a loom and then once the railways arrived they would have transported it further afield into the industrial valleys and that gives you the impetus to start investing in bigger machines bigger mills so how much impact does the railway have on this industry in this area so there was 24 mills working in this village in the square mile in this one village they were producing eight to nine thousand yards of cloth a week each of those twenty four hundred and twenty miles a clock a week pretty much everybody must have been working in the woolen mills everyone would have been in this village yes they're all tied to it in some shape or form at its peak there were over 900 woolen mills and it became one of wales's biggest industries [Music] woolen goods from price price jones's mail order business was sold all over the world [Music] it turned him from a humble shop assistant into a night of the realm with a workforce of 4 000 and a quarter of a million customers his goods were distributed by the railway's own parcel service um the one you've got your hands on the top thanks look at that i sent away wow here we go mail order so this has been brought in on the railways courtesy of uh of a catalogue absolutely this is just another one of those examples isn't it of something that starts as a tiny little cottage industry really quite outdated i mean they're still using spinning wheels in some parts of west wales yeah and and you'd think in a new industrial age powered by steam and rails that that be the first thing to go to the wall and yet and yet many tiny little specialist craft industries but a whole new lease to life right okay so let's have a look at this this is an authentic so this is an elisa rug wow proper welsh blanket thanks to the railways the euclisia rug was a huge success this is the forerunner to the the modern sleeping bag and this goes global in a matter of years price jones sold over a hundred thousand the trade opportunities that are opened up by the railways yes meant that those industries could expand and grow and they're doing it through mail order yeah so catalogs are getting sent out by the railways yeah people are browsing through these catalogues and going oh i got like one of those oh this is it i know i'm right in front of the fire i've got a pillow at the back i'm feeling warm already i'm ready for a journey now in a carriage with no heat in up to scotland so all of a sudden great britain has access to fine welsh wool the finest scotch whiskey fresh milk even in the middle of town you've got access as a consumer to all the produce anywhere yeah so the railways are not only standardizing towns across britain they're enabling towns and areas to specialize it's hard isn't it that the two things should be going on at once yeah it's it's it's a drastic transformation it really is you know trades would have changed within a matter of decades all because of the railways rail usage peaked in the early 20th century when 420 million tons of goods were being moved each year then the railway's position as the nation's main form of moving goods came under attack from the roads because the railways have to carry goods they've often used roads to move them either from local businesses to stations or even between stations that are quite close together much of this was done with horse and cart but as the road network improved and vehicles came along lorries such as this could carry much heavier goods like these planks and they didn't just have to carry them to the branch line they could go all the way to the main line so suddenly branch lines are looking at their own demise moving goods by road proved to be not only more convenient but also cheaper from 1900 to 1960 the number of wagons on the railway fell by a third and rail passengers by half the railways were losing over a hundred million pounds of public money every year the government had to act in 1963 the british railways board published a report entitled the reshaping of british railways written by dr richard beeching some of you will say can't we have the branch lines as well can't you attract enough traffic to them to make them pay but unfortunately we can't he recommended that over the next five years six thousand miles of mostly rural lines should be scrapped closing over two thousand stations the grilli railway that was so instrumental in the welsh wool industry the highland railway that put whiskey on the map [Music] and the south devon railway providing london's milk were all closed driver dave noling was a victim of beeching's acts i started in 1954 on british railways and got me redundant by dr beach in the 1966 right so i suppose he his cuts signaled the end of of steam that there was a total ban on well a lot of railways in a lot of places like in devon here the southern line was completely closed they were all branch lines that fed off the mainlines and it was those branch lines that suffered the most oh yeah they it's like a river cut off the tributes but dave was not long out of work the south devon railway soon reopened as a steam heritage line and he was re-employed as a driver [Music] in 1969 doctor beat him coming officially i shook his hand the one that made me redundant wow and there's a photo of me shaking hands with him on the day he officially opened it well you're shaking the hand of the man sign there sign the death warrant i think coming here seeing an engine operating on the branch line it's only now i realized just how much this one thing represents an entire industry it was a it was a english life really the branch lines [Music] dave is now britain's longest serving steam locomotive driver having spent 63 years on the foot plate ironically 500 miles of lines previously closed by dr beeching have reopened as preserved railways and so despite the cuts steam is thriving in the 21st century and that's not all over the last few decades the railways have seen a resurgence in both goods and passenger numbers today nearly 30 million tons of freight are moved and one and three-quarter billion rail journeys are made each year more than at any time in the history of the railways [Applause] [Music] next time the railways revolutionize leisure uh return to scottish please creating seaside holidays [Music] trips to the countryside the train traveler was able to see the english landscape in a way they'd never seen it before and days out at the steam fair the victorians they became steam junkies

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 123,377

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, scotch whisky, full steam ahead, ruth goodman, alex langlands, peter ginn, steam trains, rail transport (industry)

Id: dfCkkGxQsMs

Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020