Walking Britain's Lost Railways

Rob Bell seeks out the lost railway from Elgin to Portsoy, a line which served the fishing and whisky industries so vital to the local communities. The track bed to the 'Scottish Riviera' of Lossiemouth once saw sherry barrels aplenty and…

Rob starts his journey in the famous steel town of Sheffield, where he’ll be following the old Woodhead Line, through the Pennines, to the industrial powerhouse of Manchester. This film is about human endeavour against all the odds,…

Rob’s journey through Dartmoor from Plymouth to Exeter begins in unlikely surrounds: in the garage of model railway enthusiast Bruce Hunt. Bruce has meticulously recreated the beginning of this line in miniature, including a model of Rob…

This is the story of a freight line, built to traverse the tricky landscape of the Lake District to transport minerals from the many Cumberland mines, but which later was embraced by tourists eager to explore the spectacular countryside.…

The story of the Somerset and Dorset line is one of investors, certain of the wealth they would generate, overcoming tremendous difficulties to build the line, only to find the landscape too punishing to avoid financial ruin.

Rob Bell visits Wales to examine the story of a lost line between Ruabon and Barmouth. The route represented a sea-change in how ordinary Victorian working families were granted affordable access to the landscape and language of the Welsh…

Rob Bell explores more abandoned rail routes, beginning with one that cut an outrageous path through the dramatic hills and gorges of the Peak District - part of the 1860s express route between London and Manchester. From Matlock to the…

Rob Bell heads to the industrial heartlands of north-east England, beginning on Wearside, where he learns about the world's first railway designed for steam locomotives. Rob also visits the ‘living' museum at Beamish and rides a railway…

Rob travels to Bangor in North Wales, where he explores a lost line that was built in 1801 to transport Welsh slate from the local quarry, which once was the largest in the world, and now provides the backdrop for the world's fastest zip…

Until it closed in 1966 the Deeside Railway followed the River Dee upstream from Aberdeen into what is now the Cairngorms National Park. As luck would have it, Queen Victoria purchased Balmora just as the line was set to open, giving the…

Rob Bell heads to Norfolk to follow a lost railway through some of the quietest - yet wealthiest - parts of the country. This railway was a curious latecomer when it was built in the 1880s and it threatened to rudely thrust the region…

Rob Bell explores the Waverley Route, which ran south from Edinburgh for 100 miles through the Scottish Borders to Carlisle, connecting with what is now known as the West Coast Main Line. After years of campaigning, the first stage of…

Rob Bell discovers the now-abandoned lines that unlocked the wild coastline of north Devon. He begins by following the dramatic Barnstaple and Ilfracombe Railway, which once built, proved an instant success, eventually carrying the…

Rob follows an epic 70-mile route along the glorious west coast of Scotland on the Callander and Oban line. Along the route he discovers an underground power station.

Starting out from the Regency splendour of Cheltenham, Rob Bell crosses the Cotswolds, following the 46-mile route of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway. The line passes many quarries, all producing the famous Cotswold stone - some…

Rob Bell follows traces the course of the Great Central Railway, the final great line of the Victorian era and the last main line built before the Channel Tunnel rail link more than a century later. Starting near Nottingham, Rob is taken…

Rob is in Yorkshire on the trail of a man once known as the ‘Railway King’. George Hudson rose from farming origins to become Lord Mayor of York.

Rob explores the copper mining that once dominated Cornwall, following the first two railways as he discovers how the deep mines prompted the invention of the steam engine.

Rob checks out a railway line in rural Kent that became extremely prominent during the world wars, The Elham Valley Railway, which once connected Folkestone to Canterbury.

Rob explores the lost railways of Northern Ireland - and there are many to choose from. Northern Island is only a little larger than the counties of Yorkshire.